My experimental Super 8 film "Silly Billy"

[Nicholas Kovats]

I have now uploaded my experimental 1995 film "Silly Billy" starring my infant son, fireworks and various bands such as Shadowy Man From A Shadowy Planet. I have retained the original 1995 edit reflecting my then obsessions with film grain, macro body parts, explosive color and time exposure. My 2010 edit involved a switch of two musical pieces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgROUdRU7Sw or http://vimeo.com/25466819

Technical:

I utilized the German Leicina (Leica) Special Super 8 camera with the superb optics of the Schnieder 10mm Cinegon Macro.

The combination of manual time exposure ( 3 seconds per frame) in conjunction with interval of 0.5 seconds between frames produced what I called the Francis Bacon Screaming Pope effect. I shot close to 300-500 frames that evening of various musicians at Sneaky Dee's long ago. The organic "fluid-ness" was produced by the long exposures which froze people in approximately three positions interconnected my "streaks" in each frame. The same technique was utilized regarding the fireworks but in glorious Kodachrome. My infant son was a labour of love captured by handheld macro shots.

The slow motion effect was achieved by setting the transfer playback at approximately 5 frames per second in the film/digital transfer bay.

ENCODING:

Codec = MainConcept AVC ACC MPEG4
VBR = 20Mbps
PIXEL = 1.00000 (square)


Cheers!

Nicholas Kovats
Toronto, Canada

[fairchild]

I miss Sneaky Dee's...I played there a few years back

Really great stuff...nice job

Joe

[Nicholas Kovats]

Thanks for the compliments, Joe. Yes...good old Sneaky Dees! Do you also reside in the Toronto area and are you also shooting Super 8?

[fairchild]

I'm just over the border in Niagara Falls USA.I haven't been up there since they changed the passport laws a few years back.I remember back in the day getting through customs with my high school ID and spending the day up there....those days are long gone

And yes I shoot super 8 and 16

If your ever down here you should check out squeaky wheel in Buffalo...lots of good stuff going on there 8) http://www.squeaky.org

Ive been meaning to get up there and check out Niagara Custom Lab.Have you ever gone there?
Keep up the good stuff
Joe

[Nicholas_C]

Really enjoyed that, nice work.
Bet it looks great projected.....

[Nicholas Kovats]

I haven't been to Buffalo since the late Eighties, Joe! Does it still have that neutrino bomb afterglow?

Good stuff on the continued shooting. We are all film nuts. We should be all shooting HD instead.

I will check out your link.

Niagara Custom Labs does all my Super 8 color negative stuff. In fact they are the only ones in Canada. I suspect they are swamped with processing orders. For example I have been told that they are the last place where you can get a 16mm film print in NA.

They also cross-process E100D and Plus/Tri-x into negatives. In face Sebastian will process almost anything. He is an experimental filmmaker himself.

I recently met his assistant and he is a really sharp guy. They need some quality control on their head/tail Super 8 film negatives re: electrostatic buildup whereby "lint" ? gets processed and is visible. But some people love the look of freshly processed color negative with these "characteristics".

I have been promising myself a full examination of the Avisynth script for some time. Freddy P.'s stuff is jaw dropping. Alas a 64 bit version is not forthcoming from what I understand,

[Nicholas Kovats]

I haven't been to Buffalo since the late Eighties, Joe! Does it still have that neutrino bomb afterglow?

Good stuff on the continued shooting. We are all film nuts. We should be all shooting HD instead.

I will check out your link.

Niagara Custom Labs does all my Super 8 color negative stuff. In fact they are the only ones in Canada. I suspect they are swamped with processing orders. For example I have been told that they are the last place where you can get a 16mm film print in NA.

They also cross-process E100D and Plus/Tri-x into negatives. In face Sebastian will process almost anything. He is an experimental filmmaker himself.

I recently met his assistant and he is a really sharp guy. They need some quality control on their head/tail Super 8 film negatives re: electrostatic buildup whereby "lint" ? gets processed and is visible. But some people love the look of freshly processed color negative with these "characteristics".

I have been promising myself a full examination of the Avisynth script for some time. Freddy P.'s stuff is jaw dropping. Alas a 64 bit version is not forthcoming from what I understand.