SOME OLD SUPER8 FILMS FROM MY COLLEGE DAYS 1989-1992
These films were mostly shot on a Bell&Howell camera I had back then. Much of the footage from my inter-rail trip around Europe would later get used in my college film projects.
HOME MOVIES FROM TRIP TO CALIFORNIA 2008
I bought a Braun Nizo S800 camera in 2008 and took it with me on this family holiday. All this was shot on one roll of Ektachrome 64T. This film was transferred to video using using my own cobbled together frame by frame telecine system. I learnt a lot about DIY telecine techniques from various websites and felt moved to have a go myself.
+++UPDATE SEPT 2011+++ Some clips from this film have now been used (by arrangement) in the promo video for the new Lana Del Rey song 'Video Games'.
OUR 8mm WEDDING 2009
On our wedding day I handed my Nizo S800 (loaded with a roll of 64T) to my friend Ellis Pritchard. I think Ellis did an excellent job with the cinematography. I'd loved to have done a bit of filming too, but I was otherwise ... engaged. This film went to Andec lab in Germany for processing then on to Uppsala Bildteknik in Sweden for HD Flashscan telecine (8mm to Quicktime) conversion.
A NOTE ABOUT SUPER 8 CAMERAS
I've had several different super8 cameras in the past. My first one was a Bell&Howell FilmoSonic, then a Sankyo ES-88XL. When I got back into super8 in 2008, I looked on Gumtree and found the Nizo S800. The Nizos were made in Germany and are amongst the best cine cameras. Braun/Nizo also hired top product designers of the day such as Dieter Rams: these are elegant and very stylish cameras that feel very good in the hand. I'm currently using one of the smaller Nizos; my 'new' 156XL.
The Super 8 format is 4x3 ratio (just like television in the pre-widescreen TV days), but I'm experimenting with a Panasonic LA7200 Anamorphic Adaptor to shoot a film in 16x9 (modern widescreen TV format). Here's my Nizo 156XL with the Anamorphic lens adaptor attached...
All super8 cameras are old, my Nizos are from the 1970s and the format pretty much died (from mainstream use anyway) in the 1980s when camcorders became cheap enough and the home video era took over. It is getting harder these days to find good cine cameras in working condition. Cameras can be found easily on ebay, but I'd say from bitter experience that many of these are probably non-functional.
A NOTE ABOUT SUPER 8 FILM
Contrary to popular belief, it is still possible to buy and process super 8 film. Kodak still make four or five varieties of filmstock in Super 8 cartridges. The classic Kodachrome40 is long gone now, and Ektachrome 64T came and went, but just a couple of years ago Kodak launched 100D which is the film stock I'm using now.
A NOTE ABOUT PROCESSING SUPER 8 FILM
Once the cartridges are shot, they have to be sent away for processing, and I currently send mine to Andec Labs in Berlin. Braver folks than I have do attempt to process their own films, but I'm yet to see some DIY processed movie film that isn't blotchy and 'experimental looking'. I suspect also, that once you've purchased all of the equipment and nasty chemicals, that DIY processing is not really a path to cheap film-making either.
SOME NOTES ABOUT DIGITIZING SUPER 8 FILM
In the old days, it was enough to run your processed film on your projector and gather around to watch it playing out on a wall or projector screen. The more ambitous film-maker would cut the less successful scenes out and splice the pieces of film back together again; usually using a small plastic tape splicer device and some special sticky-backed splicing tapes.
However, these days I want to have the film digitized so that I can edit using the editing software I am most familiar with (Adobe Premiere and After Effects) and ultimatley I want to show the films on-line.
The process of converting the film to more usable digital video is generally called telecine or film-scanning. The cheapest DIY approach is to project your film and 're-film' it with a camcorder, the most expensive way is to send your film to a fancy post-production house with a proper film scanner. There are many options inbetween on the cost vs. quality continuum.
Suffice to say I spent a long time working on the DIY route. There are some very smart people who have taken this a lot further than I have, and fortunately they have been willing to share their findings. Roger Evans runs a company called Moviestuff, he seems to have pioneered the 'frame by frame' method of capturing of cine film to PC. He sells the equipment to do this pretty well too, but I decided to modify my old Chinon movie projector and have a go myself. Based on this method, the set-up I was using a couple of years ago, was pretty much this...
1: Modified Chinon 2000GL projector. Adapted to run slow (around 3 fps with pulsed motor control circuit) also with low voltage cooler-running light source to prevent film burning. A magnet attached to the rotating shutter disc triggers a reed switch every time a frame is stationary in the gate. A hacked mouse circuit provides a USB click to the host PC to trigger capture of each frame.
2: 120mm diameter plano-convex condenser lens to capture aerial image thrown by projector. Lens held in place by home-made foam board mounting.
3: Borrowed Canon XM2 3CCD mini DV camcorder captures images at PAL resolution, connects to host PC via IEEE1394 (Firewire).
4: Host PC (Windows XP) runs Cinecap software. Incoming mouse clicks from projector ensure frame by frame capture to hard disc.
It worked of a fashion, and certainly gave better results than the projector/wall/camcorder approach, but this was system was very hard to set up properly. Getting the projector to create the 'aerial image' on the condenser lens and the camcorder aligned to capture this was very time-consuming and fiddly. This is the arrangement I used to digitize my California08 film.
In more recent years, and not really being satisfied with the DIY method, I researched the available commercial options for telecine. I currently send my films to Uppsalla Bildteknik in Sweden, I send a USB memory stick too, and they use a Flashscan HD machine to telecine the film and create a reasonably priced and reasonably high resolution(1024x768 pixel dimensions) Quicktime movie and save it on to the memory stick. They return the USB stick and roll of film to me and then I can see the footage for the first time and begin editing.
Buying and have the film processed and digitized isn't cheap, but this makes you become very choosy about what you shoot... To use this medium you have to be patient and accept that the results are very unpredictable. The only thing you can be sure of is that the film you shoot will be special to you and certainly wont look like run of the mill video or DSLR video footage. For all the cost and frustrations of working with this stuff, it's actually quite fun!
