[3] He liked the intense images produced by hand-held shooting and practiced holding the camera with no film in it for an hour or two each day.
[7] Outtakes from Anticipation of the Night appear in Brakhage's 1961 short film Thigh Line Lyre Triangular.
However, the organization's founder Amos Vogel refused to take Anticipation of the Night, believing the film's formlessness would be unwatchable and lead to "some kind of riot".
[8][9] Brakhage refused to give any of his future films to Vogel unless he agreed to take Anticipation of the Night and recent work by Marie Menken.
Vogel remained steadfast, leading to Stan and Jane's decision to start distributing films out of their home in Colorado.
"[7] Ernest Callenbach denounced it, likening its form to "a Mahler symphony—the material appropriate for a delightful song has been pumped up into nearly an hour of meandering repetitions with no real sense of pace…and no precision of impact or emotion.