James Benning

Father of Sadie Benning

Where do I start? Spring 1968 I met Renny Davis at a bar in Denver and we talked about organizing poor whites. The next day I found a used 8mm Bolex at a thrift-store on Larimer Street. It looked to have never been used, and I got it for 90 dls. As soon as I returned home I shot a roll of film and mailed it off for processing. Two weeks later I retrived it from my post officebox. I was teaching high school math in Ozarks and living on a cattle farm in central Missouri at the time. In 1971 I traded my 8mm equipment to Olden Camera in New York City along 350 dls. for a new 16mm Bolex EBM. Later that same year I began graduate school at the university of Wisconsin. I studied film with David Bordwell and art with Richard Reese. The first time I got to use the school's new Steenbeck, a visiting artist (...) said, "Why bother? Film is dead!" Thirty-six years later I proved him (or her) right. I stopped shooting film.or using "analogue", as it is now called. No big deal. I had made over twenty feature length films and a number of shorter works all made with the same Bolex camera and tripod, Nagra tape recorder, AKG microphone, guillotine splicer, rewinds, split reels, and two sanbacks (...). In 2008 I bought a Sony EX3 digital camera. In Just three years I have been able to make five HD works and a bunch of shorts, along with five digital installations, and two live performances that used HD projection. Currently I am working on a new digital version of [kink=tt0206988]. So I got what I wished for-a cheaper way of working, along with total autonomy, and a system that is a thousand times faster. I no longer need lab services. I can now do everything myself, that is, once everything was purchased : Sony EX3, Vinten Tripod, six 58 minutes SxS cards, Sound Devices recorder, batteries and chargers for both the camera and sound recorder, two Sennheiser mics with blimp and wind screen, MacBook Pro, for field use installed with Final Cut Pro, M-Box attached to a second MacBook Pro installed with both Final Cut and Pro Tools, two headsets for both fieldwork and editing, two Genelec speakers and per project, two LaCie 2 TB hard drives - all for the cost of one 16mm film, and it fits into three small equipment cases. I can now do post production anywhere is electricity. What more is to be said? How much I miss the look of grain and the physical touch of film? Perhaps, but not really... [from: "Going Digital", 2011]