Going for a look in Pro8mm 800ASA (realmedia link)

Konton · Post by **Konton** » Thu Oct 24, 2002 11:38 pm

The Super8mm Militia is soon going to attempt to make a silent 18fps B&W short film at night using negative film. Actually, I don't know about the B&W part. The film is supposed to me more of a suspense type film. I'd like it to look grainy and washed out with a lot of dust specs. I plan to crop the top and bottom so ti appears widescreen.

In preparation to do this I had to go back and look at some tests I did a few years ago. The footage was scratched up and shot on Pro8mm 640ASA stock at 24fps. I used my Goko TC-20, a Sony DXC-M3 tube camera, and a Sony Multi Color Corrector XV-700. I think in post we will actually use a Workprinter with a 3CCD camera and invert and color correct using Adobe Premiere.

Anyway for fun I thought I'd post the bad transfer. The images are not sharp as I was in the process of cleaning my house, drinking, and watching TV at the time, but it's nice to see what a high ASA can do.

The beginning of the film just shows the San Francisco lights from above (I was on a friends balcony). The end shows my ex in the subways of San Francisco. Again, this was done with 640ASA. They don't sell that anymore at Pro8mm so we'll be using 800ASA for our film. Plus we'll be shooting at 18fps so we should get just a little more light in that respect.

http://www.super8mm.org/media.ram

The file is streaming, but it's 18 megs so I don't plan to leave it up for long. It's about 3:30 minutes. Please let me know what you think of the look.

Post by **mattias** » Fri Oct 25, 2002 1:05 am

wow, that was encouraging. sure, the transfer was really soft, but the grain wasn't too bad and the image had quite a lot of sharpness. much better than i had expected after my experiences with the faster stocks in 16mm. i never had the guts to try anything faster than vision 200t in super-8, but i'm shooting a music video on super-8 soon and i'll try to get the budget for using some negative. most of it is night exteriors in fairly well lit urban environments, and i want to get that documentary "non lit" look. my plan was to shot k40 dusk for night and maybe use a battery powered halogen fill light on the camera, but this seems like a better idea. thanks.

/matt

Post by **Konton** » Fri Oct 25, 2002 6:44 pm

mattias wrote:wow, that was encouraging. sure, the transfer was really soft, but the grain wasn't too bad and the image had quite a lot of sharpness.

I think actually the softness was caused by the tube camera and the compression software. It looks better on the monitor when I play it from my miniDV tape. Now if I can just get a 3CCD camera and equipment that uses S-Video or better.

mattias wrote:most of it is night exteriors in fairly well lit urban environments, and i want to get that documentary "non lit" look. my plan was to shot k40 dusk for night and maybe use a battery powered halogen fill light on the camera, but this seems like a better idea. thanks.

Well that was 640 ASA. I'm sure 800 ASA at 18fps will give a much better view of the city at night. And in the subways I won't need to keep the iris all the way open. I mainly wanted to use 800 ASA on Super 8mm because we're just running around the city, and lugging a big 16mm camera, or light for that matter, would be a bit conspicuous.