Jump to content

Eric Maxwell

Basic Member
  • Posts

    5
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Eric Maxwell

  1. As someone who likes to endlessly take apart, modify, tinker with, and generally be destructive to his toys, it's a lot easier operating on the sort of cheapo super 8 camera one finds in a thrift shop over a more expensive 16mm. And, if (read: when) the homemade modifications decide to break, tear off the camera, or in my case, catch on fire, it's not a big loss.
  2. I play clarinet, accordian, bagpipes, the didje, frame drums, guitar, bass, and I'm learning the play the flute and mandolin. But, I also love composing and arranging, which is always a plus when one needs soundtrack pieces but has no money.
  3. I've used the Minolta XL-401 for time lapse shots and aside from mistakes that were my fault, the results have been pretty good. Its range is roughly three frames a second to about a frame per minute, but I've never tested the longer intervals. I've seen these for around $100 on ebay.
  4. My other addictions include a lot of drawing, music, a fair bit of painting, and a hideous amount of writing, both in screenplay, essay and novel form. I can see the links music and visual arts have to cinematography, but I also think that essays, not of the sort that are written for school, have a lot to do with cinematography. Maybe I've taken it too far, and I'm just a lowly student trying out things that are new to me, but I like to take my background in English and writing and apply that to composition of a shot. In English classes, I would often have to break down a sentence into its individual words and evaluate the sentence; I've grown to believe that same thing can be done with images. You have to identify the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, etc. in the shot, as well as recognize what might be adjectives (beyond simply showing what the subject matter looks like), adverbs, articles, etc., and construct these like a large visual sentence. In writing, there are a variety of different voices that one can write in, and just as I don't like to write in a passive voice unless absolutely needed, I like to try to figure out what the grammar of a composition is, and make sure that what I choose to capture is in the right voice for what I am doing. Whether or not a visual grammatical approach a good idea, at least it makes me think about what I'm doing. If you think that's pretentious, I can do a lot worse. Sorry, I strayed away from the original topic a bit.
  5. I recently shot a super 8 short that used both 24 and 18 fps and the difference, at least at home on a television, is very small. For the bits in the story that take place in reality I used 24, but in fantastic or unreal situations, I used 18 for a slightly dream like look. Though this isn't the best indicator at all, use any editing system that can render the footage at different frame rates and save a video file at both 18 and 24 fps. True, there are a lot of other factors in film, but the video test is a start. Also, I believe that significant sections of Guy Maddin's "The Saddest Music in the World" were shot in 18fps, both on super 8 and 16mm.
×
×
  • Create New...