Brain Static: a self-portrait
Synopsis: The human brain is the lifeline to living a happy and healthy life. Any damage to the brain can be a devastating experience for one to live through. Mental illness is overlooked, shunned and hidden in the shadows. Brain Static takes the viewer into the mind of the filmmaker and his fear that one day he may face the same illness as his own mother.
Technical Notes: Brain Static: a self-portrait started off as a film about my mother and her battle with mental illness, it was not long after production began that the film turned into my own story. I started shooting the film in the fall of 2006 and did not finish shooting until the fall of 2009. It was with this film that I for the first time successfully bleached unexposed colour film stock and then photographed an image over top of the bleached emulsion. The last scene in the film where I am holding a camera and looking at myself in a mirror was bleached prior to photographing it. My film Camera Paint came out of this experiment. I liked the results so much that I actually stopped production on Brain Static in order to create Camera Paint. As well with this film I used the technique of bleaching images off of photographs. With the use of time-lapse photography and an Oxberry animation camera I bleached myself out of photographs leaving behind the images of my family. It was also with this film that I started to experiment with hand processing black and white film stock.
Technical Notes: Brain Static: a self-portrait started off as a film about my mother and her battle with mental illness, it was not long after production began that the film turned into my own story. I started shooting the film in the fall of 2006 and did not finish shooting until the fall of 2009. It was with this film that I for the first time successfully bleached unexposed colour film stock and then photographed an image over top of the bleached emulsion. The last scene in the film where I am holding a camera and looking at myself in a mirror was bleached prior to photographing it. My film Camera Paint came out of this experiment. I liked the results so much that I actually stopped production on Brain Static in order to create Camera Paint. As well with this film I used the technique of bleaching images off of photographs. With the use of time-lapse photography and an Oxberry animation camera I bleached myself out of photographs leaving behind the images of my family. It was also with this film that I started to experiment with hand processing black and white film stock.
