Screen Test: Helmut

Andy Warhol's Screen Tests were filmed from early 1964 to November 1966. Factory visitors who had potential "star" quality would be seated in front of a tripod mounted camera, asked to be as still as possible, and told not to blink while the camera was running. Warhol manipulated light and shadow in increasingly inventive ways to capture the appearance, style, personality, and mood of both famous and lesser-known visitors to his studio, the Factory. His subjects included Dennis Hopper, Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, Susan Sontag, and Salvador Dalí. Although each film was shot at standard sound speed, or twenty-four frames per second, Warhol specified that prints be projected at a slower speed of sixteen frames per second, a rate used in the projection of silent films. The result is an unusual fluidity of pace, a rhythm gently at odds with the starkness of the lighting and the boldness of the close-ups of face and hair. In total more than 500 Screen Tests were made. Helmut was the seventh. 16mm film, black and white, silent, 4.4 minutes at 16 frames per second

Quatre minutes trente et une de plan fixe sur un individu presque parfaitement immobile. L'un des 500 screen tests tournés à la Factory par Andy Warhol entre 1964 et 1966.