Niall Conroy

I've been doing this a couple years now whenever a project comes up that works well with it - if you process it with Caffenol the results are pretty decent a music video I made with some K40 + caffenol (blue is the natural colour when inverted from it's negative form): an older experiement:

You could try connect the Alexa into a CRT TV and hook up a VCR recorder and record the Alexa footage to tape - only problem then is to re-digitise it. Funnily enough I am also in pre-production on a music-video where we too wish to create a VHS asthetic, however we are going to actaully shoot on an old Panasonic (M7) - now we're just trying to figure the best way of digitising the footage and upscaling it to HD. Have come across Black Magic's Video Recorder which encodes toH.264 - anyone aware of any other alternatives or ideas?

Thanks for all the replies, guys! I think i'm just going to have it running the night of the opening - then for any other day, i'll just have a note beside the projector with a little' illustrated instruction of how to turn it on and off. The splice is just a piece of cello-tape! having said that, i punctured the sprocket holes and smoothed it out to a decent degree - so hopefully it wont fall apart on me. And yes, the loop is very short, as in - it's length is exactly that of the film going over the front spool, through the projector and then by-passing the back spool and connecting directly back to the front spool. Oh, and the actual film is a combo of 2 old 'blue movies' (nothing saucy, unfortunately) one of which is quite faded already - but hey even if they do progressively wear out, as Dom Jaeger said above, that's art!

Hey guys! Quick question (which i'm sure won't have any concrete answer).... I've edited together a short super-8 loop which i'll be projecting at an Art exhibition. The exhibition will be running from Wednesday till Saturday. So the projector will technically have to be running for at least, on average, 4 hours a day, non-stop. The projector itself is a Eumig Mark 502D. Does this sound possible? What sort of issues would one predict I might encounter? Bulb blowing? Film getting too hot and melting? I DIY telecined the loop - so I do have a digital back up which I could project if all fails. But it would be nice to have the real thing projecting. Thoughts?

good point - guess i'll just have to deal with it as politely as possible and let them see it from our side. hmmm, there's about 260 gigs worth of footage that would have to be re-rendered to have the watermark, feels like its not really worth the hassle. my friend was telling me a quote the other day on the issue - think it was Jack Warner...something along the lines of: "The only positive thing in you can have in film making, is having the negative" the negative is power.

Many thanks for all the replies, guys I'm actually based in Ireland. I guess i'll just have to politely talk to the manager about the situation and see what their plans are for the rushes - if they don't intend on using the footage in the future, then why would they want them? Fishy. If they want them for future reference (i.e. possibility of using the footage further down the line) - surely we should be credited or financially taken care of?

Hey guys, Just wondering what your thoughts on this... Quick background - the past few months I've been on-and-off shooting some promotional material for a band and editing short videos together for them - cash in hand sort of deals. Just got a call today from their manager asking to hand over a hard drive of all the rushes ever shot of the band so that the record company can archive them for future reference. Now, we didn't go into it on the phone, but once the call had ended I started to wonder about the legality, or rather ownership, of the situation - where do I stand here? I was operating under a production company myself and a college work under - obviously we are the owners of this material, but does it change once we're shooting a group which is signed to a label? what should one do in this situation? How can one protect themselves from a record label using their footage in the future and not get any credit or payment for it? Thoughts?

Many thanks, lads.

Hey guys, hopefully this wont be treated like spam, just thought some of you might be interested to see beautiful telecine job by Jose at Ochoypico (not to mention Frank at super8.nl) the videos mixed with some GH3 footage also, but predominately super-8 - 100D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-m-UW_bFA

Congrats on the great camera - i've been using one for a while now, never any problems and great results. Personally i find the filter switch fiasco quite confusing - I actually made a post last year inquiring about it (got great feedback and help) basically you have to remember that this camera was built with Tungsten style film in mind - therefore the camera will be expecting Tungsten type cartridges - so with that in mind, my guess would be that it disables the internal filter (when you press the notch switch) ...but then again, thats just a guess. In terms of your test roll - what film stock are you using - you could select one that is notched to either disable or enable the filter switch - that way when you shoot it - you'll probably have a better idea as to what the filter is doing once pressed but overall - like all cameras - you have to shoot a test roll ANYWAY - just to see if its even working - so use this opportunity to shoot various lighting scenarios inside and out and hopefully with the footage you'll be able to work out the conundrum Make sure to choose a colour stock for the test shoot then again...you could just contact the ebayer you bought it from and ask about the switch? best'a luck anyway

just in case you super-8 heads didn't catch my post in the 'film stocks and processing' sub-forum - i've successfully developed the Kodachrome 40 stock with the caffenol home process technique ((which when developed turns the film (or rather any film) into a negative)). I then DIY telecined the footage and colour corrected it. still a work in progress - will need to invest in a proper developing tank, but the potential seems promising!

Many thanks for all the info above, finally got around to trying this out - still a work in progress, but heres the first test I did with the Kodachrome 40:

haha yes, every time I see it I get a slight panic attack thinking that I exported incorrectly. It seems the 'square' nature only really pops when its framed or bordered. When its just sitting plain in a 16:9 screen it seems to look taller than it actually is. Peculiar.

if people are interested - I went and shot for 1:1 - here's the teaser trailer i put together <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/43490693" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

so i'm guessing this soaking process with the borax would be after the fixer - so I wouldn't have to do it inside a darkroom?

my apologies to Dagie! Yes, the remjet - i've read conflicting things about its toughness - some claim it rubs right off with your fingers - others say its stubborn enough and needs to be soaked in special chemicals i'm guessing the negatives are useless without the remjet fully removed?

Hey guys, just in case anyone ever stumbles across this post looking for info on the topic - I emailed Dagie from his website: http://www.dagiebrundert.de/EK40.html He said it is possible and he has done it many times - basically it should develop the K40 just as good as any other black and white developer into a negative form, which usually produces great results. So good news! If i ever get around to testing this later in the summer i'll be sure to post my results. Also, i misspelled "caffenol" in the topic title, maybe an admin could amend that?

Thanks, John. Very helpful and encouraging :)

hey guys, I know Kodachrome and its developing process have been retired, which means its pretty near impossible to get it developed now (except for some Canadian company which I hear can develop it to black and white) however, I was wondering would it be possible to develop some 40 with the cafenol home developing process - from my initial research it seems near every film stock can be developed in some form with cafenol. I have 4 super-8 carts of the K40, so it would be nice to experiment with them. anyone have any ideas?

also - I once bought a Canon 814 XL for 0.99p on ebay - so these bargains do exist! (also beware of some cameras that only shoot 18fps(like the canon i mentioned) - if you want to record sync sound you'll need a camera that shoots 24fps)

Super-8 cameras do not shoot 16:9 - they shoot 4:3 - you should embrace this different aspect ratio and abandon the horrid 16:9 ratio. However, if your reaaaally needed the image to be 16:9 - it is possible to achieve it if you scanned the film at 2K and and just cropped into the frames - but, you'll be losing picture on an already tight image If you have the cash - a Canon 1014 xls is probably the safest best camera money can buy - but they are rather expensive - otherwise I'd recommend you do what I did, go onto ebay everyday and search through the super-8 cameras that are listed, see which ones are popping up - google them for more info - check youtube/vimeo videos to see what sort of images you get with them - and then start looking for some bargains - I got my Elmo 1012xls for €50 when i've seen some people list it for €180 - so just keep looking and wait for the perfect auction. at the end of the day, one camera wont give you extremely different results in comparison to another standard super-8 camera - its all down to the film stock you use and the scan (i recommend full HD telecine) so maybe start with a relatively cheap camera and work up from there

Yes, i've been meaning to watch Meek actualy! I agree, it is a bad way to exclude loads of amazingly shot films - but I'm just more interested with DOP's who have picked 4:3 and shot it for a reason and utilised all the old masters techniques, rather than those who just shot 4:3 because it was the norm and the industry standard at the time.

beautiful stuff, David. However, i was more interested in possibly looking at contemporary cinematographers dealing with the 4:3 aspect ratio and seeing it put to beautiful use, Post- 1950's.

This is true. And yes, i don't mind living with the black borders :) Could you elaborate on what you said/meant about "The triangle 3-4-5"? This is true - however, I feel 1:66:1 is stepping too close to 16:9 and getting that small bit too wide for what i'm looking for. I'll keep it in mind tho :) -- So overall, no one is aware of any films being shot in 3:2? Or would anyone like to suggest any beautifully shot 4:3 films that might inspire my choice?

Granted that all the theatre's need a common aspect ratio in order to project them properly, especially with film - but with the onset of digital projection screens and such - if the film was shot in digital, surely the aspect ratio shouldn't make a difference