MAKING OFFON
Making Offon
(Scott Bartlett, 1980, 10 minutes, color)
During a video production course Bartlett and students recreate some of the effects used in his 1967 piece OffOn. Outside of a few moments where Bartlett acts like a magician revealing his tricks there is not much of interest in this piece. Oddly, a few technical explinations made to clue the audience into vocabulary being used by Bartlett was cause for chuckles amonst some of the film students in the audience. Why, I do not know? Is jargon now considered funny? I missed that memo.
(Scott Bartlett, 1980, 10 minutes, color)
During a video production course Bartlett and students recreate some of the effects used in his 1967 piece OffOn. Outside of a few moments where Bartlett acts like a magician revealing his tricks there is not much of interest in this piece. Oddly, a few technical explinations made to clue the audience into vocabulary being used by Bartlett was cause for chuckles amonst some of the film students in the audience. Why, I do not know? Is jargon now considered funny? I missed that memo.
posted by Ryan Sarnowski @ 7:25 PM
1 Comments:
At 9:49 AM,
zierot said…
Scott Bartlett got an National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)grant to make this film in the early '70's, but he didn't make it until much later. He never really could articulate where OffOn came from, and by the time he met his obligation to the NEA with this film, he was quite at sea. He was "waving his hands in the air," as they say in academic circles for people who want to make a point but don't understand their subject.
OffOn is a film made from film loops used in the multiple projection light shows made by Bartlett/DeWitt/Hawkin in the '60's which appeared in venues in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. from 1966-67. The images were processed using video facilities provided by Michael McNamee and with liquid projections made by Glenn McKay. The soundtrack was made by Manny Meyer with the assistance of DeWitt and Bartlett. When the film became a commercial success, Bartlett took over all handling of the film. His common law wife, Freude, took over the management of the property along with their followup films such as Moon and Serpent which are stylistically distinct from OffOn. DeWitt's later films also veered slightly away from the OffOn style initially with The Leap in 1969, but the style returned in 1971 with Fall. His 1990 3D music video "2000 Light Years from Home" directed by Gerald Marks (DeWitt did the computer graphics), recaptures the style nicely. Bartlett died in 1992. DeWitt is now known as Tom Ditto and works in upstate NY.
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