Hi friends,
I've been thinking about memory this week, a subject at the heart of the monument project I'm working on. I'm interested in how cinema—and photography—shapes our memory, especially of iconic places. How and why do these places establish their power, and how do the images we capture of monuments shape our understanding of their importance?
Last week, I attended an event at my graduate school alma mater, the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon in Portland. The program I attended is moving from downtown to a campus in the Northeast part of the city, and this event was a farewell to the White Stag building in Portland's Old Town.
It's a bittersweet transition from the city's urban core. The journalism program is moving because one of the richest men in the world and his wife gave some money for a new school focused on child behavioral health. The new behavioral health program is being established at the campus of a now-closed private college; the journalism school will move there, too. I get the appeal of a brand new facility, but I also worry something will be lost by moving the journalism school out of the heart of the city. Institutions such as universities should have a role in shaping our cities, post-pandemic, and this is a lost opportunity to assert leadership in a part of town that needs it.
Nonetheless, time marches on.
At the party, we watched a bunch of 3-minute Super 8 films made by alumni, which was a perfect, nostalgic send-off to the old building. These are short reels of silent home video, made on analog consumer movie cameras introduced by Kodak in 1965.
During the breaks between films, a few of us got to talking about the medium itself. Would these mini-films be as appealing if they were shot on iPhones? As Kodak points out, Super 8 revolutionized amateur filmmaking by making it more accessible. Smartphones have done the same. We all have powerful cameras in our pockets now.
But there is something inherently appealing about 18 frames per second, which is the Super 8 format. It's slower than what we see on our iPhones, which automatically capture video at 30 frames per second. (I have my iPhone set to capture video at 24 frames per second, which is considered "more cinematic," and was the preferred frame rate for the work we produced in my graduate program.)
You can, of course, do all sorts of speed manipulation with video editing programs. But not so much with these Super 8 films, even if you digitize them. They were meant to be played at home as highlight reels of family vacations and events. They were meant to capture little snippets of time. They were meant to capture memories.
I didn't have access to a Super 8 camera growing up and no one I know did. Video cameras were edging them out in the marketplace when I was a kid. Yet even if you've never experimented with a Super 8 camera, it's easy to comprehend the beauty of their analog nature. They are inherently nostalgic because they use an older, non-digital format. Their charm is in the distinctive point of view of the camera operator and what they're capturing. Simply projecting one of these square-format films up onto the screen cues your audience—even if it was just immediate family in your living room—that they're about to share memories with you that otherwise would play only in your own head.
One of the films was by my adviser, Wes Pope, who shot a 3-minute cartridge 12 years ago and then never developed it—the film had been sitting in his refrigerator all that time waiting to be processed and seen. This was its debut. It was all images of his journey through Arizona on his move to Oregon. There was iconic western stuff, lots of mesas and buttes and corrals and burros at tourist sites.
I had a minor a-ha! moment there in that room, a place where I learned so much about making things. Lots of people have such footage in their closets, much of it older or captured in the heydey of these cameras. What would it be like to incorporate such imagery in the project I’m working on? Especially of iconic American monuments?
The next day I went searching online for footage of other people's vacations at Mt. Rushmore, the St. Louis Arch, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, etc. I realized that I, too, can shoot new footage of these places with a Super 8 wherever I go this summer, too. New footage on an old format would be just as evocative.
It's just one idea, but I love that it came to me while hanging out on the old campus where I learned how to make films. (And yes, it probably would have happened at the new place, too.)
So, an ask: Do you or your family have old film footage of visits to major or minor American monuments? Maybe from a Super 8 camera or an old camcorder? If so, I’d love to use it in my monument project. I’ll pay the cost of postage to send it to me. I’ll also digitize it for you, and will credit contributors in the final film.
Yours,
Erika
THE NEWS
All the links…
Here at The Windfall Dispatch, we love stories about later bloomers. Although “late brooders” might be more apt for this flamingo mom, har har.
More on the theme of interactions with strangers, from the most recent edition of TWD. Turns out that so-called “minimal social interactions” on the bus and at the coffee shop are critical for a sense of belonging and happiness.
Another update from links in previous editions: Why the New York Times covered Saudi Arabia as a travel destination.
But is it art? It’s a spectacle, that’s for sure. The controversy over the Marilyn Monroe statue in Palm Springs.
The quest for the “perfect” Happy Baby pose. Guess what? There’s no such thing as aesthetic perfection in a yoga pose.