'camera'

The other night, I watched 'Videodrome' on Criterion Collection, honestly, I had never really heard of the film until recently - and for whatever reason, it only sparked my interest because; a) 'Blondie' was in it, and b) I thought the case for the DVD was the most creative Criterion case I’ve ever seen, although ‘Fear & Loathing’ is a close-second.

I had very mixed feelings about the film, maybe it just wasn’t the “kind” of movie I was in the mood for at that particular moment, but in any case, this is all besides the point.

Afterwards, I skipped around some of the ‘special features’ and stumbled across a short film by Cronenberg titled, 'Camera', a project he did as a prelude to celebrate the “25th Anniversary of the Toronto Film Festival”. 99% of it was shot with video – a very rough-handheld documentary styled look to it – except the very last cut is in 35mm. The contrast is so startling and amazing and unexpected. The director really does a great job of setting up the audience to “look” at his short a certain way, and then, right at the end, pulls the rug out. I watched it twice in a row, just to get the full effect.

Watching it really got me excited about the 30-minutes of 16mm stock the crew and I plan on buying for the film. That’s not to say I wasn’t very excited about it before watching ‘Camera’, but the full effect of ‘video in contrast to film’ hadn’t hit me until that last shot. It’s surprisingly powerful if done right.

Well, I spent about an hour sifting through broken links, searching for a downloadable clip of ‘Camera’, so please, make my efforts worthwhile and watch this short. Enjoy.