Scars of Youth in Shock Cinema

Check out the new ad for the Scars of Youth DVD in Shock Cinema #37. It's finally out on the newstands this month!

My Duke Mitchell Documentary

One of the reasons I wanted to work on the release of Massacre Mafia Style was to do some form of a documentary on Duke Mitchell, which I was able to do with Like Father, Like Son. While I'm still working on everything, check out these excerpts on youtube. I shot the documentary in HD, 16:9 24p so that's how it will be presented on the final DVD.

Duke Mitchell Documentary Videos (Youtube)

Duke Mitchell Documentary Opening from john Hand on Vimeo.

Working Day and Night...

Working on a DVD release is fun, but I can definitely understand how easy it is to miss a street given how "on point" I need to be everyday in order to stay on schedule and get things done.

It's been massacre-ing my sleep, but it's going to be worth it. I guarantee it.

By the way, I'd like to thank the excellent Marc Morris for those Executioner pre-cert. cover scans!

Goodbye Kodachrome

So all the major news outlets have picked up on Kodak discontinuing Kodachrome, their namesake. They're obviously doing this so they can pull out that Paul Simon concert footage that's been burning a hole in their pocket and slap it on the news. That's great, because I like Paul Simon. They can also make this thing into some kind of rallying cry for the death of film, but it's just another stock, right? Perhaps it's a little more than that. It's ridiculous if you ask my opinion - it's kind of like if McDonalds stopped selling burgers. It fits together with where Kodak needs to go, I guess.

The product effectively died in 2005 when Kodak dismantled their main processing lab in Lausanne Switzerland because processing wasn't environtmentally free or the lab property was really valuable, whatever, something like that. Right now the only place to develop the film is Dwaynes Photo in Lawrence, Kansas. That's where Stan Brakhage developed some of his film (according to the imdb at least) and it's also where I developed all the footage that shot for my first film Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare. Perhaps the news of it's impending doom at that point forced my hand into starting the film.

One odd little tidbit is that any Walmart that utilizes Fuji for it's film processing was able to process Kodachrome Super-8. You simply dropped the film in a photo envelope with the direction to process as K-14 and they would send it directly to Dwaynes with a relatively short turnaround. This was how I processed every single bit of Frankensteins... footage, through Walmart. I never lost one reel and I even had a tracking # from Fuji from the mailer so I could check on the status of the processing.

So what can I tell you from the balance of a feature film with the stuff? Well, Kodachrome was a pain to shoot, really. It has limited latitude and it require a significant amount of light to expose properly, then it turns very muddy if you underexposed.

Still, properly exposed on a beautiful sunny day? The green, blues and reds are just mind-blowing, and the skintones just look fabulous as well, It's just got the timeless sheen of technicolor. It's a reversal stock, but those colorations are still very present when the film's telecined, even though I wish I'd had the money to transfer to some uncompressed HD format because I really thought the DV compression really crunched those colors down. Still, I'm happy with final results even though when they made the Unearthed Films DVD they messed up on the gamma, washing out those colors slightly, but that's another nightmare unto itself.

As I pull myself out from the stacks of tapes, photos and USB hard drives...

...I say hello! I'm still alive, and I'm still working on the Massacre project. Hopefully I should have a little more to report about this very soon.

Up Next: Massacre Mafia Style on DVD

Well I'm not sure if it's any big secret, but the project that I'm working on right now (actually what I've been working on for some time now) is the production of a limited edition DVD release of Duke Mitchell's grindhouse epic Massacre Mafia Style. The preliminary cover art is pictured above. By the way, I mention "grindhouse" but I should note that Grindhouse Releasing never had the rights to the film and doesn't have anything to do with this DVD release, though they do have the rights and film elements for Duke's unfinished follow-up film Gone With The Pope.

I'm working on this project with Duke Mitchell's son, Jeffrey Mitchell, and beyond being the first official DVD release it's essentially the first North American home video release that's fully authorized by Mitchell's family (hence the "Family Edition" title) because after Duke passed away this film became a cinematic orphan, and the guy who bought a limited amount of foreign rights took the whole thing over, re-titled it The Executioner and made a quick buck off the video rights. It's quite sad actually. All I can say is that the story of Duke Mitchell is just as interesting, if not even moreso, than what the film Massacre... would suggest. Some of the special features that we're working on are pretty mind-blowing.

As more information becomes available it will be posted to massacremafiastyle.com.

U.A.R. and C.O.G. definitely R.O.C.K.

I had a great time this weekend at the local Consortium of Genius show, which also featured fellow technician User Assumes Risk on the bill. The electronic paranoia of UAR as usual was excellently disturbing, and if you ever have a chance to check out Consortium of Genius, or COG, I would definitely go for it; where else are you going to see a Mad Scientist rock band with a holographic drummer, all powered by an Amiga 3000? It's a rare event. Everyone put on one hell of a show. I also managed to shoot some nice HD video of UAR's set.

User Assumes Risk - 4/17/09 from john Hand on Vimeo.