Mojo Bag - Film History

1-min movie I made at age 16

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 8, 2003

Sivle <not@myhouse.net> wrote:
> An excellent little 'shortie' but I wish you would have added a little
> claymation at the end 'cause I kept expecting some CREEPY-CRAWLY to
> come out of that bag and engage in animated sex. See. SEE what you
> have done! You MADE me expect some bizarre twisted-up 'ol thing due to
> those previous 'life cycle' posts. But, be that as it may, you
> demonstrated remarkable talent at age sixteen. Too bad you didn't go
> commercial but then, you'd half tuh WORK fer a living from then on!
> Anyways, when ma money runs out I 'spose I'll have to find a job. Till
> then, I salute u suh from Mesquite, Texas... fireants and all.

If truth be known, I slaved like a dog from 1974 to 1992 or so in the
Dallas business film business. First I did things like haul dolly
tracks across factories where we were shooting industrials, and later I
became a film cutter, with a little camera work and animation in
between. I did free lance editing of commercials and fund raiser films,
and wrote scripts for industrial films and real estate companies. I
even half co-assembled numerous shitty music videos. I wrote-edited
several feature length documentaries about strange subject matter. I
DID have to work for a living from the moment that I moved out of Mammy
and Pappy's house, and a whole lot of it was outdoors in the Texas
summer.

I TRIED LIKE HELL TO BREAK INTO COMMERCIAL DIRECTING. I had a FAMILY to
suppoprt! But the Dallas companies either wouldn't talk to me at all
because I didn't have a college degree, or they wouldn't hire me
because they figured I wouldn't LAST there long, since I had won so
many film festival awards for my "artistical" shorts!

I started putting working for "Bob" on the SIDE, MOONLIGHTING, in 1979
when my first offspring was born and I realized that if I didn't do
something TRULY HORRIBLE, I would be doomed to a life of station wagons
and TV and job and beer like everybody else. As it turned out, not even
frantic constant effort and work could save me from jobs and beer. Only
when I had almost completely lost or fled almost everything else EXCEPT
"Bob" was I able to free myself from jobs and beer. (At the time, I
thought I was making a SACRIFICE!)

Now, there is no longer even one motion picture film lab in Dallas and
probably no film editors. The SubGenius Foundation remains, but it got
the hell out of Dallas.

The son that was born in 1979 is now in Hollywood working on the
slickest of the slick commercials.

I still have the same TV and station wagon that I started with.

Anyway thanks for the compliment. I get weird however when somebody
implies I'm THAT kind of Slacker. I'm the OPPOSITE of the Conspiracy
definition of a slacker. I'm much more like the Conspiracy definition
of a crackpot mad scientist with a day job where they humor mad
scientists. I can't stand to sit still for a second unless it's to cup
a titty in my hand or watch a movie or something like that. And even
then I'm memorizing the titty or outlining the movie's plot structure,
or "seeing" its storyboard. Fuck, I work even when I'm off work. Every
second of my life I am acutely aware of the jaws of Death, snapping
ever closer to my ass. Must not waste precious consciousness time! An
Emergentile rather than a Rewardian, in other words. In nature,
Rewardians outnumber Emergentiles by like 10 to 1.

But, were it not for the Rewardians, we Emergentiles would starve.
Without Emergentiles, the Rewardians would overrun the planet and
consume all its resources, finally ending all life. It's a marvelous
balance, the Circle of Life.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB

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From: idrmrsr <idrmrsr@subgenius.com>

>>a film cutter

F-f-film? c-c-Cutting?

Oh, the brutality of the ancient age! All that cellulose and those
sulfurous smelling carcinogens in the soup. The carrying on under a
"safe light" (which was neither safe nor light) in a dark room (that was
neither dark nor a room). Guessing the exposure, never sure that the
result might be simply a purple haze.

Tracing soundwaves along the audio track! As crude as if chiseling them
into a cave wall. And the synchronization...ohhhh...the syncing of
voice to image.

I weep when I think what MEDIA was before modern times, how much like a
barber's leeches sucking syphillitic blood from the doomed peasants
desperate for relief from their gaping, seeping sores.

Oh, the horror. THE HORROR!

[*]
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From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

Yes. Physical ribbons of matter were dragged at incredible yet staccato
speeds over a gauntlet of sprocketed gears driven by ferocious little
turbines. To lock the "sound track roll" to the "picture roll" (once
matched up using the special filming of the "slate") you had to
actually conjoin the crankshafts of the two separate machines using a
barrel shaped slip-ring. Imagine how complex such line-ups of
crankshafts got when you added the SOUND EFFECTS TRACK(s) and the MUSIC
TRACKS. (Lucky it was all MONO!)

To truncate a scene, one took a KNIFE LIKE BLADE, a special razor, and
literally cut -- not virtually cut, but literally CHOPPED -- and then
afixed the PIECES together using special SCOTCH TAPE with holes punched
in it, or hot glue that smelt like fingernail polish remover.

And then the playback device -- called an "upright moviola" and
weighing half a ton -- was used to display the image and sound on a 3x4
inch groung glass screen with LITTLE LIGHT BULBS behind it, and a
little speaker about like the ones on posts in the olden day drive-in
movie theaters.

Oh, but I forget. You kids wouldn't know about drive-in movie theaters.

Then the client would tell you to do it over again but Pinker.

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Original file name: MojoBag-FilmHist.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05