"The fading that devastates color films occurs in the dark. It is accelerated by high temperatures and, to a lesser extent, relative humidity. Dye fading is irreversible. Once the dye images have faded, the information lost cannot be recovered"—Image Permanence Institute
"An answer print is the first film after the original has been timed for every shot with fades and dissolves if any. The question that it answers is ‘what is this going to look like’, and ‘what corrections, if any, are needed’"—Bill Brand
Answer Print is made with deteriorated 16mm color stock, and it is meant to disappear over time. Neither hue nor sound has been manipulated in its analog reassembling. The soundtrack combines audio generated by silent double perforated celluloid, the optical tracks from sound films, and the tones produced by each of the filmmaker’s cuts when read by the projector. The shots are based on a 26-frame length: the distance in 16mm films with optical tracks between an image and its sound.
From Poems of Home, by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892):
"...Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set."
"Mónica Savirón's Answer Print is a brief little dynamo of formal energy. [...] If Savirón's own print is 'answering' anyone or anything, it could be Conner's own A Movie, one of the first associative films composed of found footage. Conner's film was a cry of despair, depicting a planet going to hell while the capitalist world amused itself to death. Savirón's film, by contrast, implies that we've grown accustomed to the disaster—that we're living in a long apocalypse, and we might do well to sift through the detritus and rebuild" - Michael Sicinski
Images from:
Hamlet, by Douglas Campbell, Encyclopaedia Britannica Films.
The Immigrant Experience: The Long, Long Journey, by Joan Micklin Silver.
Stalking the Spanish Ibex with Rifles, by Alberto Carles Blat.
Sticky my Fingers… Fleet my Feet, by John Hancock.
Changing Art in a Changing World, by Paul Burnford, Film Associates of California.
The Sixth Wheel, by Lawrence Mollot.
Place Value: Modern Mathematics in the Classroom, by Bob Frierson.
Spring is an Adventure, author not identified.
Planet Earth: Challenge of the Oceans, author not identified.
Anonymous discarded film rushes, and camera tests.
SPECIFICATIONS & CREDIT LIST
-Original title: Answer Print
-Country of production: USA
-Date of completion: June 13, 2016
-Release date:
-Running time: 5 minutes
-Format: 16mm print
-Aspect Ratio: 3:4
-Language: English
-Color, or Black & White: Color
-In collaboration with: Bill Brand, Stephen Broomer, John Casey, Cullen Gallagher, Crista Grauer, Jack Rizzo, and Tommy José Stathes
-Editor, Director: Mónica Savirón
