Acting blue in a new film by Jason Gutz

Back in December, I got to play play "Blue", one of the three primary colors characters representing Kodachrome for a new work by Jason Gutz. Jason is an avant-grade/experimental filmmaker based in Tacoma. He's been working on a film having to do with the end of Kodachrome film, both production and processing. The film's release is TBA, though Jason may be screening works-in-progress here and there.

me as "Blue"

Kodachrome (aka K40), a color reversal still and moving image film stock, was introduced in the early 1930s. The stock produced sweet saturated color and rich reds in particular, but the processing required more heavily toxic chemicals than most other film stocks.

By the late 1990s, the last place in the States to provide a "true" Kodachrome processing was in Texas. After that lab closed, one had to send film all the way to Switzerland, but they soon stopped as well. Following rumored threats over the last 15 years or so to discontinue this amazing-looking yet environmentally-damaging stock, Kodak stopped producing Kodachrome in 2009.

Heather Hall as "Red"

And the last place to get it processed at all in the world up until December 30th, 2010, was Dwayne's Photo in Kansas (although Dwayne's website states they were Kodak-certified, in my view, their production resulted in almost muted colors, more resembling ektachrome.)

Heather and I furthered our costumes' use by continuing to wear them all the way home from Tacoma to Olympia, stopping at a Starbucks and Jack-in-the-Box along the way - but that's a whole 'nother story...