Polavision?

[audadvnc]

Or was he a vampire? Bar owners hated having the Beatles visit their establishments because the minute they left all the energy was sucked out of the room.

[peaceman]

Another specialty with Polavision not mentioned yet here is that it sis "line based". Like Polachrome (the 35mm equivalent for foto cameras) the film is made with vertical lines, red/green/blue next to each other, and a kind of bw-shade across these. This makes the illusion of color -- similar to a TV. I think the special challenge of telecining this might be interference between the line's resolution and the ccd resolution as well as codecs "stumbling" over the structure.

However, its projectable pretty well, never had problems in my t610 with it.

[peaceman]

Here is a frame I captured with my D-SLR from a Polavision roll:


You can see the stripes when magnified: (Thats the nose)

[downix]

All this got me to thinking, could one load up a polavision cart with regular S8 film?

[aj]

Depends on thickness of the film and sensitivity to breaking of the cartridge when fiddling with it. And you are very much restricted to home-processing. Which lab accepts snippets or modified lengths? It may disturb the processing machine content and wreck other people's films too.

[MoonstruckProductions]

I transferred about 1000 feet of this stuff a couple months ago. There were no chemical packets that I remember. The carts break open pretty easily and, once I placed the film on to an empty reel, the transfer process was the same as super 8.

The only problem, as mentioned above, is that the vertical lines cause interlace flicker when you use sharp focus. After focusing I simply backed off the focus slightly until the lines dissapeared.

The worst part about the film (1978-1979) was that it had a lot of horrible spots on it. I guess that stuff doesn't last like Kodachrome.

-Scott

[wado1942]

Beware, the film is very dense and high contrast so it will not transfer well to video!

[etimh]

Some actual examples of transferred Polavision films here:

http://www.polanoid.net

Go to "about polanoid" and then "movies." Very strange stuff that I've always thought would be fun to play around with.

Tim

[James E]

I don't remember where, but I saw on this firms web site that one of the specific services they offer is transfer of Polavision tapes. They also specifically mention that they remove it from it's cartidge to do so. Google Polavision transfer and several sites will come up that offer it.

[Jim Carlile]

Having said that,though,Polavision footage HAS been BLOWN UP to 35mm successfully.The film "Imagine",the documentary about the life of John Lennon had some Polavision footage as well as half inch reel to reel videotape,Betamax,VHS, super 8,regular 8 and 16mm home movie and news/doc footage of various times in the life of the singer.

Watched the dvd, what a "great" documentary and how they creatively edited John's old audio interviews as though he narrated the film. It was an editor's nightmare though since they had to chop it down to 1 hr 45 mins from 160 hrs worth of various film/video material.

I had an old friend who actually supervised the editing for that film. I think his name's on the credits, still. Apparently, there was a tremendous amount of S8 footage that they went through, but the producers were jerks and idiots who wouldn't use the best stuff, only the most mundane. And security was tight tight tight-- nobody could take anything for posterity.

I heard there was some amazing stuff that never made it into the movie. I mean absolutely speechless footage. And tons and tons of it.

You know, at one time in the early 70's John and Yoko were supposedly responsible for almost 10% of the daily output of the Kodak Rochester lab-- that's how much S8 they shot. They documented everything for a good number of years, and were very early users of Ektasound cartridges.

Polavision ruined Eumig and Polaroid. Land spent hundreds of millions of dollars-- it was his baby, and it ruined his reputation as well. Polavision was DOA when it came out. It's considered one of the great industrial follies of the 20th century.

[James E]

All this got me to thinking, could one load up a polavision cart with regular S8 film?

I don't see why not. Polavision tapes have the same perf pitch as S8. Plus we reload Kaccemas. And people have been reloading Kodak sound carts for some time with some success. Try it out. I belive it's 38.5'. And Polavision tape, I belive, is thicker than Ektachrome. So you may be able to get slightly more in there. Use and old home movie and spool it in there untill it's full then measure it out to see exactly how much fits. Wouldn't that be way cool it the Poliavision camers could be used again. Even some of the high speed ones.

[MoonstruckProductions]

You can try to load super 8 in a polavision cart if you have a lot of extra time on your hands, but I don't see it reviving anything. The carts are glued together and have to be broken open. Even if you had the patience to take an exacto around it, how would you close it up again?

The other pain the arse is the fact that the polavision film is wound through a crap load of thin metal pieces and springs that keep it on track. They bend easily when you remove the polavision film and I don't know how feasible it would be to try and re-assemble the entire contraption. Honestly, it's worse than taking apart a VHS or audio cassette tape that has broken and tried to fix it and put it back together again.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would take a lot of patience.

-Scott