From 50 Terrific Movies and How to Make Them

An article by Chuck Workman in ``Peter Max Magazine'' Issue No. 2, 1970

1 ``IMAGES OF GOD''

Take your movie camera to a Bar Mitzvah or First Communion. Shoot a lot of film, then project the negative.

2 ``SANCTITY''

Go into your bathroom. Turn on all the lights. Bring in some lights and point them up at the ceiling from behind the shower curtain. Open up your camera's aperture as far as it goes. You will get a very, very bright effect. Deposit something in the doilet, a dark colored toothbrush on the sink, and some blood on the floor. These dark objects will look terrific and quite holy.

3 ``ELECTRONICALLY INDUCED IMAGES I''

Move your camera in close to the TV screen so that no one can tell it's a TV. Fiddle with the vertical, horizontal, fine tuning and color control knobs untill you have an interesting abstract pattern. Shoot as you continue to fiddle with the knobs.

4 ``STONE''

Picture same as #3. Put a sitar recording on the sound track.

22 ``66''

An abstract film. Gather sets of 66 of various things such as books, bicycles, girls, eggs, fish, bunnies, telephones, samovars, pins, pubic hairs, dollars, etc., and photograph each set. Use 66 sets. Leave each on screen for 66 frames. The editing is quite important in this film and will teach you a great deal. For instance, should the 66 sets be arranged in alphabetical order, by size, by relationship? I leave this to you.

29 ``WELCOME BACK, MARY LOU, WELCOME BACK''

Another story film. Mary Lou, an octogenarian who dies years before, re-appears in her hometown. She has numerous adventures, many funy, some sad, all of which can be improvised by the actors. The trick is that Mary Lou always appears in color and everything else is in slow motion black and white. Mary Lou is right side up, everyone else in upside down. Is it real? Is it apparent? Who is Mary Lou? What is she? Are some of the questions the audience (and the critics) will ask themselves and each other.

33 ``THE ART OF FILM''

This will be your chef d'oeuvre, the culmination of everything you know about film. Shoot a toilet flushing, in color with sound. Cut to a pot of water boiling silently in slow motion and black and white. Cut to a child crying. Freeze the frame. Project this film and after it's over, blow up the theatre. This indicates your thoughts on the irrelevance of cinema as an art form.

41 ``AMO, AMAS AMAT''

Three people make love in extreme closeup. It should be difficult to tell who's who or what parts of whom are being shown. Get in very tight on arms, legs, noses, elbows, and private areas. Put a Beatles song behind it all at half-speed.

42 ``AMPERSAND''

An animated film. To the tune of Bach's Minuet in G Major, pop on a lot of different- sized, different- colored ampersands on a white background.

50 (Untitled)

A glimpse of scarlet, a blast of yellow-gold, a succession of kaleidoscopic images in every color of the rainbow bombards the viewer while rock and roll blares. Suddenly silence, pure white. Life and death.


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