The Flicker (1966)

Anecdotes

The Flicker is a 1966 American experimental film by Tony Conrad. Aside from its opening credits, the film uses only solid black or white frames. It changes the rate at which it switches between black and white frames to produce stroboscopic effects.

Production

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas gave Conrad rolls of film and helped obtain a Bolex camera to use. He shot the black frames by covering the camera lens. He first tried unsuccessfully to shoot the white frames by removing the lens but ultimately ended up shooting a sheet of white paper. Conrad shot the material over the course of a few days. He produced one 16 mm roll with 47 arrangements of black and white frames and made ten copies.

Conrad knew a friend who had died from an epileptic seizure, so he talked to a doctor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital's seizure clinic about the film. He was told that less than 0.01% of the population was affected and that prompting non-epileptic people with a warning could cause them to have "seizures".

The soundtrack for The Flicker was made by Conrad on a synthesizer that he built solely for the film. He operated the synthesizer around 20 Hz so that the people could hear it as either a rhythm or pitch. The soundtrack uses tape delays and heavy reverb. Conrad intended for the audio to be played from a separate stereo tape because of film's poor sound fidelity.

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