First look - first impressions - it is working out well. To me the EK64 stock does look grainier than Kodachrome but that gives it a retro look that will work well for this project. I am not sure yet about how much I want to use it on future films.
Frame scans are posted on another site because of display space.
You can see them here ...
IAFILM Current Projects - Love Song to Super-8
The Canon 814E looks more and more like the number 1 camera. One surprise behaviour we have uncovered. We noticed that we got slightly different settings focussing by eye compared to measuring distance with a measuring tape. We went with the measuring tape but the close-ups show that the focussing by eye was the one giving the true and accurate settings. We have some close-ups to re-shoot Monday night:(
Friday, February 16, 2007
Thursday, February 8, 2007
"Love Song to Super-8" - blog06 - film is processed!
The package of Ektachrome films has just arrived back from Spectra Lab, Hollywood, USA. Turnaround time was 14 days from New Zealand. I have unreeled the first few cm of one and I can see it has nicely exposed pictures on it. Tonight I can start running the films through my home-made scan-into-computer machine.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
How best to use YouTube - a new idea!
The story so far. An aim of IAFILM life is to score some high audience figures on YouTube so we can point to these when going for funding of more ambitious movie projects. Experiment 1 was to do "responses" to a big-time film-maker and that went nowhere because the other film-maker did not accept the response - I suspect because of feedback overload rather than any other reason.
Experiment 2 is an intense effort to comment generously on videos I like. Most text comments on YouTube are very simple one liners like "lol" or "wow" or "bravo! excellent video" so it MAY get some attention to make an effort to write meaningful mini-reviews.
For example: ("Le Grand Content" by "enlarge")
"I LOVE this video because I HATE most business presentations I see - and I get to see a lot! It is so good to see such an effective satire. I will enjoy pushing my teaching and business colleagues to watch this! Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!"
Making an effort to comment on a very popular video does result in the comment only being visible for about 5 minutes until it is swamped off the comment front pages by the "lol" and "wow" brigade. Does that comment do something useful for IAFILM in its short readable life? Let's find out.
Most of these comments are visible by clicking on videos in the "favourites" section of Channel Iafilm.
Experiment 2 is an intense effort to comment generously on videos I like. Most text comments on YouTube are very simple one liners like "lol" or "wow" or "bravo! excellent video" so it MAY get some attention to make an effort to write meaningful mini-reviews.
For example: ("Le Grand Content" by "enlarge")
"I LOVE this video because I HATE most business presentations I see - and I get to see a lot! It is so good to see such an effective satire. I will enjoy pushing my teaching and business colleagues to watch this! Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!"
Making an effort to comment on a very popular video does result in the comment only being visible for about 5 minutes until it is swamped off the comment front pages by the "lol" and "wow" brigade. Does that comment do something useful for IAFILM in its short readable life? Let's find out.
Most of these comments are visible by clicking on videos in the "favourites" section of Channel Iafilm.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
How best to use YouTube - continued
On Sat 27 Jan, see below, I wrote of my experiment to produce and post a clip "CheekyGirl10..." as a response to someone else's high profile clip = "Poor Pluto" by "LonelyGirl15". Well that was 4 days ago and so far "LonelyGirl15" has not accepted my submission as a response so no result yet on that experiment. The good news is that the "CheekyGirl10" clips are scoring better than any of my previous ones just by normal osmosis or whatever it is that brings viewers.
"Love Song to Super-8" - blog05 - In the clutches of Chinon
Late last night I went further with dismantling the Chinon camera from inside the cartridge chamber. 2 screws removed and out came the backplate. 2 more screws and the clutch removed nicely as a unit. It is adjustable, but this one was on its lowest setting and still seemed tight. So a deep breath and following my new theory that minimum take-up reel force is good, I replaced the strong spring with part of a ballpoint pen spring. Today we had the last day of pickups and I did some shots with the modified Chinon. It transported OK including running one entire cartridge on its own so I nervously await processing to see if less torque fixes the jiggles.
Monday, January 29, 2007
"Love Song to Super-8" -blog04 - camera experiences
Our Super-8 experience is going to depend on how well 25+ year old secondhand cameras have survived. We have started out with 4 cameras on "Love Song to Super-8". In brief: a Canon 814E is looking like the champion.
In detail:
Canon 814E - lens performance unknown as yet, we have had one mediocre EIA1956 result of 500 horiz line pairs but that was with way outdated b/w film with dodgy processing - so we don't really know. BUT the Canon is standing out as giving rock steady registration. My guess is that it has a better(lower) tension on its take-up clutch than the others. The others just pull too hard.
Sankyo 620 SuperTronic - reasonable lens performance = about 550 line pairs horiz, small registration jiggle. Kinda average. Dedicated animation stand camera on this project so it can live permanently with a close-up lens and a vertical mount.
Sankyo ES44 - low-light champion but failed on set just whirring and not transporting. My guess is that a release solenoid has failed or jammed. It lasted just long enough to get an action scene where we ran the ES44 at 9 frames per second and got the actors to act out in slow motion movement - aiming for a strange quality of movement when sped back up in post. Changing between cameras is a trap - under pressure I forgot to pay attention to the ES44's unusual daylight filter switch so did an entire scene (fortunately) set to daylight while lit with artificial light. We anxiously await the result back from the lab. Maybe it will make sense as an orange-toned scene? Maybe we can correct digitally?
Chinon Pacific 200/8 XL - this is a good-looking and nicely ergonomic unit to use and our EIA1956 tests are showing excellent lens performance up to 720 line pairs horizontal which rivals HD cameras. BUT its registration is awful. Bad jiggle and one sequence shows film going momentarily out of focus which IMO is the gate spring bending under pressure. This hints at the awful truth. The take-up transport just pulls with too much tension. Just putting a finger on it makes that very clear. We've pulled this camera off the project and replaced with the Canon 814E but I am trying to figure out how to reduce that take-up tension. I have been able to partially dismantle by easily removing the film chamber backplate but I can't see enough yet to get many clues. This would be a brilliant camera if I could fix its transport problems.
In detail:
Canon 814E - lens performance unknown as yet, we have had one mediocre EIA1956 result of 500 horiz line pairs but that was with way outdated b/w film with dodgy processing - so we don't really know. BUT the Canon is standing out as giving rock steady registration. My guess is that it has a better(lower) tension on its take-up clutch than the others. The others just pull too hard.
Sankyo 620 SuperTronic - reasonable lens performance = about 550 line pairs horiz, small registration jiggle. Kinda average. Dedicated animation stand camera on this project so it can live permanently with a close-up lens and a vertical mount.
Sankyo ES44 - low-light champion but failed on set just whirring and not transporting. My guess is that a release solenoid has failed or jammed. It lasted just long enough to get an action scene where we ran the ES44 at 9 frames per second and got the actors to act out in slow motion movement - aiming for a strange quality of movement when sped back up in post. Changing between cameras is a trap - under pressure I forgot to pay attention to the ES44's unusual daylight filter switch so did an entire scene (fortunately) set to daylight while lit with artificial light. We anxiously await the result back from the lab. Maybe it will make sense as an orange-toned scene? Maybe we can correct digitally?
Chinon Pacific 200/8 XL - this is a good-looking and nicely ergonomic unit to use and our EIA1956 tests are showing excellent lens performance up to 720 line pairs horizontal which rivals HD cameras. BUT its registration is awful. Bad jiggle and one sequence shows film going momentarily out of focus which IMO is the gate spring bending under pressure. This hints at the awful truth. The take-up transport just pulls with too much tension. Just putting a finger on it makes that very clear. We've pulled this camera off the project and replaced with the Canon 814E but I am trying to figure out how to reduce that take-up tension. I have been able to partially dismantle by easily removing the film chamber backplate but I can't see enough yet to get many clues. This would be a brilliant camera if I could fix its transport problems.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
"Love Song to Super-8" -blog03 - black-and-white film
We are shooting the main storyline in colour with Kodak's new Ektachrome 64T stock. 7 rolls of that is in the post to Spectra Lab in California so we don't know what that looks like yet. Some of the films-within-the-film are black-and-white. I am doing hand processing so we have our first results with new Kodak 7266 stock. The raw results appeared very bleached or over-developed but I am almost certain that I got my developer formula wrong with too much KSCN clearing agent. The good news is that on scanning into the computer and applying digital contrast and brightness corrections the results look great. We discover we can get an enormous improvement on the raw image.
"Circle Dance" is the classic experimental Super-8mm genre that EVERYONE did, of dancing and spinning while holding a camera at arm's length pointed back at one's face. Performed here by Linda Whitcombe playing the part of "Glenis".
"Circle Dance" is the classic experimental Super-8mm genre that EVERYONE did, of dancing and spinning while holding a camera at arm's length pointed back at one's face. Performed here by Linda Whitcombe playing the part of "Glenis".
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