Super 8 vs 16mm Costs...

[perthskydiver]

Do you think the costs of running Super 8 is too high? Sure the cameras are cheap & they mostly run on AA batteries which are cheap too but look at the film, processing & telecine costs when compared to 16mm. You'd expect 16mm to be a fair bit more expensive given its a larger gauge.

Now i'm going on the prices of Super8Sound...
6 rolls of neg Super 8 Film with processing & telecine (total 15mins of footage) to mini DV costs: US$438.00

5 rolls of neg Super 16mm film with processing & telecine (total 15mins of footage) to mini DV costs: US$395.00

Now dont get me wrong, I love super 8 & the cameras look super cool & its a great format, but wouldn't you expect the super 8 costs to be cheaper than 16mm?........

[christoph]

Now dont get me wrong, I love super 8 & the cameras look super cool & its a great format, but wouldn't you expect the super 8 costs to be cheaper than 16mm?........

it all depends what you want to do with your films:

if you want to shoot on negative stock and have a high quality telecine transfer made the cost wil ne near equal with 16mm havig a huge quality advantage....

if you want to shoot reversal film for projection or home video transfer, super8 (specially K40 and the b/w stocks if you process them yourself) will be a lot cheaper... like 15mins of K40 results in about 80 euros.

++ christoph ++

[super8man]

a HUGE difference for me (with small kids) is that I can take my super 8's anywhere. The thought of hefting my small Scoopic 16 is too much. Once that's accounted for, I simply enjoy the projection aspect of super 8. When I start to do 16mm (I have not yet but am ready with film,etc) the thought of a huger (sic) projector in the small room will take a bit to get used to.

[Nigel]

I think S8 is more expensive than 16.....That is a small part as to why I have shot less and less of it over the years. It isn't so much the cost of the film it is processing and post-production that seems to me to be the drawback. The lack of film stocks doesn't help.

I will always try to work S8 into projects and now that the processing and post-production field is appears to be getting slowly deeper maybe prices will come down.....

Good Luck

[Santo]

Shooting the negative stocks, there is no cost advantage. In many cases it costs more.

Shooting the reversals that are not 7240, there is a significant savings. This is because 7240 costs twice as much to develop as the black and whites. It costs the same as the negatives to develop. Negatives also must be digitized for editing on Rank or Spirit or other expensive machines that charge on an hourly basis.

With K40, Plus-X, Tri-X, costs are 2/3 or less of shooting in 16mm, provided you've done your homework.

How?

K40 developing is inconvenient time-wise, but cheaper than any other film medium if you buy directly from Kodak.

Here in Toronto, I get my Plus-X developed for $10 Canadian a roll at the Black and White film factory. Cheapest price on the planet unless you're developing it yourself. Anybody get their standard roll of 16mm black and white developed cheaper? Not without doing some haggling.

Big savings? Roger's fantastic Workprinter. Transfer you film at a first rate provider like Forever on DVD in Ottawa that uses a broadcast camera and you'll get frame accurate, surprisingly sharp images for edit.

Then be smart and do a physical edit of the footage yourself and either then blow up to 16mm/35mm or a Rank or Spirit transfer of the edited film in Beta SP for film festivals. Or not in the last case -- it's rather surprising how good a workprinter/broadcast camera gets.

So shooting on negative stock or Extachrome 7240? No cost savings compared to 16mm and even a little more in the case of negative.

Shooting on reversal, play it smart and a significant cost savings is yours over 16mm.

[MattPacini]

Shooting Super 8 is only cheaper than 16mm if you are going to either project it yourself, or own a workprinter, or some other way to skip telecine, especially for small projects, since you will either be paying a gate rental fee, or dealing with Super 8 Sound, which I do not suggest, outrageous prices being just one reason.

Also, Super 8 is only cheaper if you're shooting Kodachrome 40, as was mentioned before.

This assumes you are getting discounted 16mm stock (short ends & recands mainly), the benefit being that you actually CAN get discounted film in 16mm, and not in Super 8.

And depending on what you're doing, the cameras are not that much more expensive either, and the footage you shoot, (all other factors being equal) looks probably about 600% better.

Matt Pacini

[downix]

Shooting Super 8 is only cheaper than 16mm if you are going to either project it yourself, or own a workprinter, or some other way to skip telecine, especially for small projects, since you will either be paying a gate rental fee, or dealing with Super 8 Sound, which I do not suggest, outrageous prices being just one reason.

Also, Super 8 is only cheaper if you're shooting Kodachrome 40, as was mentioned before.

This assumes you are getting discounted 16mm stock (short ends & recands mainly), the benefit being that you actually CAN get discounted film in 16mm, and not in Super 8.

And depending on what you're doing, the cameras are not that much more expensive either, and the footage you shoot, (all other factors being equal) looks probably about 600% better.

Matt Pacini

I was actually planning on trying a scanup, using a high-end scanner to scan-in my Super8 film into the computer and work on it that way. Anyone else ever tried this?

[marc]

As Matt pointed out, don't use Super 8 sound ( pro 8mm ) as the benchmark for determining the cost of super 8 production. Their rates make a good subject for a horror movie!

[MattPacini]

downix, forget about it.
Lots of time and money have been wasted coming up with ways to use a flatbed scanner for scanning film.
Bad idea!
If video res. is OK, contact MovieStuff and get a Workprinter.

Matt Pacini

[downix]

downix, forget about it.
Lots of time and money have been wasted coming up with ways to use a flatbed scanner for scanning film.
Bad idea!
If video res. is OK, contact MovieStuff and get a Workprinter.

Matt Pacini

Fair enough.

Here's a poser, how would you go about "blowing up" frames so they can be edited via a computer?

[Santo]

As I'm sure Matt would answer (because he's been through the wringer on this and has a good idea what he's talking about):

"Blow up" refers only to optical blow up. You send your super 8 film to a lab and they blow it up to a larger gauge such as 16mm or 35mm.

Transfer to video for edit (DV, miniDV, BetaSP, digitalBeta) is accomplished by:

a) Workprinter (if a reversal stock -- impractical if negative because of a variety of factors easily found by a search on this site under "workprinter and negative"

b) Rank Cintel Transfer -- an old standby and now a step below

c) Spirit (and other cutting edge transfers whose names escape me at the moment) Look up "Flying Spot" in Seattle on the web for this next step in excellent film transfers to video for editing.

d) Do-it-yourself with a white sheet of paper or crappy old school telecine transfer and a camcorder. The worst solution by a considerable margin.

[downix]

@Santo

Actually, I don't want a video-transfer, I want images of each frame.

[Santo]

@Santo

Actually, I don't want a video-transfer, I want images of each frame.

My answer is still the right one. You stated "edit frames". Any of the methods I describe except the last DIY are the way to do it. All the frames in the "Pictures" section of this site were accomplished by one of these methods. A home scanner is a complete waste of time as has been demonstrated ad nauseam on this site.

[Brandt]

Downix,

Depending on how much money you want to put into this....
Get a Workprinter XP from Roger
Get a Sony PDX10 16:9 camera...high pixel count when recording to the pc, along the lines of 1152x864. See http://www.techshop.net/PDX-10/ for examples.

Edit your project in native resolution, export as a series of uncompressed image files.

Use S-Spline Pro and run the files as a batch to uprez them to the size of your choice.

Remember that your playback options become limited the higher you go.

You could also get a color calibrated Barco monitor running at 2048x1536, play your frames back on this display at full rez and recapture with a 16mm camera, but by the time you've done all this, you've spent more time and money than you would have just shooting 16mm in the first place.

[downix]

@Santo

Actually, I don't want a video-transfer, I want images of each frame.

My answer is still the right one. You stated "edit frames". Any of the methods I describe except the last DIY are the way to do it. All the frames in the "Pictures" section of this site were accomplished by one of these methods. A home scanner is a complete waste of time as has been demonstrated ad nauseam on this site.

The one issue with turning into a video stream is that then I'll have to extract the individual frames, drop it back down to 24fps, do the postproduction still work (all on a very-low resolution, mind you) then drop it back onto film, re-put it back onto video...

Almost worth it to project each frame and take an electronic shot of it with a high-res camera.