We did the 48 Hours competition with 8mm film!

A Monster movie AND it is based on a true story: the Auckland Graveyard has run out of space. The Auckland Council Graveyard Department go on a quest to find new places to put the dead bodies.

The 48 Hours Competition 2025 in New Zealand started Friday, 15 Aug at 7pm with the surprise requirements dropped on us:
Our genre: "Monster Movie".
Elements to include: "miniature", "accident", "something precious", "a slow motion shot".

The camera is a Canon Zoom 8 released in 1959. Except for the titles and dolls house graphic shot on a Canon 8 EEE released in 1962. The film is Fomapan ISO-100 negative Double-8mm (aka Standard-8) produced in the Czech Republic. DIY processing in Ilford DD-X diluted 1+4 for 14 min at 14 degreesC. Great moment Sunday morning. I hung out the wet film to dry at 1am. Fomapan usually takes 5 hours to dry but I got to work on it with a hair dryer. Dry in 1 hour! That 4 hours saved probably saved us. Then it was into my home made digitiser that slowly advances frame by frame taking digital stills. It is reasonably reliable and it kept its act together overnight while I went to bed and got some sleep. Digital transfer was ready at 10am and it was a comfortable edit to get it over the line about 6pm.

The version you see here has the opening title visible for slightly longer for readability. It also has 2 credits added. There is a minor music edit to cover the longer credits. Otherwise this is retro film production done under competition conditions in 47 hours.

We re-started 8mm filming in Jan 2025, aiming to take on the 48 Hours challenge and working up to it with a series of shorts. What really happened is that we were plagued by old camera unreliability which is a reality check on the romantic idea of retro filming. Some of us were filming with Super-8mm in the 1980s. We have 5 old cameras between us and only 1 works now. Main fails are electric motors. So we went with Standard-8mm. These usually cost 20 dollars NZ (USD 12) and have faults but they are easier to fix. They also have much more of a vintage look and vibe that the actors and crew enjoy. We thought we had found a reliable specimen with a Canon Zoom 8. It let us down during the competition by doing a film tangle losing about 30 percent of our footage. We were able to do a rescue edit and get a complete qualifying film into the festival screening. We did not win any awards but so good to be part of it and get a lot of positive attention for being the retro film team.

We are continuing the retro film project. The test filming now is with the surviving Super-8 camera. Using Fomapan Double Super 8, split down the middle and loaded into cartridges in complete darkness. I was nervous about trying this but when I got into the darkroom and did it, it went OK and was easier than I expected. We are also trialling DIY cartridge loading of bulk Orwo NP100 film from Wittner.

Things we have learned.

• The cameras are too old. Never pay much for an untested example. There is about an 80 percent chance of being seriously defective.
• Myth: Standard 8 has steadier gate registration = less gate jiggle than Super-8.
  Not true. Much the same gate jiggle. Just watch "Graveyard  which has no steadying corrections.
• Myth: The "reversal" process gives better grain and sharpness than "negative".
  Not true. Which is good because negative uses standard low hazard chemistry, and reversal is way more challenging.
• Myth: Prime lenses are sharper than zoom lenses.
  Not true. Our line resolution chart tests are giving the similar results for both.

"Brave Love" - only a little use of AI

  "Brave Love" release! USD 2.99 to rent on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bravelove

There is only a little use of AI in "Brave Love".

“Brave Love” effects were mostly done by 2024 when I started AI trials. My biggest need is green screen "keying" and “rotoscoping”. I have been unable to get a good and useful AI keying result from my trials so far. The keying we see in “Brave Love” is all human-driving of “traditional” algorithm-based video editing packages.

Another need is background crowds. My AI trials failed until the end of 2024 when I had a small success. This is 7 seconds of a partly-AI composite running 01m 45s to 01m 52s. I wanted to show the 1930s rise of extremist mob rule in the imaginary city-state of Lagado.

This clip includes a lot of redrawing from me. The AI spider was so bad I was inspired to get back to basics and get outside with a camera to photograph a real spider to work from. The crowd and its animation comes from 2 different AIs. One for generating stills - "Microsoft Azure Dall-E". And another for animating those stills - "RunwayML".

"Brave Love" has other part-AI elements.

• Audio enhancement - about 5 seconds of audio recovery and repair.
• Audio enhancement of 2 songs. These are my recordings of a human singer with studio-style enhancement from a web service described as AI.
• Some background still images

My general impression of AI - over hyped, disappointing, with some limited niche usefulness. AI may produce eye candy one-off images and video but my experience is that I could not get it to play nice with other elements as part of a creative whole. AI is however rapidly improving and I may give it a different future report.

Movie Review - An Irish Goodbye

In planning the online release of movie "Brave Love", I have been watching and supporting other online rentals to see how it is done. Here is an excellent example.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/anirishgoodbye

"An Irish Goodbye" (23 min) has a slow paced start, but stay with it because it packs in as much  storytelling and insight as many features. James Martin, an actor with Downs Syndrome, provides a star performance as a Downs Syndrome man, Lorcan, who reacts to the death of his mother with a creativity and emotional intelligence which surprises and surpasses those around him. The best part of this is that Downs Syndrome is not a big thing here. Rather the warm, funny and relatable Lorcan just happens to have Downs Syndrome as a part of his character.

"An Irish Goodbye" is a well deserved Oscar and Bafta winner of best short film.

"Retro Film" - Testing Topaz Starlight AI Enhancer with Super-8mm film

 

I have been testing AI Enhancers for a year now and until recently, March 2025, I have seen poor results with black and white, and with film grain. A common result was no change, with or without an error message. But now, surprise! a dramatic transformation from Topaz Starlight, a "research preview ... first-ever diffusion AI model for video enhancement".  At the time of writing, 13 Apr 2025, it is open for free testing with limited amounts of footage. That comes with a condition that they can use uploaded footage in their research. Therefore the performance is from ugly old me and a much better looking cat. IMO Topaz Starlight is a little "over the top" in its changes and if the release version has a control for something like degree of enhancement then I would be into "dialing it down a bit". 

I can see 2 uses:

Old films.
When we were filming with Super-8mm in the 1980s it was because it was accessible and affordable for telling our stories. IMO it is valid with some of these fictional drama films to go for enhancement. I am thinking minimal or no enhancement for our documentary material.

New Retro Filming.
We are having more of a debate with this! Is there a point to analog filming then having it change to look digital - or does it? Is there a case for saying that this hybrid of Super-8mm and Digital Enhancement gives a distinctive new look with its own new artistic validity? Is it good artistic revenge on filmmakers who fake the film look with digital tech, to fake the digital look with retro film? Our actors, documentary subjects and crew are enjoying working with vintage cameras, and they may enjoy it more with enhancement.

See the Youtube description and additional clips for more about camera, stock, chemistry and cat.

"Retro Film" - Processing colour film as black and white

In learning "retro film" we do tests with stills cameras. It is a quick way to test different films and processes. So these still photos really do relate to film-making.

I can sometimes buy 16mm colour shortends, the unexposed remaining parts of big rolls of film. The colour process is a big challenge and I am focussing on black and white. How does processing colour film as b/w work out?

I got my Kodak Retina 1B out of storage. This is a classic camera from about 1954. It had a partly exposed roll of Kodak Gold 200 in it. I shot some more then processed as black and white in Ilford LC29 diluted 1+19 for 13 min at 20 degC. A usual time for LC29 is 8 min. I read somewhere to give more time to colour film and that seems to have worked. 

Now on the TODO list, film something creative with those shortends! As in short comedy sketches which act as team-building test runs for our mad idea of competing in the 48 Hours film-making competition using retro film.

"Retro Film" - Double-8mm with "Double Bohemia"

 

Getting to know Double-8mm by testing with Double-8mm film made by Foma in Bohemia. So of course we went 10km to film in Puhoi, NZ settled by immigrants from Bohemia. Hence the title "Double Bohemia". AND we are testing a Meopta Admira 8E camera made about 1949 in Prerov which is near Bohemia. So does that qualify as Triple-Bohemia?!

I bought the Admira for its removable lens which I assumed was a “D-Mount”. And the threading was correct for D-Mount. It accepted a C-Mount to D-Mount adapter and I tested C-Mount lenses from 16mm cameras, and also a C-Mount CCTV lens. On developing the film – shock! Horror! There was only about 20 seconds of movie and some single frame stills – all taken with the original lens. All the interesting other lenses were extremely out of focus. After some detective work I found a strange sad answer. The D-Mount flange-to-film distance standard is 12.29 mm. On the Admira it is much further, 17.3 mm. Why?! I can only guess that the “communist bloc” worked to different standards but a different thread would have been nice. In the “wise after the event” department, the lens is unusual for having threaded structure going a long way, about 9mm, from the flange into the camera.

The film is Fomapan 100 R designed for reversal processing. I processed as negative because I needed a quick result for planning my next “retro project” move.

I used Ilford Ilfotec LC29 at 1 + 19 dilution for 5 minutes at 20 deg C.

Here in NZ the reversal chemicals are difficult to get, especially during the Christmas/New Year southern hemisphere long summer holiday period. And we have no reversal-capable cine film labs here – the nearest is in the US. Therefore this is not a fair test of Foma film. What info we do get is:

* Processing Foma R as negative is possible.

* The anti-halation layer acts like a 4.5 stop neutral density filter. My homemade digitiser was able to cope with that because it works by taking a photo of each frame with a digital camera. That camera normally runs with a shutter speed of 1/60 sec. In this case it was setting speeds like 1/2 sec. Question: can commercial digitisers handle that big a variation?

* The old Admira spring motor means that I do not know the shutter speed for the bracketing single frame shots. I did light metering assuming 1/20 sec and ASA 50 indicating f/2.8 as the best setting. The result is very different! My digitiser camera is automatically adjusting for negative density which is why the results for f/5.6 to f/16 look much the same. The fact that they look much the same indicates good exposure latitude.

About the Meopta Admira 8E

* In my opinion this has a non-standard design that works against the interesting option of using a variety of D-Mount lenses and other lenses with C-Mount to D-Mount adapters.

* In this test we have random scratches on about half of the film

* The gate and transport look like high quality engineering. However the gate wiggle effect is no better than seen in Super-8. Especially look at the opening shot with the Bohemian Museum road sign. I had the Admira on a tripod and operated with a cable release for max camera steadiness to test for gate wiggle. I am guessing that this particular Admira has had a hard life. A lot can happen in 75 years.

The Admira lens does not have a focussing ring. It relies on Double-8mm having a long depth of field. I am sceptical of this and I am going to suggest that a focussing ring is a must-have. The distant shot of the roundabout appears to have better sharpness than the test chart which was at a distance of 6 feet (1.8 m). I have also been testing wide angle C-Mount lenses on a mirrorless camera and it is showing precise focus changes with only small movements of the focussing ring.