Mission (almost) Impossible

[S8 Booster]

a while back i shot 3 S8 carts as a supplementary activity at a CD release party. when i arrived there i realised that the light was marginal for shooting film and there was no way to boost it so i just had to give it a try.

several mistakes later the results became visible. however, that said i think the films came out surprisingly good the dim light conditions considered.

films used were all somewhat outdated: tri-x (or plus x i have to check), Fuji F500 and Kodak 500T V3.

cams were Canon 1014XLS, CANON 310XL, Beaulieu 5008 MS in the same order to the films.

intended for 25 FPS PAL I should have shot 24 fps not 18 - would have given less visual grainage on the colour films and the possibility to use 1:1 transfer with less speed correction. the 310 would have been ruled out which would be silly too.

the was a strange sound sync issue with the B cam as it was strikingly slow to wind up after start making lip sync start point tricky.

here is a few RAW clips for reference. intercut with the Sony latest gen video cam. will go quite sync from song start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66phL_tYl4w
sound recording by Sony video cam.

here is samples from all 3 films and cams just put together with no sync just over sync track, plan is to intercut with the video master take if the project materialises:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvowlyxN0fE
dont mind the out of context everything - it is for evaluation only.
the film clips repeats after 6 minutes.
sound recording by iPhone table top.

operating 4 cams simoultanesly had some impact.


shoot..

[Will2]

The Super 8 looks great; no mistaking that it's Super 8 but light definitely stuck to it.

Did you multitrack audio record this? A well mixed soundtrack would make all the difference in the world. There are some great 16 and 24 channel digital audio recorders/mixers available from Zoom and other companies under $500 that are small, portable & would have worked great.

[S8 Booster]

hi.

no, i did no multitrack recording which i later did regret for several reasons but the musicians did a off mixer recording which will be added to the edit later for improving the sound quality..

the shoot was never properly planned, it was a run n gun job but i later realised that a multi track recorder would have saved me a hell of a lot of job, i could even have done a syncing track for each cam (pulse or simply run) to identify each cam. if ill ever do something like this again there will be a multi track recorder in the picture for sure.

yes it is S8 for sure. i am pleased that it came out so well it in the dim light conditions. i was very anxious that it would be rather useless due to bad exposure.
i just shot it wide open with all 3 cams.

the artist was very satisfied to see the "warmth" in the film takes compared to all video takes so i was pleased with that.

when i start the proper editing job i may intercut just shorter clips with the video "master" but i am still so pleased with the S8 results that i may use most of it.
when the S8 takes are speed corrected they will become less intensive in the jumpiness, shot at 18 and partly 9 fps, transferred at 1:1 25 fps.

originally i planned just very short intercuts with S8 but since the takes came out so good as it did i am going to use the most of it taking away a little of the "surprise" factor 8mm normaly gives but that is OK.


shoot......

[carllooper]

The Super8 is great. It's holding the colours in the low light really well. Would definitely look great holding those shots for longer than you otherwise might in an edit.

C

[S8 Booster]

tnx Carl.

the actual use of S8 edited on to a/the video, there are 3 video films available has been one of my concerns.

in usual "music videos" there are mostly ultra short inserts which sort of seems to be intended for "magic shifts".

my intentions were originally to use only shorter "inserts" (but not ultra short music video style) to create a different "mood" here and there.
however, as the S8 takes was mostly quite close ups and reasonably goodes so to i am sort of stuck in a dilemma but i believe i will use longer S8 sequences but with quite short video inserts to add more "life" to the total.

here and there some edits/transits will be added to disguise camera unrest, movements, zoom etc so i hope to manage a good balance and rythm in the edit.


i hoped that RedShark got their Lightworks NLE editor ready for MAC this job but they havent so i may have to bootcamp one of my MACs to run win or linux for this project.
it is the only NLE which fits my requirements and which i like because it adds efficient flixibility.

surprisingly the new iMovie had a feature which was quite good for syncronizing. it was quite easy to stretch or crimp the clip to fit in sync but it seems to have a "wind in" function which allows some flexiblre extra front/end speed adjustment without altering the speed of the whole clip.

damn you red shark....


shoot........

[S8 Booster]

Just pasting the link to the original music video opening cut (the short sample i posted) so you can get a more true impression of the performance.

This is not my work though.....
http://youtu.be/Hv3PrqKVExg

Shoot....

[S8 Booster]

just uploaded the shortest synced clip to Vimeo to compare YT vs Vimeo. Here the Vimeo version looks better to me, the grain seems more smoothed out and more the imagery more balanced . pleasant? , in my view moticably better.

Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/82288023

YT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66phL_tYl4w

The original has quite sharp grain but it flows and smooths out well at 24 fps, Unfortunately i shot at 18 fps so each frame seems "stamped" out to be observed one by one in a way.
I still like it though... film you know.....


Shoot....