S.F. Trips Festival: An Opening (1966)

Van Meter had three camera rolls of 7242 Ektachrome EFB, which he fully ran through his camera each day of the 3-day Trips Festival. The end result was three 100 ft. rolls of film that each had been triple exposed in-camera, each layer of exposure representing a day of the festival. Aside from just two or three necessary structural edits, Ben spliced the three rolls together essentially unedited. This was then set to a soundtrack that was achieved in roughly the same manner, via triple layering of sound he recorded throughout the festival; He calls the film “a documentary of the Trips Festival from the point of view of a goldfish in the punch bowl.” Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.