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MacDonald:
Over the years, the perception of
Wavelength
has changed. When I interviewed Anthony McCall, he mentioned that he was profoundly influenced by written descriptions of
Wavelength
when he made
Line Describing a Cone
[1973]. When he finally saw
Wavelength,
he discovered it was completely different from what had influenced him, and that he had developed a relationship to something that actually didn't exist.
Snow:
In your mind, the shape of the zoom is the same as the shape of a projector beam. I was thinking about that at the time, too. All the imagery issues from still photographs, frames that are amplified in one direction, while the zoom narrows your view in the opposite direction. Maybe that's part of what he was thinking of.
MacDonald:
What surprised him is that the zoom wasn't consistent, smooth, and even. In fact,
Wavelength
is a very rough film in many ways.
Snow:
The zoom was hand done. The imagery was shot out of order. Originally I thought I might make the film without editing. Later, I realized I'd need to edit. I shot reel three and that had to be at a particular place on the lens, which I'd marked out. Then I shot reel one, then reel five. And I moved the zoom lens by hand, so it's very uneven. And I really like that a lot. There are cuts in the film, too, to get from reel to reel, and sometimes there's editing where I took something out. It's not a continuous zoom by any means. There's a lot of nuance to the fact that it was hand done, not in the tactile sense of, say, Brakhage's films, but as a nice by-product of the process.
MacDonald:
There's a surprise at the end where viewers discover they're not going toward the photograph of the Walking Woman.
Snow:
Well, there are a couple of mistakes at the end of
Wavelength,
because I had to move the camera. Almost all of the film was shot from a platform. I put the camera up high because I figured that would provide a certain kind of view. But then to finish the zoom I had to move the camera down. I wanted to move it on the same horizontal line, but I made a mistake: it's a little off. This is toward the end where you've got the photographs sort of in the middle and an equal amount of space around them. Every time I see it, I think, Jesus, that's
bad
[laughter]. Sometimes I think it's good.
MacDonald:
Well, it's what it
is,
now.
Snow:
[Laughter] It certainly is.
MacDonald:
I'm always struck by the textural dimension of
Wavelength,
by the variation in grain. In fact, there's so much to look at in the film that I'm amazed when it's called a minimal film.
Snow:
Oh, I don't understand that at all. Every time I read that, I'm amazedthough it hasn't happened all that often. It's also described as a "conceptual" piece, sometimes. Certainly a lot of thinking went into it