Flicker #6

Welcome to Flicker #6, tonight is exciting for several reasons. First of all, this is our 1 year anniversary, and what a year it's been. Our good friends at Local 506 have let us come in every other month to screen (including tonight) around 80 films! I'm dreaming of a video compilation of the best of the first year of Flicker in Chapel Hill.

The Only Stable Thing is Motion, by Jennifer Page
The two things I'm concerned about at this moment are getting this written in time to fax to Norwood, and Hurricane Felix possibly hammering us down here at Carolina Beach. I hope my trip up to Chapel Hill doesn't coincide with evacuation to my parents house in Durham. Nevertheless, I find the energy associated with hurricanes and the like very inspiring.
The loop I am screening tonight is based on those kind of elemental phenomena. Things being done and undone, simultaneous motion and stability - a Top for example. The last Flicker program mentioned something about unsplit 8mm. This loop is an example. This piece is shot with an 8mm camera that had a single frame button. I devised a system of registration tabs inside the camera to butt the end of the film against so I would know exactly which frame I was shooting on. I would shoot single frame blacking out every other frame and come back and shoot a different image on the unexposed frames. Shooting on the other side, the camera is turned upsidedown so it all ends upward on the screen. The end result if four separate images going on at once. The film is four times as short - a 45 second loop from one 3 minute roll of film.
I was glad to read in the last Flicker that Kodachrome Reg. 8 is still available. I love the rich color of Kodachrome, particularly the Reds. In my film "Bicycles", screened at Flicker #4, I went to ridiculous lengths to try to get the look of Kodachrome in this little piece inspired by found home movie footage. A man riding a bike toward the camera probably filmed by his lady friend and vice-versa. I made a loop out of each of these, being different in length and played them together. This gave me a looped image that ran for a long time without repeating itself. To add even more variety, I made the loops mobius loops, so the loop switches left to right orientation every time it goes through the projector. I liked the rhythm this created and reproduced these loops by optically printing them onto 16mm color negative stock then editing normally after that. I could have used a regular optical printer that was at this film workshop in New York City called Millennium, but it was electronic and shot one frame automatically at a steady pace. The loops were very fragile, basically falling apart, covered in splicing tape and wouldn't make it through the machine without constantly jamming, so a home made version had to be used. Basically all an optical printer is, is a movie camera mounted on a frame facing a projector. The camera has a bellows with the lens on it that can be zoomed in or out to shoot the full frame or crop the frame and shoot a detail. The progector lacklights the film and the camera focuses directly on the film, not a projection. You can also shoot Reg. 8 or Super 8 onto 16mm using the printer. The home made version was a blacked out room, a 1940 Keystone projector, and a 16mm Bolex reflex. A hand winder from a very old 16mm projector was bolted on the sprocket wheel of the projector. The film was advanced one frame at a time by hand and shot single frame in the Bolex. I made these films while I was living in New York between 91-93. I shot a lot of stuff with a 1940 16mm Keystone camera I got from my grandparents. I collaborated on most of the films with Robert Flanagan who's still making films in N.Y. I want to thank him and his parents for making these films possible, even a short film can get costly, but it's worth it. Thank you Norwood for inviting me to screen these pieces. The Flicker show is great.

To insert a Super 8 film cartridge into a rear-loading Super 8 camera, you just slip in the cartridge so that the cartridge opening is toward the lens and the cartridge label is visible through the window on the side of the camera. If you have a side-loading camera, insert the cartridge with the opening toward the lens, and securely seat the cartridge in the camera with the cartridge lable up.

What I Remember About Super 8 Sound, by Peyton Reed

I got my first Super 8 camera when I was 13. It was Christmas 1978, and the first film I ever shot was some bad stop-motion animation with Star Wars acrion figures. The camera was a low-end fixed focus silent Bell & Howell with auto exposure and no single-frame capability. Over a two year period, I made a dozen or so short films: stuff like "The $10,000,000 Boy", "Attack on Pearl Harbor", and "Here's My Dog".
I also got a projector. I broke out my paper route money and decided to splurge on a Chinon 4100: a Super 8 sound projector! True, I hadn't made and sound films to show on it, byt in those pre-VCR days, the only way to watch your favorite movies over and over again (or at least 'selected scenes') was to buy the 200 foot or 400 foot Super 8 versions. I had Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Superman the Movie, Jaws, and a bunch more. They were full color and beautiful monophonic sound -- and to this day, there's still something about watching these films on a projector with the lights out that a VCR just can't match. Two years later, I got a Nikon 8x Super Zoom: still a silent camera, but with a much better lens, variable speed control, and at last: single frame capability. My animation got better, the images were sharper, and I started to realize you could get A's on school projects just by doing films instead of papers. I did probably a dozen more shorts before I started feeling like something was missing: Sound!
I bought another camera -- this time a Chinon Sound model. It had a decent lens, a telescoping microphone, and standard magstripe recording capabilities. Admittedly, it did open up a whole new realm of possibilities, but it also brought with it some drawbacks.
The first thing I notice about my early sound films is how much the picture quality sucked -- not because of the lens, but because I was so fascinated by havbing sound that I wasn't concentrating very hard on the picture. sound limits your shooting flexibility. "How so I hide the mike cable?" "Will the mike pick up the actors?" "I wish I had a few more people to help." "Oh yeah, I can't talk while I'm shooting..."
And then there's the editing. If you're cutting with a Super 8 splicer/editor, remember: the sound on the magstripe is about a foot ahead of the picture! When you make a picture cut, you might also be cutting the end or beginning of someone's line. If you cut to accommodate the dialogue, you sacrifice the pacing of the scene.
So what are the options? You can record sound on your projector! Most Super 8 sound projectors also have recording capabilities. Some are pretty basic, others are quite sophisticated. Either way, it presents several possibilities. You can 'loop' your actors' lines. If you've cut your sound film the way you want it, the magstripe is still intact and can be recorded over. Simply bring your actors in, run the film a few times, hand them the mike and let them redo their lines as they watch the picture. Obviously there's a sizeable margin for error, but it's magnetic tape -- do it again and again and again until you get it right.
Music can be recorded by the projector in the same way. Just be careful. If there's not enough of a preroll on the projector, the recorded sound can get kind of stretchy -- giving music or dialogue a bizarre wavering sound. I have the films to prove it.
Another option is to shoot on Super 8, transfer picture and sound to video, and edit on tape. Talk to the people at Yale Lab in Los Angeles or consult your Flicker guidebook for other transfer houses who also have sound transfer capabilities.
The bottom line is: for a dialogue-heavy low-budget production, shooting on videotape starts to make a lot of sense. What you sacrifice, of course, is that look that only film can give you. A few enterprising filmmakers have decided to combine the best of both worlds: shooting their scenes simultaneously on Super 8 (silent or sound) and videotape. Why?
Your Super 8 will provide the picture and your home video camera will provide the sound. (In the case of most of today's video cameras, it'll be stereo and/ or digital sound!) You'll be editing on videotape, so transfer your Super 8 to video and transfer your videotaped audio to another videotape. This way you can sync the two elements up on your master cutting tape: with a beautiful Super 8 look and crystal-clear stereo audio.
There are a bunch of other options, too numerous to go into here. One example: There are plenty of low-budget features that have been shot entirely on Super 8 using a Nagra sound recorder just like 35mm movies do. (You must have a crystal-sync camera to do this!) There are also cheaper mini-Nagras available. Ask Lloyd's camera in LA or once again, consult your Flicker guide. Whatever you decide to do, sound or silent: Keep shooting film!

Super 8 movie film is 8mm wide. You can shoot the entire 50 feet of film without reloading.

Film-speed notch
Super 8 film cartridges have film-speed notches that automatically set the correct film speed when the cartridge is inserted in a super 8 camera with automatic exposure control.