184, 517-518 by Brakhage: An Anthology (Volumes One and Two)

[Adam]

Hi,

She said actually that it won't be Blu-ray yet, alas, but the telecines are being done in appropriate HD for the future possibility.
And that it will be 3 discs. Probably an Eclipse, but I'm not sure about that.

[domino harvey]

One of the best things about the previous set was the booklet. It'd be a shame to forgo another one for it to be eligible for an Eclipse set

[Gregory]

It will be wonderful to have all of these, but Chinese Series in particular. I hope this doesn't sound sentimental, but there are few things in the entire world of film history more moving to me than the thought of Brakhage on his deathbed, scratching into emulsion with his fingernails after softening it with his saliva. I had the chance to see this film in Portland shortly after his death.
Many thanks for the news, Adam.

[kidc85]

Apparently The Art of Vision is quite good.

It would be absolutely awesome if that found its way onto the new Brakhage collection, but I doubt it. Could you even fit a four-hour movie on one disc?

[Adam]

You can, but at a sampling rate that wouldn't be acceptable for Brakhage. The tops for one disk is really 3 hours 45 minutes.

[domino harvey]

But without sound, extra space would be cleared up on the disc. I bet you could

[AlexHansen]

If Scenes from Under Childhood is included, I will be one very happy young fellow.

[MichaelB]

She said actually that it won't be Blu-ray yet, alas, but the telecines are being done in appropriate HD for the future possibility.

But presumably there's little point doing HD telecines from Super 8 originals?

I think that's why the BFI's upcoming multi-disc Jeff Keen set comprises a mixture of Blu-ray and DVD discs, because with some of Keen's films originating on Standard 8 (i.e. with an even smaller picture area than Super 8), there wasn't felt to be any point with scanning them to 1080p, since the SD transfers comfortably resolved all the relevant information.

[Gregory]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but 8mm has about 700 lines of resolution and Super 8 has 800, both of which are greater than what SD DVD can reproduce. Also, Brakhage sometimes filmed with a 16mm camera, and that gauge has a resolution of 1400.
The even bigger problem with SD, though, is mpeg compression. It encodes using groups of pictures, so that something like one out of every 12 or 15 film frames is reproduced and the rest are filled in by calculating predictions about changes and movement. So it simply can't handle motion as drastic, complex, and unpredictable as exists in many of these films, particularly the cameraless ones. Colors, textures, and contrast are not reproduced accurately at all, and compression artifacts further obscure a lot of the finer details. Blu-Ray circumvents a lot of these problems because of course it can accommodate a far higher bitrate.
I was glad to have By Brakhage, but now that Blu-Ray is feasible, there's no excuse for not using it for films that would be most compromised by the SD format out of anything Criterion releases. If they need a higher SRP to recoup costs, then so be it; its not as though By Brakhage 2 will sell like hotcakes even with the Eclipse price structure.

[ptmd]

8mm has about 700 lines of resolution and Super 8 has 800, both of which are greater than what SD DVD can reproduce. Also, Brakhage sometimes filmed with a 16mm camera, and that gauge has a resolution of 1400.

To be clear, Brakhage only used Super-8 on a very small number of films (mainly the Ten "Short Films 1976") and 8mm work occupies a very tiny portion of his output. I would certainly assume that some of the Songs will be included on the new release, and those are 8mm, but Brakhage almost always worked with 16mm stock. In either case, though, there's really no question that they should transfer these using the best possible standards; By Brakhage was a very good set, but, as someone who knows most of these films very well in projection, I have to say that the color range was much more limited and narrow that one gets in a good or even a decent film print. 16mm will always be the best way to see these films (and thankfully it's still fairly easy to do so), but if they are going to put them out on disc, HD telecines would help.

[MichaelB]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but 8mm has about 700 lines of resolution and Super 8 has 800, both of which are greater than what SD DVD can reproduce.

Presumably this would depend on the nature of the film stock, though? If your 700 lines is a notional maximum based on 25ASA Kodachrome, presumably most Standard 8 productions would be a fair bit less? Or was that an average figure?

The even bigger problem with SD, though, is mpeg compression. It encodes using groups of pictures, so that something like one out of every 12 or 15 film frames is reproduced and the rest are filled in by calculating predictions about changes and movement. So it simply can't handle motion as drastic, complex, and unpredictable as exists in many of these films, particularly the cameraless ones.

Now that certainly is a good point, though of course the uncompressed Digibeta master won't have these problems - so it's not an argument against an SD telecine as such.

[Gregory]

Michael, the 700 lines is an average figure, as far as I know.

To be clear, Brakhage only used Super-8 on a very small number of films (mainly the Ten "Short Films 1976") and 8mm work occupies a very tiny portion of his output.

"Sometimes" was a poor word choice on my part. He went through periods of using 8mm exclusively but of course these were the exception. I just meant that he sometimes used one and sometimes used the others. We know that Burial Path will be included in the upcoming set, and that was shot in Super 8. I'm hoping we'll see some of the Romans and/or Arabics as well (also Super 8).
But this is sort of a tangent. My main point is that I think they could justifiably release it all on Blu-Ray.

[Adam]

I was told that "He was born, he suffered, he died" will probably be dropped from the set, because in the telecine, it just didn't work, - the color frames had too many artifacts in cutting from one to the next.

[ptmd]

I'm hoping we'll see some of the Romans and/or Arabics as well (also Super 8).

Well, like Burial Path, they were shot on Super 8 and printed up to 16 (not quite the same thing as Super 8 presented as Super 8, because the resolution is much higher), but I certainly hope that rather than including some, they either include the whole series or leave them off. The serial structure of both works is a major part of the way they work, even though they certainly can be watched in segments.

The bigger issue, though, is that I don't think these would work at all on DVD. The Arabics in particular are so much about the relationship between the shifting tones of projected light and the grains of the celluloid, that I don't see how they could work as anything *other* than films. Other Brakhage works, both photographic and hand-painted still survive fairly well on the By Brakhage transfers, but I think the inherent flatness of digital presentation would destroy the totally abstract, "imagnostic" work. The Text of Light will lose a lot, but might be okay because the texture is more painterly, but the Roman Numerals and the Arabics are as purely, irreducibly "filmic" as you can get.

[Gregory]

I'm going to have the chance to screen Arabic 0 + 10 on 16mm soon, but not the rest for the foreseeable future. Having them all in one place on Blu-Ray would probably be a reasonably good substitute to seeing them on film, but without having done tests I wouldn't venture to guess just how much better than DVD it would look for these series. Of course I may never be able to see all the Arabics in any form ever, unless I want to rent them all from Canyon for around $600.

Anyone heard when the Re:voir Blu-Ray editions of Brakhage (and/or Mekas and Anger) might appear?

[ptmd]

Of course I may never be able to see all the Arabics in any form ever, unless I want to rent them all from Canyon for around $600.

Which, all things considered, is very reasonable for a work of that length. I'm very excited about these releases and I'm happy that these films will be available to a wider audience, I just hope they don't make it harder for cash-stripped non-theatrical and educational venues to justify the expense of showing the actual films (which are readily available from several sources). Apparently, the rentals for Dog Star Man prints have dropped markedly since the last By Brakhage set came out... It would be wonderful if the non-theatrical and home video markets worked in tandem with one another (with the sales of the discs leading to increased film rentals) but for work like this, that rarely seems to be the case.

Arabics 0+10 is probably the best place to start with the series and you are definitely in for a treat whenever you hold your screning.

Anyone heard when the Re:voir Blu-Ray editions of Brakhage (and/or Mekas and Anger) might appear?

I'm pretty sure Re:Voir has no plans to release a Blu-Ray of any of Anger's films, but they are working on Michael Snow's Rameau's Nephew and some films by Mekas now. It could be a while before the discs come out, though.

[Gregory]

I would say it's definitely reasonable to charge a $600 rental for that number of films. Personally, though, I'm low-income and married (enough said, presumably). I could probably figure out a way to finance it if I knew enough like-minded people.
I've read likewise about rentals dropping for the Brakhage films included in the Criterion set. One might at least hope that rentals of his other films and attendance of Brakhage screenings in general have increased due to greater awareness of his work.
Rumors of an Anger DVD from Re:Voir in high-def date back a few years. Perhaps it's been dropped if it was ever in the works, but in any case I think the Brakhage and Mekas releases are needed more urgently at present.

[MichaelB]

You can, but at a sampling rate that wouldn't be acceptable for Brakhage. The tops for one disk is really 3 hours 45 minutes.

When being trained up in DVD production, I was told three hours per disc as a rule of thumb, give or take a few minutes - obviously, you can go further than that, but compromises kick in sooner rather than later.

In fact, I was quite worried about the first disc in the BFI's Svankmajer box hitting something like 190 minutes - from a programming and presentational perspective, I really wanted the break between discs to represent his 1972-79 production hiatus, but I was also extremely conscious that his rapid montage style (not quite as extreme as Brakhage but he's no stranger to cuts every few frames or so) and the textural detail of his images would demand a hefty bitrate.

Fortunately, it all worked out, but I was very nervous indeed when I checked out the final encodes for the first time.

[Adam]

I learned it as 3 hr 45 min when I produced a couple of featurettes for the special edition (not th extended version) of Peter Jackson's "King Kong." the film was 3 hours, or 3:01, and I had exactly 45 (or 44?) minutes for the total duration of the two featurettes. (Kong's New York 1933 and A Natural History of Skull Island). It was a DVD-9, but I wasn't involved in the encoding so can't speak to those specs.

[MichaelB]

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you for a moment - there's no "correct" answer in any case, and it largely depends on the nature of the material. And also, presumably, on the video system - are there significant differences between PAL and NTSC, or is the former's higher resolution cancelled out by the latter's higher framerate?

[Adam]

Hi,

Oh, I didn't take you as disagreeing. Just seeing it more as different perspectives, and the importance of encoding issues. And I would think that PAL vs NTSC would be an issue, but don't know the answer.
Some lame tech DVD producers we are!

[Noiretirc]

Hmmmm....I should recheck the length of my single disc Lawrence Of Arabia, and Gone With The Wind.....

Disc 2 of the By Brakhage collection was much more challenging for me. One or two of these actually made me feel ill. My 9 month old son loves them though!

Eye Myth was especially beautiful yet frightening to my eyes. I had a mild nightmare about it. I was that guy, suffocating, straining, .....

[ouatitw]

We hosted Marilyn Brakhage at Filmforum last Sunday, and she confirmed that they are working on a new Criterion with 29 more films (!).

I hope every month that it will be the month that this is announced. Hopefully the disappointment ends soon. (Although I wouldn't be mad if they put this release off for another 6 months while the work on a Bluray release as well).

[ptmd]

Marilyn Brakhage just announced the list of titles in By Brakhage 2 on Frameworks. In (rough) chronological order, the list is:

The Wonder Ring; The Dead; Two:Creeley/McClure; 23rd Psalm Branch; Scenes from Under Childhood (Part One); The Machine of Eden; Star Garden; Desert; The Process; Burial Path; The Domain of the Moment; Murder Psalm; Duplicity III; Arabic 12; Visions in Meditatiion 1-4; Unconscious London Strata; Boulder Blues and Pearls And; The Mammals of Victoria; From: First Hymn to the NIght - Novalis; I Take These Truths; The Cat of the Worm's Green Realm; Yggdrasill: Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind; Ellipsis #5; Persians 1-3; Chinese Series.

These are all great films (I'm not crazy about The Process, but it's a good example of that period of Brakhage's work), although I'm a bit annoyed that the set will only include parts of major series like Sincerity/Duplicity, Arabics, Ellipsis, and, most puzzling of all, Scenes from Under Childhood. The reasons for this are obvious, but the serial structure of these films is very important. At least Visions in Meditation, to my mind Brahage's greatest achievement, is there in its entirety and hopefully the inclusion of parts of the larger series will lead to more print rentals of the other sections!

[zedz]

although I'm a bit annoyed that the set will only include parts of major series like Sincerity/Duplicity, Arabics, Ellipsis, and, most puzzling of all, Scenes from Under Childhood.

That was my first, uncharitable, reaction too, but then I thought about the sheer glory of such a collection and got over it!

Does anybody less lazy than myself have an idea of how many discs this would be / require, given the running times?