Will Cummock

hello!! after a 3 year hiatus straight 8 is back and open for entries we invite anyone, anywhere to make a short film on one cartridge of kodak super 8mm cine film you send the cartridge back to us unprocessed and upload a soundtrack we'll take care of processing and hd telecine at cinelab london if it's great, you'll see your film for the first time at its packed premiere at cannes film festival in may 2016 we'll be organising further cinema/festival screenings later in the year too, showing more films entry is open until feb 29th and you'd need to get your finished film back to us in london by apr 4th more details, past films and entry is at www.straight8.net we're really excited to be back and can't wait to see a brand new crop of straight 8 films

straight 8 invites anyone, anywhere to make a short film on one cartridge of super 8 — without editing. the first time filmmakers see their film is at one of our awesome worldwide premieres. check out the 2012 trailer here: to be eligible for our slamdance screening - you need to get your completed film back to us by december 12th 2011. (all entries received by the slamdance deadline will also be eligible for cannes and all other 2012 selections.) if you miss the slamdance deadline... to be eligible for cannes and everything else in straight 8 2012, you need to get your film back to us by march 29th 2012 enter now at http://www.straight8.net to join in entry costs £60 (+vat if you live in the eu), or a bit less if you're a student we'll send out your cartridge, you shoot it and send it back to us unprocessed, and upload an original soundtrack if it's great, the first time you'll see it is at our awesome cannes film festival screening, the incredible slamdance festival in park city utah, sheffield docfest, rushes soho shorts fest in london, or one of a growing number of fantastic festivals and screenings around the world. straight 8 receive 100-200 entries every year, and we show as many we can. in a typical year we'll show over 70% of submissions at one our premiere screenings. if you've checked out our trailer, and you're interested in entering, have a browse of the awesome films on our vimeo channel to get some inspiration! and if you want to help us to organise a straight 8 screening at a festival/venue/school/arena/tent near you, please get in touch with will@straight8.net

I'm afraid there isn't anywhere quite like Pro8 over here. You can rent cameras from Sendean in Soho, I think they may offer telecine too. All/most of the UK shops that offer processing, send it Andec in Berlin. The only UK lab processing Super 8 on a large scale is Deluxe Soho (formerly Soho Film Lab/Soho Images), they only process neg film and telecine SD on an Ursa Diamond. I think Film & Photo will process colour reversal if you've got a few rolls and they do B+W reversal as neg. There's a quite a few places around that offer telecine, some in HD, but they won't be up to the standards of Pro8's Cintel M2. I think The Farm in Soho might have a super 8 gate for their Spirit, but the cost of using them is probably prohibitive for all but large-scale commercial productions. I've heard some pretty mixed reviews of the Widescreen Centre's telecine.

we've put together this guide to help people choose which kodak super 8 stock to shoot their straight 8 film on: http://straight8filmstock.blogspot.com/ although we made it to help straight8ers we hope it might be of use to other super 8 users too there are probably a few errors and omissions in there - please let me know if you think any changes are necessary! straight 8 2011 is open now at www.straight8.net

i haven't had any s8 stuff repaired for a long time but used to use axco instruments in finchley, north london - 020 83468302 i think they are still going and the quality of workmanship was always second to none. w p.s. if my camera did that i'd probably try giving it a sharp slap.

straight 8 screenings 2009 one super 8 cartridge. no editing. London Premieres (as part of Rushes Soho Shorts Festival) 3 nights only: 27th, 28th and 29th july at the Curzon Mayfair & The Renoir cinemas from tiny super 8 cameras to huge west end screens – without any editing the best three-minute in-camera edited straight 8 films, selected from over 150 entries from around the world 20 never seen before films each night join the filmmakers for the fastest and the slowest 3 minutes of their lives as they see their work for the first time since they looked through the viewfinder and pulled the trigger plus the eight films that premiered at the straight 8 cannes film festival screening- showing for the first time in the uk 9.15pm, monday 27 july – Curzon Mayfair (screen 1) 9.15pm, tuesday 28 july – The Renoir 9.15pm, wednesday 29 july – Curzon Mayfair (screen 1) tickets available from: www.curzoncinemas.com there is a little teaser trailer here: and, for a short time only we've released these two films from our cannes film festival screening to give you a taste of the programme: and any help you could give us in spreading the word would be hugely appreciated. screeners, stills, quotes and queries- please contact will cummock - 020 7482 6862 helpingout@straight8.net

straight 8 screenings 2009 one super 8 cartridge. no editing. London Premieres (as part of Rushes Soho Shorts Festival) 3 nights only: 27th, 28th and 29th july at the Curzon Mayfair & The Renoir cinemas from tiny super 8 cameras to huge west end screens – without any editing the best three-minute in-camera edited straight 8 films, selected from over 150 entries from around the world 20 never seen before films each night join the filmmakers for the fastest and the slowest 3 minutes of their lives as they see their work for the first time since they looked through the viewfinder and pulled the trigger plus the eight films that premiered at the straight 8 cannes film festival screening- showing for the first time in the uk 9.15pm, monday 27 july – Curzon Mayfair (screen 1) 9.15pm, tuesday 28 july – The Renoir 9.15pm, wednesday 29 july – Curzon Mayfair (screen 1) tickets available from: www.curzoncinemas.com there is a little teaser trailer here: and, for a short time only we've released these two films from our cannes film festival screening to give you a taste of the programme: and any help you could give us in spreading the word would be hugely appreciated. screeners, stills, quotes and queries- please contact will cummock - 020 7482 6862 helpingout@straight8.net

straight 8 screenings 2009 one super 8 cartridge. no editing. London Premieres (as part of Rushes Soho Shorts Festival) 3 nights only: 27th, 28th and 29th july at the Curzon Mayfair & The Renoir cinemas from tiny super 8 cameras to huge west end screens – without any editing the best three-minute in-camera edited straight 8 films, selected from over 150 entries from around the world 20 never seen before films each night join the filmmakers for the fastest and the slowest 3 minutes of their lives as they see their work for the first time since they looked through the viewfinder and pulled the trigger plus the eight films that premiered at the straight 8 cannes film festival screening- showing for the first time in the uk 9.15pm, monday 27 july – Curzon Mayfair (screen 1) 9.15pm, tuesday 28 july – The Renoir 9.15pm, wednesday 29 july – Curzon Mayfair (screen 1) tickets available from: www.curzoncinemas.com there is a little teaser trailer here: and, for a short time only we've released these two films from our cannes film festival screening to give you a taste of the programme: and any help you could give us in spreading the word would be hugely appreciated. screeners, stills, quotes and queries- please contact will cummock - 020 7482 6862 helpingout@straight8.net

SFL can process and transfer your footage in 24-48 hours. as a london based filmmaker, that makes a massive difference to me.

i've never used autom b with the lever half way back, i'm pretty sure it isn't designed to work like that. for reliable time exposures always lock the lever fully back, this will lock the shutter open even when the camera isn't running so do beware of flash frames. if you don't lock the shutter open autom b should work fine, but in most cases it doesn't. the strobe effect seems to happen when the shutter frequently fails to lock open. different nizos seem to behave differently in this respect, battery level is also a factor i've heard. the strobe thing can be used to good effect- i discovered this in a fortuitous single cart comp accident: the shots in question are just after 2 minutes in case you don't want to watch the whole 3 mins. will

hi tom, i've never had any problems with image stability on my 801- it's certainly down to the individual camera rather than the make and model in this case i think. sounds like a dodgy camera to me- i'd return it. i once had a problem with image stability on a zeiss, it turned out that the claw that advanced the film had a compressed ball of fluff on it. maybe check that out first. will

is cannes not a real festival tim? i've heard that people make lots these days from short films made on super 8. and the short film market in general has really taken off hasn't it? it hasn't. i'm not going to waste my time replying to any more of your misguided posts. perhaps you should canvas the opinion of those that have been involved in the event in the past. FYI filmmakers are: always fully credited they retain all the rights to the work on a non-exclusive basis (they can enter it to any film festival) can opt out of being included online or on our dvd

yes tim, that's exactly right! the market for super 8 films on dvd is huge right now. on the other hand taking a program of super 8 films to cannes film festival, cannes lions advertising festival, rushes soho shorts festival, as well as venues in the usa, germany, france, the netherlands, spain and more costs peanuts. and of course employing one and a half people full-time for the whole year is free. please READ, RESEARCH and THINK before posting such acidic comments. straight 8 is not a profit making exercise or a funded organisation. it exists fairly subsistently. straight 8 is a film event not a festival as such

hi, many people seem to be under the impression that straight 8 2009 is no longer open to enter- this is probably our fault for saying the entry period was from December-February. we've extended the deadline for completed films until the 30th march, anyone can enter right up to the deadline as long as it leaves sufficient time for us to get the film out and for you to shoot and return it. just to recap: entry is only available through www.straight8.net (more info on straight 8 for the uninitiated also on there) the best films will premiere at cannes film festival in may with the best of the entries from people working in advertising playing at cannes lions advertising festival in june. we'll have a massive round of premieres at rushes soho shorts festival in july and loads more at screenings all over the world. will

straight 8 are guest editing the youtube features section for today only. http://www.youtube.com/?gl=US&hl=en-GB

straight 8 are hoping to hold a super 8 workshop with processing next weekend. unfortunately tanks are proving really hard to come by. does any one have one or better still two we can use please? preferably 15m spiral tanks. will

straight 8 2009 is open now from now until the end of february... anyone, anywhere is invited to rise to straight 8's challenge shoot a short film on a single cartridge of super 8mm film if your film's great you'll see it for the first time at a packed straight 8 screening entry is only available on www.straight8.net and the deadline for delivering your film - exposed but un-developed - back to us in london is march 23rd last year straight 8 premiered the very best entries at cannes film festival fot the 6th year running and over a 100 great films at other festivals and screenings worldwide this year, for the first time, you'll be able to choose negative stocks as well as reversal. so, you can now choose: ektachrome 65t, plus-x, tri-x, vision 2 200t and vision 2 500t if you have any questions please email me at helpingout@straight8.net

i'm pretty good at procrastinating and spend a fair amount of my time 'researching' on youtube. i've found it really hard to find great super 8 stuff on there- the number of views and the highest ratings seem to have little bearing on quality. occasionally someone will send me an absolute gem that has been up for ages and only been watched 100 or so times. so, i thought i would try and canvas some opinions and find some great stuff to reference by asking people on here to list three great bits of super 8 film on youtube. any contributions would be hugely appreciated! to start things off here are three i really like: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YlBvakaleJk http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=G9_VMngcubs http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wR3xuwjqXng will and here's one i worked on (because i'm an egomaniac) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2biU8FGTVpE&...re=channel_page

in answer to your first question: because of the way that super 8 cameras were made the indicated aperture reading does not correspond precisely with the practical amount of light that reaches the film. in answer to your second question: I merely said that exposure changes in a shot were a usable device, not always the way to shoot.

you'd actually be much better taking a reading from the internal light meter and using the ee lock to avoid this. external light meters aren't a good idea with most super 8 cameras for reasons explained in earlier posts. also, in shot exposure changes can look great...

plus x should be fine, exposure meter is ttl. been too long since i handled one of these and can't remember much about it. the manual is here: http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/garage/...on_514xl-s.html will

but they are pretty pricey.

i don't know where they are, sorry. i think du-all camera in nyc would do a crystal synch mod on your camera- probably expensive but worth a try.

the place where everyone used to get it done is Axco Instruments Ltd. 228 Regents Park Road Finchley London N3 3HP Tel: 020-8346-8302 - will probably ring and ring but persevere they are really old school, grumpy and not on the web. they do have a reputation for being very good at fixing cameras though. if you do go with them i'd love to hear about your experience and whether the company is surviving ok i hate to say it, but it would probably be more economical to buy another one on ebay