Wednesday October 4 * 6-10pm * REGISTER
Process film with just plants, ashes, and water. No industrial products, nothing from the store!
Summary: In this plant processing workshop students will learn how to make a plant developer for black and white 16mm film. (Also works for ALL b&w film and photo emulsion, including photo paper emulsion).
This workshop will cover the material history and ingredients of celluloid, what happens during exposure and development, how industrial chemicals were developed over plant based ones and why.
Then, we will learn the ingredients in plant developers that can create the same results as the industrially produced ones. We will learn about how to harvest, when to harvest, and the preparation of the developer in order to achieve the desired results, as well as how to embrace the nature of chance and the destandardization of development. Plant developers are not trying to just mimic their industrial counterparts but are their own wild selves.
We will create the different plant developers together from plants harvested locally and process test strips to compare the differences between plants. Finally we will thread all of our developed samples together and project them with a 16mm film projector on a loop so we can see the final results in motion!
Founded in 1992 by a group of filmmakers, Atelier MTK is an artist-run film laboratory equipped to work with super8, 16mm, and 35mm film. It offers training in lab techniques in order to provide filmmakers with the necessary independence to make their own films. The lab should be considered like a playground; tools and techniques are reappropriated from the industrial film laboratories in order to encourage filmmakers to consider every element of the film medium. From camera work through printmaking , development, editing, sound, and up until projection or presentation – each step has creative potential, to be questioned at will, without a priori.
Film processed with Eucalyptus
Film processed with Stinging Nettle
Here is the preparation of a large amount of plant developer with Stinging Nettle and Yarrow. You can see the chopping, cooking, adding of the ashes, and then filtering of the liquid to make a developer.
Film processed with Bee Pollen and Hibiscus, the bee pollen’s waxiness trapped the color of the hibiscus.
More images of past workshops: chopping, preparing the teas, filming the process, outdoor projections of the results!
A peek in the dark room after the lights can go on, the film is out of the developer tea and in a water wash before being fixed. Then, taking the film out of the salt fix.
Film tests results, in order from left to right: wild carrot, plantain, choke weed, blackberry leaf, yellow aster, yarrow, and an invasive fern. Notice each plant leaves its own tint on the film!
A close-up of the film processed with Yarrow, before the salt fix is washed off.