The Choice of Film Stock - Text 2
Even more than that, however, the kind of film stock used and even the kind of emulsion recommended can have a powerful effect on the artist’s practice. Although in 1958 Norman McLaren advised that for drawing on leader one use “motion picture safety film with negative perforations (Bell and Howell perforations)” found in “1000' (304 m) reels by any large motion picture stock supplier,”[2] this kind of film stock was not preferred by every artist who worked in the field. As McLaren notes, “this film is quite clear and transparent” and “is used for drawing directly upon with ink,”[3] limiting it to a particular kind of approach. William E. Jordan recalls that McLaren, right from his earliest films, used 35 mm film stock, salvaged from exhibition copies of films, and that “with patience he washed off the emulsion of the old images down to the transparent base of this print.”[4] We can thus suppose that the quality of the film stock used has an impact on the aesthetic of the film produced (possible traces of previous uses, reduced transparency of the film stock, the different reaction of the ink on film stock that was washed and not new, etc.).
Similarly, we can note that in the case of opaque film stock it too is not used in a single fashion. Pierre Hébert notes that this leader “can be produced on different emulsions (such as colour or black and white), and its relative hardness can have an effect on the quality of the line.”[5] In an interview dating from 2017, he demonstrated his palette of tools and compared his work with a carbide tip on a black-and-white 16 mm emulsion with that carried out with the same tool on a 35 mm colour emulsion.
