This is my response to a Facebook post but it is also a response to all footage of this kind.
"Super 8 filming is about making a human handcraft statement. It is the fact of filming on emulsion film with a Super 8mm camera that brings the special Super 8mm quality to a production. If you want to contribute digital skills to Super 8mm I suggest you put your kind of energy and talent into digital enhancement of authentic Super 8mm footage. I would be more interested in a discussion on what is valid and useful with color grading, grain reduction and upscaling. In other words upgrading Super 8mm rather than downgrading the digital image."
The question was about finding "copyright free" music for a short film.
My response:
Copyright free gives you restricted options and it may be hard to find. Consider copyrighted music with filmmaker-friendly licensing. incompetech.com is Kevin MacLeod's library with Creative Commons Attribution. Use his music for free on condition of giving the appropriate credit which would work for a short film. For some of my indie projects I pay Kevin USD 30 per song for an even more flexible license. Kevin explains this very well at:
Recent example (August 2025) of my 48 Hours Competition short film with free use by attribution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkSVFcNHuqY Attribution credit at 2min 02sec
Practical work on the idea of 8mm wide film without sprocket holes to make more room for the frame images. Diagram attached. Here my dead old Sankyo 620 Super-8 camera moves film again with a stepper motor drive repurposing the pinch roller sound drive. Testing here using outdated film with sprocket holes which gives a measuring standard to check out the movement. The “drift” effect is expected. What we are looking for is a smooth steady drift.
There are 2 test cartridges. The other one gives “rough drift” and from that I learn that the Nema 11 stepper motor is running with only just enough torque. I need to evaluate Nema 17 or the physically longer higher torque version of Nema 11. “Rough drift” video:
A competent genre film in a crowded field. Does some quirky twists but so do all murder mysteries. Slow paced. I was so itching to edit this. Does some satire but needed to go harder on that rather than dabbling with it in between big-A Acting and murder mystery formula elements. The satire represents a disappointing lost opportunity to do something better.
An idea for an improvement on 8mm wide movie film. I propose to use modern transport drives, eg stepper motors, so we can lose the sprocket holes. Use the space to go 16:9 widescreen. Modify and Modernise so call it "Mod-8".
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” 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.
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