A Tom, Tom Chaser

 “I do an electronic riff on the MoMA print in A Tom Tom Chaser, concluding the NTSC edition.  I’d been supervising a new digitizing of Tom, Tom at 15 frames per second (as against the 16 fps `standard’ silent-speed of the PAL transfer; in truth there was no standard fps back then) because 15 fits neatly into NTSC’s 60 fields/30 picture frames per second, thus minimizing compression `artifacts’, a form of visual `noise’ I wasn’t welcoming.  The riff was inspired watching
Scott Olive, Tape House master technician, zip forward and back on their million dollar optical film-scanner.  I asked Scott if we could record some of this discarded visual phenomena incidental to film-to-digital transfer.  Sure, he said.  I stood cheering him on to wilder aberrations and what we got is pretty much what you have, less some judicious excisions.” -K.J.