Douglas Hunter

Adam, Standard procedure is to go to a lab that does telecine and have them transfer it to the video medium of your choice. You footage will need to be preped for telecine. That is it will need to be cleaned and have leader added, and then transferred to video. But it sounds like you don't understand what you want or what you are asking. You ask about good quality and then mention doing it at home. The question is what does "good quality" mean to you? The higher your standards the more money you need. If you just want your 16mm on some form of video there are labs that will charge under $200 per hour for their telecine time and allow for some color correction as you go. Its possible to video tape a projected film at home, but this should not be thought of as a transfer. Think of it as a way of getting a very specific (read funky) look for a video image.

I just did a camera test with an 814 on saturday. I did some bracket exposures, comparing the BTL to my spot meter. I should be able to gleen something from this. I have to say while I was shooting I was suprised at how close my spot meter readings and the BTL meter readings were. Anyway I'll let you know how it comes out.

O.K. in a rough sense that can work for you, just know that you won't have frame accuate matching between your FCP cut and your super 8 cut. You can get close but it won't be exact. As far as sound goes do you plan on trying to achieve good sync with hard efx and lip sync or just a fairly close sync of sound efx and music? I ask because as I think about it you may have some options. For example, if sync is not that important you could cut your sound in FCP or Pro Tools, or Sound Track or any other audio editing softwear. Then you could play the audio portion of your film out of your computer while you project the film. In this case your sound would be at a constant speed and depending on the quality of your projector the picture would drif in relation to your audio as the film was projected. What I (and others) used to do in the old days was to cut audio by hand on a reel to reel tape recorder and play that back with the projection. If the audio gets ahead of picture you put your finger on the reel to slow it down a little until its back in sync. There also use to be systems where you could use a tape player that accepted a sync pulse from the projector to keep it in sync but I don't know if these exist anymore. In any event these are extremely crude working methods and severly limit what you can do with both sound and picture. Also you will need some super 8 academy leader. In the end how to work depends on what your goals are, if you want a clean looking image in sync with hard effects or dialogue then you need to finish to video end of story. If you want to do something old school, and funky in which a clean image and sync on any level are not the priority then experiment with working by hand and have some fun with it. Any while you are at it have some fun experiment with hand painting on the film, bleeching and other expirmental techniques.

Bill Brand in New york does wonderful blow-ups from super 8 to 16mm but this is an expensive process no matter who does it. If you have the money it can lead to very pleasing results but you really want to know what you are doing before going down that road.

Salvador, Sorry to say but your porposed workflow does not work for Super 8. 1) You can not do an EDL for super 8 as super 8 does not have edge code. Without edge code you can not match your film to time code which is what must happen if you want to use FCP to generate a cut list. 2) To project with sound on film you need to have a print mag striped. As far as I know both S8 prints and mag striping are all but dead. (perhaps someone here knows of people who still do this.) The most common S8 work flow these days is to do a "television finish" that is image accusition occurs on film, the footaqe is telecined and the projected finished on video. Sound being done after picture is locked.

While I can see how this might be the case for some cameras is it certainly is not the case for all cameras. I shot using a 5008s and did a lot of zooming. The amount of drift was consistent despite doing a number of zoom ins and zoom outs on very long takes. Not all super 8 cameras utilize store bought AA batteries. Also considering the age and service records of many super 8 cameras I would allow for the possibility that such a problem as you describe has other causes beyond the power supply.

Maurizio, If you want to know how much of the jitter is due to the camera you should shoot a registration test grid. Super 8 is going to be jumpy because of the crude transport system but some cameras are steadier than others. Shooting a registration test will help you see how much of the jitter is due to the camera itself, and give you a reasonable expectation of what super 8 looks like in this regard. I agree with the others that your diopter is not set correctly, notice that so much of your out of focus material occurs on zooms, its looks like you had a poorly set diopter, focused in the wide shot and zoomed in to something thus loosing focus. I would think that if you were having problems with your shutter that we would have seen slight but frequent exposure changes that were not associated with changes in the subject of the shot. Nonetheless it is worrysome that you were hearing the shutter motor working so much. I think you should shoot another test on reversal film and project the results. Do the test on a tripod and shoot a registration test, a focus chart, framing chart, and do some exposure comparisons between a hand held meter and the BTL meter on the camera. These sorts of things will give you a better idea of what you are working with. A good camera test is well planned and has goals in terms of testing specific aspects of the camera one at a time. P.S.- I just shot a test of my new 814XL-S this afternoon!

If you record digital audio, your audio is constantspeed and your picture is what drifts, so by using head and tail slates you can easily see how much drift you have when you pull the footage into your NLE system and then stretch or shrink your picture to match audio. If your camera's drift is fairly consistent, this step alone will give you pretty good sync. The problem is if the camera is speeding up and slowing down, then you have to identify where this is occuring and do some sub cliping. The principle to follow is to give yourself really good sync points and conform the drifting element to the constant element. I've used this technique recording audio to DAT, but any digital audio divice will do the job. This method is not practical if you don't have good sync points and or if the camera changes speed a good deal. In these situations its better to just use a true constant speed camera.

Great, thanks Don.

Hey, My Canon 814XL-S just arrived last night and I am looking for a manual for it online. I've had no luck so far. Anyone know if this is available as a down load anywhere? thanks

As much as I enjoy the sillyness of Terry's and Alessandro's exchange. They raise an important question: How do we really know what a film stock looks like? Or how do we know what we are actually going to get when we shoot a certain stock? For less experienced filmmakers Terry and Alessandro are both right and wrong. First, Terry is correct that watching film on a projector with a good bulb is commonly considered the best way to really know what you have on the actual film in terms of color, contrast, grain, tonal range etc. When we look at these things on video we are seeing an electronic representation of the actual film strip and there are going to be differences. Keep in mind the old joke that says NTSC means "never twice the same color" Even on high end, well tuned monitors the image will always be different from monitor to monitor because its the nature of the NTSC standard. Alessandro is right that in telecine you can see how far you can push a stock but that's only on video. If you finish all your projects to video that's good to know but it does not tell you what can be done in timing a print which takes a different test. Concerning filters, Terry is wrong. We always test a film under the conditions we are going to be using it. If you are going to need to use filtration then, the stock needs to be tested with that filter. looking at an unfiltered stock does not tell us all that much about how a stock will look when using filters.

This is a frequent topic of discussion on this board, have you tried doing a search? A well maintanied, high quality camera will drift but it will do so at a fairly consistent rate so syncing takes a little time but is not a nightmare. If you want dead on sync. check out the sync conversion offered by The Film Group and also look at getting a Bealieu 6008 or higher, which are crystal controlled cameras, bewarned though they are noisy. The Canons and Nizos are significantly quieter. Also use head and tail slates when shooting on non-constant speed cameras.

Sure, while both editing systems have plentlly of quirks, its my experience (and that of many others) that the cinema tools / FCP system is not as trust worthy when it comes to generating a frame accurate film cut lists. For example, in the early versions of Cinema Tools the saved in and out point for clips could shift! Talk about scary! Now, I realize that Cinema Tools has gotten better since I cut film with it but I think its a difficult system for people without a lot of experience matching back to film to use. It taks a lot of checking and double checking. Since The OP said he didn't have a key code burn in on his editorial tapes, doing the necessary checking is more difficult. And since he did't go for the key code burn in I'm guessing that he lacks post experience which opens the opportunity for the introduction of human generated errors in the database etc. Cinema Tools was an after thought for FCP and I think it shows, while the Avid was designed from the start for creating accurate film cut lists. Don't get me wrong I've been cutting on FCP since V 1.0 so I am somewhat "loyal" to the product but I'm also willing to admit that its got a lot of bugs and short comings.

After reading your last post I can only hope that you are editing on an Avid and not FCP! It sounds like you don't have a post super on the show, but I think you would be very pleased with the results if you went out and got one!

Michael's time estimates seem pretty good and would add that I would estimate around $500 an hour for telecine (not including stock), $500 an hour for the HD online and a little more than that for color correction in an HD bay. It sounds like this may be a lower budget project so if I was involved I would push for 2 days of color correction over David's week. I know feature guys like to have a week but a typical hour drama is done in two days, so with a good operator two days is reasonable. so 1 week HD telecine: $20,000 (40 hours, no overtime) 2 days assemble: $8000 (no overtime) 2 days color: $8000 (no overtime) also add also add up to 3 hours for your audio lay back. So your looking at 36K+ easily. Procedurally speaking you are correct that you would need to go through each reel of neg and telecine only the shots in your locked picture EDL. The best case would be if your re-telecine has time code that matches your previously made work tapes, otherwise you would have to ingest all the new footage and re-link your project to the new media and generate a new EDL. Then your new master tapes and EDL go to the only where an auto assemble is done and an output created for your editor to check. after that is completed you can move into HD color correction.

I'm a fan of the podcast, keep 'em coming. but I have gotten a number of errors when I try to get them onto my iPod. I get a bitrate error on the" In my Image" segments. Everything plays fine on the computer but most will not transfer to my video iPod, any ideas why this would be the case?

Like Jim, I don't see how doing it that way makes anything easier. Also, you will get better sound quality if you don't go though the camera.

I'm a big fan of the Velvia, Among the super 8 stocks I've shot in the past year I think it has wonderful grain and more accurate color representation than other stocks. I must admit though the 100D kodak is a very close second. I'll shoot Velvia as long as its available.

I've been watching the prices for these cameras over the past year on ebay and I think the lowest I've seen for a good condition one is $390 and the highest I've seen is over $600. The over $600 was the result of a bidding war. I do worry though when you say its barely been used in the past 10 years and that its in great condition. It goes without saying that the camera will need to be services but also the electronics could have problems that you are simply unaware of, because you've barely used it. from the buyers point of view, it would be cool if you have the camera checked out before you sell it. OR offer a refund if the buyer finds problems that you didn't know about.

Most shows do a hair and makeup test before shooting. Since you are new, looking at the monitor on set and talking to the director & DP about what looks right for the role (and in different lighting setups) is probably as good a starting place as any. Take a close look at your work in the CUs and meds. How you do the makeup can be very different from one actor to another.

In the well known art history journal OCTOBER issue #100 there was an article on digital video as a false revoultion. Which I think is a great term to use because it directly confronts our still very limited and modernist thinking about technological changes and notions of "progress" etc. be careful of using terms like "video taking over film". its not a good representation of our historical moment. Even films shot on film still depend on video in the post production work flow, and many video users want their video to look like film, most people call there videos "films". On this issue it's often easy to get bogged down in ideological debates and lose sight of how film and video are used to meet aesthetic and technical goals. On a side note, I'm quite certain that many audience members can NOT tell the difference between video and film.

Adam, Pilot season is ending in the next week so a lot of the labs will have plenty of free time on editing systems etc. its a good time to get good rates for low budget and short projects. If you can afford it I think the best results would be gained by exporting a full res quicktime and taking it somewhere like Modern Videofilm in burbank for color correction / downconverted output to Digi.

Hi Jan, That's really not an issue for many productions. Right, and as HD keeps getting more expensive, and HD workflows more complex (I'm talking about the high end here, not the mid to low end of the market) I suspect that 35mm will stay popular. At this point for a higher end production, 35mm can be the simpler tool.

I don't know this seller, but I would never pay via wire transfer, period.

I was thinking exactly the same thing but didn't post it. The shots had a nice clean look that folks are going to want to use for a variety of applications, but in the example, compressed on the web as it was I would be hard pressed to tell it from HVX footage. It already is, I learned a lot on the show I wrapping now. It was shot on on the Genisis which is as close to a noiseless image as I've ever seen, the color correction session was pretty amazing, as was the process of applying looks to the camera master signal. But the Genisis, it seems to me, has its own characteristics. It does not look like film, and really it does not need to. If I was going to shoot anything that should look really sexy, and glam like a high end car ad, I would advocate for the Genesis to be sure. great signal, tons of flexability, easy to create very sophisticated looking images.