Tom DeWitt Ditto

An NTSC space opera.

Computer imagery dances before a techno soundtrack.

Originally shot in color, this politically-charged special was a collaboration between young artists angry at the system. Just days before airing, the Master tapes were 'accidentally' erased. It was taken to court and, after several years, the local TV station was found guilty of willfully destroying the tapes. Featuring inventive VFX and co-opting songs by the Doors, Dylan and the Steve Miller Band. "Seven young men, each of them involved in one of the arts [...] talk for the greater part of the film. They are involved in a discussion of mystical processes important to them" - Film-makers Co-Op

Abstract video art created in 1981. Music by Vibeke Sorensen and Walter Michael. Abstract video art created in 1981 at EUE Video in NYC.

"What is most powerfully effective in FALL is the extraordinary sophistication of DeWitt's visual techniques, his graphic eye, and his complex designs. Because each unit of the exposition is so painstakingly conceptualized and nurtured, an audience is afforded a unique kind of purview on the elements as they are reconstituted in the more complex overlays. Thus the early, Magritte-like compositions of eye and sky establish basis for later more complicated efforts .... Color changes worked on given images (the bird, the sky) avoid the oversimplifications of hues/cues. Certain effects, as when clouds pass through the falling body which is outlined in flaming orange, can only be described as awesome. ... [A] work of immense dedication and exceptional skill." – John Fell

The Leap is impressive for its mixture of pure video space with representational filmic space. Thus an ordinary man seems to interact physically with videographic apparitions, moving in and out of different time space realities, fluctuating between the physical and metaphysical with each stride of his leap toward freedom. —Gene Youngblood

"An extraordinary film, which powerfully evokes the feeling of the city, but more important, a film of fine graphic design." - Lenny Lipton