Super8 and Tagtool – Tales from the Attic

We have just returned from a trip to Rotterdam – taking our Tagtool with us of course! Filmwerkplaats Rotterdam was where we made our first 16mm film together – there are great facilities for experimental filmmakers there and people are always friendly and very helpful. For this visit we decided that we would film in black and white on Super8 one of my monochrome Tagtool drawing sessions.


This is a photo of the drawing and recording set up. Because of the low light in the attic we had to use a Nizo 481 Macro Super8 camera. Dima made the wooden box to contain our projector and mounted it on a second tripod to illuminate my drawing area – a ‘stage’ where the curved surface of a huge cylindrical water tank formed the backdrop while a big wooden door and one of the beams supporting the roof formed the wings. In front of the door was an old car seat. A solitary ‘actor’ (Dima!) appears and disappears in the course of the drawing process.

We developed the Super8 film at the Filmwerkplaats and on our return home Dima did this home-made telecine transfer of the filmed footage. This process unfortunately loses the very special quality that celluloid gives to the images and, being a DIY job, it is a bit shaky and uneven but I think it gives quite a good impression of the session none the less. I am posting this version now but we plan to do optical printing on 16mm film and add a specially composed soundtrack.
The music that we chose to accompany this version is The Alban Berg Quartet’s recording of Berg’s String Quartet, op. 3.