Thanks, M1chael! At least you know my feelings about your choice of format. I'm thinking that with the new stocks, you can light as you would any other film. When I shot TERRARIUM in 16mm, I used that 500 speed stock and it looked great.
Scoopicman! My first feature was shot on Super-8, Kodachrome 40, self-funded, in 1989! A Cold War thriller completed just as the Cold War ended. Timing has never been my strong suit.
We have a lot in common, including timing! When THE BLACK CRYSTAL came out, Gulf War 1 was already going and the recession followed soon after. Recessions are tough on indie distributors. I'm going through that now, with EXILE. Your movie sounds interesting.
I got the film transferred, via the Rank Cintel to 1" broadcast tape, by Starfax, in California. Then, I had a friend of mine, who was an editor at a local station, transfer the 1" to 3/4" and then VHS, with timecode. I edited on my home VHS machines! I did a rough edit and then a fine cut. I wrote down all the SMPTE in and out points, for each shot. Then, I took the SMPTE list and the 1" tapes to KMSB, in Tucson and hired an editor for $100 an hour. We logged 45 hours, which included dubbing sound from a sequencer and samplers. I brought a Yamaha SY77 and 2 TX16W samplers to the TV station! I had about 120 floppy discs of audio and 2 sampler machines, which could load 2 discs at a time! The editor would cue the footage and when there was a cut, I would press START on the SY77 sequencer and trigger the audio. We did a lot in those 45 hours!
To see what I'm talking about with the sound, check the 2:20 mark of this youtube vid:
Synth Setup 1991
These days, I think it's funny when people with computers ask how they can sync audio up. All you have to do is nudge snippets in the Timeline, do some ramping/fading and it's done. Back then, I would play a keyboard for entire scenes and get everything in sync, just by watching the TV or monitor. A single line of dialogue was sometimes culled from multiple takes, so I might have to press 4 different keys just to have a character say one sentence!