smallformat and Kodak ask for your Film Diary

Jurgen Lossau · May 8, 2008

Here is what you will find inside smallformat 2/2008:

clapper TAKE PART! WIN! Jürgen Lossau about a co-operation between Kodak Motion Picture and smallformat: My Film Diary

viewer A NEW SINGLE 8 CAMERA? And other news from festivals, Wittner Cinetec, pro8mm and no.w.here lab (UK)**

viewer CAMBRIDGE COMES INTO FASHION Jürgen Lossau visited the film festival near London

special INGENIOUS DESIGN Have a look at instructions, brochures, posters and packaging of the last 60 years

test TRAVELLING WITH KODAK'S LATEST Ole Dost made a trip to Albania -- with his Kinor movie camera and the new Kodak Vision3 500T film stock

lab BUILDING WITH LUKAS Lukas Fritz from Bavaria (Germany) is just 14 years old -- and he has already built his own E6 processing machine

lab PROCESSING MADE EASY Clever service from European's largest Super 8 and 16mm lab, Andec in Berlin

interview CREATING MAGIC WITH SUPER 8 Jürgen Lossau talked to the mistress of cinematic poetry, Dagie Brundert. She will be Artist in Residence at the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles

portrait DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL Oron Cohen and Nathan Coombs about a Super 8 look into the Iranian Jewish community

movie school WATER WORLD Con Koutsomitis describes underwater filming with easy-to-use cameras

power pack SPEED CHECKER Determine if your camera or projector is running to slow or fast -- tips provided by Con Koutsomitis, James Grahame and Martin Rowek

screening OUT OF THE BOX (11) The history of the package movie: Globus Film, Film Office and Mirage Films. A report by Andreas Eggeling, Jean-Marc Toussaint, John Clancy and Keith Wilton

forum LETTERS TO THE EDITOR about problems with Fuji Velvia 50D in 16mm, digital competition for the chemical film and other topics

zoom DIRECTORAMA Peet Gelderblom's cine comic

And here is more about the competition "My Film Diary":

Michael Lehnert · May 8, 2008

Jürgen,

will there ever be any circumstance where you would contribute freely to this forum without first attempting to flog your magazine with splash ads?!?

After the recent aggravation that was discussed and explained to you at length after two of your Smallformat advertising threads got deleted by the moderator team, this new thread of yours makes me understand why they got so repeatedly p*iss*d off by you.

If you already blatantly disregard forum regulations for (non-)commercial posting and continue to regard cinematography.com primarily as a personal platform to put up your sales ads, then please at least try to be more subtle - after all, viral word-of-mouth really works better and is less in the face. And Smallformat as well as other mags get constantly referred to here by users - Smallformat got extensive coverage throughout several threads just yesterday, Alex has your mag hyperlinked in his signature, and I constantly give source references to Smallformat, Schmalfilm & Super 8 Today whenever possible. So you can't really say that you don't get much exposure here -- actually, you get more in-thread exposure here than at filmshooting.com!

But this featherbrained attempt of a banner ad "intelligently hidden" behind the given topic title for a truly interesting and worthwhile community initiative by Smallformat and Kodak is really outrageous behaviour! Just posting the initiative announcement with an elegant reference to your new issue hyperlinked to your website would have shown class and would have been totally sufficient. However, this "bauernschlaues marketing für angefangene" of yours is just daft and a disappointment of your character and sense for good business-making.

After all: why do you do exactly what I suggested above in the 16 forum, but not here for S8!?! -- Shamelessly bad style, my friend!

This thread shall not be deleted, but crickey, please do learn from it! If not, then I would put to you that there really isn't alot of goodwill left from the moderators...

Best wishes to you in Hamburg,

-Michael

P.S.: Will be off-forum 'til Monday, so please don't expect a reply from me should you try to counter this post. Cheers! -ML

Paul James Savarese · May 9, 2008

With so little avenues to find super 8 news and materials - why wouldn't we want to see small format postings?

Jürgen,

will there ever be any circumstance where you would contribute freely to this forum without first attempting to flog your magazine with splash ads?!?

After the recent aggravation that was discussed and explained to you at length after two of your Smallformat advertising threads got deleted by the moderator team, this new thread of yours makes me understand why they got so repeatedly p*iss*d off by you.

If you already blatantly disregard forum regulations for (non-)commercial posting and continue to regard cinematography.com primarily as a personal platform to put up your sales ads, then please at least try to be more subtle - after all, viral word-of-mouth really works better and is less in the face. And Smallformat as well as other mags get constantly referred to here by users - Smallformat got extensive coverage throughout several threads just yesterday, Alex has your mag hyperlinked in his signature, and I constantly give source references to Smallformat, Schmalfilm & Super 8 Today whenever possible. So you can't really say that you don't get much exposure here -- actually, you get more in-thread exposure here than at filmshooting.com!

But this featherbrained attempt of a banner ad "intelligently hidden" behind the given topic title for a truly interesting and worthwhile community initiative by Smallformat and Kodak is really outrageous behaviour! Just posting the initiative announcement with an elegant reference to your new issue hyperlinked to your website would have shown class and would have been totally sufficient. However, this "bauernschlaues marketing für angefangene" of yours is just daft and a disappointment of your character and sense for good business-making.

After all: why do you do exactly what I suggested above in the 16 forum, but not here for S8!?! -- Shamelessly bad style, my friend!

This thread shall not be deleted, but crickey, please do learn from it! If not, then I would put to you that there really isn't alot of goodwill left from the moderators...

Best wishes to you in Hamburg,

-Michael

P.S.: Will be off-forum 'til Monday, so please don't expect a reply from me should you try to counter this post. Cheers! -ML

Jurgen Lossau · May 9, 2008

With so little avenues to find super 8 news and materials - why wouldn't we want to see small format postings?

Thanks, Paul. I am a little bit surprised. I always posted the content of smallformat magazine, and sometimes some articles with it, on cinematography.com and there was no discussion about that in the last year. Chris of Super 8 Today did the same thing. This year was different, some threads have been deleted here.

We also do these postings on filmshooting.com and some other European forums where the members are happy to read it. To speak about a commercial product is a little bit too much of honour. The German publishing house of smallformat (I am only a freelancer of this company) is far away from making money with a magazine for such a small community...

Richardson Leao · May 9, 2008

Thanks, Paul. I am a little bit surprised. I always posted the content of smallformat magazine, and sometimes some articles with it, on cinematography.com and there was no discussion about that in the last year. Chris of Super 8 Today did the same thing. This year was different, some threads have been deleted here.

We also do these postings on filmshooting.com and some other European forums where the members are happy to read it. To speak about a commercial product is a little bit too much of honour. The German publishing house of smallformat (I am only a freelancer of this company) is far away from making money with a magazine for such a small community...

I agree with Paul, there's already so little material available out there and the smallformat is a great source of knowledge. It's amazing though how people waste time in complaining to such trivial things...

With the currently minute super8 market, a magazine that praises the format is not fully commercial, but there's a lot of idealism behind it.

andy oliver · May 9, 2008

Michael, while you are correct and this breaks forum rules for advertising, i feel Jurgen is doing a great and thankless job in keeping a quality 'smallformat' magazine going. The magazine needs new subscribers, surely via the super 8 section of cinematography, the magaizine may stand a chance of at least a couple of new readers. Its also rather nice to see what in the next issue for us people who do subscribe to the said magazine.

Edited May 9, 2008 by andy oliver

Michael Lehnert · May 12, 2008

Dear all: RTFM :) .

With so little avenues to find super 8 news and materials - why wouldn't we want to see small format postings?

Paul, where did I write that contributions in the Super 8 forum from Jürgen are not welcome?

I wrote pretty exactly the issues of contention in my post. They are so simple to realise and understand, I really cannot follow how you come up with your reply that presumes so much... it seems you only started reading my post and after one and a half sentences, you thought: "Gosh, that w*nker is against Smallformat - I disagree - I'll post that" without making the effort to grasp that this was a very kind wake-up call for Jürgen to get real about why his threads get deleted all the time - effectively depriving him of any platform at all while in fact if he were to change his approach here a bit, he would achieve much more. I guess it's a matter of approach and adequacy, for both you and Jürgen.

Why?

Because when his contributions are limited to posting advertisings for his magazine, which is a commercial venture from any angle, then this is against forum rules. Full stop.

Why not break the rules for him?

Like in your family, your home town, your communities, clubs, companies, states, countries, even some continents, rules have been set out for a purpose...

For this little get-together here in the cloud, Tim's forum rules have proven to contribute to make this board one of the most liberal, productive, friendly, professional and network-beneficial places in the cloud. Forum regulations get regularly discussed in the General Discussion forum, as I am sure you are aware, so feel free to suggest changes: I doubt, though, that allowing in-thread advertising will go down well. As I am sure that you havn't seen any other advertising postings of Jürgen's kind here in any sub-forum, you will certainly understand why he gets noticed for the wrong reasons.

I agree with Paul, there's already so little material available out there and the smallformat is a great source of knowledge.
With the currently minute super8 market, a magazine that praises the format is not fully commercial, but there's a lot of idealism behind it.

Again, please re-read my post and address the issues raised and valid points before presuming some destructive forces that want to see Smallformat annihilated and Super 8 exterminated! After all, following your argumentation, the next stop would intellectually then be that should Smallformat go bust, cinematography.com's moderator team will be solely responsible for its demise... and that would be preposterous, now, wouldn't it?

Furthermore: I worked with Schiele & Schön and Schmalfilm in the 1990s when S8 was nowwhere near as popular than now and I can assure you that it's not a non-profit charity, although they are not making hoards of greenbacks with their operations due to their market and focus. But frankly, no publishing house of any size is doing that right now, whether it's S&S or the FT Group! Which is why every publishing house that wants to exist in 10 years time is moving rapidly out of established press channels to find alternative business models.

I am sure Jürgen is doing the same.

It's amazing though how people waste time in complaining to such trivial things...

Please raise your issues about the trivialities in setting-up, building and maintaining an online forum of this calibre with Tim or David, not me. I am sure they will be delighted to tell you more trivial matters for your delectation, like having to waste time about creating threads where users are asked to use a name according to the rules they agreed on when registering here in the first place... David loves doing that, I can assure you!

Michael, while you are correct and this breaks forum rules for advertising, i feel Jurgen is doing a great and thankless job in keeping a quality 'smallformat' magazine going.

Hi Andy,

no one said that Jürgen is doing a bad job for Smallformat?! While I had the time for it, I worked in S8 community-building efforts in form of publishing, seminars, film-making and organising film festivals across Europe, amongst others with two of Jürgen's job's predecessors before leaving now-defunct West-Germany for the UK, gosh, three years before Jürgen took the helm and rejuvenated a decaying mag.

Though I never encounter thanklessness during that time, I remember alot of thankfulness. And that was at a time before you could type "Super 8" into Mountain View's finest and get million feedbacks, plus download your camera manual, chat with your tech guy, or get an invitation for the Vision3 presentation and discuss the future of S8 with Kodak management directly.

The magazine needs new subscribers, surely via the super 8 section of cinematography, the magaizine may stand a chance of at least a couple of new readers.

Again, please re-read my post to get the issue of leawaying a little on meaningful rules towards blatantly direct advertising (that already caused information deprevation due to two deleted Smallformat threads) and then not being able to reign-in the consequences that will invariably happen for the entire forum later. I am sure you have encountered the issue of leawaying-a-little-and-than-paying-the-bill here or there in your life... after all, we live in the UK, and we see all the time how a little leaway here and there affects communities in many ways - which does not mean that a draconian regime is a better world. HENCE why I stupidly enough even made suggestions how Jürgen could easily circumvent the issues that caused his threads to be deleted and seed "adverstisings" rather than just post adverstisings.

I am sure someone will now say: but where's the difference... :rolleyes:

Its also rather nice to see what in the next issue for us people who do subscribe to the said magazine.

Hmm, I get the content of the next issue of the mag from the Smallformat newsletters in both German and English that you can subscribe to from the website. That is the fastest way. I also get the content of the new issue of the mag pretty much sync'd with the deliveries plus additionally other great product news via Widescreen Centre and Wittner Cinetec newsletters, or from the Smallformat website in general which I check regularly for potential updates. Oops, that was advertising, now, wasn't it?! :o

Michael Lehnert · May 12, 2008

Thanks, Paul. I am a little bit surprised.

REALLY?!?

Knowing you, Jürgen, I somewhat doubt that!

I always posted the content of smallformat magazine, and sometimes some articles with it, on cinematography.com and there was no discussion about that in the last year. Chris of Super 8 Today did the same thing. This year was different, some threads have been deleted here.

Jürgen,

with all due respect but this is incorrect, and you know it!

Under your former user name Filmfreund, you posted the content of Smallformat in the same way as you did in this thread in the 16 & S8 forums, and this practice ran into troubles with the moderating team after the third thread (= after plenty of leaway and silent observation) of that kind way already back in 2005/6.

The moderating team then suggested to you that you could continue to post your adverstising of Smallformat provided that you also post one complete free article in-thread (no downloads, no attachments) FOR FREE. The articles should be different in the 16 and S8 thread, and should be a relevant knowledge contribution, i.e. not some fringe article.

You adhered to this fair consensus as a status quo for almost one year without any problems.

When your user name Filmfreund got deleted in a "full-rule-enforcement-act" (paired with a maintenance schedule) by David because the rule to use real first and last names got increasingly ignored by more and more users - which then in turn had lead to a roughing up of the tone of communications here and the way people (dis)respected each other - you inexplicably reverted to just posting splash ads, i.e. the cover and the ToC, but no free articles any more. That means that you broke the agreement without reason. That was last year, i.e. 2007.

As you also shifted your attention away from posting in the highly-moderated 16 forum in favour of concenctating on the S8 forum (being then moderatorless), this slipped through the net.

However, in light of renewed debates over the erosion of forum rules by David twice over the past months, your "unruly" practice re-appeared on the moderation radar and the last two threads got deleted immediately.

You protested the second time here - seemingly having forgotten the circumstances of the previous deal as your above post seems to indicate further - and many users pointed out the reasons to you. You did not make any statements after those explanations where given.

Instead, you continued the splash adverstising, but this time using a content title that only relates to a tiny part of your post! In effect, you piggy-backed your un-ruly ads on a worthwhile and allowed community project. That's really a bit out of order as it seemed almost designed after the last controversy to push the moderators into a dilemma situation: delete the ad and also delete the community effort, or leave the Diary but accept the rule-breaking ad...

Now, re-read my post in full. Maybe you will be less surprised then...

We also do these postings on filmshooting.com and some other European forums where the members are happy to read it.

I am very well aware of this as are most other readers that have cross-memberships. But cinematography.com is not filmshooting.com or kamera-forum.de , on so many levels, actually, and in respect to many rules that this place here has, that this point of yours is pointless.

After all, just because Germany does not allow dual-citizenship as a rule (Germaness by blood) doesn't mean that the UK should abolish the rule that allows multiple passports (Britishness by allegiance). You digg me, mate?

To speak about a commercial product is a little bit too much of honour.

Such humbleness does not suit a man of your importance, Jürgen...

I am also intrigued what constitutes a "commercial product" according to you. If Smallformat weren't a commercial product, then I think your publisher wouldn't have told you rather clearly you that if you can't achieve a certain target of subscribers, Smallformat will be chopped. After all, that's what you wrote in one of your "subscribers wanted" ads yourself: that Smallformat needs to become commercially viable to remain alive and that everyone should take out a subscription or two for a friend... that was also the reason why you stopped free article downloads to stop free-rider readers and increase the monetary gain (as you would object to the word 'profit', as Smallformat makes a loss right now) per article.

The German publishing house of smallformat (I am only a freelancer of this company) is far away from making money with a magazine for such a small community...

...which makes it obvious why advertising for subscripers is high on your agenda.

Jürgen, please re-read my post and attempt to fully grasp angle, motivation and manay many helpful tips. Otherwise, you might have nasty run-ins with the moderators in the future.

This matter is closed for me. I move on as everything substantial has now been said, explained and clubbed to death to you and fellow posters. If you fail to see the issue at hand, than I don't know what else to explain.

Best wishes,

-michael

P.S.: BTW, as you brought him up: Chris from Super 8 Today stopped advertising for his mag upon request from the moderators as he did not want to provide articles for free. I recently talked about this with him, and he said that he didn't feel comfortable adverstising in a community forum.

Oddly enough, despite lack of splash ads, Super 8 Today has rapidly grown over the past 12 mothns, has now a commercial distributor, full pro printing, is available in retail and attracts many forum members here not only as subscribers, but as authors. The last issue is almost a ciny.com edition, with 4 articles out of 10 written by forum members here.

That should give you something to think about the merits of mere "subscribers' wanted ads" as the ideal way of making your venture profitable.

Alessandro Machi · May 12, 2008

I think I suggested that if Small format is mentioning cinematography.com in each issue of their magazine that that might be an excellent reciprocal to posting info here. The idea is the advertisers that advertise on this website might get an actual customer or two from people who read small format and then see the cinematography.com website address in the magazine and come here.

Then both sites reciprocate from each other and the advertisers for both benefit.

kevin jackman · May 14, 2008

as per usual it appears that there is bitching in the forums on the internet. i thought this was one place that wouldnt happen. i was wrong. if you have a complaint then post it to the moderators, etc. i will post my support of it. so we will cancel each other out. i hope people who support some ads for smallformat will write the mods saying they are hapy with it. id rather see overpromotion than underpromotion in a world where users are shrinking.