Description
The clips are royalty free and may be used for TV commercials, films, web, corporate videos, and more. They may only be used by the original purchaser and may not be shared, copied, resold, or repackaged in any way.
Warren started collecting his clips back in 1990 when he was a telecine assistant. Directors often asked him to put the VTR into record and just ‘play’ with the film. This meant spooling the film fast, running it off the machine showing the sprockets, and the edge code.
As a roll of film got loaded into a camera often it would get exposed from the edges first, a result called “edge fogging”. Light leaking into the film magazine also gave great results. This was often a mistake but he saw this as a cool effect and would stay back and record these short sections to tape.
A few directors even encouraged him to scratch their films, normally by spooling the film on to a dusty stairwell! Another common technique was to scratch the film with a scalpel just before it went through the telecine gate. Sometimes the film would literally fall apart creating some great effects as the sprocket holes fell across the scanning beam. He wasn’t popular with the early morning colorists who often wondered why they had shredded film scattered across their machines.
He’s made these hand-created clips available for you to use in your projects.
Scratch FX Promo video
Warren’s collection was growing so he started looking at ways to expand it even more. He bought a Bolex 16mm film camera and managed to get some short end rolls from Kodak. As a cinematographer, Warren broke all the rules — loading the film badly, opening up the magazine while filming and letting the light leak in. He even exposed the negative after shooting by opening the film can.
So how could he capture film burning in the gate? Warren thought about hiring a cinema and filming the screen as the film burned, but couldn’t find any projectionists keen enough to jam their machines whilst creating a smoke filled room!
Warren purchased an old 16mm projector and jammed that creating a great film burn, filmed with the Bolex. The problem here was the Warren hadn’t expected so much smoke which subsequently set the smoke alarms off. After calming down the security guards, he taped the smoke alarms up with bin bags and continued.
The TV Video and VHS Shash was recorded in 1997 and once again it was a case of breaking all the rules. Recording NTSC tapes in PAL machines, pulling sync leads on VTRs and generally trying to wear VHS tapes out until he got some great dropout effects.