Thinking of shooting a few shorts on 8mm

T

thedreampolice

What all would I need? I have an idea for a series of shorts that would be just a few minutes in length and VERY stripped down from a production standpoint even to the point of it being black and white. The more I thought about it the more I thought 8mm may be perfect for the vibe of the production. Of course I will capture sound separately and bring them together in post. I have ONLY ever shot digital including DV, HD and RED so these may be newbe film questions. OK my questions are

#1 What would be a good 8mm camera for this? I have looked on ebay but I have no clue there are so many.

#2 Of course I will have to edit, what is the best way to get the film in to my editing software (probably Final cut or AVID not sure yet)

#3 Will the cool vibe of 8mm be retained when I go to digital?

#4 it will mostly be distributed on the web, any reason to print it back to tape?

Of course one of the goals is for the entire production to be crazy inexpensive so I am finding it to be an interesting challenge.

Thanks in advance for your help!
 
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Super8 rocks. :cool:

1) Eh... there's lots to pick from. I have a Canon 814AZ, which I like. Manual exposure, rather nice lens, good focus. Couldn't really recommend any in particular, as I'm not a camera buff.

2) Best way is to send it to a lab to be telecined. The film is run through a scanner and digitised onto mini-dv or a harddrive. A cheaper alternative is to project it against a wall & videotape it, but that's going to be a noticeable downgrade in quality from a telecine.

3) I think it is, yes. Mostly. There's also a lot of newer filmstocks available, though, which is kinda fun. Not everything looks like it escaped from the 60's with it.

4) None of the labs I know can make contact prints anymore. Maybe Pro8mm does; they've been doing custom stocks for a while. I've never had a need to. Maybe you do. I dunno.

crazy inexpensive
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:lol:

:weird:
 
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thedreampolice said:
If one was to shoot 8mm for black and white do you have any film recommendations?
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As far as stock goes, you've only got two choices from Kodak (both reversal, btw):

Plus-X
Tri-X

Plus-X is a slower speed: outdoors or brighter light
Tri-X being faster: indoors or lessor light

That's actually an overly broad generalisation, but meh. :)

Edit: Looks like Kodak is changing the lineup again; now only Tri-X :no:

http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Products/Production/Spotlight_on_Super_8/index.htm

...for the current offerings.
 
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Hi!

I recently made a short (5 min) film on 8mm in Australia. I actually found it more expensive than making a digital film given the cost of film, development and then telecine AND the fact that not many people offer those services anymore.

We cut costs by doing the telecine ourselves since my film school lecturer had an amazing 8mm projector (very crisp focus) and we had a sony EX3 to shoot it with. Plus the only telecine service we could find in Australia only did SD anyway!

I found it was worth all the extra hassle because our film was meant to have been made in the 1950s and i DESPISE when people shoot digital and just put a film effect over the top. It never fools anyone.

But you might want to ask yourself if it will REALLY be cheaper for you. My advice is:
1) Find out how much your film stock costs.
2) Work out how long your shorts are going to be
3) Work out your shooting ratio: How many takes are you going to factor for each shot? For example if you're going to factor 2 takes in for everything it's a 2:1ratio. You might need more if you have tricky shots or inexperienced actors.
4) Now that you have the above information work out how many reels/tapes you need. The stock we were using did just over 4 minutes per reel.
5) Find somewhere that develops 8mm and find out how much it costs per reel/tape.
6) Then decide whether you're going to telecine it yourself (using a projector and a camera as mentioned above). If not find out how much that costs too. It can be more than you think.

And my final advice from going through it myself is rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. I never would have got my film finished if i had not thoroughly rehearsed before hand. :)

If you want to see how ours ended up looking you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfOe7TLSm_Q

PS: It was shot on a Canon 1014 xl-s on KODAK EKTACHROME
 
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@Alcove I will capture sound in to my DAW on location and merge it with the video in post.

@MangoFan That looks very cool! I think you have convinced me more and more to shoot 8mm. I am still working out all the details but my shorts will be very umm short and won't need more than a few continuous shots. Thanks!

Anyone in the US have a recommendation on a good telecine I could send the footage to?
 
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Use Kodak.

You'll go digital in the transfer--think of possibly going Quicktime for the edit. It's going to cost you around $30 for every 3 minutes of footage you capture and process.

If you can get a crystal sync motor, that will save you some time, and you won't need to constantly keep the vid and audio in track with one another. When you don't have a crystal sync motor...the video lags behind the audio you capture by less than a frame a second or something...but it doesn't take long to start looking odd.

Get a nice blimp for your camera (sound padding jacket)...if you're capturing sound on set, those cameras are loud.

Don't go Pro-8...they are OK...but we've had better results through Kodak.

Good luck.

Oh, by the way...due to the overwhelming difficult and time consuming nature of 8...our feature (THE DISCO EXORCIST) is now being shot HD and will be posted to look 8. Our 8 footage looked amazing...but it's just too difficult to keep consistent, get good sound, and wait for the results...not to mention the actors only get a few takes, so hopefully you've got solid actors. We have awesome actors...but it's still hard to only give them a few takes.
 
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ok cool, I am actually a pro sound guy and do ADR work and compose for a living. So I am less worried about the sound stuff but the clock/sync is good to know for sure!

Have you been able to get a convincing look in post? That is an area of concern that maybe it wont look quite right, you know?

I have not got all the actors yet, but it is VERY dialog heavy so maybe shooting digit would be better. Maybe just mini dv and not hidef to get that low-fi look? IDK
 
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Don't underestimate the power of post for a Super 8 look, if we can shoot an entire film on green screen, emulating a dated film effect is a walk in the park.

There are some cool 8mm film overlays out there + CC + bloom + Vignette, gives a convincing look.
 
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Making an HD film look convincingly 8mm isn't easy...it takes an experienced colorist to do it right. Far too many indie filmmakers think they know how to color grade/correct using MagicBullet and the like...but it's more than just a few fancy filters and presets. It's also design.
 
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Michael said:
our feature (THE DISCO EXORCIST) is now being shot HD and will be posted to look 8.
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I think Luke said it best:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
smiley_fist.gif



Nathan said:
emulating a dated film effect is a walk in the park.
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The Pepsi Challenge is more complicated than you think. :no:
 
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Throwing some digital scratches and fake grain over a Mini-DV image doesn't make it look like Super8. Same will go for HD.

Edit. Also here's my thing with post grading like this. Just because you think you can, doesn't mean you should. Lots of tools out there are WAY overused (I'm looking at you Magic Bullet) for cheap grading.
 
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