Alessandro Machi

Crushing the blacks to reduce grain is not really a modern day film technique, it's more of a kodachrome film technique. I frankly can't stand the matted black hair on the backlit shots. The Alexa to me looks so much better in less contrasty scenes that I find some of the backlit contrasty shots, the wider the backlit shot, extremely jarring. When they do these film vs Alexa tests, do they actually compare wide angle back lit shots, or just the less contrasty scenes? I wouldn't mind seeing the wider shots shot in film. I'm still a sucker for "The Middle" and it's eye popping color shot on Kodak film.

I have an add on question to this topic. Would there be any benefit in shooting some super-8mm negative stock to get a rough idea what the super-16mm can do? Of course a super-8 high end telecine would have to be part of the process so one could see how the super-8 negative responds.

Hey John, thanks for the update. Did you go uncompressed or the very mild compression scheme. I think the mild compression is actually best for workflow requirements, no?

Number 14 has a four frame burst mode. I don't think any other camera had that feature? Although I don't recall if it repeats or not or how often.

I clicked on it a few times but it would not open. I guess it must take up a lot of file space?

I would have liked to have seen a goal scored at the very end of the video to match the voice over scripting. Not too important question about the alarm clock and avoiding wasting film. Did you just shoot 5:59, stop the camera, and start again at 6:00, or did you time the clock and around 5:59 and 55 seconds start filming? Did a shot like that freak you out because you did not want to waste film but suddenly you were? I'm a big fan of not crushing any part of the super-8 or regular 8 image because that will usually happen when one posts online. Do you feel you got all of the image that was there? And a comment now. You achieved my number one rule of super-8 filmmaking, you created a solid, sustained, sound track that then allows you to add images over as you see fit. Good job. It might have been funny to add a line about "there are no concussions in underwater hockey, at least not ones that last very long".

And lets not forget that film is format agnostic. It can always be retransferred to the latest greatest digital innovation, usually with an increase in quality. Films made in the 60's and 70's that get retransferred decades later seem to hold up quite nicely even on newer and better HD formats.

Urgent Care is not as grim as going to the emergency room. The cool thing about urgent care in the U.S. is that if the doctors on duty find you have something that they think qualifies as an emergency, their pre-screening usually means one gets seen faster in the E.R. So as long as the Urgent Care does not have mega long lines, it tends to be a safe way to get seen and then escalated if necessary. So you did, or did not go?

We call then Urgent Care in the U.S. I'm a bit nervous that Freya quoted the most bland part of my original message. Freya, I have care taken for both of my parents and I have been in and out of Urgent Care's. emergency rooms, and stayed overnight on a cot when either was admitted to the hospital. Finding the Baseline condition is always the first thing that is done, finding what you might be deficient in helps move the process along correctly. Finding a way to make the symptom disappear without consulting a doctor could mask the actual issue that needs assessing and addressing.

This seems more like a facebook question to me. Are you on facebook? If you are not, then let us know that and someone will probably respond. You should take your blood pressure to see what it is at. If you are near an urgent care, you should just go. If you are not a member and don't have health insurance, the charge is usually a 100 dollar deposit that then is applied to the actual services that are given out. However, someone should probably drive you since you probably shouldn't be driving a car. Were you or someone else to guess how to make you feel better, that could still be a bad thing since you never find out what was actually wrong. There are too many causes of light headedness to be diagnosed by someone who is not a doctor and who doesn't already know something about you. You should probably do something instead of hoping the feeling passes, if you feel too shy to call an ambulance, then you MUST talk to a friend or family member who knows you so you can go over the options that work best for you.

Start with what you want to avoid. You want to avoid having different people come up to you and give their opinion one on one. Think of it as a pyramid. You are on top of the DP pyramid, but you do answer to probably two people equally, the director and the person who is trying to keep the production on schedule and on budget. Anyone else should be going through those two people unless it is a very simple tweak or something they noticed that maybe nobody else did (like something is halfway in the shot, or something is sticking out of someone's head, or a suggestion that saves time, etc). So if there are two people you answer two, see if you want to have discussions as three people, not just you and one or the other. After that, anyone else should go through those two people with the exceptions mentioned above.

Would be interesting if there was a way to have lab transfer reps that were actual outsiders with a vested interest. What if people from this site offered to rep a transfer done for a filmmaker from another part of the world? Could be problematical I suppose.

Since you require 3 audio tracks, I assume you are doing interviews and want an iso on the interviewer and another on the subject, plus an ambient mike? Another way to consider doing it is with two mikes and do not isolate either microphone as much and use more omni microphones as well. The result is either microphone can double as an ambient mike in between comments, and either mike could theoretically have the other person's sound level high enough that it can used if necessary. And if you are outdoors, you might be able to get a bit of stereo sound as well. Some mikes fall apart at relatively short distances, especially digital sends, however I recall a few years back having success with a lapel mike on one person's shoulder that doubled as a back up for the other person sitting next to them. One man banding and going with three audio channels is kind of freaky. You may just have to go with some type of field audio recorder with three inputs so you can just go directly to that, and then to the camera send 2 iso's only. I'm assuming something out there records three channels, no?

Here is the link to a song called Trickery (Eumig Chinon Remix). How can two super-8 camera names be in the same song, yet the song has nothing to do with Super-8? http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/eumig-chinon-remix

Hey Josh, the average Super-8mm camera has around a 7.5 to 8mm wide angle. 10mm is definitely limiting. Once you get to 7mm and lower, you will notice a difference. 6 mm and 6.5mm is noticeably different from a 10mm, your probably getting twice the viewing area. Another way to go is to find a camera with a macro setting on it and then find an wide angle attachment of the same thread size. However you won't be able to zoom once you put on the wide angle attachment and focus on it. Eumig made an attachment that converted a 7mm lens to 4mm, which resulted in almost three times the viewing area.

I'm guessing, (and it's just a guess) that since it was a "freebie" their top transfer person did not do the job. When you fed-ex'd, did you do it the slowest way possible to save the most money? I'm just curious what the price differences are between overnight, standard, 2 day, 3 day, and so on for an international shipment. Next time you might want to consider taking the actual super-8 film contest notification that you won lab services and show them to places in England and see if you can get a local discount. Maybe consider getting on your hands and knees and begging them, "Please, Please, don't make me use this prize, I'll pay any amount to not use this prize". Then when you factor in all the shipping costs you save, maybe you end up even while patronizing a local vendor who is happy for your business. I'm assuming you placed in the New Jersey Super-8 film festival? Congratulations!

It's always helpful to provide at least one photo of the camera in which all of the dials and buttons can be viewed. It's also helpful to put the knobs and dials and switches into the position that either starts the camera, or shuts it off.

One aspect of the loss of CRT technology that I cannot stand is the flat screens are amped up with more contrast, but that is just masking the loss of tonality. The first video has crushed black levels and I can tell it could look spectacular if the contrast were properly set, but on CRT, it just looks like another crushed black level video. I love CRT, I love the depth, I think flat screen does not show off the depth, it replaces the loss of CRT depth with more contrast, kind of like adding sugar to a sugary drink.

The black levels are crushed which then affects the color saturation. At times there does appear to be a focus issue on the far sides of the image. I am guessing this occurs when the f-stop is near wide open. I have had the same issue when I shoot time-exposure footage with my Eumig Super-8 camera. I try and not go below a 2.8 / 4.0 split to assure better focus throughout the full range of the time-exposure image.

Got it to embed, never mind.

The music video is 2 minutes and 11 seconds long. The final 45 seconds features super-8 stock footage special effects as background plates and are from my own super-8 stock footage library. The whole music video has interesting stuff in it.

I'm ok with it, thankfully there was no mention of Kim Kardishian. My own personal opinion, never make the most important film of one's life so early on, but more importantly, don't make it early on, and long. Any experience making anything, and completely completing it, creates such a huge learning curve that the next project, even a long project, will benefit in so many ways from the experience of having completely completed the first project.

Actually, 25 year old betacam sp format does look shockingly good when shot with a quality camera and lit well, especially if one views the component signal. Corporate work is not to be taken lightly, you do a good job, they call you back, you do a crappy job, they don't.

I need a bit more info. Are you showing me a frame from an actual piece of super-8 film that was shot and developed through your camera? If not, that round blue object might have something to do with if film is running through the camera or if you are over or underexposed, or maybe some other camera function. If it is when something you see through the viewfinder, does it blink when the camera is running, does it change shape or size at any time?

I shot a roll of Vision2 500T outdoors a few years back and was pleased with the result. However, the camera had an f-stop that went down to f44. 500T can be rated at 200T and should actually give a fuller negative with a crisp depth of field as well. So, even if you go with either Velvia 100, Ektachrome 100, or Vision3 200T for outdoors, you can still resort to the 500T if that happens to be what is in your camera when you want to grab a quickie shot and don't want to mess with swapping out film cartridges, which will require you logging the footage of the cartridge being taken out of the camera, and then logging the other cartridge if you don't get all the way through that one before needing to switch back to the prior film cartridge.