S8 Student Project

stephen lamb · September 1, 2005

Hi All,

I'm a student filmmaker preparing to shoot a five minute Super 8 film for class/festivals. I've got a few questions and any answers/tips/advice would be greatly appreciated. I am farily sure i want to shoot on negative film because i've read the negative comes across much better in the telecine process, also, negative film gives so much more lattitude for mistakes and for tough shooting situations. I have two main questions. One, the film involves present times, and 'flashbacks' and i want a distinctive look for each of the two time periods. I want the flashbacks to have full, rich vivid colors. I want the 'nowadays' parts of the film to be rather dreary, and unsaturated. I think the colors for the nowadays sections will be light greens/blues/tans etc. My question is what are some techniques i can use to pull off those color differences. Color pallettes in production, possible filters, lab techniques etc? The flashback sequences are all exterior, and no access to lighting will be possible, however, the nowadays pieces will have access to lighting, any tips there?

the second question has to do with quality telecine transfer. I want the absolute best master copy i can get in a digital format. I have had rumors of a lab (don't know the name) who can telecine to any video format, put that format onto a harddrive, mail the harddrive, and then i can just click and drag the files. any truth to this? I guess basically i'd love it if i could get a 4:2:2 digital transfer onto my mac somehow.

dunno if my questions made sense, but thanks for reading, look forward to your responses.

Steve

Tom Wills · September 2, 2005

I think Bonolabs is the place with the Harddrives you're talking about. http://bonolabs.com/

In terms of looks, why not just shoot it all straight, and CC in post to get more of the feel? I mean, for the low-contrast, gray, grim stuff, shoot it with lower contrast (light everything to basically the same level), and then just take it from there in Color Correction. If you're going to be editing digitally, this is probably the easiest option.

Good luck on your film! :)

Edited September 2, 2005 by Tom Wills

Chris Burke · September 2, 2005

Yes, bonofilm.com or bonolabs.com for HD. In either case you can buy packages that include film, processing and telecine to hard drive. If this is a student project, I would recommend that you get the Super 8 to hard drive in SD. You will get a file, rather large one, that is uncompress video of your footage. I am not sure, it may be even 4:4:4 color, but definitely 4:2:2. I have done this and think it is great. Your system may not be able to handle uncompress footage, you will need a RAID for this, so what you may want to do is this:

When you get the drive back, make some sort of offline clips from the uncompress footage, be it DV or something smaller. When your picture is locked and sound is layed back in, you will be ready for an online. When this time comes, look around for a post house that will do your online for you. You could do your own, but that entails a very fast RAid Array, a video card that can output uncompressed video and a really good monitor. This is a bare minimum set up for doing SD stuff. Spend your money at a post house, they have all the best stuff and know how to use it. Telecine to hard drive is a great idea. Have funn and good luck

Chris

;)

stephen lamb · September 3, 2005

hey guys, thanks for the help so far!

i looked fairly deeply into bono labs and they definetly look like the place to go to. What a cool lab to figure that not everybody has a super deck. i have access to a pretty good PC running an Athon x2 4800+ harddrive, 2 gigs ram, nVidia 7800 gtx graphics card and a 400 gig RAID array. I also have a Mac G5 single 1.8 ghz processor, 1 gig ram, standard nVidia graphics card no raid array, i assume that the mac would not work out so well for uncompressed or DVCpro HD. Do you think that the PC could handle uncompressed footage? and if so, what software would do it? Any ideas how much an online might cost and any good places to look into for it? Thanks for your input,

Steve