A friend visits

See full photo album

Finally we were able to get David Berry to come on down. He spent the day looking through the footage and he was able to make some important distinctions for us.  Including a specific piece of 16mm film that we could not account for.  Everything else in the "Knotte Grosse" reels were 35mm, but there were three rolls of 16mm film.  They were pieced together and significantly longer then anything else.

Remember, "Knotte Grosse" as a fragment film was only a series of loops.  What does that mean exactly?  Well, almost all the reels are all black (or clear) with a small bit of animation on them.  The animation lasts for 16 frames or maybe 32 frames with 24 frames in a second that goes by very quickly.  These few frames of animation are followed then by quite a few frames of black.  The idea for the final film was that the 16 frame segment would be looped and looped, but since he had not gotten to the final piece yet he didn't need to actually make the loop.

So, these rolls of 16mm film were strange because they were continuous.  It was 1000's, or really 10's of 1000's, of frames of animation with very little blackness.  But it turned out from David that these were cut segments of "Heavy Light".  Now, I'm certain that Mark would have figured this out if he could have put it in a projector, but since there was this confusion of what is negative and what is positive with the "Knotte Grosse" materials he made sure to be very careful with it.

After a few hours of going through rolls and rolls of film we all finally settled on a few rolls adding up to about 1000 ft of film.  Now was the complicated bit.  How do we get the film scanned with no funds to speak of?

Well, Mark knew that David Wilson, who'd helped in getting "Life in the Atom" scanned, had a standing offer to help get much of "Knotte Grosse" scanned as well.  This proved to be a difficult process.  If Mark is a busy guy then David is a constant blur whizzing around our world never sleeping.  Eventually, though we went through another friend of Larry's to help us contact Rhythm & Hues to scan the film, Richard Hollander.

You see, the Hollywood movie industry is still very much full of people who work in film, there's a lot of digital, but still, a lot of film.  And Rhythm & Hues being a Visual FX studio that gets hired by production studios that means they need to be able to work on both film and digital productions.  So, they have a very high quality film scanner (a few, I believe).  But since film is not used by everyone they are not using their film scanner all the time.  So, in between a couple productions I was able to bring a nice large reel of "Knotte Grosse" rolls to R&H.  They ended up giving us a nice 2K 16bit scan of the film.

This was really great for me because it meant I had quite a bit of latitude to color correct.  The only thing I would have liked would be to have a color card or some skin tone (like I did for "Life in the Atom").  Yet, still it ended up looking really really good.

On the DVD we ended up keeping the film as one movie.  We made no loops.  This I think was a bit of a mistake, but by this point we had really pushed the schedule so far that I was really letting Larry and Pam make the decisions without much discussion.  And really I didn't have too many points of disagreement with either of them.  I really respect their decisions, but I feel that it's important if I disagree with something that I should speak up - politely, of course.  But I hope that one day the loops can be shown as loops.  Just as the "Light Show Loops" were included.

KG vids

I knew if I ran the rewind at the right speed the frame lines would sync with the frame rate of my camera phone...I only wish I'd had 3 hands to do that.  Still, kinda interesting.

Film fragments

Just about a year ago now I first laid my hands upon the 35mm elements known as "Knotte Grosse".

I don't know too much about the origins of this one, that's a question for Pamela (and really everything about Beckett that I'm writing is more based on rumors then actual fact - Pam is the real source for these things).  What I do know is that this film was a splinter off of his optical printing work that he perfected in "Heavy Light".  This was significantly more complex and hypnotic, but according to Beth Block this was the bane of his life while he was working on it.

He received a grant for it and therefore was obligated to finish it, but he also seemed to put it down and pick it up again at any moment.  He also often labeled rolls of film "Knotte Grosse" when they were in fact a gig he had for an advertisement or other project.

By the time I got to them, or really Mark Toscano at the Academy Film Archives since it's his jurisdiction, they were a few hundred rolls of film fragments that at first were unable to make too much sense out of.  Some sections were negative, some positive, but he specifically used a reversal stock while treating it as a negative (I think for economic reasons).  So, it was difficult for Mark to assess very quickly.  And, well, to say that Mark is a busy guy is an outright understatement.

During this entire process I found myself getting impatient with him because he would take weeks to respond to an email or phone call.  When in actuality he is constantly busy working on countless projects and he really has no exact obligation to the iotaCenter to help us work on anything.  So, I hope he forgives me for the times I may have been impatient with him during this process.

In any case, some how, some way, some where it came up that we should have a special process for working with "Knotte Grosse".  We knew we needed to include something of them in the DVD.  And some one, I think it was Mark, suggested that we should talk with Adam's old and close friend David Berry.  David had already been strongly involved in the process of the DVD with significant and generous donations to the iotaCenter specifically for the Adam Beckett project.  Not only did we want to make him feel like he was move involved in the process of the DVD, but we also wanted to get his opinion on these film fragments.  And it seemed only natural to have these fragments edited together in some sort of cohesive finalize piece.


As I've repeatedly stated these really are fragments and anyone who's seen the DVD can tell you that there are basically just sections of loops.  They start simple and get more complex and more complex.  Adam seemed to be working on getting a good library of loops that he would then jumble together in a final film.  He got up to the stage of making a library, but never made the film.  So, we asked David to make that film.


We didn't quite get directly to that a first.  I recall bringing this up with Larry and David, but later it turned out that David didn't have the time and Larry thought it would be manipulating the film too much.  However, initially we wanted to get David's opinion on what sections we should use.  We literally had 100's of rolls to choose from and I knew we'd have to cut it down if we wanted to make our deadline and get any help from Rhythm & Hues in scanning the film.

I figured we should just take an essential 1000' of film (about 10 minutes) of the best of the best that we could find.  Keeping in mind most of this was leader and long black sections between the loops this ended up only making it to about 3 minutes of footage and by no means could we cut any of that original material - it was archival film for god's sake.


So, we asked David to come down from the Bay Area and give us his assessment of what we should use.  I knew he would not have the time to spend all day at the archives looking at the film, but he would spend a good few hours doing so.  I also knew that Mark had not gone through all the film fragments and he would not have time to.  So, I decided to spend a day at the Academy looking through all the rolls of film and making note of reel numbers, estimated lengths, any notes or text like dates and whether or not a roll was interesting or possibly good for David to look at.

That way once David came down we were all set with just a few rolls and he wouldn't be slaving away at looking through bland or unnecessary rolls.

During that process I took some pictures and some video with my camera phone.  It's not great quality, but I hope you enjoy.  Next I'll tell you about David's visit and the following process.  On that day I brought my Digital SLR camera and took much better photographs.

The Life of "Life in the Atom"

For 30 years this film was lost.

In 1979, in the ashes of Adam Beckett's house stood Beth Block, Chris Casedy and a few other friends and family members.  Hit with the tragedy they walked like zombies through what was left of his house picking up drawings, reels of film and any bits of artwork they could find.

Most of this ended up in a storage space that is still owned and operated by the family.  A significant amount also went to CalArts; in particular the artwork that he created while at CalArts, naturally.  Still a small amount was held onto by other friends.  This was mostly because at first the two other sources were not allocated immediately and his friends all knew that this artwork was extremely important even if the world had not completely realized his genius quite yet.  One reel of film was given to Beth Block, fellow filmmaker and close friend.  That reel was his incomplete film "Life in the Atom" - this was the show reel, the most complete edit that he compiled to that point.

A few years passed and people started to ask Beth about that film.  By that point the family had finally started acquiring his artwork and putting it into the storage space.  Beth's recollection at that point was that she'd taken the film, but passed it off quickly to Adam's sister or another friend.  This question kept coming up over the next few decades, Beth would occasionally search her house and return to restate that she'd given the reel to someone else.

In about 2009, after some years people had forgotten about the film - lost to history, as so many other brilliant pieces of cinema have left us.  Two moves and significant sifting of all of Beth's life and property later; one day as she was looking for another piece of her old films in her home office- "It's not here.  It's not here either.  Hmm... There's some stuff on this tall shelf."  She pulls up a stool and reaches to a dark corner that she can't even see; feels around and settles on a box. "What's this?" she thinks to herself.  She slowly pulls it out and brings it down to eye level.  She opens the box as puzzled as can be.  She reads the side of the film inside...and a shock comes across her face.

She immediately calls Adam Hyman, director of the Los Angeles Filmforum.  THE person in Los Angeles to ask who to talk to about how to get this film in the right hands.  Adam immediately refers her to Mark Toscano, archivist of the Academy Film Archives who focuses on experimental and avant-garde film.  He is able to transfer it to the iotaCenter archives because, conveniently, their archives and all their films are on deposit at the Academy Film Archives (voluntarily, completely free of charge as an in-kind donation to the iotaCenter).

Also coincidentally, Larry Cuba, Stephanie Sapienza, Pamela Turner and Mark Toscano just finished restoring the six original films of Adam Beckett (and his one reel of early experiments).  They were just a few months away from a huge celebratory event of Adam Beckett's films and of the newly restored prints.  So, not only was Mark able to deposit the film in the iotaCenter's archive (since by that time all the film materials were donated to the iotaCenter from the Beckett family - almost single-handedly because of Pamela), but he also knew that he needed to work quickly and pull some strings all around town to get the film scanned so it would be ready for the event.

He went immediately to David Wilson, director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City and a close friend of Adam's.  David had many friends at Rhythm & Hues, one of the largest Visual FX studios in the world, and he asked them to scan the film - free of charge, out of the goodness of their hearts.  And that's just want they did.

The film was presented and just barely made it in time for the screening.  It was a huge success and many of his old friends were able to see the film again after three decades.

A little over a year later I came into the picture.  It took me some time to understand not only the history of all the films, but also what exactly should be done with the DVD.  I quickly realized that this was an extremely important project and not only were people donating to the iotaCenter to have it done, not only was Larry the director of the organization with his aspiration, not only was Pamela the director of the project with her dreams, but there was also Mark, Beth, Chris Casedy, David Wilson, the Beckett family.

So, after talking with many different people there came about a couple different ideas.  One of which was to ask Carl Stone, Adam's old collaborator to do a new soundtrack for the DVD.  I'm not sure who it was that came up with the idea.  I think it may have been Mark, but I also recall talking to Larry about this.  I think between me talking to the two of them the idea just came about.

Of course, this comes into the dilemma of should we be manipulating the artwork of a deceased filmmaker?  If we did then what are we saying?  The filmmaker is no longer able to have a say and we might be going against their wishes.  I certainly understand this argument and I think it has a valid point, but often I think it's important try and reach a new audience so that brilliant old works of art don't die.  This argument is quite wide ranging and has even been argued for transferring film to video.  Since this is a DVD of films at what point do we say "This is ok to manipulate without the filmmaker's consent, but this point is not okay."
And frankly, in this case, you can simply hit mute and see the film as it was/is.

So, I digress.  We eventually contacted Mr. Stone who pretty much jumped at the idea.  And even though we could not pay him and he was extremely busy he made a beautiful, dreamy and lucid soundtrack and matches the film in a very eerie way.  I still can't get enough of watch the film with that soundtrack.  The film is very similar to "Flesh Flows", but significantly more sophisticated.

I do feel the need to add that Beth Block was not keen on the idea that we added a new soundtrack, but she also didn't feel the need to throw her weight around to make sure it was halted.

Also, as one more side note to the really in depth fan who is interested.  There is one segment of the film (in the second picture above) where there are little abstract bits of things that circle around in space.  At one point just before that part the background cuts from white to black.  During our correspondences Carl mentioned that he believed that Adam meant to dissolve (aka fade) the background from white to black.  It was at this point that Larry decided that we shouldn't intervene on the film to that level.  After all it was and is an incomplete film.

Mark also told me that he recalls David Wilson talking about another section of the show reel where the two characters at the end go on some kind of carpet ride.  That would have been interesting to see.  Remember there's also a small section from "Life in the Atom" that we only had animated on paper.  This was shot by Pamela and we were able to include it.

A long story, it is, but still a fun one to tell.  Next will be the "Knotte Grosse" story.

Beckett: Animated Life, Animated Personality

Possibly the most important part of Adam's Graduate career was befriending and collaborating with a young man named James Gore.


James also has his own complicated and tragic life, but unfortunately I know little about it and it's probably better that I not discuss it publicly.  However, he was an energetic man who would hang out at Cal Arts in the animation classes, make his own animated films, but was never officially enrolled or accepted.  Yet, James still ended up being the most influential member of that first group of Cal Arts experimental animators.  His films dominantly demonstrate in bizarre and hypnotic kind of morphing that on one hand appears to be child-like scribbles and in another light reveal to be highly sophisticated and radical stream-of-conscious animation.  This morphing style was very influential to the entire department.  It could be seen in all different films from that class.  In one of his films "Une Lettre a un Ami" (aka "The Letter"), Beckett gave James permission to use one portion of one of his early experiments within the film.

Dear Janice

While at CalArts Beckett perfected two styles that were very distinctly his - Infinite Animation and intense use of the Optical Printer.  Infinite Animation is a process in which one creates a simple loop or cycle and you continue adding to it over and over again.  You take, for example, 6 sheets of paper and you draw a line moving across the page - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.  Then you go back to 1 and you draw a ball bouncing.  Since it still has the original line on it your page 1 becomes 7 as well.  You draw the ball out through 6-12.  Then start the process over again with something else - a square.  By the end you have an animated loop that starts out with a line, then a line and a circle, then a line circle and square, etc.  This is the technique used in his film "Dear Janice", but he used 12 sheets of paper and created some of the most intricate animation I have ever seen (and many agree with me on that).

Heavy Light

His optical printer process was quite different and yet similar at the same time.  An optical printer is a machine that used to be used (and occasionally still is) to create complex FX in a movie.  The basic example was showing a building on fire.  You have the fire on one strip of film and the house on another strip and you put them together.  These FX can get significantly complex and Adam developed a technique where he would manipulate the image creating up to 100 iterations of one image on a single frame.  Basically, he made a simple animation and gave it a strange trail effect (similar to video FX when you point a camera at the TV or projection that the camera is also feeding live video to - so it sees trails if you move the camera around).

This technique was most strongly exemplified in his film "Heavy Light", which is possibly also his most well known film.  Even though he learned almost all of his skills from Pat O'Neill everyone (including Pat) consider Adam to have pioneered this technique himself. Pat has described the old Optical Printer room at CalArts as a place where Adam would spend hours, days even, and he kept it orderly.  He was an unofficial gate keeper and apparently some times he would even remove a piece of important equipment just to make sure someone would have to talk to him in order to use the damn thing.

He continued to use this technique in his incomplete film "Knotte Gross".  But, again, that is another story.

Beckett: a short verson of a tragic life

Introduction
I learned about the life of Adam Beckett and his tragic death at the age of 29 in bits and pieces.  To learn the full story with completely accurate facts you should refer to Pamela Turner and help her in her quest to publish her biography on Beckett.

I mostly learned all about this through a few different sources:

• Directly and indirectly via Pam Turner
• iotaCenter website containing a very short biography
• discussing Beckett's life at the iotaCenter office (Pam lives and teaches in Richmond Virginia

• Beth Block - she was a close friend of Beckett's and helped collect his things after he died
• she is a board member at NewTown where I am the Artistic Director so I was able to ask her directly and heard stories
• I also helped the Los Angeles Filmforum with their Oral History project and found out that Pat O'Neill, Beth Block and Diana Wilson all talk about Beckett at length in their interviews.  I was trying to include this in the DVD, but due to some miscommunication it got cut.  Yet, in the end our goal was to show the artwork and films.

• Mark Toscano - being both personally interested in his films and professionally connected to them.  Mark has become a second historian, of sorts.  Mostly in relation to his film materials and piecing things together from that end.  Pam has done most of the research (particularly in relation to getting to know the family), but Mark has seen everything Beckett has been apart of - collaborations with lovers, rejected Star Wars footage, audio recordings of Beckett and friends hanging out.

Early History

The Beckett family was tainted with tragedy, wild emotions, pinnacles and pitfalls from an early time.  According to Diana Wilson, Adam's father was a prominent architect.  When Adam was young his father was well on his way to becoming one of the most important designers in the Southland.  However, by the time Adam was about eight years old for what ever reason that all came crashing down.  As someone who's lived here for 6 years now I can say that Los Angeles is a harsh place in careers, success, glamor and importance.  It is significantly more severe then New York City.  So, it's not surprising that after some short lived success father Beckett eventually became the doorman of a major downtown hotel over looking Pershing Square.  No continuation of an architecture career to speak of.

It was there that the man decided to walk off the second or third story balcony to his death.  Possibly out of shame and feeling betrayed it's hard to say exactly, but I did hear a rumor (I can't remember from who) that Adam may have in fact been there to actually witness the incident just as the curtains close on Act I in our Shakespearean play.

Adult Life
His fame really started almost at the beginning of his Graduate studies.  He was in the first class ever at the newly formed CalArts Animation program started by Jules Engel and included Pat O'Neill as both important mentors for Adam.  He made six of his own films while there and numerous collaborations.  He worked with now world renowned composers Carl Stone and Barry Schrader.  He began a romantic and artistic relationship with highly influential animator Kathy Rose.

He made six films while at CalArts - "Dear Janice", "Sausage City", "Flesh Flows", "Kitch in Synch", "Heavy-Light" and "Evolution of the Red Star".  They were shown all around the world and according to Jules Engel he had a following when ever he would go to a Film Festival.

After graduating he continued to work on two films that he never completed - "Knotte Grosse" and "Life in the Atom".  He also worked on many commercials and FX for many films.  With his experience with the optical printer he was highly sought after.

He was hired by ILM as a Visual FX supervisor to work on the first Star Wars movie.  All his friends were hired - David Berry, Chris Casedy, Kathy Rose - it was basically a CalArts reunion.  His department was basically in charge of all the glowing things - lightsabers, lazor guns, etc - and explosions.  According to Beth and Diana Adam was enormously invested in this film.  He praised Star Wars as the Science Fiction epic movie that geek culture had been waiting for.  He developed a complete new look to the Visual FX to add to the fantasy and legendary status to the film.

Of course, we all remember the look of the lightsabers and how innovative and different that was, but the explosions that Adam was working on were really quite different and might have ended up in a film like TRON, but apparently when George Lucas saw the first example he'd decided to go with pyrotechnics instead (meaning the explosions would look real and be shot with real explosives - usually much smaller explosives on a controlled set).

This hit Adam quite hard.  Certainly during the film there was a lot of drug usage and debauchery in order to maintain the level of production that they were doing, but after that hard blow to his ego Adam went into a huge spiral of drinking, smoking and snorting.  Apparently, he was still a fan of the film and trumpeted it when it was finally released, but he never quite recovered.  Particularly when the film won an Academy for VFX and those in the other VFX department received an Oscar, but Beckett received none.*

He continued on for a few years working on other films commercials, but many of his friends recall that he was basically a ticking time bomb at that point.  Beth told me a story once of how Adam stormed in on her while she was on a long distance phone call with her Aunt.  He drunkenly yanked the phone out of her hand and screamed obscenities into the receiver and hung up the phone.  Beth promptly flung him back out the door and back into his car before calling her Aunt back.  Shaken and flustered her Aunt asked if she was ok.  "Of course, I am.  why what ever do you mean?  We simply got disconnected."  She knew there was no use in explaining the situation and it would probably just use up expensive long distance phone charges.

Most thought he was going to fall into a drug related overdose or a DUI related car accident.  But instead he ended his life with a tobacco cigarette.  One night he was working late in his house on a film and he ended up passing out with a lit cigarette in his hand.  The next morning he house was half gone along with him and his dog Elvis.

That morning as his friends were sifting through his remains his mother received a phone call: "Mrs. Beckett, we need you to identify the body of your daughter."  Apparently, she had invited home a man she met at the bar.  At some point in the night he turned on her and murdered her.

While his mother was in the middle dealing with this she found out that her son had also perished.  I can only imagine what she had to go though.  In 1979 at the ripe age of 29 Adam Beckett was no more.

For many years the questions remained - Did Adam in fact committee suicide?  Or was it just an accident?  Adam was very attached to his sister and it is conceivable that he would have ended his live over hearing of her death.

For some time many of his close friends assumed that he committed suicide, but Pamela did the research and she knows for a fact that Adam could not have known about his sister at the time of his death.  Further more, Beth backs up this fact with the issue of his dog, Elvis.  Adam loved his dog and he never would have done harm to him on purpose.

Epilogue
So for many years the films of Adam Beckett were hidden at CalArts or deteriorating each time someone rented them from Canyon Cinema the film distribution house.  Up until Pamela started investigating, meeting the family, getting to know where the all the films and elements were held.  And only after a significant amount of time and research from Larry Cuba, Mark Toscano and, in particular, Pamela Turner were these films and his life's work finally brought together and donated to the iotaCenter from the Beckett family.  And that was just the start of the journey for his films.

And it doesn't include the story of "Life in the Atom" which was lost for almost 30 years.

Adam K. Beckett DVD: the beginning

I was hired to work for the iotaCenter in October of 2010.  I had many tasks while working there, but the main project that I spear-headed while there was the DVD of the works of Adam K. Beckett, experimental animator, eccentric, VFX supervisor for Star Wars and Cal Arts Alumni.

It was a very long process and I came into it at the beginning of the DVD, but the middle of the entire Beckett Project.  The films had already been donated to the iotaCenter.  They were already restored with the assistance of the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Academy Film Archive.  And many of the materials had already been sifted through for a couple different events and screenings around Los Angeles.

Yet, I got there at the very beginning of the DVD.  So, I really got it before much had been done on specifically digitizing the films and coalescing all the materials and information.

Of course, I'm only realizing now that I should have had a blog going during the process to document what was going on and how we got everything done.  We being the iotaCenter founder and executive director, Larry Cuba, Beckett biographer and iotaCenter board member, Pamela Turner, Academy Film Archive avant-garde and experimental film Archivist, Mark Toscano, and myself.  So, I will try to include all the important details and all the photos I took through out the process.