Film manipulation: reflection and how it's relevant to you as a filmmaker

I really enjoyed being able to manipulate film by directly altering it. After taking FST302 in experimental film and seeing many amazing films from people who have directly altered film, I had always wanted to try to do it myself. After having the experience of making a one minute 16mm film by direct manipulation and seeing how hard it was to just do a simple animation, I have a whole new respect for some of the great 35mm hand painted films I've seen that are longer than 10 minutes. I think its really interesting that artists even thought of using the medium of film for direct manipulation. I don;t think that direct film manipulation is relevant to me as a filmmaker today at all. Unfortunately, film has become a dead medium. Cinematography isn't even offered at UNCW anymore because no one shoots on film. I now have to take an art of the camera class on digital filmmaking which I'm sure isn't going to be nearly as cool as shooting on film. If we lived in a world where everyone still shot on film, I feel that the direct manipulation would be more relevant to me as a filmmaker. When you shoot on film you're doing so by exposing each frame 24 times every second. Direct manipulation is similar because it is a frame by frame process. You can take your manipulated film and look at it and have some kind of idea what it will look like when projected, just the same as if you took some developed film and looked at each frame before running it through a projector.