Spiral 002

Here's what that 8mm film developing spiral might look like.. .should somebody try to CAD model it in Geomagic Design...

I'm currently trialling this software and making some progress with it... The most basic version of this software is called Geomagic Design (Personal Edition), and I'm thinking this is a pretty good tool for this kind of work, and certainly a whole lot better than the Autodesk 123D Design (free) application I've been using so far.

This model is the lower half of the film spiral only. There will need to be a top plate to keep the film held in place, but that part will be of a much simpler design.

I uploaded this as an .stl file to Shapeways.com, the estimated price to make this part would be about £80. Just at the moment this seems a little bit too much to spend on this project, so I'm hoping to find a service / 3D printer owner who could help me make this for a little less.

New Spiral

Pretty soon I'd like to try DIY processing some cine film for the first time. Processing stills film is pretty straight forward, but super 8 cine film comes in 50 foot (15 metre) lengths. This is not going to fit inside a Paterson tank and anyway, there just don't seem to be any 8mm film spirals either.

Folks seem to use Russian Lomo spiral tanks to do this, but I can't quite bring myself to send lots of good money away to buy a hunk of soviet-era bakelite from ebay. I'm guessing that many of the available tanks will be broken or have bits missing by now.

So what about designing the vector graphics for a new spiral and having it made from plastic? I would think this could be a job for a laser cutting or 3D printing service.
It might look something like this...

By my calculations this would need to be about 220mm in diameter, the channel for the film is 1mm, as are the ridges between the winds. This is a theoretical design, but who knows if this would work, or if the film could actually be loaded into such a thing? The next step will be to find a cutting/making service that could make this up for me at a reasonable price. Please comment below if you know of such a service.

I've been too busy working on something at TANDEM the last few weeks, so there's just not been any time for  DIY film-making activity at home recently.
However, when I get a little spare time I'm going to try some of this in my Super8 camera.

It's 50 feet of black and white negative film. I'm hoping to try out some DIY film processing and figured that this BW negative would be the easiest type of film to start with. Processing is similar to BW neg. stills film, with affordable chemistry at room temperature. I'm also very intrigued with the idea of 'Caffenol C' processing... Yep, that's film developer made from coffee!

Kodak Super 8, The positive and the negative.

Anyone who uses super 8 film these days, might still be reeling from Kodak's double-edged announcement in December 2012. On the same day Kodak announced a NEW super 8 stock would become available (Vision 3 50T negative film); but also that their existing Ektachrome 100D would be withdrawn.

This is a really big deal for people using the format. 100D was the last colour reversal film from Kodak, so now only colour negative films are on offer. This is the end (at least from Kodak) of positive film that can be watched on a projector once processed. It probably doesn't bode well for Straight 8 and similar 'single cartridge' and 8mm festivals either. Undoubtedly colour reversal in super 8 format is the gateway stock (i.e. the cheapest and easiest to process and use) for anybody wanting to try and shoot some real film. It should also be mentioned that all existing cine cameras are rated to work with 100D speed film; very few are rated to work with the film speeds in the Kodak negative range.

Like it or not, anyone who wishes to buy Kodak film from now on will be buying negative film stock. For me, this is new territory, I'll need to find out how my camera might work with this stock. Also, processing and telecine options are greatly reduced too. In short, thanks to Kodak, super 8 just got a whole lot more difficult and inevitably more expensive to use.

There are apparently some advantages to negative film, we should expect better latitude, smaller grain and maybe even sharper pictures; the Vision 3 stock is the very same film used on professional motion picture production in the larger formats. For those willing to persevere (and spend more) there could be image quality benefits to be had.

I've just bought some Kodak 200T negative stock, and I'll try it out, maybe I'll try the new 50T too (when it becomes available here in the UK) but I can't help thinking that this change will on the whole reduce the user-base for super 8 film.

I'm thinking long and hard about the price implications of buying, processing and scanning film. I think this announcement will further hasten the demise of the format, so maybe it's time to enjoy using it while we still can.

What to do? I looked around online for some inspiration, then I found this...

I think this looks pretty sweet... Seems like we have fewer choices now, but just maybe there could be an upside to this negative...

Further Adventures in 3D Printing

I've revised the 3D design of my 6 tooth super 8 film sprocket wheel slightly, and had a pair of these new ones printed at Shapeways.com
I reduced the size of the sprocket teeth this time and ordered 'fine detail white plastic'. Here's the result, and this time, the teeth do seem to mesh with a piece of film. Encouraged by this, I've just sent away my design for a 20 tooth sprocket...

Pocket Sprockets

Well I've had bumper Friday of exciting things coming in the post today, first up here are my very first 3D printed objects. I present 2xDIY 8mm film sprockets. I only sent these to Shapeways.com on Monday night, and here they are in Friday's post! Much quicker than the 10 days Shapeways quote for turnaround time. I think it's pretty impressive that one can design a custom item and have it manufactured and returned within the same week. Here are the little fellas...

Now these are tiny, the hole in the centre of these is only 2mm in diameter, so you get some idea of just how tiny these are. I wanted to test the process with something small. Well I'm pretty impressed these came back, with all the features intact; maybe without the sharpness in definition I had hoped for. There 's no sign of the layering effect one sometimes sees in 3D prints, but there is a 'grainy' or slightly 'powdery' feel to these; they aren't smooth to the touch.

It remains to be seen whether my design and the manufacturing are fit for the intended purpose...

LATEST NEWS 16/02/13+++

Ok, these just don't seem to engage the film sprocket holes at all. It seems the 3D printed sprockets are just too big and fat to fit in the holes... However, I've just noticed that Shapeways offer a 'fine detail' plastic material that's 'slightly shiny'; that sound more like what I'm after. I think I'll redesign a bit on 123D Design and send off another print job soon.

RIP Kodak 100D Reversal Cine Film

Very strange behaviour from Kodak. They announce a NEW type of Super 8 film (50D negative) then the same day they announce the scrapping of 100D reversal (the most-used and affordable cine film; their only remaining colour reversal film) Nooooooooooooooooo!  :(

Enfield on Super 8 film : Reel 04

I just got the fourth roll of super 8 footage back from 18 Frames in Germany this week as HD .avi files from their Muller scanner. Keen followers of this blog will remember that over the last year or two I have been out and about in my home town shooting lots of super8; old-style home movies on analogue film with my 1970s era Nizo camera.

Some of this footage will ultimately become part of my Enfield: My Kinda Town project, but in the meantime, here are some new stills.

My First Muller Scans: Super 8 Looking Great!

It's always an exciting day getting super8 footage back through the post, and today is one such day... I've had another reel of cine film processed and then telecined for my ongoing Enfield: My Kinda Town project.

 

I sent this roll to a different transfer facility this time, I wanted to try out the Muller HM73  film-scanner, so sent this film (and a 16GB USB stick) over to 18frames in Bielefeld, Germany.

The service was very fast, they turned this around within a day, it's just the UK/Germany postage that takes time (around 4-5 days each way). They put a 15GB avi file onto my memory stick, a lovely 1440x1080 sized image with the correct 1.333 pixel aspect ratio for my anamorphic footage. So I effectively get back my super 8 reel and a 1920x1080 16x9 file to work with. Kudos to Frank for getting these settings right, because anamorphic super8 footage is a fairly unusual format to be dealing with.

I have to say I am hugely impressed by the quality of the work, especially as this is a reasonably priced service. I'll definitely be sending a few more films this way in the future; maybe even getting a few re-scans of earlier films by way of comparison.

I've been sending my last few films off to Sweden to Uppsala Bildteknik for scanning on the FlashScan HD machine, from that system I was getting a 1024x720 4x3 scan, pillarboxed within a 1280x720 image size.

The new scans from the Muller machine are obviously clearer and higher resolution; the files seem  to be hardly compressed too. When ordering the telecine from 18Frames, I opted for their '2k look'; quite a heavily post-processed image which is highly-stabilized and sharpened to look more like larger film formats. For this project, I'm not looking for a wobbly grainy 'home movie' image, I'm trying to make my images look like a glossy cinema travel documentary or a commercial from the 1970s, and these would typically have been shot on 35mm film.

The thing is... the first couple of reels I had scanned for this project now have a very different quality to this new one, leading to the costly possibility of getting a couple of those earlier reels scanned again.

I'm not showing any moving footage from this project just yet, but here are a few stills (from the new Muller-scanned footage) just to give an idea of the new look.

Lana Del Rey and my home movies (again)

Lana Del Rey has licenced some of my Super 8 film footage again.

Back in 2008 I shot this short film whilst on a family trip to California...

Then last year, some fragments of my footage appeared in the official promotional video for Lana Del Rey's breakthrough track Video Games. As it turned out, this song became a huge hit with millions of viewers worldwide.

I am pleased to say that the makers of the video did make contact with me and we came to an amicable agreement for this usage. I can add that Lana and the folks at Polydor have just re-licenced the footage for use in a live concert recently held (Sept 26th 2012) at the London roundhouse as part of the iTunes festival.

Who'd have known that the first test footage I shot with my Nizo S800 cine camera 4 years ago would make the big time?

Lo-Fi Photography

A couple of weeks ago I was out for a family day out to the seaside at West Mersea, and decided to try out the Lomo Diana F+ camera I've had since Christmas.

So in went the 120 roll film (200ASA slide film), and joy of joys NO BATTERIES! I shot my 12 pictures at the large size and was then ready to hunt on-line for processing services.

I chose thephotoshoponline.co.uk to process my film. It turns out that slide film is more pricey than negative film would have been: for processing and scanning I ended up paying £12.95 + 1st class postage £2.70. I got back my 120 slide film as strips and a CD with the scanned images as 5MB .jpg files. The results are technically horrible in many ways, yet I quite like them too. Here are a few of the better ones...

The harbour at West Mersea.

Crab botherers on the quayside.

Local lads diving in the harbour.

Whoops, accidental double exposure!

Reflection in the sail-makers workshop.

So it's an expensive way to get some dark and grubby images, but I think I'll be having another go at this soon. Whatever the results, the process is lots of fun; very few controls on the camera, random results, delayed gratification and (did I say this already?) ... NO BATTERIES.

I've got some more rolls of the slide film to get through, then I might buy some negative film and shoot the smaller images (16 per roll) to get slightly better value. (Negative film at the lab I used is quicker and cheaper than slide film, 1-day processing is quoted at £7.95+postage for the process & scan) I'm also toying with the idea of dusting off my 35mm SLR too just for more analogue kicks...

TXT ISLAND Plays Bristol on Tuesday

Just a note to say that my 2009 short film TXT ISLAND is getting another screening this Tuesday (25th September), this time in Bristol where it will be screened as part of the CineMe Award Winning Shorts event. Although I can't make it, I wish everyone attending a fine evening and would like to thank Matthew Freeth and the event's co-ordinators for choosing to show my film.

The Myth of Public Domain Films

Well, I'm currently researching a documentary film project about an old cinema (more of this to follow no doubt) and interested in finding some clips from feature films made between 1930 and 1970. Of course, I'm making this film off my own meagre dollar and looking for clips that I can use legally in my production for very few £££s.

My internet research dallied for a while in the realm of 'Public Domain' footage. Here's a Wikipedia page all about it including a list of films claimed to be in the Public Domain and supposedly not covered by copyright. One can even download most of these films and many others besides at the Internet Archive site.

It seems that the films on these 'Public Domain' lists are mostly ones in which the copyright wasn't renewed by the producers 28 years after the release dates of the films. For a while under US law, it seems that the non-renewal of copyright meant the films would fall into Public Domain use. Even under UK law, as recently as the 1988 Copyright Act, it seems that copyright on films had a 50 year expiry after the release date of the film.

For my project, this seemed ideal; Hollywood films from bygone days that I could cut up and integrate into my project... until I dug a little deeper....

Here's the catch... seems that UK law is quite different from US law on this subject and has changed very much for the worse. Nowadays, UK-based film-makers wont be able to source any film material this way at all, thanks to the 1996 Harmonisation of Copyright amendment to the 1988 Copyright Act. It seems that copyright of old films doesn't just fall away after fifty years of the film's release any more, oh no...

If you want to use old films, you now need to wait 70 years (until the end of the year) the director, producer AND writer of the film have all died! Effectively this legislation prohibits use of any extant old film footage in modern productions for way into the future. Not only that, but our film-making descendants will have a hell of a job working out the copyright status of any given film without finding the death dates of all the writers, directors, producers involved... Frequently, this will require extensive research into a huge list of hard-to track down characters. In short, the time period is too long to be of any creative use, and the multiple death-date system sets up a whole heap of trouble for the future. If a law was ever an ass, here it is.

By 1996 when this amendment to UK law came in, many old films had already out-lived the 50 year copyright period. Any film released prior to 1946 would have been available, plus all of those exceptional cases on the US lists too. The 1996 amendment has retrospectively over-ridden all of this; snatching back what was already out and kicking the rest into the very long grass.

A man with a tripod in Enfield : my experiences

Over the last couple of months, I've been out shooting film around my home town of Enfield. I've been inspired by some old 1970s era travelogue films to make one about my home town too. To get the required retro look, I've been shooting on Kodak Super8 film with one of my old 1970s era Nizo cine cameras.

I thought I'd recount some of my experiences 'street filming' out and about amongst the general public. I've included a few stills taken from the first roll of super8 film too. For most of the shooting, I was setting up my cine camera on a tripod, so any idea of 'stealth' filming was out of the question. I decided to just get on with it and see what happened...






ENFIELD MARKET:
I was filming around Enfield market for a while. One of the traders was really helpful and interested when I filmed the dummies on his clothes stall. But one of the fruit and veg. traders wasn't so happy ; he told me I should have permission from the market manager before filming there. Enfield Market square is apparently run by a charitable trust and they set their own terms about filming on the property. Luckily I'd pretty much filmed what I needed and moved on.

FISH SHOP:
As a courtesy, I told the shopkeeper here what I was doing before filming the goods on display in his window from the pavement. He was fine about it.

ENFIELD CIVIC CENTRE:
On a weekend day I got all of the shots I needed of the exterior of the Council building no problem, the place was closed and nobody was around. I also wanted to shoot some panoramic views of the town from the top floor of the Civic Centre. One weekday morning I went in to the reception desk and asked permission there. I used the internal phone to talk to someone 'upstairs' and explain my project too them, they said they would consider my request and call back. I was called back the next day... unfortunately no permission could be given for any filming from within the Council building...

OXFAM SHOP:
I was filming the exterior of the shop from the pavement. A shopkeeper came out and asked what I was doing. I told him I was just filming the shop's 'We Love Enfield' sign;  he was fine about it. After this, a passer-by approached me and we had a nice chat about cameras and cine film etc.

ST. ANDREWS CHURCH:
I set my tripod up just inside the church grounds to take an exterior view of the church. A nice lady asked if I was doing this as 'coursework or something' I explained my motives and we had a pleasant chat about it. Then, an unkempt and suspicous gent came out and said 'You didn't film me did you..' , I hadn't, so I told him I hadn't; he went away. Then another gent came out while I was taking my shot. This turned out to be the church verger. He was quite cross with me and told me I needed the vicar's permission for filming... His biggest worry was that I might take a picture of the church that could 'end up on YouTube or something...'

LIBRARY:
I shot some exterior shots of the new library building, no problem. There is one interior shot I really would like to add to the film. I asked the librarians, and they in turn asked the library manager. The library manager said that I had to have permission from the Council's head of Library Services. I rang the Head of Library Services at the Civic Centre; she says permission can't be granted on grounds of needing permission from everyone in the shot before taking any pictures at the location. It looks unlikely that my film about Enfield will include any shots taken from within the new library building, though I will perhaps pursue this a little further...
+++UPDATE 16/12/11 I've just heard back from the Council's Head of Library Services and it suddenly looks much more likely that I can get the shot of the library interior too. Hurray : )


PALACE GARDENS SHOPPING CENTRE:
I took some exterior shots here, then ventured inside, this time using a monopod for extra speed! I did manage to take one shot here, but didn't feel too comforatable about rushing and working somewhat covertly. I have emailed the managers of the centre to ask permission to shoot from the car park, though not received any reply.

PALACE EXCHANGE SHOPPING CENTRE:
I was taking a monopod shot here when approached very quickly by a security guard. He told me no filming could take place on this 'private land', he offered that 'terrorism issues' were the main reason...
I think it highly likely now that my little Enfield film will not include any mention of the shopping centres at all. In a film about the nice aspects of Enfield Town, they seem to be especially un-welcoming places. It's my film, so I really don't feel inclined to give them any coverage..



So in conclusion, setting up a tripod and filming things in Enfield certainly attracts a lot of attention.  UK law is that in public space it's OK to do all of this, take pictures or film, use a tripod, whatever ... Also, members of the public do not have any legal rights to 'privacy' of their image when out and about in public spaces. The UK surely wouldn't be one of the most CCTV surveilled countries in the world if this were indeed the case : )

The problem is that much of the space around town isn't really 'public'. The council-owned spaces (which we pay for of course) are seemingly almost impossible to 'officially' film in. Apparently the main concern is to protect the privacy of anyone that might be photographed. Seemingly open public spaces like the market square and shopping centres, (although they invite our presence as paying customers) do not welcome photographers at all.

In short, I'm not entirely surprised, but a little disappointed at these experiences. +++UPDATE 16/12/11 But very heartened by the possibility of the library shooting :) +++ My film when it's finished will show the Town in a good light, but it certainly hasn't been made any easier so far by the folks that set and enforce the 'rules' around the place. In such a risk-averse society, there seem to be plenty of 'good' reasons not to allow a bloke with a tripod and a 1970's cine camera to wander around taking pictures.

Perhaps a strange man has been filming you in Enfield Town recently? If you have been affected by any issues raised in this post, please use the comments button below...

But ambassador you spoil us ...

On Thursday night this week I went over to the Italian Cultural Institute in London's swanky Belgravia Square. This is the part of town where you find the grand embassy buildings; all imposing stucco facades draped with the flags of all nations...

The evening was a presentation of the work of artist Carolina Melis. The main event was a screening of her film Le Fiamme di Nule (see below). The film uses a mixture of dance and animation to tell the story of three Sardinian women engaged in the Nule tapestry competition. The scenes depicting the tapestries being woven were nicely expressionistic with giant threads and a very pleasing integration of black and white studio based live-action with animated sequences. There was also a sequence of archival black and white still photography in the film too. The music by Rosella Faa is especially beautiful, I'll be searching out more of this...

By chance I met with D.O.P. Pete Elmore at the screening, (I've worked with Pete on shoots at TANDEM several times before.) Pete used his own Bolex (with motor) 16mm camera for shooting the live action shots seen in Le fiamme di Nule.

After the screening there was a chance to see tapestries that Carolina has designed and to sample some Sardinian nibbles too. Pecorino cheese with fig jam and nutty torrone were amongst the edible delights on offer here.

All in all a nice slice of Sardinian hospitality and an interesting event.

Another new film scanner!

Well it's not often that NEW equipment comes out for handling super8 and other small film formats. Imagine my surprise and delight upon discovering this... (NOTE: There is no sound on this video.)



The Müller HM73 Data Framescanner scans all film formats up to 16mm, using laser sprocket alignment, all-roller transport and saving images frame by frame to data in RAW format. I'd have one but for the small matter of €27,0000; but Christmas is coming soon readers ;)