THE FUTURE OF SUPER 8

[Dcm]

One person's poison is another's antidote. "Archangel" and "Careful" are two of my most favorite films, precisely for their obtuse and surreal approach to narrative and mood. The fine line between technique and style is a vague one... and of course one doesn't imply the other... but in a pinch I'll take style. And there IS a certain technique to his shooting. He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. But it's rather non-conventional. If he were simply being lazy, then every amatuer would accidentally be making Guy Maddin films in their spare time... until they learned a trick or two.

As far as financial distasters go... He's not in it for the money, so if people are willing to continue to pay him to make films, who's to say he shouldn't keep shooting? His budgets are far lower than those the faux-indy houses wield...

[Sparky]

I meant Careful

Mark

[Lex colby]

all this " one day there will be this & there will be that etc etc .. " !
will someone just invent a magic box that can transfer s8 film straight from the cam into my NLE without any fuss or waiting - thats all I ask!!
oh & that HD becomes so saturated in the motion picture market that it pushes 35 mm cameras & stock out of the industry & into the bargin bins - lets only dream - every cloud has a silver lining :lol:
These amazing S8 cams are 10 a penny - a projector cheap as chips also.
this is why there is a a thriving s8 scene still going on - its cheap & fun - it will only get cheaper - lets hope the same of 35 mm :twisted: - in the day when we have super hd projectors & super hd cam's - film will probably be useless but - i would still go hunt for the odd real film cinema down the side alley :lol:

[Santo]

Give the Guy a break- hes doing it

Mark

True enough, I'm being too hard on the Guy...he's a lot more sincere and genuine than most Canadian filmmakers. He went through his fair share of years of rejection and despair, unlike most of the fakes we've got around here who built a career based on personal connections and political game-playing alone. And I do enjoy the goofiness of his stuff and seeing people I know in his films, and who produced his films.

[mattias]

hey, did i say i thought it was wrong to use super 8 for it's "crap qualities"? no i didn't, and i use super 8 for those reasons a lot myself. i was just pointing out a fact that seemed relevant since people started talking about image quality and pressure plates...

/matt

[Scotness]

hey, did i say i thought it was wrong to use super 8 for it's "crap qualities"? no i didn't, and i use super 8 for those reasons a lot myself. i was just pointing out a fact that seemed relevant since people started talking about image quality and pressure plates...

/matt

Yeah I agree - I think if you try and push Super 8 to it's upper limit you soon come to the conclusion that you might as well shoot 16mm for a whole lot of reasons - and so then you just accept Super 8 for what it is - and to get the most out of it you need all the crappy qualities of it because that's what adds the most to the films that suit that kind of look - rough, gritty etc.

Scot

[Santo]

I think there is a significant difference in crossing that line between embracing the beauty of film texture and grain and feel and purposely degrading your images to try and fake like it's a trashed out print from the 1920's or somebody's ineptly shot home movie. There's an honest beauty to the first approach, and implicit deception in the latter and it becomes gimmicky really fast.

The difference, Mattias, can be seen in your short LAST ONE IN IS A ROTTEN EGG. You did indeed shoot it on Super 8 K40, so it has that "lost memory" time displacement quality, but you didn't try and degrade the image so it looked like somebody shot it really badly as a home movie. You tried to make it look as good as it could within the limitations of what it is. It embraces the format and film stock combination for what it is. It's not trying to pretend it's something it's not. It sounds like a similar honest film texture approach is being used for this feature you've mentioned a couple of times, which I would like to see if I get a chance.

Yeah, I think there is a big difference between the two approaches in terms of philosophy. A big difference in pushing super 8 as film and pushing super 8 as crap.

Trying to pretend super 8 is 35mm is also a mistake, and something I never advocate. And, if you think about it, not at all what people like Daniel are doing in his groundbreaking historically significant Chilian government-sponsored V2 100t/Beaulieu with prime lenses/2k transfer experimental short feature trying to make super 8 look as good as it can. No, this is a move to optimize super 8 and the beautiful qualities of shooting on film that it emphasizes more than other formats while shedding the severe limitations and restrictions that K40 imposes.

That's the future of super 8.

[mattias]

I think there is a significant difference in crossing that line between embracing the beauty of film texture and grain and feel and purposely degrading your images to try and fake like it's a trashed out print from the 1920's or somebody's ineptly shot home movie.

i completely agree. i just don't put any judgement into it. if a trashy look is what people want, super 8 is an excellent tool, and if they want a "timeless film look" on a budget, it's also pretty good, as well as plenty of other applications. in flatliners they even used it to create a video look. go figure.

/matt

[audadvnc]

I think there is a significant difference in crossing that line between embracing the beauty of film texture and grain and feel and purposely degrading your images to try and fake like it's a trashed out print from the 1920's or somebody's ineptly shot home movie.

i completely agree. i just don't put any judgement into it. if a trashy look is what people want, super 8 is an excellent tool, and if they want a "timeless film look" on a budget, it's also pretty good, as well as plenty of other applications. in flatliners they even used it to create a video look. go figure.

/matt

As a sometime practitioner of this "trick", I must disagree with the argument that stressed development and intentional degradation is an inherently bad practise. Any technique used solely for novelty or fashion is guilty of shallow thought; the technique itself is not to blame, rather the intent and performance of that technique. How many bad wah-wah guitar solos have we heard in our lives? Do they negate the work of a Jimi Hendrix or Jorma Kaukonen, who elevated that cheap technique to the level of art?

The same goes with film techniques; is stressed development bad, but skip bleach or sepia toning good? These techniques help the viewer break out of their awareness of the present and perhaps see the past in a different way.

I attended an archival film transfer yesterday where some of the old Ektachrome reels were showing severe reticulation and emulsion breakdown; my initial reaction was disappointment at the film's condition, but upon further viewing I gained a deeper appreciation for the images; not only were they old, but the degraded character of the images reinforced the impression that the events of the film occurred in a time and place that is swiftly receding from our awareness. The people shown in the film, if even still alive today, are not the same as before. Instead of merely viewing someone else's old home movies, I was struggling to see through the imperfect glass of memory to learn a little bit more about these people and, perhaps, myself.

The extra effort involved in deciphering the images requires a bit more commitment from the viewer, and draws the viewer into a more personal relationship with the work. We as filmmakers can legitmately use this technique, among others, as part of our palette to connect with our audience.

[Santo]

Any technique used solely for novelty or fashion is guilty of shallow thought; the technique itself is not to blame, rather the intent and performance of that technique.

We're on the same page. You're advocating film texture and extreme distressing techniques for authentic sincere artistic purposes. Big difference in my opinion between that and the hackneyed pseudo-home movie feel in mainstream features and fake bad old film so it looks cool approach which should have died out decades ago in music videos and Michael Bay and clone-hacks. Probably this is part of the reason I sit on the fence with Guy Maddin. He crosses that line too often into making everything about novelty and trying too hard to make it look like it's an old film from the 20's -- a fashion.

[mattias]

As a sometime practitioner of this "trick", I must disagree

watch your reply levels. who did you intend this for? the purpose of quoting is to tell which post you're commenting on.

/matt

[super8man]

If I may, the "trick" quote was intended to offend no one.

Who cares why he/she decided to use the quotes on the word trick? Neither of the previous two writers used this word in their posts so it is obviously the author's own suggestion that "trick" was not the right word he/she wanted but the best word he/she had available at the time.

For future, would all internet writers please refer to the following source for use as a standard reference:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

Thank you. You may all resume your "egregious" posting styles.

Later,
m

[MovieStuff]

I think there is a significant difference in crossing that line between embracing the beauty of film texture and grain and feel and purposely degrading your images to try and fake like it's a trashed out print from the 1920's or somebody's ineptly shot home movie. There's an honest beauty to the first approach, and implicit deception in the latter and it becomes gimmicky really fast.

I understand your feeling. One of my gripes is Pro8mm's way of promoting Super 8 by pointing out all the movies and music videos that use Super 8 as an indicator that super 8 is now a "professional" medium when, in reality, virtually all the users they refer to bastardize the image and make it look worse than it has to as opposed to as good as it can be.

Probably this is part of the reason I sit on the fence with Guy Maddin. He crosses that line too often into making everything about novelty

But, for the sake of argument, isn't making one's film "novel" the ultimate goal of all film makers? In some ways I guess it should be but, then again, one could simply shake the camera around and scream in the mic and that would be novel, though not very intelligent and certainly not clever. Perhaps that is the key. A film should be clever in its approach to being novel as opposed to being lazy and predictable. Hard to define. Interesting thread......

Roger

[Santo]

With regards to the post from audadvnc, because he puts it in the same catagorization as fashion as being guilty of shallow thought. If something is shallow in thought, its chances of being a novelty (as in being original) is very slim except for pure luck. The more shallow something is, the more derivative it seems to be when it comes to art or even mass entertainment.

Likely he's refering to it in terms of an alternate definition of novelty. Like: "a decoration of color or interest that is added to relieve plainness" which is what fashion mostly is. As Maddin's use of appropriating 1920's film techniques is hardly a novelty in any original sense, it is more closely catagorized as being a novelty in a fashion sense.

The case for Guy Maddin is not that far removed from you, Roger, if you based an entire career of half a dozen features and over a dozen shorts on the techniques you used for JET BENNY. It's clever on its own, but if you just kept using the same appropriated retro "fashion" over and over and injected some stuff about your personal life into it and end up getting 3.5 million to do a feature with an international celebrity in it and a network broadcast made for TV feature as well, is it particularly novel to do that? I think there's a difference between a true original film artist and somebody who does that. But I'm starting to lapse into critiquing Guy Maddin again, and I guess I don't want to do that.

[MovieStuff]

I guess this begs the question, "What is style?"

I know a director here that creates projects with questionable results. I once asked someone very close to him about the director's haphazard method of working that resulted in such lackluster products. The reply was, "That's just his style, I guess." But I disagree. Making the same mistake over and over isn't "style", especially when better options are repeatedly presented to him that he ignores. Instead, it is simply an example of someone fighting for the right to remain ignorant.

Likewise, someone that keeps using the same "look" in all film efforts is akin to a comedian that keeps telling the same joke to the same audience. It isn't "style". It is just repetition born out of a lack of originality and to keep repeating the same joke in hopes of lightning striking twice is fairly pointless. I really admired "Dances with Wolves" but am amused at Cosner's attempts to try and repeat his success without having a clue what he did right the first time around. That is why failure is such a valuable part of the learning process. People that luck into success generally have a hard time of it later on when they are expected to perform on demand because they really don't have control over the medium. I see the same thing happen in music, as well. One hit wonders.

Roger