Ken Middleham appreciation thread

There's also this: 1975's BUG, dir by Jeannot Szwarc featuring insect cinematography from KM. It's on netflix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A0341bIlG8

The Secret Life of 118 Green Street -- I should have found this sooner!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VeFHUYAQNE

I watched Bug (1975) on Christmas eve and it was pretty good! Very similar to Phase IV in tone and style, trippy synthy soundtrack, same Ken Middleham gold

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8359/8306982729_c00e54524f.jpg

i watched phase iv last night!

That's great! Did you enjoy it?

it was pretty fantastic. i'm recommending it to everyone who likes weird sci-fi.

Anyone who doesn't fall for the imdb description will at least enjoy the visual aspect and ant footage. I mean, really:

Desert ants suddenly form a collective intelligence and begin to wage war on the desert inhabitants. It is up to two scientists and a stray girl they rescue from the ants to destroy them. But the ants have other ideas.

Also every time I google "ken middleham ants" it brings me right back to the same place: here

Why is this guy not more famous?! He's great!!

He got into the opening credits of Bug -- he was a name enough for that back then. I wonder whether technology made his methods obsolete or he just got tired of doing it or what.

no idea

what struck me is how the ants seemed to have different characters, like one recurring ant with a green translucent abdomen. i wonder how much footage he had to shoot in order to get each individual ant to behave in a particular way.

He seems like he was a very patient man. I've not found anything new recently, but I haven't given up either. That WE LIVE image has been one of the more popular things I've posted to tumblr, though. People seem to like insect words better than egg sacs, I guess.

Holy fuck I want to see A Night Out with Mr Toad so bad!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry, I've xposted to the new librarian thread asking for help...I want to see all of them!!

Crickets from Days of Heaven -- bonus music, men, fire, Brooke Adams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY9HBAmHMDU

I'm not going to go on too much longer about how little appreciation there is for Ken Middleham, but I do think it's worth noting that a video search for Ken Middleham cinematographer brings up this thread. A search for Ken Middleham (nothing else) has this thread right under imdb. Unless Google is personalizing my searches more than I thought, there is not nearly enough appreciation of the work of Ken Middleham.

I mean, do I need to make a Ken Middleham youtube playlist or something? Is that what people do?

Springtime is a great time to explore the work of Ken Middleham. I've sort of slacked off in my appreciation due to a host of other responsibilities, but at some point I will renew my quest to find more of his work. In the meantime, what better time than the present to revisit the Black Widow Spider: Her Life Cycle and Enemies.

Also, maybe the return of the cicadas will prompt a bit of interest in old Ken and his work. Who knows.

I'm afraid this has not been the case.

If you'd like to freak out about bacteria and rodents, try this (118 green st pt 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37TONWTkPpg

or part 3, which is about lawn mowing, among other things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjA3Qv4IudA

cool slime mold

are you seeing these through library film strips or just youtubin'?

youtubin
i don't know if i have it in me to track down filmstrips tbh

i thought i would try and i tried for a while but i got nowhere
and summoning the will to try again from there was not appealing
so i just went back for more 118 green street

i wonder what kind of condition something like that would be in. would the people at cpl (for instance) even know what to do with them?

yeah i dunno?! for some reason, i imagine that most of this is sitting in someone's basement somewhere because they went to a library book sale the precise year that the library got rid of all of the filmstrips. because it seemed like they might be interesting to watch someday, they went home and then no one ever saw them again.

i hope that's not the case, but it's the fate i've dreamt up for poor ken middleham's legacy based on the general lack of interest (with internet evidence, at least) in preserving his work thus illustrated itt. i wonder if maybe his family also has copies. i bet they do.

i hope so, at least.

I could not summon any more energy to find any more of Ken Middleham's work than the stuff I've already compiled here, but I still think about it and wish I could see it. Maybe someday.

Excellent compilation thread, thank you. Is there a good early photo of him that might be included? there is a small one in the San Bernadino County Sun from 1951 describing his success in the Popular Photography magazine prizes for that year, but you can only view it once and then they seem to require subscribing.

this is the only one i could find short of subscribing to a magazine!

http://exilimlab.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/pixel4_4/blog/portadas/filmando_lo_invisible_1_1.jpg

i'm glad you enjoyed this thread! i've been waiting for someone to find it because there's so little info about him and his work is so awesome.

thanks for the portrait suggestion.
My particular interest is his 1960 film on the natural history of the black widow: i'm preparing a book on common California spiders with a chapter on the history of illustration, and want to include a paragraph on Ken Middleham and a photo(s). Music sound track aside, his film is easily the equal of modern spider natural history films, so it seems to have been well ahead of its time. Disney's1953 Living Desert has some quite good tarantula spider/wasp footage, not as good but part of the evolution to Mr. Middleham's work. Award winning Microcosmos 1996 has some of the same footage as KM, made much later and no better imo.
Do you know if there were other time lapse cinematographers at that time, or was his work there also new?
I will keep looking for a good earlier photo portrait and let you know if i find anything.
Have you thought of transferring your work to Wikipedia for more hits and maybe more feedback?

i found the film score for phase iv a few months ago on a blog. It's by Brian Gascoigne who would later be Scott Walker's musical partner in crime for his brain-frying Tilt etc phase. Gascoigne apparently intended to release a Phase iv OST LP but it never happened.

So yeah, the long-awaited Scott Walker-Middleham-Saul Bass connection...

And you didn't tell me?! I'm appalled! The music in that movie was v good iirc. Crazy connection too!!

robh - Oh wow, that's great! I love the black widow film so much. I've dreamt of projecting it on a wall while making music of some kind, but this thread is as far as I've gotten with that. His work was definitely ahead of its time. One of the reasons I think it's appealing is that we have seen his footage in so many different places -- in the cinema, in the classroom, on tv -- and it's familiar but difficult to place. And no one seems to know the name of Ken Middleham, so it really does please me that someone (you) must have googled and found this thread! If you can get your hands on any of the educational films that I couldn't find, I would love to see them!!

I've never made a wikipedia entry for anyone successfully (tried to make one for a published author/filmmaker and was rejected!) but I agree that he deserves his own entry. As for this Do you know if there were other time lapse cinematographers at that time, or was his work there also new? I have no idea -- I think I started this thread after seeing Phase IV and was like WHO IS THIS GUY and pursued it for as long as I could before it got in the way of other things I had to do. If there are others, I'd sure like to know about them!

Your book sounds great too! Is this something you're doing for work or art or ?

that's how out of touch I've been-- I told you it was bad!

have made amends just now -- check yr inbox...

haha, ok :)

LL - book: preparing it in my own time and will probably self publish, though it will be a year or 2 yet.
Sent an email to The Nature Box who host the widow film to ask if they can access some of the KM's other nature films at Library of congress,
will post if anything new turns up.

Is this insect metamorphosis footage from an old filmstrip? I wonder if it's KM's?!
http://www.dnatube.com/video/6099/All-About-Insect-Metamorphosis

my google alert for KM produced fruit today, but this was it :(

It looks like we don't have any Biography for Ken Middleham yet.

Be the first to contribute! Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Biography submission guide .

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0585453/bio?ref_=nmbio_ql_1

Goddammit. I want my toad action

google alert has produced fruit

:-/

http://parallax-view.org/2014/09/28/review-bug/

The insect sequences are the work of Ken Middleham, since The Hellstrom Chronicle the dean of insect cinematography; but Bug does not do him proud. In fact, Bug is about the only film I can recall seeing that was not redeemed by a single interesting shot, cut, line, or idea.[

WE LIVE

I thought it was cool when the cockroaches spelled out Parmiter. Some credit for that pls!

heard an interview with Steven Kutcher, "Hollywood bug wrangler" and there was no mention of Ken Middleham or his work :(
they even talked about ants

GOOGLE ALERT NEWS:

Ken Middleham's grandkid has been going through his stuff! And s/he found a bunch of cooooooool old movie posters!!
http://imgur.com/a/G09FV
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3dfp4v/my_grandfather_ken_middleham_was_a/

Wow. I'm wondering what else is in Ken Middleham's old stuff.

http://i.imgur.com/TD47DRg.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/M59Y0O1.jpg

1. Check your car
2. Check your neck
3. Check your hair
4. Check your bed

Is that damnation alley? Cool!

Btw, LaLaLand let it slip that they will be releasing a CD of the Phase IV film score. I was bummed that the reissue from waxworks was vinyl only so yay

Yeah i forgot to label them
there was one for Phase IV too but it was the same one i think i already posted

Time lapse nature photography and/or mycology enthusiasts should definitely seek out The Creeping Garden, a documentary about the artistic, scientific, computing, and social sides of slime mo(u)ld. I saw it last night and it was GREEEEAT

trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyQqRBJngkY

soundtrack by Jim O'Rourke!

That looks neato but the soundtrack would make me claw my ears off.

So much creepy tension! So much that I would be unbearably agitated. Cool topic though!

Cool!

Awesome avant garde score by lalo schifrin on that.

Bugs they plot to destroy us all

Black Widow is on youtube now!
THE BLACK WIDOW IS A MENACE ON FIVE CONTINENTS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur3RE04R2ks

https://youtu.be/TmqGXTl2fzQ

oops apparently this is 10 sec of volvoxes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmqGXTl2fzQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThtggIPomoQ

thymol crystals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYTVR9owuAk

BHT crystals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9aI3goikr4

will conclude with this one, obviously the best. snow melts and mushrooms grow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrQKm9uH7hQ

still no wikipedia entry for him in english afaict
this thread continues to pop up as a top search result :-/

Am in zing so cannot see all YouTube titles yet-- is mr toad one of the above???

nope, sorry :(

aw that's ok i will watch all these

most are super short, like 10 sec

i recently went on a trip to visit behind the scenes at the field museum. one of the places i got to see was the room where zillions of beetles clean the bones of birds whose skeletons are getting prepped to be sorted and go into the collection. it was amazing and reminded me of ken middleham.

i don't see that he has gotten any more well known since last i checked but someday i hope to 1) track down his educational films before it is too late if it is not already too late and 2) get some video art assistance and perform some music in front of projections of ken middleham imagery. <--- there it is, if you can help me make it happen lmk! manifest your dreams!

also 4 years ago ilx user "robh" was writing a book -- any updates on that, robh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDElLm1hfSQ

never give up

that's right, never give up!

It finally happened! A band used the black widow film for their own music video. In this case, a band with an extensive backstory named Toiling Midgets. This news courtesy of my Ken Middleham google alert.

https://www.straight.com/music/1331056/toiling-midgets-more-local-you-ever-knew