Big Rogers also known as Roger Graf
(not to be confused with the Swiss criminal novel author of the
same name!) is a film director, cameraman, photographer,
musician, actor, stuntman and also a solo entertainer.
He has directed various films
including his latest in September 2021
published short film "Beware of The Agent B.",
has produced various music videos and video clips,
has led the camera in various films and has
designed and programmed the special effects
and the graphic effects.
Musically BigRogers is by no means a blank slate.
He was a member of the band "16-17 Soundsystem"
with Daniel Buess (drums), Christian Lichtenberg
(Live Video Mix), and Alex Buess (saxophones and electronics)
and as X-TRAK-T he worked for "Cortex" with Alex Buess and Daniel Buess.
He has played on 16-17's up to now latest production and
made a significant contribution as a guitarist to the vinyl album “Phantom Limb” (published in 2020).
In addition, he was an important audio technician of sound producer Alex Buess in many sound productions for Radio DRS / SRF.
For economic reasons, he also repeatedly works in advertising, for example in a video presentation
(entitled: Behind The Visor) by the high-speed racing driver and bolide designer Urs Erbacher.
He also often appears as a solo entertainer and talented impersonator. A good example for this kind of works is "The Pack Rat - Frank Martin Junior", which he presents in his „BigRogers Entertainment“. It speaks for itselve.
Big Rogers' film work ranges between fiction, comix, science fiction and documentary film. This diversity can also be seen in his new film "Beware of The Agent B." mentioned above.
...digital versus analog processing....
He is not necessarily only interested in digitally generated effects, but rather in analogue processing. This of course includes blue and green screens, special camera positioning tools including camera sliders, drones, etc.
However, the following elements are also very important: the selection of special projection surfaces, including video and slide projection onto parts of the body or special lighting techniques, such as moving colored surfaces. The light in large, varying amounts plays an important role in BigRogers film and photo technology.
Flooding objects with light creates new structures: slide projections onto certain areas of the body create a kind of tattoo effect, which can be seen, for example, in his "2017 Totem series".
…an instrument that can be directly influenced…
You could possibly achieve similar effects through digital image processing, only the digital processing is much less direct. By projecting for example slides, which are an intense light source, it is possible to design the photographic process much more directly. This immediacy is comparable to playing an instrument in music:
while digital processing of a photograph mainly works with “samples” of an image, the result is much more dynamic when projecting directly onto a body. The light becomes a directly influenceable instrument of the photographer.
...origin of this type of film/photography in the pre-digital time...
The origin of this type of film/photography can be found mainly in the pre-digital time. At that time, special effects and miniatures were largely realized through film and slide projections.
An impressive example of this is the 1980 film "Altered States" by Ken Russell. In this film, the psychedelic effects, which were extremely impressive for that time, are mainly achieved through projections without computer technology.
