Filmmaker’s adventures in Super 8
When California issued its stayathome order back in March, filmmaker Danny Plotnick — just like about every artist creating in isolation — started live streaming. He picked up a Blackmagic ATEM Mini streaming device and has since been testing it on his family; his wife, Alison Levy, is a singer and their son is a collegetrained jazz pianist, so Plotnick can livestream a concert from their San Francisco home whenever they’re in the mood to play.
But those familiar with Plotnick’s filmography might be surprised to learn he is using modern technology. The majority of the 54yearold director’s work has been created on Super 8, one of the oldest, cheapest film formats still on the market. His bestknown films, like the short “Skate Witches” and the fulllength feature “I’m Not Fascinating,” were made on equipment he could have picked up at a thrift store.
Plotnick has even written a book that’s an ode to his love for the motion picture film format titled “Super 8: An Illustrated History” (Rare Bird; 240 pages; $40), which came out last
month. The coffeetable book lays out the history of the medium, from its creation by Kodak in 1965 to today, with Kodak’s plans to release a modernized Super 8 camera. There are also interviews with directors like Richard Linklater and Bruce LaBruce, who notably started their careers using Super 8, and gorgeous pictures of Super 8 ephemera, much of it from Plotnick’s collection. It’s an eyecatching look at a format originally intended for home movies that filmmakers have used for much more.
Even so, Plotnick, who plans to talk about the book with Antonio Bunt on Instagram on Friday, July 3, admits he ran away from that format years ago.
“Super 8 became just such a pain in the ass at some level that it was like, ‘I have to get out of this racket,’ ” Plotnick says.
And yet the book is proof he’ll never escape Super 8’s grasp. Interwoven into the descriptions of Super 8 technology and directors’ stories of learning how to use the almost ancient equipment is Plotnick’s own history.
In many ways Plotnick is San Francisco’s Pied Piper of Super 8, having been a dedicated user when it was considered “dead” and going on to teach it to budding filmmakers at the University of San Francisco.
“The students flock to it. They love it,” Plotnick tells The Chronicle. “It just has a different feel from the digital technology that they’ve grown up with, and so it looks cool to them.”
Plotnick started using Super 8 at around the same age as his students, in his home state of Michigan. He enrolled in the University of Michigan’s almost nonexistent film program, which used Super 8, partly because his film teacher provided the equipment for students with his own money. Plotnick made a handful of Super 8 films there, most notably “Skate Witches,” a glimpse at a trio of tough, ratowning female skateboarders who terrorize boys trying to skate on their turf.
While the twominute film garnered hundreds of thousands of views online years later, the first film festival Plotnick submitted it to, the 1986 Ann Arbor 8MM Festival, rejected the short. This infuriated Plotnick, but being a firm believer in punk rock’s doityourself ethos, he began showing “Skate Witches” and his other films at punk shows and unconventional venues, using a projector he could carry on his bicycle.
“It made more sense to me to find my friends who were in bands and say, ‘Hey, can I show my film before your band?’ People were really receptive to my work,” Plotnick says. “I also realized there’s a lot of people who will like my work who don’t go to cinematheques; they go to clubs and cafes.”
Plotnick’s 14yearlong Super 8 period could be summed up as DIY. He set up his own film tours and financed his own movies by working parttime jobs. Using Super 8 allowed him to keep it that way, as the film and equipment were affordable and easy to find. To edit, Plotnick didn’t need to rent time at an editing bay; a friend lent him a topend Super 8 film editor so Plotnick could trim and splice at his kitchen table.
Plotnick hit his Super 8 stride after moving to San Francisco in the late 1980s. The city provided him with a cheap place to live, numerous smallscreen venues to show his work, and most important, plenty of creative, likeminded friends. Two of them, Ray Wilcox and Chris Enright, became Plotnick’s muses and starred in most of his Super 8 films. (In total, Plotnick created 15 films and two music videos on Super 8.)
“We always had a lotta laughs,” recalls Wilcox, who still lives in San Francisco. “But he works hard and tirelessly. We did a lot of rehearsal, and he really coached us on the dialogue and how things were said. As a brandnew film actor, this was very helpful because it was one less thing to think about.”
In 1996, Plotnick finished his first and only Super 8 featurette, “I’m Not Fascinating.” The 49minute film follows the San Francisco punk band the Icky Boyfriends as they go from nobodies to majorlabel rock stars, but also serves as a love letter to ’90s San Francisco as it captures the era’s grit and quirkiness.
When he first showed it in San Francisco, it sold out three nights at the Artists’ Television Access theater in the Mission. Later, Plotnick took the film as far away as New Zealand and managed to sell it through Tower Records.
While making “I’m Not Fascinating,” Plotnick began teaching Super 8 filmmaking at California State Summer School for the Arts. It wasn’t his first teaching job; Plotnick taught Super 8 classes for the Film Arts Foundation starting in 1990. But the CSSSA program brought highschoolage filmmakers from all around the state to the Southern Califronia school to be indoctrinated with Plotnick’s DIY ethos and his love for Super 8. Plotnick taught there for 12 years, eventually taking over the program. He went on to teach at USF in 2010.
“Danny inspired us to go out and make our films. You can direct it, you can act in it, you can write it, you can be the whole crew, and you can make a film,” says Lee Lynch, a former student who ended up taking over the CSSSA program from Plotnick years later. He now lives and works in Iceland.
In 1998, Plotnick made one last film on Super 8, “I, Socky,” about the day in the life of a degenerate sock puppet. He then moved on to more modern digital formats like mini DV, as the technology finally met Plotnick’s aesthetic standards and budget requirements.
Decades after Plotnick made a name for himself with Super 8, the medium is seeing a comeback. Spike Lee, for instance, used Super 8 in his latest joint, “Da 5 Bloods.” Plotnick says he’s thinking about returning to the film format, too, as he has some reels of film waiting to be used. And if he does, while there are Super 8 plugins that would provide a less expensive, easier way to make his movies, he doesn’t plan to take shortcuts.
“The whole funny thing about some of these plugins is it’s all about degrading the image,” Plotnick said. “I was using Super 8 because that’s what I could afford, but my goal wasn’t to make something that looks s—ty. My goal was to make something that looked as good as it could.”