17 Reasons Why

Last updated
17 Reasons Why
Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky
Distributed by Canyon Cinema
Release date
  • October 6, 1987 (1987-10-06)
Running time
19 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent

17 Reasons Why is a 1987 American avant-garde short film directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. Working with a collection of secondhand portable cameras, Dorsky used the unslit 8 mm footage to create a split screen with four quadrants. Normally screened on 16 mm film at 16 frames per second, it is one of his only works to have been shown as a digital transfer.

Contents

Description

17 Reasons divides the screen into four quadrants. The top and bottom images are offset by a single frame. [1] The left and right sides usually use different shots but sometimes show the same image out of sync. [2]

The content of the images varies between landscapes, interior scenes, faces, extreme close-ups of objects, and color fields. These are sometimes combined through multiple exposures. [1] [2]

Production

Double 8 mm film is made by shooting along each side of a 16 mm film strip and splitting it in half during development. Dorsky used unslit Double 8 to create a 16 mm film with four images per frame. 8mm and double8.png
Double 8 mm film is made by shooting along each side of a 16 mm film strip and splitting it in half during development. Dorsky used unslit Double 8 to create a 16 mm film with four images per frame.

The split screen in 17 Reasons Why was produced through Double 8, a technique common within experimental cinema during the 1970s. [3] Double 8 mm film uses a single film strip that is 16 mm wide. Only half the width is exposed at any given time, and the camera operator flips the roll once one side is complete. When the roll is developed, the strip is slit along the center to separate it into two 8 mm strips. To create the quadrisected image, Dorsky created a 16 mm strip from printing the unslit 8 mm strips, such that each 16 mm frame contains four smaller 8 mm frames. [4] [5]

Dorsky made the film using old 8 mm cameras he purchased secondhand. [6] To prevent the two sides of the strip from facing different directions, he held the camera upside down when shooting the second side of each roll. [3] His use of multiple cameras and film stocks produced different colors, textures, and gate shapes in the resulting footage. [1] [7] He edited the footage together, using much shorter shot durations than is common in his work. [8]

The title 17 Reasons Why comes from a rooftop sign at 17th and Mission Street which appears in the film. [7]

Release

The film premiered on October 6, 1987, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, in a program with Pneuma and Alaya . [6] It screened on October 20 at the Collective for Living Cinema in New York. [2] Dorsky requests the film be projected at 16 frames per second, slightly slower than the 18 fps frame rate of his other films or the 24 fps frame rate of typical sound films, to emphasize the articulation of individual frames. [3]

17 Reasons Why is one of few films by Dorsky to have been presented digitally. A 2019 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Private Lives Public Spaces, featured 100 works of "artist's cinema, amateur movies, and family filmmaking". 17 Reasons Why was presented on a digital screen in front of a dark background at the exhibition's entrance, in addition to two 16 mm screenings. MoMA had wanted to show the film as a 16 mm loop, but the wear and tear would have destroyed the print. Dorsky was concerned that rendering the film at 16 frames per second would require the insertion of duplicate frames, which would interfere with its single-frame effects. Upon seeing the installation of the digital version, Dorsky remarked that it "has less feeling of body and light, delicacy of color, and tenderness of fragile beauty" than the film version but that he was "very pleasantly surprised with how good the MoMA technicians made the film look in its own newly acquired digital terms." [9] [10]

Reception

Critic Amy Taubin described the film as "lively, glittering, and mysterious", writing that it "has the surprise and resonance of accomplished ensemble jazz improvisation." [2]

Related Research Articles

Frame rate is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and motion capture systems. In these contexts, frame rate may be used interchangeably with frame frequency and refresh rate, which are expressed in hertz. Additionally, in the context of computer graphics performance, FPS is the rate at which a system, particularly a GPU, is able to generate frames, and refresh rate is the frequency at which a display shows completed frames. In electronic camera specifications frame rate refers to the maximum possible rate frames could be captured, but in practice, other settings may reduce the actual frequency to a lower number than the frame rate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">35 mm movie film</span> Standard theatrical motion picture film gauge

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">70 mm film</span> Wide high-resolution film gauge

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">9.5 mm film</span> Amateur film format

9.5 mm film is an amateur film format introduced by Pathé in 1922 as part of the Pathé Baby amateur film system. It was conceived initially as an inexpensive format to provide copies of commercially made films to home users, although a simple camera was released shortly afterwards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movie camera</span> Special type of camera used to shoot movies

A movie camera is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either onto film stock or an image sensor, in order to produce a moving image to display on a screen. In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video. The frames are projected through a movie projector or a video projector at a specific frame rate to show the moving picture. When projected at a high enough frame rate, the persistence of vision allows the eyes and brain of the viewer to merge the separate frames into a continuous moving picture.

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In video technology, 24p refers to a video format that operates at 24 frames per second frame rate with progressive scanning. Originally, 24p was used in the non-linear editing of film-originated material. Today, 24p formats are being increasingly used for aesthetic reasons in image acquisition, delivering film-like motion characteristics. Some vendors advertise 24p products as a cheaper alternative to film acquisition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movie projector</span> Device for showing motion picture film

A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying motion picture film by projecting it onto a screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras. Modern movie projectors are specially built video projectors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital cinematography</span> Digital image capture for film

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In filmmaking, video production, animation, and related fields, a frame is one of the many still images which compose the complete moving picture. The term is derived from the historical development of film stock, in which the sequentially recorded single images look like a framed picture when examined individually.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-speed photography</span> Photography genre

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathaniel Dorsky</span> American filmmaker and film editor

Nathaniel Dorsky is an American experimental filmmaker and film editor. His film career began during the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s, when he met his partner Jerome Hiler. He won an Emmy Award in 1967 for his work on the film Gaugin in Tahiti: Search for Paradise.

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Hours for Jerome (1980–82) is an American silent experimental film in two parts directed by Nathaniel Dorsky recording the daily events of Dorsky and his partner, artist Jerome Hiler, around Lake Owassa in New Jersey and in Manhattan. The two films revolve around the four seasons with Part 1 revolving around spring through summer while part 2 revolves around fall through winter. According to Dorsky, he states that the film "is an arrangement of images, energies, and illuminations from daily life" and a "silent tone poem".

The Arboretum Cycle is a seven-part film cycle by American experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky. The films—Elohim, Abaton, Coda, Ode, September, Monody, and Epilogue—were shot in 2017 at the Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco. Dorsky made the series to capture the interaction between light and plants in the garden.

Triste is a 1996 American avant-garde short film directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. It is the first in a set of "Four Cinematic Songs", which also includes Variations, Arbor Vitae, and Love's Refrain.

Alaya is a 1987 American avant-garde short film directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. It shows sand filmed in different ways.

Pneuma is a 1983 American avant-garde short film directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. It captures grain patterns from unexposed film stocks.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Kleinhans, Chuck (February 1988). "Margin notes". Afterimage . Vol. 15, no. 7. p. 21. doi:10.1525/aft.1988.15.7.21.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Taubin, Amy (October 27, 1987). "Being Here Now". The Village Voice .
  3. 1 2 3 Proctor, Maximilien Luc (February 15, 2022). "Nathaniel Dorsky: Shimmering Golden Music". Notebook . Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  4. ↑ Wolff, Kurt (February 1988). "Filming Grains of Sand". San Francisco Bay Guardian . p. 30.
  5. ↑ MacDonald, Scott (2006). A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. University of California Press. p. 88. ISBN   978-0-520-93908-0.
  6. 1 2 Ahlgren, Calvin (October 4, 1987). "Making an Art Form of Chemical Breakdown". San Francisco Chronicle . p. 37.
  7. 1 2 Sicinski, Michael (2010). "The Bay Area as Cinematic Space in Twenty-five Stops or Less". In Anker, Steve; Geritz, Kathy; Seid, Steve (eds.). Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000. University of California Press. p. 269. ISBN   978-0-520-24911-0.
  8. ↑ Nelson, Max (July 2016). "Heavenly Host". Film Comment . Vol. 52, no. 4. p. 53. Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  9. ↑ Hudson, David (September 27, 2019). "Archived and Revived". The Criterion Collection . Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  10. ↑ Dorsky, Nathaniel (September 22, 2019). "17 Reasons Why by Nathaniel Dorsky is the welcoming moving image for MoMA's new installation" . Retrieved December 16, 2023.
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