This week with Super 8 Brothers: an interview with Renaissance Man and fellow Slooper-Sizer, Andrew Miller

Greg and Chris recently rallied to their favorite watering hole in Ballard, The Sloop, to interview born-and-raised Seattle painter, photographer, and filmmaker, Andrew Miller.

From the cell phone camera of Brother Chris:
Andrew Miller poses with a print of his inked photograph of The Sloop.

Super 8 Brothers: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Andrew Miller: I’m 32, and I’ve lived in Seattle 32 years. When I was 8, I took my first trip to Yellowstone and was happy as hell to take pictures, get them developed, and just look at them.

But, later in life, and a lot of photographs later, I realized that my pictures were just mementos, and I wanted to make art. I wanted to make art pieces, put them on canvas. My aunt gave me a set of oil paints and pencils made for painting on top of film. She had already been using that medium for years. Her work inspired a lot of my future work.

An example of one of Andrew Miller's inked photographs

So this gave you the idea to paint on top of super 8 film, too?
A while back I started shooting a lot of footage from the Alaskan Way Viaduct, out the window of my car. I wanted to see what the oils I was using on photographs would look like on the film. With the Viaduct footage, I used a lot of purple, oranges, yellows, and scratching with toothpicks or whatever I had available.   

But, my very first Super 8 experience was shooting with filmmaker and friend, Jason Reid (sonicsgate.org). We merged digital video with 8 mm film.  We shot in Georgetown and West Seattle and put an M. Ward song on top of the footage. Jason shot the digital, and I shot all of the 8 mm, and this led to shooting more and more films. Eventually, a lot of this initial work was shown at the Christoff Gallery in Georgetown for a show entitled, The Color of Black and White. After that experience, I realized I wanted to use film exclusively.

What do you like about Super 8?
I love the grain and industrial-style of the film. It has a classic look, and there’s something to be said about that. With manual cameras, you have to mess with the light, mess with the aperture, get the exposure right, mine for shadows. You get film back that is either right or isn’t right. And when it isn’t right you can look at that film and say, “I can do something with that.”

All of that said, the one thing that really allows us to do the film work now is the digital transfer. I can’t discount the value of digital media and the editing latitude it gives us.

What are you doing right now? Is there anything you’ve done recently with Super 8?
One of my latest 8 mm films is Balladen. I coupled parade footage from the 2008 Nordic Heritage Festival with an extra roll of film colored with Sharpies, which have a surprisingly diverse amount of colors.

I’ve also helped out with a lot of films found under youtube.com user “Reidsterreid”, such as "You Are My Sunshine." That is another example of my hand-painted films, and has had a lot of hits. For a complete listing of my work, check out mantisart.com.   

BALLADEN from andrew miller on Vimeo.

Any parting thoughts?
There are so many people around me that are so creative. I get support from friends and family. My family has been as supportive as anyone to me. I’m lucky as hell.

Hey super 8 fans, be sure to keep an eye out for one of Andrew’s latest projects at the Georgetown Super 8 Film Festival. His film, tentatively titled, Ode to Viaduct, will be a main feature.