In The Shadows

When you reach your biblical "three score years and ten" as I do today gentle reader, (and yes, there was cake for breakfast), the subconscious mind can be forgiven a quick peek  in the shadows  just in case Grimmy himself might be lurking there, scythe at the ready for a spot of reaping.

Of course I'm being facetious, flippant even. I trust I've a good few more birthdays to come yet, but take nothing for granted, being mindful of the fact that all four of my grandparents died in their sixties and my mother didn't make it beyond seventy-two. Still, people live longer in the 21st century, don't they? Come on! 💀

Dismissing reflections on mortality, I'm also celebrating another milestone today, this being the 400th Dead Good Saturday blog. It's funny how things turn out. I only started writing them because I didn't have the time back in 2014 to devote to my novel-in-progress (which still hasn't advanced very far). However, blogging has been fun. It's got me researching and writing about lots of topics I would never have broached otherwise, and I hope you've been enjoying the journey as much as I have. By the way, if you're late to the party (so to speak) and would like to catch up, they are all still out on the website just waiting for you. Link here to access at your leisure >>>  The 400

Anyway, to the subject in hand... I've sat in the shadows at my local cinema on two occasions recently and by coincidence watched films that have both referenced the fact that the illusion of the "motion pictures" we so enjoy is a trick effected by projecting still images at the rate of twenty-four frames per second (24fps). 'Empire Of Light' and 'The Fabelmans' are the movies in question, both excellent and well worth viewing - for best effect on the big screen if you get the chance. The latter, Spielberg's homage to his family and origins, is up for a clutch of Oscars. The former, directed by Sam Mendes and deserving of huge accolades for everyone involved (especially the acting of Olivia Coleman and Micheal Ward), has been nominated in just a single category, cinematography. Shame on the parochial Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

When viewing frames on a reel of film, most human beings are capable of seeing the images as distinct and separate up to a speed of around 10 to 12 frames per second. Any faster than that and the brain begins to see motion, a continuous moving image instead of a series of stills. That's the magic. A frame rate of 24fps was discovered to be optimum some hundred years ago and has been the industry standard ever since. It's the speed at which cameras shoot and the speed at which projectors play back. 

35mm film stock, again the industry standard for most feature films, consists of a series of 16mm x 22mm image panels interleaved with 3mm separators, with traction perforations along each outside edge and with the optical soundtrack encoded on the operation side, as in the diagram below.

Of course, we never register the separators, those black lines flashing up every 16mm of film, 24 of them every second, 1,440 per minute, 125,000 of them during an average-length movie: that's 375 metres of darkness passing before our eyes! 

It is often rumoured by conspiracy theorists that the occasional frame containing a subversive message gets edited into what we see, to condition us without our realising it. But just think of what could be encoded, fragmented, or just lurking subliminally in the black light of the interstices in a reel of film. It's an intriguing (though admittedly unlikely) speculation that the celluloid helix of our story world could also be flashing secret messages to us, like so many ciphers on a succession of rapidly passing telegraph poles.

Spool up the latest rushes from the Imaginarium...(It's a weird piece and will no doubt be subject to some post-production editing):

Who Goes There?

What goes down 

in the shadowlands,

a darkness interposed

between each rectangle

of light like fence-posts

or telegraph poles as seen

from e.g. a moving train

speeding to 'The End',

or perhaps a skateboard

as blithe Zoe zips down

Old Hollywood Lane

while taking the lion

of least resistance out

on his daily run because

poor Leo lost his pride

the day he growled

on camera, 

for if a photograph 

can steal a soul, 

just reckon what

24 per second does...

those black bars 

between frames 

are the ciphers

of his shame.

As a fanfare of sorts, here's Joni Mitchell supported by The Band singing Shadows And Light (from the latter's farewell gig at San Francisco's Winterland in 1975).

Thanks for reading, S ;-)