Sledge Poteet

Sledge Poteet is one of 24fps’s practical operators: a camera worker, equipment hand, and security-minded companion who repeatedly confronts the cost of making images in dangerous conditions. He is neither simply a committed militant nor a detached technician. His recurring concern with escape routes, equipment, and acceptable risk gives the collective’s cinematic ideal a stubbornly material counterweight—and brings him into the effort to find Frenesi Gates after the group has been shattered.

Place within 24fps

Sledge belongs to the working core of 24fps, the Berkeley filmmaking collective that inherited equipment and some members from an earlier radical film group. Within the collective, he and DL Chastain represent a practical tendency: they favor tactics and getting things done over the more utopian commitments of members such as Mirage and Howie. That distinction is not a simple opposition between politics and apathy. Sledge is involved in politically charged filmmaking, but he is alert to what the work demands of the people making it.

The group’s meetings can dissolve into arguments over even the smallest terms. When a proposed label for their enemies provokes objections on behalf of pigs and then cockroaches, Sledge suggests cockroaches as an alternative; Howie objects while holding a joint. Later, as the dispute grows heated, Sledge tries to quiet the room with broad gestures of a comb, while Howie offers his smoking joint as a makeshift peace symbol. The episode presents Sledge as a mediator in a collective whose shared purpose does not prevent it from getting caught in its own disagreements.

Work, equipment, and the value of the image

Sledge’s practical outlook is clearest in the group’s recurring disputes about light and danger. 24fps members are obsessed with lighting, and arguments about it can overtake meetings that began as business discussions. Frenesi Gates favors acquiring as much electricity as possible by tapping the local power company; Sledge worries that the illicit connections will eventually be discovered. His concern is concrete: if the others are caught, he expects to be the one responsible for getting them safely out of town.

He also questions how much physical danger a film can justify. Ditzah Pisk argues that filmmaking entails sacrifice, while Sledge maintains that no one should die for mere shadows. The disagreement crystallizes a conflict within 24fps: images are treated as politically consequential, yet the act of obtaining them can expose the filmmakers to injury or death. Sledge does not abandon the work; instead, his objections insist that the people behind the camera remain more than expendable material for it.

His role is hands-on. During a gathering at Rex Snuvvle’s house, Sledge handles a camera support and cues Krishna while Howie manages the lights, Frenesi operates the camera, and Ditzah attends to other tasks. The group is trying to film Weed Atman recounting what happened, and the process repeatedly stalls as the lights are switched on and off. When violence breaks out, Sledge is close to Rex, and the gunshot is captured on Krishna’s audio recording. The footage later shows Rex beside Weed’s body, but it does not identify Sledge as the shooter or assign him responsibility for the killing.

The final filming and the collective’s collapse

As 24fps documents the last hours of the People’s Republic of Rock and Roll, the group works in a landscape of darkness, disrupted services, and looming violence. Sledge attends to a Mole-Richardson generator taken from the Film Arts Department, adjusting its motor in the hope of improving its operation. Around him, the filmmakers use available lamps and highly sensitive stock to record helicopters, dancing crowds, and soldiers advancing in camouflage. The camera does not retreat when the troops turn toward the lights. The episode extends Sledge’s earlier argument: the image may continue to face danger, but its production depends on practical work and on people who must live with the consequences.

After the turmoil, DL returns to the Berkeley studio with Howie and Sledge. They realize that they are more or less all that remains of 24fps. DL is disoriented and physically shaken, while Frenesi’s whereabouts are uncertain. Reports place her with a convoy that others failed to follow through a confusing maze of roads. The maps offer little help: they lead toward a blank region marked Security Services Reservation, with no reliable account of what lies inside.

Search for Frenesi

Sledge joins DL and Howie in setting out to find Frenesi. They travel in the collective’s modified 1957 Chevrolet Nomad, a four-wheel-drive vehicle with reinforced bumpers, off-road tires, and winches at both ends. After crossing the Richmond Bridge, they press through rain and rush-hour traffic toward San Rafael. DL drives, keeping her attention fixed on Brock Vond and on the possibility that he has taken Frenesi against her will.

Sledge’s caution remains important once the search turns toward the reservation. Estimates in Berkeley of the camp’s population range from ten to a hundred, varying with people’s fears rather than dependable information. He and Howie study the maps instead of treating those guesses as fact. Sledge points out the practical problem: a perimeter said to measure a hundred miles would give the authorities time to move Frenesi elsewhere if they saw the rescue party coming. His warning does not stop the attempt. DL answers that they will not see her, and the three continue into the hills, using the winch to cross a fence before taking the Nomad up rough ground on all four wheels. Sledge’s part in the mission carries his earlier concern for escape and exposure into the collective’s last, uncertain undertaking: he helps turn a search driven by loyalty into a journey planned around terrain, concealment, and the possibility of being detected.