Documentary Film Shot Entirely on Super 8

[Zach Moore]

Hey everyone, I’m really excited to share the first trailer for a documentary feature that I have been working on the past 5 years which is shot entirely on super 8. A Life Across the Street is a film that examines life in its many intricacies through diverse viewpoints. The film focuses on personal experiences that are unique to each of us, while their deeper messages can resonate with all of us and inspire a sense of shared humanity.
This film has been shot primarily on Beaulieu 4008 ZMII cameras with various lenses, as well as a Nizo Professional and Nikon R10 using Kodak 50D, 200T, and 500T negative film. Processing by Metropolis Post and scans by Gamma Ray Digital.

 

Edited June 11 by Zach Moore
Embedded link added

[Nicholas Kovats]

Congratulations on your life's work. It is well done and has the requisite Super 8 charm and feel. Bravo.

[Tyler Purcell]

Beautiful work, I'm really looking forward to the final product. 

Did you do any sync sound scenes, or just B-Roll mixed with dialog?  I've been doing that a lot and I really like the look/feeling of that, instead of having people speak on camera. 

[Zach Moore]

14 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Beautiful work, I'm really looking forward to the final product. 

Did you do any sync sound scenes, or just B-Roll mixed with dialog?  I've been doing that a lot and I really like the look/feeling of that, instead of having people speak on camera. 

Thanks Tyler! I had initially considered doing some sync sound for this project, but ended up deciding against it due to the headache involved without owning a crystal-sync camera. Some of the interviews can go on a long time too so it would have been hard to decide when to roll for only a couple minutes at a time before needing to swap cartridges. I carry a mic and field recorder with me while shooting in order to capture some ambiance and any specific sounds that can be matched up in the edit which has been working well enough, and ended up really liking the feeling I got from it.

[Jon O'Brien]

It looks so good! Love it.

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Zach Moore said:

Thanks Tyler! I had initially considered doing some sync sound for this project, but ended up deciding against it due to the headache involved without owning a crystal-sync camera. Some of the interviews can go on a long time too so it would have been hard to decide when to roll for only a couple minutes at a time before needing to swap cartridges. I carry a mic and field recorder with me while shooting in order to capture some ambiance and any specific sounds that can be matched up in the edit which has been working well enough, and ended up really liking the feeling I got from it.

Yes, I love this feeling of showing some B-Roll over the voices of the people. I used it quite a bit on my shows and it really helps. The filmmaker can be engaged in getting the dialog and not behind a camera. What are you using for recorder? It sounds pretty good. 

[Sebastian Bock]

This looks fantastic!

Please keep us updated about festivals and screenings.
Good luck for distribution & sales. 
 

Sebastian 

[Zach Moore]

1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yes, I love this feeling of showing some B-Roll over the voices of the people. I used it quite a bit on my shows and it really helps. The filmmaker can be engaged in getting the dialog and not behind a camera. What are you using for recorder? It sounds pretty good. 

Definitely allows me much more freedom, and also doesn't feel as intrusive for many of the interview subjects which are done at random out on the streets. I'm recording the audio with a Sennheiser MKH 416 into a Zoom F3.

[Tyler Purcell]

7 hours ago, Zach Moore said:

Definitely allows me much more freedom, and also doesn't feel as intrusive for many of the interview subjects which are done at random out on the streets. I'm recording the audio with a Sennheiser MKH 416 into a Zoom F3.

AH nice, that's a good lightweight kit. 416 is "the" mic! I was wondering because it sounds great! 

[Gautam Valluri]

14 hours ago, Zach Moore said:

Hey everyone, I’m really excited to share the first trailer for a documentary feature that I have been working on the past 5 years which is shot entirely on super 8. A Life Across the Street is a film that examines life in its many intricacies through diverse viewpoints. The film focuses on personal experiences that are unique to each of us, while their deeper messages can resonate with all of us and inspire a sense of shared humanity.
This film has been shot primarily on Beaulieu 4008 ZMII cameras with various lenses, as well as a Nizo Professional and Nikon R10 using Kodak 50D, 200T, and 500T negative film. Processing by Metropolis Post and scans by Gamma Ray Digital.

 

Beautiful images! I see sprinkles of Jonas Mekas and Koyaanisqatsi in there. I'd love to see the full film on the big screen someday.

[Albion Hockney]

very beautiful

[Heikki Repo]

This trailer really made me want to see the whole film! Very, very beautiful! 

 

Did you use a gimbal for the smooth camera moves or was that all just digital stabilization?

[Jon O'Brien]

Makes me wish more feature projects would choose Super 8. Would make going to the cinema more interesting. As I keep saying to anyone who listens, story alone isn't enough, the medium itself is important. There's a reason people like looking at Renoir, Monet, Rembrandt etc works over other artists featuring the same type of subjects. It's not just the light, either, or the composition. It's the medium, too. Some things are just more arty. Arty means interesting. A lot of people just don't get that. We went through a whole decade where young filmmakers again and again were saying camera isn't important only story is important. That's wrong advice.

These days with ever-better scanning and projection technology Super 8 and 16mm are a great choice for a feature-length movie.

[Zach Moore]

17 hours ago, Gautam Valluri said:

Beautiful images! I see sprinkles of Jonas Mekas and Koyaanisqatsi in there. I'd love to see the full film on the big screen someday.

So interesting that you'd say that as this trailer premiered last week on the big screen at Anthology Film Archives in NYC, which Jonas Mekas co-founded. Koyaanisqatsi and the rest of Ron Fricke's work has been a huge inspiration as well, so there are definitely sprinkles of that in here!

2 hours ago, Heikki Repo said:

This trailer really made me want to see the whole film! Very, very beautiful! 

 

Did you use a gimbal for the smooth camera moves or was that all just digital stabilization?

Thank you very much Heikki. I did use a Ronin RS2 gimbal for tracking shots and the helicopter shot, as well as some shots on a motorized slider. In addition to those tools about 50% of the images were stabilized with Adobe After Effects to reduce the jumpiness that super 8 gives due to the non-uniform perforations and lack of registration pin.

 

44 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Makes me wish more feature projects would choose Super 8. Would make going to the cinema more interesting. As I keep saying to anyone who listens, story alone isn't enough, the medium itself is important. There's a reason people like looking at Renoir, Monet, Rembrandt etc works over other artists featuring the same type of subjects. It's not just the light, either, or the composition. It's the medium, too. Some things are just more arty. Arty means interesting. A lot of people just don't get that. We went through a whole decade where young filmmakers again and again were saying camera isn't important only story is important. That's wrong advice.

These days with ever-better scanning and projection technology Super 8 and 16mm are a great choice for a feature-length movie.

I agree that the medium can be very important as well as story. I specifically chose super 8 for this project for a number of reasons, but the biggest of all is purely the aesthetic. It's nostalgic and timeless to me. When people ask "why not just shoot digital and emulate the film look?" it's really a purely selfish reason that I just love the craft of shooting on film and the deliberate process in creating your images. Shooting super 8 definitely makes me slow down when I compose a shot and ask myself "does this really need to be captured?"

[Samuel Preston]

absolutely incredible work!

[Jurgen Lossau]

Great work, Zach! Super 8 on top level! Let's do an article for the next issue of the Super 8 Magazine:).

[Dan Hasson]

This looks like a brilliant film. I forgot it was even shot on Super8 whilst watching as it was all so engaging. The audio and music sounded fantastic too. Brilliant editing.

Can't wait to see it!

[Zach Moore]

15 hours ago, Dan Hasson said:

This looks like a brilliant film. I forgot it was even shot on Super8 whilst watching as it was all so engaging. The audio and music sounded fantastic too. Brilliant editing.

Can't wait to see it!

Thanks so much Dan, as an editor by trade this is the best kind of feedback I can get!

[Patrick Cooper]

This looks awesome. Beautiful cinematography and editing. There are some killer shots in there. Very atmospheric. I can really see the Ron Fricke influence here. 

[Stewart McLain]

Beautiful.  I can't wait to see the whole thing!

[Clark Nikolai]

Really nice.  Very inspiring, (in fact watching just the trailer inspired me to play around a bit with a voice over interview and left over footage from a previous project of mine and see what I get.)

I like how you, for budget reasons, not film the people during the interview. (I assume that some of the faces we see in it are some of the voices we hear. It really doesn't matter.) Not seeing them speak makes their VOs almost become their internal dialogue with themselves about their lives.

Edited June 23 by Clark Nikolai

[Zach Moore]

On 6/23/2024 at 3:22 PM, Clark Nikolai said:

Really nice.  Very inspiring, (in fact watching just the trailer inspired me to play around a bit with a voice over interview and left over footage from a previous project of mine and see what I get.)

I like how you, for budget reasons, not film the people during the interview. (I assume that some of the faces we see in it are some of the voices we hear. It really doesn't matter.) Not seeing them speak makes their VOs almost become their internal dialogue with themselves about their lives.

Thanks a lot Clark! That's correct, some of the faces you see are from the voices you hear. You really nailed it with what I was going for, wanting the voices to be a sort of internal dialogue that can feel relatable rather than the viewer being conscious that they are talking directly to them/the camera. There's a subtle anonymity to it which I thought felt more intimate. I've also found people open up more and can be themselves when I just have a mic under them out of view vs. a loud camera pointed at them while we share a conversation. While the idea was always to pair separate audio with portraits, I had thought of trying to shoot a few interviews sync-sound. However, with the interviews sometimes lasting an hour or more it was just too tricky to try to find 2min 30sec spots to decide to roll during the conversation. Add in the headache of needing to swap cartridges without interrupting, the camera noise becoming distracting, and the high cost I quickly scrapped that plan.