ICC Filmmaker Returns to Cinema’s Source

Photo Above: Denouement (2017), written and directed by Will Jacobs

4/2/2017 by Will Jacobs

“Maturation and experience brought me into disillusionment. Twenty years old and internally disoriented, I abandoned my Hollywood dream and turned to Vincent van Gogh’s letters in desperation.”

It began in my parents’ musty basement which still bore its mid-seventies design. Underneath a buzzing fluorescent light was my nine-year-old self, using stop-motion animation software with LEGOs. I recall feeding image after image of a single figurine from my camera into a Windows ’98 computer. It was a process that demanded the utmost patience a boy my age wouldn’t normally possess, but I found it profoundly enchanting. I would obsessively review the sequence of images run together on a bulky plastic computer monitor, and watch the little LEGO man spring to life. It was sheer magic. It was my first introduction to filmmaking.

Four years later, I dragged my friends into the woods, clothing them with various military surplus gear and rubbing dirt on their face. I handed my human GI Joes World War II weaponry forged from toilet paper rolls and spray paint and recorded them shooting at invisible enemies with my camcorder. My pubescent years were quite sedentary. I would spend hours on end manipulating the footage I had captured by meticulously adding digital effects such as muzzle flares, explosions, and blood hits.

My romanticism with warfare ended and an infatuation with human psychology soon took its place. As a sophomore in high school, my film projects grew more mysterious and somber. My protagonists were lonely and troubled outcasts who meandered through wastelands of their own making on a quest for existential answers. Perhaps I was voicing my inner teenage angst, or maybe I was attempting to shapeshift into Christopher Nolan given all the turns my stories took. I would toss and turn as visions of fame and fortune flooded my mind at night, despite the continuous film festival rejection letters.

Maturation and experience brought me into disillusionment. Twenty years old and internally disoriented, I abandoned my Hollywood dream and turned to Vincent van Gogh’s letters in desperation. I reached a critical juncture in my relationship with filmmaking upon my completion of Denouement, a 28-minute short film following an alcoholic playwright in the 1950s. I became conscious that I had only emulated the filmmakers I exalted. In my films there were but remnants of my own voice shrouded by preconceptions and banalities. I knew what had to be done: tabula rasa.

I underwent a renascence of my spiritual life and reconvened with Nature, adopting the film theories of Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky. A veil had been lifted and the responsibilities of an artist were revealed. This newly-acquired insight resulted in a lyrical short film diptych: Trees Are Angels and Will Spring Forgive?. Trees Are Angels was screened at Illinois Central College’s 2018 Student Film Festival and was among the top three juried films. The short was also featured in Peoria’s first annual Big Picture Film Festival in the fall of 2018.

Now twenty-two, I’ve taken the next step in my artistry by exploring cinema’s metaphysical properties and renouncing the digital format of my past with an online Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign entitled, “Illinoisan filmmaker’s switch to 16 mm film”. The transition to Super 16 mm film requires a $7000 camera. One might ask, “Isn’t film an obsolete format?” A visit to Kodak’s ‘Shot on Film’ webpage proves otherwise. In fact, the digital format has made many attempts to replicate film’s aesthetic qualities such as its grain, color, and imperfections. Why? It is void of these essential qualities ascribed to cinema––such qualities embedded in its genetic code much like the vibrations from a single note of music.

The digital format has initiated the degeneration of the artist’s self-discipline and sense of ethical responsibility. We accumulate hours and hours of footage, only to use minutes of it when editing. We rehearse less and make far more mistakes. We believe any error is fixable in post-production. Film speeding through the camera is money being spent, and footage must be developed before reviewing. This process means more care and forethought are required during production. It demands that everyone involved on a production operate at their utmost potential.

Any donation to the campaign will be reciprocated with a profusion of my paintings and artwork, an album of music from my solo effort, Trees Are Angels (named after the short film), special thanks and executive producer credit, and an invitation to a film shoot on my first 16 mm project.

Contributions are not only helping me as a filmmaker, but will sustain the life of cinema and pave the way for film to exist in our future. Every artist should have the privilege to choose film. The day that choice is torn from us because of our own greed to capitalize on technology is the day cinema will die.

If cinema is ‘sculpting in time’, as Andrei Tarkovsky expressed, then we are gravely disrespecting our handling of time. I desire more ascetic principles. I yearn to experience the way of cinema’s early masters, a time where much was required to be a filmmaker.