Hold

Year of release: 2008
Original format: Super16mm (b/w)
Running time: loop
Screening format: DVD
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Director/producer/animator: Kayla Parker
Editor: Stuart Moore
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media info@sundog.co.uk

Description
Steel dressmaker’s pins, buttons, small metal screws, plastic and silver rings: a collection of ‘found objects’, once used to bind things, and people, together: they have been lost or discarded, then rediscovered; their silhouettes burned into the emulsion of 16mm black and white negative film using household bleach: leaving a trace of their presence falling through time and space. Shown as large-scale projection for the British Animation Awards: onto the exterior wall of the Davy Building and onto the wall of Crosspoint inside the Roland Levinsky Building at University of Plymouth.

Production notes
Commissioned by Peninsula Arts for the British Animation Awards 2008: Public Choice programmes screened in the Jill Craigie Cinema
Digital photo of 16mm film frame, before cropping and colour harmonisation

Digital photo of 16mm film frame, before cropping and colour harmonisation

I dip the found objects in bleach and lay them on a strip of film where their presence marks the emulsion. I wash the strips, rubbing the film between my fingers carefully as the emulsion is soft and easily damaged. I then hang the film strips on the towel rail above the radiator in the bathroom. The next stage is to photograph each frame on a lightbox, starting at the top (the head, or beginning) of each strip and working down through to the end (or tail). The images above show 8 of the digital photos of small mother of pearl buttons and pins: each jpg is 3216 x 2136 and needs to be cropped, re-sized and harmonised before the digitally-copied 16mm frames are laid end to end on a timeline to create the animation and prepare for screening. The emulsion is black and impervious to light; in the areas where the emulsion has been removed by the bleach a range of muted colours is created by photographing the filmstrip in colour: from clear white, where there is no emulsion, to mottled shades of murky brown, where some emulsion remains.

Publication and comments

Exhibition
2010
Hand Eye Visions: the Films of Kayla Parker and Stuart Moore Cine-City, the Brighton film festival; Lighthouse, Brighton, UK. We presented a programme of 17 direct animation films, made over the last 20 years, for the third and final Hand Eye Visions event, curated by Ian Helliwell (27 November 2010)
The Measure of It 16mm film-drawing performance and screening with artist’s talk, Studio One at Plymouth Arts Centre, UK (6pm - 8.30pm 28 April 2010)

2008
Photo taken during the evening from North Hill, showing projection of the film Hold onto the south-facing wall of the Davy Building at University of Plymouth

Photo taken during the evening from North Hill, showing projection of the film Hold onto the south-facing wall of the Davy Building at University of Plymouth

British Animation Awards: large scale projection onto the exterior of the Davy Building, Plymouth University (during the evenings 18 - 21 February 2008)