OPTICAL PRINTING

The bulk of work of Francois Miron's experimental films were created using this technique of image manipulation, what is optical printing ? How is it done? What does it do? What can be done with it? We will here try to answer these questions. Starting with a bit of film history, the technique of optical printing is as old as film itself, the basic principle is re-photography, when doing optical printing , one re-films an film image; to copy it, to print it.

The optical printer thus consist of three basic elements, an animation camera that advances frame by frame with raw stock in it,an original meaning a strip or roll of film with an already processed image on it place inside of a "gate", an finaly a light source aimed at the camera lens going thru the image in the gate.

In the early days of cinema up to the early 70's, all special effects were done with optical printers, sometimes in the late 60's, primitive computers assisted the mechanical operation of optical printing. Experimental filmmakers saw this technique as a tool to create abstract images, to change time structure, to create stock footage collages and loops, several of them even built their own. The master optical printer to this day remains filmmaker Pat O'Neill, he started in the 60's, and he is still active today. Along with stockfootage collages, optical printing saw (in North America) , I believe two main comebacks one in the 80's with a few dedicated obsessive filmmakers, some still at it (François Miron), some shifting to the digital image manipulation, the early 90's saw a big comeback of mostly simplistic optical printing films using step printing and double exposures. It is somewhat difficult to evaluate at this time what goes on in the optical printing world in europe but a few names must stick out, namely Martin Arnold and Matthias Muller.

There is basically two types of optical printers, the J/K (fig. 1) for the experimental/independent filmmaker (read low budget), and the Oxberry which is the printer usually found at professional titles and optical labs, a few schools and film coops are lucky enough to have them, other types exist; Acme, Research Products ect. I myself consider them as the equivalent to the Oxberry. Nevertheless as with almost anything in Art, it is not the tool, but the person operating it, that makes it good or total crap, amazings films have been created on J/k's and awful ones on Oxberry's and vice verca.

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