Yourself on film

Filip Plesha · April 12, 2006

Did you ever appear on motion picture film yourself?

This thread is mostly aimed at home movies from your childhood. Did your dad film you on Kodachrome or something else etc. ?

Or perhapse you have had a cameo in one of your movies, or someone elses movie

My parents regret always said that they regret that they never had a motion picture camera when I was a kid. So I mostly appeared on AGFA color still film and Kodacolor, they threw away all the negatives out of ignorance. Today, I would give my right arm to have those old negatives to scan. It's magic to scan such old film on a brand new scanner.

But all that's left are a whole bunch of minimum size images, less than 4x6.

To make things worse, my father was an amateur photographer, yet didn't see value in making enlargements or at least keeping the negatives. So much image information was thrown away this way, too bad.

And those little prints are going yellow now.

What about you?

Kevin Zanit · April 12, 2006

There is some Super 8 film of me, but not much.

The only other film I have been in is at the wrap of shooting, and my camera operator starts shooting the mag out for fun. I have always wanted to cut together a montage of all this film of tired crews happy to be done from over the years, which never makes it into anything, but always is funny during post.

Kevin Zanit

David Mullen ASC · April 13, 2006

My early childhood is well-documented in Kodachrome slides. No home movies. My wife's childhood, however, was documented by reels of K40 Super-8.

I usually am the one holding the gray scale card on my film rolls, so I can meter the card at the same time. So I wonder what years of gray scales spliced together would look like, a time-lapse of myself aging, and also getting tired-looking by the end of each feature.

James Steven Beverly · April 13, 2006

I am documented on super 8 but I'm also an actor so I have some REALLY GOOD footage of me on 35mm! :D

Fortunately my dad liked to use a his super 8 movie camera but you know how it is with home movies people take them to presever their memories, look at them once or twice them store them away and forget them so when my parents set tons of this ignored footage in a storage area of my dad's shop, I rescued it for preservation. He later went to video then resently went digital letting his old super 8 camera lie dorment in a box of old junk for years.

When I found it the contured foam padding had disintegrated. I though it was shot because it looked like there was a shall brick battery ion the bottom to power it and I had no charger and was sure it was history, but when I looked closer it turned out to be where you PUT IN 3 AA batteries on not a battery at all. I installed 3 batteries an the little camera fired right up. and still had a mostly exposed cartrage of Kodacrome 40 film in it. I'm going to get it developed even though I know there's very little chance of anything useable on it. , so I also rescued his old Super 8 camera, projector and a 16mm sound projector as well (At some point I'll pick up a 16mm camera as well). My parents have tons of stills but it's the movie and video footage I like the best.

I also want to telecine the footage when I get some time, edit it and put it on DVD for them. I have to fix the projector though, it had the corner ran over by a forklift. I could buy another one cheap, but I kinda want to TRY and fix this one. Somewhere he has all the stuff to do old school editing too. If I can find it, it want to screw with it a little. I figure it would help me learn more about working in film without a lot of expense attached. At some point I want to get a good little proffesional Super 8 camera just to play with. It's so increadible cheap to shoot on super 8 and might be fun for shorts and music videos.

I have 2 KEM flatbeds for 35mm, one I had bought a while ago and another I got a killer deal on w/ a high speed rewinder and some sound equipment. This one has a widescreen head and was just recently used to cut the Producers together. The addition of this machine gives me all three heads, academy, cinemascope and widescreen as well as a SGI machine w/ a raid set up and acouple of other editing computers networked to gether to do editing and CGI, acting as a small render farm. I want to move my editing room to a larger room and dedicate one little space to super 8 and 16mm. There's a lot of stock footage (people's home movies) out there shot on super 8 that guys are buying at yard and estate sales to use commercially. A lot of it has some great quailties to it.

Filip Plesha · April 13, 2006

So where did you act? What's your name?

Rupe Whiteman · April 13, 2006

... I had a small part in Band of Brothers... I'd operated on some commercials using tanks and action vehicles, the action vehicle guy asked if my brother and I wanted to come up to the set and hang out... We did! we both ended up doing some Jeep and Deuce 1/2 driving over several months... It was a good way to get to chat to the dops, directors and operators and be part of such a massive production... I became Colonel Synk's jeep driver (Dale Dye) for about 5 episodes and spent a lot of tiime working out how they were doing things whilst gettng paid!..

... My Dad shot a hundred or so standard-8 films when we were kids and taught me how to print b&w when I was about 12 so I owe him a lot. His father too took pictures and a little 16mm from about 1910 onwards. We have thousands of pictures taken by them both to go through that cover a whole Century! My Dad's P3 bolex's are pride of place in a shelf at home and one day I'll collate all the Super 8 - all beautiful Koda' still looking very good after up to 50 years after it was shot...

...

Rupe Whiteman

UK

Phil Rhodes · April 13, 2006

Hi,

There is some super-8 of a very young me, but in general I try to avoid being in front of the business end of a camera. My face makes small children cry.

Phil

James Steven Beverly · April 13, 2006

So where did you act? What's your name?

I've done a few things. But again, I want to keep my annonimity. I did do a feature where I had a pretty good role w/ Robert Blake though, before he was a murder suspect. That was interesting. He's only like 5 ft tall and not really someone you might think of as dangerous when you meet him face to face. David Mullens just recently worked with a real good friend of mine, though we haven't seen each other in a while, Larry Fishburne. That is one really great guy. But enough about me. The band Of Brothers thing sounds like a blast, are you planning to continue acting or was that a one time thing?

Edited April 13, 2006 by Capt.Video

Matt Pacini · April 13, 2006

My dad shot a bit of 8mm film of us kids in the early 60's.

This is sad though; my mom had them transferred to VHS by one of those cheap (and bad) film-chain transfer services.

Years later, I asked her for the original film rolls, so I could scan them, and she said she threw them away!

The ultimate price paid for thinking video is better than film!

So now, I have these crappy looking VHS-NTSC videos instead of nice looking Kodachrome home movies.

David, I think you should start asking for transfers of your gray-card cameo's. That's a great idea.

MP

Sean Azze · April 16, 2006

I've done a few things. But again, I want to keep my annonimity. I did do a feature where I had a pretty good role w/ Robert Blake though, before he was a murder suspect. That was interesting. He's only like 5 ft tall and not really someone you might think of as dangerous when you meet him face to face. David Mullens just recently worked with a real good friend of mine, though we haven't seen each other in a while, Larry Fishburne.

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, CAPITAN VIDEO!

And I expect $100,000 at my doorstep by Monday morning if you want to keep your identity a secret WOO HA HA HA

Peter J DeCrescenzo · April 16, 2006

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, CAPITAN VIDEO! And I expect $100,000 at my doorstep by Monday morning if you want to keep your identity a secret WOO HA HA HA

If this were a film, we'd expect Sean's character to turn up dead soon. :)

Sean Azze · April 17, 2006

If this were a film, we'd expect Sean's character to turn up dead soon. :)

Not if the studio's planning a sequel!

James Steven Beverly · April 17, 2006

Your a minor characture, they kill off at the begining to prove how dangerous the villan is, then a cop or your brother as the hero comes in to investigate the strange circumstances of your apparent "suiside" and finds something "Just doesn't FEEL right" . he doggedly persues the evidence uncovering clue after clue but no5thing solid enough to build a case on and just when he's been told to back off by his boss the police captain or in the case of your brother, a corrupt cop who works for me, he fids his first piece of solid evidence and starts to get too close to the identity of the killer who then tries to kill the hero. There are gun battles and car chases and in the end I would be killed in a hail of bullets or an explosion...or AM I??? So the only one who makes ot to the sequel is the hero and possibly me.

Sean Azze · April 17, 2006

Your a minor characture, they kill off at the begining to prove how dangerous the villan is, then a cop or your brother as the hero comes in to investigate the strange circumstances of your apparent "suiside" and finds something "Just doesn't FEEL right" . he doggedly persues the evidence uncovering clue after clue but no5thing solid enough to build a case on and just when he's been told to back off by his boss the police captain or in the case of your brother, a corrupt cop who works for me, he fids his first piece of solid evidence and starts to get too close to the identity of the killer who then tries to kill the hero. There are gun battles and car chases and in the end I would be killed in a hail of bullets or an explosion...or AM I??? So the only one who makes ot to the sequel is the hero and possibly me.

damn player, you got way too much time on your hands...