The Choice of Film Stock - Text 3
The filmmaker’s physical involvement is thus different depending on how hard the emulsion is, from which derives the posture of the person drawing, but also the pressure he or she exerts. Nevertheless, the decisive choice remains the size of the film stock or, properly speaking, its gauge. As Pierre Hébert has written:
We usually think right away that 35 mm is the best choice, because it is larger. It’s not that simple. The fact that in 16mm a line is four times larger, proportionally, than in 35 mm, with respect to the image size, has several consequences. Materially, one can draw more lines onto the surface of a 35 mm image, making possible more complex drawings with greater spatial differentiation. With 16 mm, on the other hand, the line has greater force and graphic presence.[6]
Constraint thus becomes, for Hébert in particular, the means to a special form of expression. It is also possible to work on 70 mm film stock, as Caroline Leaf did in her film Two Sisters (1991). In this case, the very large format of the film stock made it possible to achieve even finer lines before re-filming her work in 35 mm for projection. Note also, in the case of this film, that the question of the emulsion has great importance, because Leaf used colour film, whose surface emulsion contains the three primary colours (red, yellow and blue). By lightly scratching the first layer (red), she was able to play with the yellow and blue effects which are the film’s hallmark.
As can be seen, that for these NFB filmmakers, far from meeting the inherent obligations of technology and being obliged to adopt an unalterable technological base, the choice of film stock was an integral part of their creative ideas. In this way, such a choice was part of the variety of work created in this Canadian film studio.
