"Not the First Time" was presumably intended to become a part of Hollis Frampton's "Magellan" cycle, due to that particular project being the only thing the filmmaker was working on by 1976. The title, while seemingly unfitting to action, refers to the subject of the film itself: double exposures, which cause two different shots to be superimposed over one another to create an interesting effect. The concept of a double-exposure is one which is used commonly by directors as part of the stories in films today, but this film shows the potential of the idea, using it to make the short an abstraction. "Not the First Time" indicates that the viewer is seeing an image more than once, and the film does just that, taking the title to the most literal sense of the word.
This five-minute movie consists of a series of scenes, including the dunes, water and dirt, the beach, and a woman in a red coat. Each image is played so that a similar scene is placed on top and causes the same thing to be seen over the other, sometimes in such a way that the two different shots nearly meet perfectly. Particular scenes such as the dunes and the water and dirt are done in such a way that it is abstract, while others are obviously superimposed and done to play with the eye. While unexceptional, the short does serve as a basic demonstration of the editing concept (which was all it was going for), and the effects produced are visually unique and interesting even if some may find them insignificant compared to technology today.
This five-minute movie consists of a series of scenes, including the dunes, water and dirt, the beach, and a woman in a red coat. Each image is played so that a similar scene is placed on top and causes the same thing to be seen over the other, sometimes in such a way that the two different shots nearly meet perfectly. Particular scenes such as the dunes and the water and dirt are done in such a way that it is abstract, while others are obviously superimposed and done to play with the eye. While unexceptional, the short does serve as a basic demonstration of the editing concept (which was all it was going for), and the effects produced are visually unique and interesting even if some may find them insignificant compared to technology today.
