Three Frames

By Less Lee Moore

A few weeks ago, Popshifter contributor Millie De Chirico revealed to me the disturbing and compelling nature of Three Frames.

The site is pretty self-explanatory: three consecutive frames of a film are transformed into a looping, animated GIF. If you think that sounds boring, then you haven’t looked at the site.

The first image I saw on the site featured a creepy, hooded male figure with black greasepaint on his face, wearing white gloves, and waving mysteriously while doves flew by. Again, this probably doesn’t sound all that weird, but it haunted me.

Each entry doesn’t provide captions to indicate what film the images are from (although the site’s Twitter feed does) so I had to look at the monthly archives to find out that it was a Czech film from 1970, Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders, which I immediately added to my DVD queue.

Not all of Three Frames’ subjects are of the creepy variety; there are selections from dramas and comedies as well. Even these are unsettling, however.

The Chewing Pixels blog explains the appeal of the site quite successfully: “The repetition too, whereby the animation cycles forever till you look or browse away, can make a funny image a hilarious one, or a poignant point mesmerizing.”

A Google search for the term “three frames” turns up blogs referencing the site as well as another site called 3 Frame Movies, which uses simple cartoons to illustrate three frames of a film and in tone, is more like Movie-A-Minute (but less hilarious).

I actually find these kinds of simplified reinterpretations of films to be a lot more valuable and significant than trailers or sites like YouTube or Movieclips.com. Rather than showing a scene out of context or manipulating the plot of an entire film to entice viewers to buy tickets, Three Frames is purely visual and therefore, comes from a less commercial and more artistic place. (3 Frame Movies and Movie-A-Minute use irony in a humorous way: a less disquieting, but still viable, critique of cinema.)

If you have not seen the film in question, the mystery of what exactly is happening is intense. And if you have seen the film, you are invited to experience it in a different way. And the question of why those particular frames were chosen becomes equally mystifying.

To keep tabs on new updates to Three Frames, follow the site on Twitter.