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Gary Knutson

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  • Occupation
    Cinematographer
  1. I bought a Fairchild Cinesonic Eight in 1962 when I was in the Army in Germany. I saw a PR squib in a magazine, and wrote the Fairchild factory, which sold it to me direct. It was a tech wonder for its time, but was horrendously expensive. (Over three months' pay as a Sp/4!) I got the add-on zoom lens (with separate through-the-lens viewfinder mounted to the side), which broke in an accident soon after. I sent it back to Fairchild, who repaired it free (maybe they took pity on me) and mailed it back, just in time for me to rotate back Stateside. Because the film was so rare and expensive, almost all my European footage was too-brief shots. When I get it transferred to digital someday, I can slow it down in iMovie or FCP, or if nothing else, extract single frame pics. It was a very expensive indulgence. Its saving grace is that I was able to record irreplaceable sound footage of my parents. The great design flaw, for which the engineers should have been horsewhipped, was making the projector power cord and the camera charging cord (which had an inline transformer) with the exact same fitting. So one day I plugged in the wrong cord to charge the camera, and —POOF— the battery fried with a flash. And I was too poor to get it fixed. And of course, Kodak's Super 8 quickly rendered it obsolete. Editing was not a problem, so long as you allowed a couple seconds at the head or tail of any sound take. I used a Mansfield 8mm editor and a little splicing block. Now I just have to find a vendor who can transfer the film to a digital format, whilst dubbing the mag sound to a separate track, maintaining sync. Any recommendations? I'm afraid to take the film out or project it until I find a resource that can properly handle it. Worst case: the film has turned to mush, or the mag track has flaked off. Best case is that the film will have aged and lost color. But if that's the only problem, that can be corrected digitally later. Of course, the film will have scratches and dirt. Ultrasonic cleaning will take care of the latter. If the scratches are in the base, expensive wet-gate printing could fix it*. Scratches in the base mean nothing less than frame-by-frame Hollywood-level expertise will fix it. *I've been away from the film biz for so long, I don't know what gear the "we transfer anything" places have rescued from old motion pictures labs, and what they don't.
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