Blangy

Below is a listing of my film productions

While I was working at my high school's library as an AV tech, I discovered that they had a Video Camera and recorder which they used to tape the basketball and football games for the coaches and players. During the times I was waiting for AV work I would teach myself how to use it. One I had an understanding of how it worked, I decided to design a short video that could cover several assignments in 3 of my classes; Art, Photography and English. Since I didn’t have any way to edit the project, I had to script out a piece that was all one shot with music that the system recorded as it was being shot. I decided to use the theme music from the movie 2001 (Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra"). I took and edited this music into three crescendos, one right after the other. I then scripted out a story around the music. I had my girl friend handle the camera while her brother and I acted out the story. I got permission to shoot it in one corner of the main library. I took white bed sheets and hung up two on the shelves in a corner and put several down on the floor so that we had the look of an all white room. I then dressed up in black sox’s, pants and T-shirt while her brother dressed all in white. I barrowed the starting pistol from the PE department and I used some fishing line to hang the gun from the ceiling so that was suspended in midair at head level. As the music starts, the camera shows the two of us lying on the ground, sleeping. The music seems to wake us and once we are awake, I notice the gun at the second booming drum crescendo. We both walk over to it and walk around it, afraid to touch it as it floats in midair. I then decide to grab it on the 3rd crescendo. I’m holding it and examining it while the guy in white watches. On the 4th crescendo, the gun goes off while pointed at him. He (holding a small bag of catsup) slaps his chest squirting blood (black in B&W) all over his white shirt. He looks at his chest and then looks at the gun, then falls face down on the floor. I then get down and kneel beside him, wondering what happened. I start to poke him and then turn him over onto his back where I see the stain on his chest (crescendo). As the music starts up for the last time, I slowly start to look at the gun and while turning it around in my hands. I am still kneeling next to the man in white when I accidentally fire the gun while it is this time pointed at me. I fling my hands up and out as I fall face down and let go of the gun which lands a few inches away from my hand. The camera then slowly zooms in till the frame fills with the tips of my fingers and the black gun on the white floor.

I got ‘A’s in the three classes that I used this as an assignment. The teachers and other school faculty were so impressed with the project that for years after I left, they would show it to new students. Years later I went back to the school and asked to see the video. When we threaded it up and started to watch it, a basketball game interrupted the film. Someone had recorded over my work!

I shot this film during my junior year in high school. The story is of a student (played by myself) who feels ridiculed by his classmates and decides to bring a gun to school to kill them. I filmed different scenes around the school with my friends by skipping out of our classes and setting up clandestine shots. For the sequence where I shoot the 3 students, I had set up 3 friends with cameras stationed around the entrance to the main hallway to cover the action. We had only one chance to get this shot since I had not bothered to get the schools permission for any of this. I had arranged for a get-a-way cars to be ready to evacuate the camera crew once we completed filming the shot just in case we all got caught. If I pulled this off, I needed those cameras to be safe and away from the school. The timing for this shootout had to be right when a majority of the students would be heading back to classes after lunch. I also had given the 3 other actors little packets of ketchup to hold and hit themselves with when I fired the gun at them. We had no idea how the students would react to a gun going off amongst them, so were where apprehensive. Looking back, I was lucky that I was not able to get the PE department to lend me the 22 caliber starters gun as a 'prop'. I had to use a toy cap gun which did make a good amount of noise, but not as loud as I had hoped. In the end I was very pleased with how it all turned out and in viewing it just the other day, I was taken by the fact that my short film was conceived 27 years prior to the real events of the Columbine High School massacre.

I must admit that the concept of this film was a bit weak. I wanted to make a statement that the inventions that we were living with were accelerating our lives to the point where our physical bodies were aging much faster due to all these new advancements. The film centered around an elevator which sped you to the top of a tall hotel in downtown Seattle. I mistakenly thought that I could just walk in with my actor (Roger Junk) and start shooting my film in the lobby. When we tried to do this, we were approached by the hotel security and asked to leave. Seems they are nervous about having pictures of guests together with 'others'..... Some sort of privacy thing..... I told my father about my problem who then said that he would ask around town to see if he could get me permission. He was able to pull it off, but the only time I could do it was after midnight and I could not use any bright lights! This was going to be a problem. The film stock could not handle the dark lobby or the dim light in the elevator. I decided to shoot it anyway since I had already shot all the rest of the film and didn't want to throw away all that footage. I completed the film, but it is very dark at the end. In fact it is so dark that it is hard to get what is happening in the elevator and the end of the film..... Someday I'll have to digitally copy it and see if I can lighten the shots. Someday.....

One day while driving around I noticed a small carnival set up in a shopping mall parking lot. This carnival had my most favorite ride at the time, called The Zipper. In those days I took my Super 8 camera with me where ever I went so that I could film things on the fly. I decided to make a quick film of this ride. I bought several rolls of film and proceeded to shoot shots while riding it. I spent the rest of the day covering it from every angle I could think of. Once I processed the film I started editing it together over the following weeks. At the time my musical preference was for Led Zeppelin and as I cut I would listen to their music. While cutting the film the song "Battle of Evermore" struck me as being a good match for the footage. Prior to video and computers, whenever I wanted to show this film I would have to set up the Super 8 projector and play a cassette that I had queued up for the film. Now, 30 years later I have used computers to make a video film with the music synced.

In my graduating year at high school, I was approached by the graduation committee and asked how much it would cost to produce a 16mm film to show at the commencement ceremony. The only other request was that it had to include an image of all the students and shots of campus life.

I told them that it could cost about $100 a minute which they approved as long as it was under 5 minutes long.

Now I had to come up with a plan which included getting all the students into the film. The committee was trying to figure out how to have a group shot in the gym or outside on the lawn. I didn’t like either of those ideas and came up with shooting individual head shots of each student. I went around to all the senior English classes and walked from desk to desk and took 4 frames of each student with the 16mm camera. I also stet up the camera in different areas of the school and shot stop motion images of the whole days actives.

The finished film was then shown at the Seattle Opera House to a standing room only crowd before the ceremony.

After graduating from high school, four friends and I hiked up into the Olympic National Forest on the Enchanted Valley Trail for a week. The spectacular beauty of the sun streaming through the trees, the virtually untouched forest, icy cold rivers and majestic mountains rising around us, made me want to some how capture it’s splendor on a film. The group AMERICA had just come out with a song called RIVERSIDE, which kept going through my head while I was in this rainforest. I planed another hike into the forest with my roommate Roger Junk (who did not go along with us on the first hike), bringing all my 16mm equipment (tripod, Bolex Camera and rolls of Kodachrome movie film to capture the lush greens of the forest). We camped up there for 3 days and not only shot footage of Roger running around through the trees, but we also fished for trout (cooking it over our portable stoves) and we sang Beatle songs as we hiked the 7 miles into the forest.

The storyline: The film opens with an animated asteroid flying through space and each time it passed through the screen, a title would appear. I took one of the instrumental interludes from Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ LP and recorded it at ½ speed for the background music. I decided to try to mimic the Disney Multiplane animation setup. In my parent’s basement, I suspended 2 panes of glass from the ceiling and draped a black cloth below them. (Mom, I’m sorry about the big holes in the ceiling….) I then took white plasticine clay and rolled it into varying sizes of balls and placed them on the three surfaces. For my Asteroid, I took tin foil and crumpled it into a large ball so that it would reflect the light in different ways as I animated it moving across and down the 3 levels.

After the last title appears and fades out, I cut to Roger walking down a city street and then I have the asteroid come out of the sky and hit him, at which point he disappears from the shot and the Pink Floyd music stops. All of this was shot in Black and White. The film then jumps to a glorious color shot of the Rainforest, with sun streaking down through the trees. All of a sudden Roger appears in the shot looking confused. He has long blond hair down past his shoulders and looks sort of like Christ wearing old blue jeans and a tee-shirt. There is no sound at first as Roger looks around, then the song RIVERSIDE starts up and he starts to run through the woods, running towards the music. This music has a long instrumental opening and just as the lyrics start, Roger finds that the music is coming from the river. At this point, I cut to a sequence of shots of just the river. To end the film I decided to have Roger jump into the river and rise up out of the water with his hands up in the air on the last note of the music. Roger had a couple of problems with this ending. He did not realize (until we got there) how icy cold the mountain river water was. “OUR” other two problems where that the river current was very strong in most of the river, and there was not many pools of water deep enough for him to dive in head first. I told him that I really needed this shot and that we can’t do all this work and not get that shot. We eventually found a deep enough place and Roger got butt naked. I told him that when the film was rolling and he had 10 to 12 seconds to jump in before the camera wind ran out so he had better jump when I said go. He jumped and I got that shot, but the current deep down was so swift that he could not come back up in place where I needed him. As I was filming, I saw that he seemed to disappear out of my frame as the film wind ran out. I looked up to see Roger being dragged down river toward some rapids. He was frantically trying to swim upstream away from the rapids.I either yelled at him to swim to the riverbank or he figured it out on his own as I ran down stream with towels to meet him. After several hours of trying to convince him to get back into the water so I could get the last shot of him rising up, I was able to find a pool of standing water that he agreed to get in.

I cut the film using Paul Dorpat’s editing bench and he helped by teaching me a few tricks when I found that I had not shot enough footage of the river for the whole song.He taught me how to cut out a section of the song to make it shorter.

The film was rejected from the Bellevue Film Festival but it did win an Honorable Mention from the Seattle University Library Film Festival (judged by Seattle Times film critic, John Hartl) of that same year.

In Junior High School (1969) a friend told me about a phone number you could call and listen to a pre-recorded church sermon. I thought that this was really odd so I called it. I was so taken with the absurdity of the message that I recorded it onto a cassette.

In 1974, I came across this tape and listened to it again and decided to make a short film using the recording. I started to collect religious images with  my 16 mm Bolex camera.  This was during the 1970's 'Born Again' craze Among the shots I collected were: shots of a neon crucifix, bill boards which were using a beer tag line to promote Jesus, "It's not the water, it's Jesus...' shots from promotional flyers for the Rock Musical 'HAIR', shots of a poster which had a very hippy looking Jesus with long blond hair, smiling and sign - 'With Love. J' I took these shots and intercut them with shots of a man in a white shirt and black tie, sitting on a rolling chair, surrounded by computers that filled the small room he was in.  This footage was all discarded outtakes that I had acquired.

I then recorded several sound effects; someone wearing clogs on a hardwood floor walking slowly. The sound of a door creaking open. The sound of a push button phone dialing. The sound of a gun shot. The sound of a body falling to the floor. The sound of a long dial tone. And finally the sound of an recorded operator informing you to hang up the phone along with that loud piercing noise they play to get your attention.

The film starts off with a black screen and you hear the sound of a door opening. You then hear footsteps going across the room. You then hear the phone being picked up and the dialing of a number. This is all done with a black screen. Once the call is picket up by the recording, you start to see the Flash Frame cutting of the images that I had collected while you listen to the sermon.

The sermon that I happened to record back in 1969, is a condescending babble about how you might feel that your whole life is a mistake and that you have no hope of ever changing it. It then goes on to tell you to turn to Christ for the answers to your messed up life.

When the sermon ends, the screen goes to black again. There is a pause of silence, then a gun blast. At the gun blast, the image of the Hippy Smiling Christ fills the screen and you hear the gun fall to the floor and the body soon follows. At this point the dial tone fills the room and then the recording telling you to hang up the phone along with the Loud Noise! I hold the image of Christ on the screen and the Loud Noise for a very long time. Eventually the image and the noise fade out.

This film was rejected by the Bellevue Film Festival in 1974 but won an Honorable Mention in the Kodak Teenage Film Festival of that same year.

While I was working with the local filmmaker on one of his films that required us to take long driving trips from Seattle, WA to Los Angeles, I started to notice how much road kill there was on our roads and highways. Since we had our cameras with us, we started to stop every time we found some road kill and take ‘Arty’ shots of it. After 3 of these trips up and down the West Coast on Highway 1 and 101 (and sometimes on Interstate 5), I had collected a large selection of images. Everything from cats, dogs, Possums, Owls, Skunks to other animal matter that had been hit so many times that I’m not sure what it originally was.

During these long driving trips, I would think about ways to use this footage. I was disturbed by how many animals I was seeing and I imagined families on vacation, dad at the wheel and the kids in the back seat, when all of a sudden a dog runs out in front of the car and there is no time for the father to stop the car. I imagined the kids screaming, stating the obvious, ‘DADDY, YOU HIT A DOG!!!!’ Hence, the title.

I struggled with this film for a year, trying to come up with a concept that fit the subject mater. I originally hired a woman who sang opera and I got her to go into a recording studio and listen to “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road” by Loudon Wainwright III. When I tried to cut the film to this music, it gave a religious feel to the film and even though you could catch the tune and recognize it (if you were a fan of this song…) it was not what I was looking for so I tossed that out.

My roommate, Roger Junk (Sculptor, who also stared in RIVERSIDE and other early Super 8mm works of mine) asked to see a rough cut of the film that I was laboring over so I took him down to the studio I shared with Karl Krogstad. Karl was working on his film GAZEBO BY THE SEA at the editing bench (this was pre-FLAT BED EDITORS!) and he was listening to one of his Jazz LP’s (LP’s are Long Playing vinyl Records…. For those that grew up with CD’s). As Roger and I watched the film in the back of the studio, the song “Harbor Freeway 5pm” by Jack Wilson was playing. THE MUSIC WAS PERFECT!!!! The liner notes say that he wrote this song while stuck in traffic.

This film of road kill is one of the most difficult short films to sit through. One year, it played before a Midnight Puck Rock movie which was playing to a rough crowd of 800 people. Half way though this film, half of the audience was getting up and running for the exits. This film is only 4 minutes long!

I submitted this film to the King County Library in Washington State for consideration to represent local filmmakers. After not hearing from the curator for several weeks, I called to see if he had seen the film yet. He told me that he tried to watch it twice but he could not sit through the entire film. He said that for days after he would be haunted by the film and decided to give it one more chance. This time he forced himself to sit all the way though the film. After viewing it in its entirety, he had decided that it needed to be in the collection. Although the subject mater disturbed him, “…the film was a great piece of work, and not until you see the whole thing, can you appreciate the entire piece.”

I made only 5 prints of this film. The one at the King County Library was stolen from the collection. Two prints mysteriously disappeared from film festivals and I lost track of what happened to one of the other prints. I have one print left and of course, the original A B rolls.

Daddy You Hit A Dog, was one of 5 chosen to represent the USA in the Huy Belgium Film Festival. It was also shown at the Portland Film Festival. It was rejected from all other film festivals across the nation.

“On a strictly serious note, “Daddy You Hit a Dog” (1975), photographed by Krogstad and directed by Alan Blangy, one of his frequent collaborators, is a finally unbearable series of shots of animals killed on our highways.” – Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas

While I was working as a Movie Theatre manager in Seattle, my job required me to work till the theatre closed after midnight. On my commute back home at these late hours, I would take time to drive around and explore the late night empty streets. This being in Seattle, the streets and the lights of the city, seem to play off each other, especially the neon signs.

On these late night excursions (often to bars before they closed) I started to notice that old buildings and their neon signs that I grew up with, were being torn down to be replaced with new buildings that didn’t call for neon signs. I decided to start taking my Bolex with me and to capture some of the oldest and often broken down neon signs while they were still up and somewhat lit.

After collecting this footage, I then went to my poetry journals and recorded some of my favorites to use as a backdrop to these late night images. During this time in my life, I was in between and bouncing through several relationships with women, so my poetry tended to reflect my state of mind at the time. Most of my poems were short (like my films <grin>) and this is one that I can think of off the top of my head:

'I don’t know where you are tonight…….. But I know where you are not!’

That ‘thought poem’ is one of the shortest ones, but you get the idea. Roger Junk wrote and preformed the music for this film on his guitar.

This film was submitted to the Bellevue Film Festival and didn’t make it into the competition. I also submitted SHIRTS to the San Francisco Poetry Film Festival Workshop where it went on tour across the nation. 

Years later, while I was living in Boston, I found a poster with my film in the list that was shown at one of the local Universities. The Director of the festival had this to say about my film: ‘ Your film ‘SHIRTS’ is one of the best treatments I’ve received…. The mood it conveys comes across beautifully. – Herman Berlandt <- (watch his life video)

In 1977, I moved to Boston and started working for FILM SERVICE LAB. I was in charge of the Black and White movie film processing department. I mixed the chemicals, mounted the 16mm & Super 8 films in special light tight holders. I then threaded these into the processing equipment. (pictured above)

While working there, I decided that I should take this opportunity to make a film of a door that I would pass each day on my way from the subway to my job. This might seem an odd subject, but this DOOR was on the headquarters for a Tea Import company and it was 15 feet high with 8 sculpted relief panels showing the story of how tea is collected in India and shipped to Boston.

Each day I would eat my packed lunch while I worked (which I was told not to do), and then at my lunch break, I would run over to THE DOOR and shoot a roll of film.I then would go back to work and process my own film with the next batch. I then made work prints and processed those.

I used music from the same LP that I used for Daddy You Hit A Dog, and cut the film using tight shots of the sculpted panels, so that you saw the story but didn't know the context of the panels. As the film progresses, I showed more and more of the door until at the very end of the film, you get to see the full door in all its glory.

Alas... all these years later, I think the door is gone.