This constant debate that exists between film and digital media seems completely irrelevant to me. While there might be personal preferences, one is not superior to the other. The way I see it is that they are two entirely different mediums that operate in completely different ways. As I’ve dabbled in both worlds, I can’t help but wonder why we feel the need to prove the usefulness of analogue film. It has wonderfully strong points that digital will never have the capacity of recreating. You know why? Because it’s not the same medium. It’s that simple. My observation does not merely refer to the aesthetics of film but more so to the processes and the experiences of working with film.
The experience of filming with a film camera and the manipulation the film material allows for is something that digital media will never be able to offer. Personally I find that the pleasure of film is in the physical manipulation of the plastic medium. You can expose it, cut it, dye it, draw on it or even stick things to it. The beauty lies within the fact that the craft is a direct result of your handiwork. It wasn’t created at the push of a button, by software that has stock functions. You have to work for it and physically make it happen.
A filmmaker who I look up to is Stan Brakhage. Now he took advantage of what the film medium had to offer and made some really cool stuff out of it. For example, Mothlight is literally a film collage where moth wings and other materials were pressed between two clear strips of film. Each object has a level of transparency which allows light to pass through. In Brakhage’s words, "I tenderly picked them out and start pasting them onto a strip of film, to try to... give them life again, to animate them again, to try to put them into some sort of life through the motion picture machine." which is exactly what film represents to me. It is a medium that lives and breathes.
