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Please answer these questions in your padlet journal, whichever format you choose and post your journal below.

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Padlet Journal:

Your Padlet Journal is an important component of this class. It is the chance for you to document your findings, record your data and describe your experience during this class. You will have one Padlet Journal post per project (3 total) and each journal is worth 50% of your project grade and due at the same time as each project deadline.

If writing is not your strong suit, find a different way to be keeping notes throughout your work (voice memos on your phone, speech to text notes, audio file of you speaking). You may send in a video or audio files as your journal, but make sure to still answer the questions listed in the Journal Template. You can write your entry directly on padlet, upload a word doc or file to padlet, upload images, videos and audio files.

BONUS POINTS: Any additional posts made on padlet will go towards bonus points and/or participation points. If you miss a crit or do not participate in giving your classmates feedback during crits, you must submit comments on your classmates posts in order to gain those crit participation grades.

The journal entries are due at the same time as the three projects:

Project 1 Journal Entry (Due May 20th at midnight)

Project 2 Journal Entry (Due June 3rd at midnight)

Project 3 Journal Entry (Due June 17th at midnight)

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I will be posting dakroom notes here, as well as other links. Please feel free to postr any cool handmade filmmaking experiments, photos, resources or links of stuff to watch for added bonus points. Each padlet post you make with new info or comments will be counted towards a bonus point.

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Karel Doing's work

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Phytography is a technique developed by me in 2016. This is the practical outcome of my research project focused on the relationship between nature and culture in cinema, a project that is still ongoing. Phytography enables interaction between the phytochemical properties of plants and photochemical emulsion. It is also an approach that strives for a deeper relationship with plants, both through observation and education. I have applied and exhibited this concept in various ways: in films, installations, directly on photopaper and as enlarged prints. More documentation about methods and materials can be found on this website. A paper describing the theoretical underpinning and historical context can be found here.

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Phil Hoffman

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© 1978-2025 Philip Hoffman. All rights reserved. Site by Wordpress and Marc LaFoy

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Franci Duran

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Background/History

In 1995, Dr. Scott Williams challenged his Technical Photographic Chemistry Class at Rochester’s Institute of Technology to create a black and white film developer using household items. The students tried a few chemicals including ascorbic acids, soaps and peroxide, these failed so they turned their attention to caffeine drinks like coffee, tea and cola. They eventually settled on coffee as the best product to use as an alternative to professional developers, their recipe called for coffee, baking soda and potassium hydroxide. The results were successful however there was an unwanted amount of fogging to the final image, this recipe has since been reworked and washing soda and vitamin C replaced the baking soda and potassium hydroxide. In order for the developer to work it has to be at a certain ph level and the washing soda helps in reaching this number. The vitamin C helped in reducing fogging and improves contrast. The main ingredient in the coffee that works as a developer is Caffeic Acid. The washing soda helps to swell the gelatin allowing the Caffeic Acid in the coffee to soak into the gelatin and surround the silver bromide reducing it back to metallic silver. Dr. Scott Williams’s article: http://people.rit.edu/andpph/text-coffee.html

Key ingredients:

Coffee, plants, herbs: This is the main developer. Chemical developers contain catechol. Caffeic acid is a phenol found in plants that resembles catechol. This is the molecule that turns silver halides into metallic silver and leaves density on your film. There is also hydroquinone which is more difficult to find in nature.

Vitamin C: Is a developing agent and a preservative. This prevents the developer from exhausting (oxidizing) too quickly. Without vitamin C the developer might exhaust before completing the developing.

Washing Soda (sodium carbonate): The Accelerator – energizes the developer. Developing agents do not do well in acidic environments. This is where sodium carbonate comes in.

Developers reduce exposed silver halides into metallic silver. This process makes the invisible visible. Now keep in mind only the exposed silver bromide reduces to metallic silver so any areas of your film image that was either in partial light or complete darkness is still sensitive to light so before you turn your light on to look at your film you need to fix your image, making it permanent.

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Dagie Brunder

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Caffenol and other edible and potable developing Experiments

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The coffee revolution! I have been experimenting with alternatives to traditional developers that are harmful to the environment for some time. And I stumbled across CAFFENOL, a black and white negative developer! A lot of photographers have already tried it and there are various recipes and reports circulating on the Internet!

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Dawn George

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Ricardo Leite

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Please answer these questions in your padlet journal, whichever format you choose and post your journal below.

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This is the Course Outline. Any changes to the projects, deadlines or schedule will be made on this doc.

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Project #1- Marking with Light (Phyto/rayo/-grams) (20% of final grade)  

Deadline: May 20th at midnight 

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Project #1- Marking with Light (Phyto/rayo/-grams) (20% of final grade)  

Deadline: May 20th at midnight 

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Project #1- Marking with Light (Phyto/rayo/-grams) (20% of final grade)

Deadline: May 20th at midnight

On a core, splice together a selection of experiments using phytograms (plant imprints made with sunlight) and rayograms (the shadows of objects captured through flashlight), or another form of cameraless filmmaking with the use of light. I want to see you exploring and researching these techniques, think outside the box if you want! This does not have to be a finished film.

Padlet Journal Entry: As a part of this project, submit a journal entry post on Padlet (worth half of your project grade)

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Project #2- Bolex + Plant-Based Developers (20% of final grade)  

Deadline: June 3rd at midnight  

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Project #2- Bolex + Plant-Based Developers (20% of final grade)  

Deadline: June 3rd at midnight  

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On a core, splice together a selection of Bolex footage. Using the Bolex (16mm) camera, create a simple narrative or a conceptual experimental film using in-camera editing. Keep in mind the film will be silent! Option to add sound if you like but I won’t be teaching digital editing so that part is up to you. Option to include time-lapse, double exposure and self-timer techniques. Develop your film using one of the plant-based processing methods taught in class. Tada! You have made a short film, and plants helped you get there.

Padlet Journal Entry: As a part of this project, submit a journal entry post on Padlet (worth half of your project grade)

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Rayogram notes:

24 degress caffenol

1min exposure w Shelagh (shay- la) flashlight

2,4,6min test strip in the caffenol developer

4min worked well.

Then we did:

30 second exposure w shelagh's flashlight

4min Caffenol

Then we did:

Rena's phone flashlight 2-3" away from film for 1min exposure time on short piece of film.

1, 2min dev ti.e. 2min best.

Then we did:

2min exposure on long piece of film (same light and distance)

2min developer

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Project #1: Marking with Light (1/3)

Who: Ivana Jaworski, Pete Mackay

Date of Experiment: May 12, 2025

Date of Submission: May 20, 2025

Project Title: Persistent Practice (First Caffenol and Rayograms)

Where:

All plants included in this project (rose leaves and stems), aside from the coffee beans that became the instant coffee in the caffenol, were harvested from the Duke Campus courtyard on my first day using caffenol and learning rayograms. All film was laid out in the gang darkroom trough for item placement and exposure to light using Pete’s phone flashlight. Place for this project was a little bit circumstantial and also a little bit significant: I was absolutely exhausted after a morning on set and disoriented from an accidental nap, and I’d arrived to the darkroom late with very little plan other than to learn how to mix caffenol and to make a rayogram I was happy with before I left. From the first day of class, though, a theme I’ve wanted to work with over this summer semester is “The Brambles”: the sticky, thorny bits of creating (maybe especially with film as a physical medium and artform) while living inside the privilege, horror, and cognitive dissonance of North American colonial capitalism empire. I think of roses as a gentle, self-protective plant: what we traditionally think of as roses give us a soothing rosehip tea, and many roses like apples, pears, cherries, etc. bear delicious, sustaining fruits that many species benefit from. Roses will also stab a bitch if they need to (and they did, a few times, over this process). Finding these brambles in our courtyard, a place where I have laughed and smoked with friends, eaten snacks on class breaks, taken breathers, and watched the light change overhead, felt serendipitous.

What:

Most of the small test strips from this darkroom day (6 shorties) are a whole lot of nothing! The caffenol had been out since 10 AM, and by the time I’d arrived around 4 PM, it was likely expired. After Pete and I made new caffenol around 5 or 6 PM, though, we successfully made rayograms featuring rose stems and leaves, jewelry, and a pocketknife. For my final rayogram strip, I used a length of film that had been previously used to shoot some footage on the Bolex of some of the plants in the Academy Learning Commons window, and I was excited that my double traditional/rayogram exposure successfully showed through where the pocketknife blocked the flashlight. I hope these frames make for a fun surprise once I’m able to see the film moving. I also find seeing my daily jewelry among the leaves and thorns feels dreamlike, nostalgic, and a little sad, although I’m not sure why.

For the original Bolex exposure, the film was exposed to a sunny day indoors, with the Learning Commons lights on. The rayogram exposure was approximately 2 seconds per inch of film, using Pete’s phone flashlight. The rayogram was developed in caffenol, and we found that 3.5 minutes of development yielded our favorite exposures, although we also tried 6 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, and 2 minutes. This was one of my favorite experiments so far in the class, and I find the uncrowded rayogram and the way the plants, jewelry and knife are allowed to take up space feels both gentle and a little lonesome, and I like that a lot.

Why:

I really just wanted to learn how to use caffenol and put theory to practice in making a rayogram, while working with an early theme I’d established for myself.

How do you feel:

I feel really lucky to have worked with Pete on this: had I not been working with someone chiller than me who was also equally persistent and process-focused, I think I might have maybe gotten really frustrated and botched my results, or not thought as clearly about our need to refresh the caffenol. I might have given up for another day instead of staying in the darkroom until 9 troubleshooting and eventually succeeding in making a small strip of film I really liked.

I also feel excited by caffenol as a developer that, at least so far, I seem less reactive to than the Black & White & Green. I’m taking the b&w photography class through Extended Studies right now as well, and there’s something in the darkroom that I’m really, really allergic to. So far the caffenol seems a bit gentler on my respiratory system, and I hope that holds.

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Project #1: Marking with Light (2/3)

Who: Ivana Jaworski, with a dear friend

Date of Experiment: May 16, 2025

Date of Submission: May 20, 2025

Project Title: On Pollution, Creating and Communing With (Site-Specific Phytogram)

Where:

All plants and algae for this project were harvested on-site at Point Pleasant Park, on or near Black Rock Beach. The developer was also mixed on location on a picnic table, where three longer film strips were also laid out with the plants and algae for exposure. One of the things I am exploring with my courses this summer is my and my materials’ relationship to pollution. I avoided film for years because it is an innately polluting physical medium and there are modern processes with potential to minimize film’s chemical harm while still creating moving images. We discussed the relative inertness of sodium carbonate, sodium precarbonate, and vitamin C in class, and when I look around the rest of my life, at the cleaning products I use, the medications I take and pass into our water stream daily, the pesticides on my produce, the car fumes I breathe walking around the city, I can see that yeah, in the grand scheme of things, these maybe aren’t so bad. I wanted to see if I could comfortably work out in the world with these developing agents, where other non-human organisms might encounter them. I chose Point Pleasant, and the harbour specifically, because it’s one of the first places I think of when I think of my own relationship to pollution. A lot of people refuse to step foot in the harbour because we’ve polluted it so badly. I wanted stepping foot in the harbour to be a necessary part of this exploration process.

What:

For these phytogram strips, a friend and I gathered plants and algae from on or near the beach and put them in a pre-prepared litre of distilled water, alongside 2 tablespoons of washing soda and the contents of 47 caplets of delayed-release vitamin C (Superstore didn’t sell the plain crystals). Scooping the ingredients into the orange juice jug I was using for the developer was messier than expected and messier than I would have liked, which felt uncomfortable. I also didn’t bring a field guide, so I don’t know what plants and algae we were working with, and I’m unsure if it feels adequately respectful to me to work with collaborators whose names I don’t know. These phytogram strips were exposed to diffuse sun on an overcast day for 30 minutes, then placed in a ½ distilled, ½ tap water stop for a minute or two, before spending Friday afternoon until Monday noon in a harbour water fix that was agitated approximately every other day. Acquiring the harbour water for the fix is the part of the process that required wading into the harbour, and that moment felt lovely and fun and right. The longer I spent with the fix, though, the more uncertain I became about my process or long term results (My research so far suggests that even more traditional salt fix only lasts for about 20 years, and I genuinely have no idea what was in my fix bath or what exactly I brought into the darkroom—I didn’t research the chemical properties of the harbour water beforehand, although I'm willing to bet this information is available either municipally or provincially. The bottle’s still in the darkroom, and I need to ask Keely how to dispose of it).

That said, these are my favorite results so far. I love the purples and oranges and pinks and even some greens which I didn’t know were possible in this process. In one spot, the seaweed left a bubble texture on the film, and I can’t wait to get the scans back so I can see that spot in greater detail. The sharpness of some of the leaves (roses, again, in places) contrast the more abstract seaweed and stem forms, with crisp detail sometimes hiding in plain sight among less recognizable splotches of vivid color. I have no idea how this will translate to the frames of a moving image, but I’m glad I erred toward using every single piece of plant that my friend and I harvested and I’m excited to have roughly 20 seconds of this phytogram experiment to work with moving forward.

Why:

This process was presented to us in class as something benign, and to be honest I was really skeptical of that. Most darkroom chemistry, and film chemistry generally, is deeply pollutant, with much of it also well known to be carcinogenic. We learned in b&w that the danger of photographic fixing agents lies in the transformation of silver halides into metallic silver—a literal heavy metal. We talked about magic in the first handmade filmmaking class; said as someone who carries a tarot pack everywhere, who has a natural dye background, and who used to grow a poison garden, my personal experience of magic is often a series of practices that accept that sometimes we make some pretty serious sacrifices for beauty and knowledge. I wanted to see if I could comfortably work in the field with these chemicals, away from the environmental protections provided by NSCAD’s darkroom infrastructure, and my current answer is that I think I might be able to, but I’m still not sure.

How do you feel:

This is my favorite result of any I’ve made so far in this class. I loved working with a long mystery fix process, if I’m honest, and I’m curious about how it will hold long term, and what it will mean if it doesn’t hold. I think it looks fantastic, and I can’t wait to see it move.

And also I still feel pretty conflicted about my use of these materials, in a way that I hope to learn more about over the course of this class.

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Ivana Jaworski Project 1: Marking with Light (3/3)

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Ivana Jaworski Project 1: Marking with Light (3/3)

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Who: Ivana Jaworski, in the darkroom with Amishi, Parker, and Jasper

Date of Experiment: May 19, 2025

Date of Submission: May 21, 2025

Project Title: Mutability

Where:

Other than the instant coffee for the caffenol, I only worked with my small collection of dried, pressed plants for this round of rayogram experiments. These plants have been harvested over the past ten years at least, in places ranging from Stillwater and Tahlehquah, Oklahoma, to houseplants in my current apartment in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I press plants as a memory-storing practice, so all of these plants are tied to specific places and memories I hold dear, or at least that I did at the time of their pressing. The film was laid in the darkroom trough for object placement and exposure to light.

What:

For this round of rayograms, I worked exclusively with negatives from the first two rolls of 35mm b&w negative film I traditionally developed (the second of which I largely botched) and dried plants collected over the past decade. Because of the warping in the second roll of 35mm film, few clear images from my negatives shone through onto the longer strips of 3378 16mm film from this session. Most of the footage on these two longer strips remained unexposed to direct light, and as a result there are sparse waves of visual data among a lot of negative space. I tried to expose the dried plants in the spots I knew were undeveloped, to little effect. The longer strips feel a bit like a void.

For the four shorter strips, I used a smaller, flatter strip of negatives from my successful first 35mm roll, but this time I found even less of the negative images showed through. I can see the branding of the film, but not the actual frames I was shining light through. My plants are also unclear, although I can make out the pressed yarrow, dandelion, and clover leaf. There’s also a big white spot with text on it at the beginning of each of these—I have no idea how that got there. These strips hold a lot of ambivalence for me—there's none of the clarity of my first set of successful rayograms, maybe because these are more cluttered, or maybe because they’re more exposed.

The pressed plants I used for each of these sets of rayograms include a large clover leaf I pressed outside Tahlequah, Oklahoma sometime between 2016-2017, a dandelion from Stillwater, Oklahoma around the same time, yarrow from Montreal, Quebec in 2018, and Christmas cactus blossoms from my Halifax apartment over the past few years.

The film for the long strips was exposed to my phone flashlight from 3” away for about 1 second per inch, and the the film for the short strips was exposed to Parker’s small flashlight from 3” away for about 3 seconds per inch.

The recipe was our class rayogram recipe, and all pieces were developed from 3.5 minutes, stopped in water for 2 minutes, fixed for 4-5 minutes, placed in HypoClear for 3 minutes, and finally rinsed for 10 minutes in a water bath.

I feel really ambiguous about all of these. As still images, they don’t do a lot for me—the short strips don’t have enough visual contrast, and the long strips have too much negative space. I really want to see how the long strips translate to moving image though—I'm hopeful that the hazy spots of memories shining through all that darkness will translate for the 10-15 seconds of footage I’m going to get from that attempt.

Why:

I went into this experiment hoping to salvage a disappointing traditional film exposure experience, honestly. I specifically developed that roll of 35mm the way I did to see how tired and sloppy I could come to the darkroom and still get decent results, and the film told me it had very little room for that kind of error. I appreciated it as a learning experience but I didn’t want that roll to stop there, so I tried some more film and some more light to see what would happen.

I also wanted to play with the concepts of muting, transferring, and layering memory. I think it’s a little funny that, to me at least, that translated thematically through muddy prints, because the ways that memories layer on top of each other and then disappear entirely sometimes do kind of feel like that. It’s a property of memory that makes me uncomfortable, and perhaps fittingly, these are my least favorite of my handmade filmmaking experiments so far.

How Do You Feel:

I don’t think I really like these! And that’s okay! I DID like working with pressed plants for rayograms, though, and I kind of want to try that with really slow process 16mm animation, larger format stills film, or photo paper moving forward.

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How to Load Film onto the Reel for Projection

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How to Load Film onto the Reel for Projection

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The reel with the film on it should be shaped like a 9 (top part is the reel, tail is the film), with the sprockets of the film facing you. Loading the Bolex is the opposite. If you have a way of remembering how to load the projection reel that works better for you, please add it—it might work better for someone else, too!

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Project 1: Chaos equals disaster - Starla

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Project 1: Chaos equals disaster - Starla

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Some project photos included. Will update this once my film is done marinating in her salt bath!

Will add the animation I created that I thought would be easy to re-create on film with spinach bits.

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Project 1_ Chaos equals disaster - Starla

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Project 1: Chaos equals disaster Part 2- Starla

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Project 1: Chaos equals disaster Part 2- Starla

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This is the 12 frames per second animation I made that I thought would be no problem animating on film using small spinach bits.

Oh man I underestimated how small the frames on the film were!

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Fix I made did not work at all :/

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Ivana Jaworski

June 3, 2025

Marigold (Rough Cut)

Where

All footage was taken on the unofficial class field trip to Long Lake. It was developed with two refreshes of the marigold dye exhaust developer made in class. As one of the few swimming spots accessible by bus in the HRM, Long Lake is a regular haunt and very dear to me.

What

The footage depicts Amishi, Jasper, Parker, Pete, Bailey, and my friend Simon together near the water on our field trip, alongside strobing visuals of the woods shot on partially-preexposed film. Splotches, scratches, and uneven streaking are common. The footage is tinted an orangish brown by the marigold exhaust bath, and one portion of about fifteen feet includes stripes of darker rust as well. Most of the footage of people was shot at 16 fps—replayed at 24 fps, everyone moves slightly too quickly, in a time distortion that feels nostalgic and alludes to Super 8 home movies or even earlier silent footage. Replayed at 12 fps, the time warp becomes more noticeable and contemplative, but at this speed the film also strobes in a way I worry may hurt viewers with light sensitivities.  The film was shot across a few hours on a very sunny day.

All film was developed in a refreshed marigold dye exhaust developer. Almost all footage of people was tray developed, while some of the forest footage was beaker developed. The beaker gave more consistent development but also scratched significantly more, while tray development left more splotches and general unevenness in development, including ombre effects and exposure striping across the film. For the first developer refresh on May 31st, I added 64g washing soda and 16g vitamin C crystals to 800ml of marigold dye exhaust. Crystals of washing soda and vitamin C accumulated at the bottom of the tray and were gradually removed or dissolved as more film was developed. On June 1st, I added water to bring the bath up to 1500ml, then added 124g of washing soda and 35 g of vitamin C crystals. All film was developed approximately 20 feet at a time to increase handling manageability, and some was clumped into the developer while some was more tidily looped.

I feel complicatedly about how the results turned out, and I will be doing further tests before I develop more expensive b&w film this way.  I love the color the marigold developer yielded, and I’m excited to work with it across different film bases, but I wish that we’d discussed how to achieve more consistent results with tray or bucket developing in class, as I'm losing a lot of information about my exposures and focus to uneven development. I also feel limited in the aesthetic and editing choices I’m able to make with the footage developed this way—thankfully I like how the extreme variability looks with the footage I shot and the color the marigolds provided, and this time the inconsistency is one of the primary inspirations for my final project. Had there been a visual clash between the contents of the footage and the textures achieved in development, though, there wouldn’t be much I could do about it in post, and even Hi-Con feels like a pricey gamble for such unpredictable results.

Why

I have a natural dye background, and the first dye I ever made was with marigolds that I grew myself, so returning to marigolds as a collaborator in a different medium a decade later feels really wonderful, and I'm very excited and honestly surprised about the color they yielded.

I’m also really happy with the temporal distortion from my first time shooting at 16 fps, as well as how this really did feel like it stretched the film. While partially exposing my reel before shooting was an accident, I also see the longterm usefulness of the strobing effect achieved when doing this, and I’d like to do more experimenting with that to see what cadences I can pre-establish in my film.

I got some okay footage of a shot I wanted to try as well, using a circular piece of half-magenta gel with the camera pointed through it to the arbor above. Bailey, Pete, Parker, and Simon were all huge helps in getting this shot, and just good, good sports stomping around the woods in a circle. I think my exposure or focus or something for it was wrong though, and the unevenness of the development makes it hard to tell what exactly is off, making it harder to correct next time.

Finally, I wanted to try exposing, focusing, and just generally handling a new-to-me camera, and I liked the Canon Scoopic a lot, although I wish I had more information on my focus and exposure with it after passing 170ish feet of film through it.

Once more, I'm working with memory as a concept, this time alongside some personally significant plant symbolism. I want to keep my themes a little bit secret for the final project, though.

How Do You Feel:

Over the course of the past weekend and Monday I spent about 30 total hours between the darkroom and Steenbeck, and now I have about 2 minutes and 13 seconds worth of footage to show for it, so I am slightly questioning my life choices. That said, I feel much more informed and closer to my long-term filmmaking goals as a result of this whole endeavor, and that’s really exciting! I plan to experiment more with ways to achieve more consistent results, but I have a reel of Tri-X Super 8 that I really want to try to develop this way, because I love the tint the marigolds left and I think it will work well thematically with the footage. I can tell I’ll be putting in a LOT of work before I try to develop that reel, though, because getting these same results on a smaller format with even more precious footage would be honestly devastating.

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my jumbled film wad, and film showing all the scratch marks just from the developer process

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Starla Matthias

June 12th, 2025

Gerberas and "Man-handling"

Where

Everything I shot was at the duke campus and then a little bit I shot in my room.

I wanted to film my friends, and the only chance I had was when we were all in class together.

What

Just filmed my friends when we were on break in our class in the courtyard at duke! Nothing too spectacular as we were all just relaxin'

added a bit of the scenery in there, as well as my room!

When I was using the camera I definitely forgot to keep the lens closed when I wasn't filming / keep my eye over the hole when filming. A lot of my footage turned out over exposed, but definitely still usable.

Happy that the developer slop I used turned out well! The measurements weren't exact and I also used Emergen-C powder instead of the crushed up tablets.

I threw all of my film in the bucket at once and let it develop for around 15 minutes. When it was done I took the crumpled wad out and did the same thing with the water, fix and hypo clear. This definitely wasn't a delicate process I was doing, but I wanted it to be like that! I wanted to see how far I could push such a "type-A" process by "manhandling" everything.

More examples of "man-handling";

I didn't care how light the room was when I changed out my film / when I loaded my film into the Bolex.

Scratched up the film a whole lot when it was in the fix and developer

When it was time to dry my film I kinda hung it up all jumbled and when it was dry I took it out and was dragging it on the floor to get it untangled (adding more scratches)

When watching the film back you can see all the "love" I put into making it "messed up" with all the scratches and sharpie marks.

How do you feel

I feel like a lot of projects working with film you're "supposed" to put care into your process and be delicate and precise for it to turn out, but for this project (and project #1) I wanted to push that boundary and see what I can get from being "careless."

(Careless to an extent, wasn't pushing safety boundaries)

My artistic process for any project usually comes with a "fuck around and find out" attitude and this definitely projected that.

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Project #2_ Bolex + Plant Developers Peter

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Who

Your Name: Ivana Jaworski

Date of Submission: June 17-18, 2025

Project Title: Marigold

Where

Long Lake is my regular swimming hole. It’s a place I go frequently when I’m overwhelmed, too in my head, or just otherwise need to be held by something bigger than myself. It’s a place that always delights and astonishes me, and I wanted to see how that would translate to this film. All of the other “where” questions were already answered in Project #2.

What

All visuals from this project were taken from Project #2 and edited based on how the film was developed, alongside the content of the visuals shot. Both the scratchiness and the splatters of the development process feature strongly in the final short and informed both my editing and themes. I worked with plant development, in-camera filming techniques, and film destruction for this short. Plant developer details are in my Project #2 Padlet journal. For in-camera filming techniques, I worked with AFCOOP’s Canon Scoopic, and the footage includes handheld pans, tilts, and zooms. Almost all footage was shot at 16 fps because I wanted to work with assorted temporal distortions in relation to my themes, and I was surprised in my final edit that I didn’t want to slow down the playback from 24 fps at any point—I really liked and was surprised by how the speed of the scan condensed time, sped up movement, and made everything feel just ever so slightly off without being too in-your(my?)-face about it. For film destruction, I am counting the distortions from my development, as lost footage features prominently in the final short. I am also counting shooting on partially pre-exposed film as a form of film pre-destruction.

Almost all other questions in this section were answered in Project #2.

I wrote my script for this short walking back and forth between the darkroom and the Steenbeck during the development process, and it was directly inspired by my inconsistencies in film development. One thing I ended up loving is that on the field trip we made a lot of mermaid jokes, and then the film itself looks kind of watery because of the way it was developed. I loved the colors the marigold gave the film and I wish more of those tones had been captured in the scans, as I had no idea how to get my expected blues back in post. In some places my sprocket holes are dark green instead of black, so I just really don’t know what’s going on with the scan color grading or how to adjust for it. I’d love to know more about our scan specs, and I expect to play with this footage more to learn more about color grading over the course of the summer, but on the whole I appreciate the relative consistency provided by my film being corrected to mostly b&w.

Why

I ended up working with memory as a concept a lot more than I expected over the course of this class, which maybe shouldn't surprise me so much. I have prior archives and writing degrees, and in both I spent a lot of time researching personal, communal, and archival memory, and the ways gaps form in each. I also spent some time working in home movie preservation and education, and that definitely influenced this final piece. Film and photography as mediums often portray themselves as objective, capturing reality as it is, and the inconsistencies in my development illustrated really clearly the ways that that just isn’t true. Film’s so easy to destroy and distort, even as a really physically durable medium. Working in autofiction, I created an unreliable narrator to work alongside the distortions in my footage and play with the idea that maybe we’re all unreliable narrators.

I did expect to work extensively with pollution as a theme in this class. I’ve loved celluloid for a long time, and part of my educational goals this summer were to explore the extent to which I felt comfortable working in a medium that is innately polluting, and that also can have pretty intense health consequences for the people who make and develop it, as well as those who live on land- and waterbases impacted by it. I wanted to learn more about my own boundaries in relation to a medium that I love but am uncertain I’m comfortable working in. I don’t know that I have a more cohesive understanding of those boundaries now, but I DO have a weird little short about how I’m not sure what I’m doing in that regard, as well as significantly more firsthand knowledge of the physical impact of film on the people who work with it.

How do you feel?

I knew the short was finished when I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I WAS sure that if I changed anything I’d make it worse. I think I’ll either like it once I get more distance and feedback, or I’ll look back on it with embarrassment someday. Or maybe both. I learned a lot more about the functionality of Davinci Resolve, but I suspect I picked up a lot of bad habits in my editing process, too. That said, I do find that I like editing, and taking a hybrid approach to my sound (recording the script, editing to it, then recording the music to accompany the visual edit) feels like it might have paid off. Right now the work’s still mostly in a vacuum, though, so I can’t gauge if my jokes are legible or my visuals are evocative to anyone but me. I also can’t tell if this is a story worth telling or just the one that my visuals gave me, but regardless the short kind of insisted on being made, so I’m not sure that ultimately matters.

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Who

Starla Matthias

June 25th, 2025

"People and Things"

Where

I chose to film this project with my friends just in the courtyard at Duke, on our break in class. All the audio I used was from videos of my friends doing "weird shit" a.k.a just being themselves lol. Some of the audio is also from an old home video of me and my family canoeing that I think adds a nice background overlay with the friend audios. (A more relaxing feel from the other audio)

What

My friends!!! Hehe

I really enjoyed editing this project more than the filming process. I love editing because that's where you can fully see your vision come together / make something from nothing.

As I think I've said before, I didn't really have a vision for what I wanted to create, I kinda just filmed whatever and hoped that it turned out well.

Although I loved this class, and I love doing school in the summer, I have been so unmotivated to make anything these past few months (been so drained) and so I didn't put as much effort into my work as I usually do. Not sure if it's noticeable to anyone, but it is to me.

I haven't been inspired by anything, all my ideas I had for filming I ended up trashing cuz I thought it was stupid and "not worth it" - and all in all just have been super anxious.

However, after just "winging it" and filming my friends, I realized they are my inspiration haha. Every project I've been working on has been heavily inspired by the ones around me!

I'm usually inspired by my environment and my world has just been friend entered recently. From their support with the episode I've been in recently, to just being fun people to be around - they really make the art I create.

How do I feel

I feel good about what I made. As hard as I am on myself, I think what I made was decent. There were so many things I wish I did differently now that I know how to do everything, but I am content with the end result.

After watching everyone's work (Which were so good by the way), I'm definitely inspired now to maybe try other things in my future projects!

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bolex experimentation and plant development - Jasper White