- An encouraging excerpt about being a novice:
…above all, the amateur film-maker, with his small, light-weight equipment, has an inconspicuousness (for candid shooting) and a physical mobility which is well the envy of most professionals, burdened as they are by their many-ton monsters, cables and crews. Don’t forget that no tripod has yet been built which is as miraculously versatile in movement as the complex system of supports, joints, muscles and nerves which is the human body, which, with a bit of practice, makes possible the enormous variety of camera angles and visual action. You have all this and a brain too, in one neat, compact, mobile package.
– Maya Derin
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- And a nice thought about tampering with the documentary process:
By deliberately spitting on the lens or wrecking its focal intention, one can attain the early stages of impressionism. . . . One may hand hold the camera and inherit worlds of space. One may over and underexpose the film. One may use the filters of the world, fog, downpours, unbalanced lights, neons with neurotic color temperatures, glass which was never designed for a camera, or even glass which was, but which can be used against specifications, or one may photograph half an hour after sunrise or before sunset, those marvelous taboo hours when the film labs will guarantee nothing, or one may go into the night with a specified daylight film or vice versa. One may become the supreme trickster, with hatfuls of all the rabbits listed above breeding madly. . . . As is, the “absolute realism” of the motion picture image is a contemporary mechanical myth. . . . The “absolute realism” of the motion picture image is unrealized, therefore, potential magic.
– Stan Brakhage