What cool trippy effects can I achieve with my Super8 Camera

[Jim T]

Hello

I am shooting a short film with a few buddies of mine soon and I would really like to use a camera technique that I have seen used in music videos a lot. I would like to include some of that frame rate fluctuation, jerkiness that I have seen used - I am sure there is a more technical term than mine!

I have borrowed a Nizo Pro and it seems that I can do some sort of interval timer technique whereby the shutter remains open for each capture until it has exposed the film, is that correct? If so, I would imagine that I could get some pretty trippy effects using this as well, no?

Any advice or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

You can see some examples of the cool effects in the Marilyn Manson video linked below, apologies for the music, feel free to turn it down when watching!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypkv0HeU ... =1&index=2

Thank you

[woods01]

You mean beyond the intense grain, golfball sized dirt and unstable frames that Super 8 naturally has?

Most music videos and commericals that have heavy camera effects use an array of special gadgets that will do weird focus pulls, camera shake, distortions and rampings. They'll also have heavy post budgets and manipulate the images then which is safer than doing it in camera.

I'm not familar with the Nizo cameras but AFIK you can shoot 54 fps to get some decent slow motion, the Auto B function can do some cool blurry shutter effects, you could also shoot at a slow frame rate like 9 or 12 fps and then correct the speed on your computer which will make movement very jerky.

There are also numerous filters you could put on you camera, or be more experimental and hold up an old warped piece of glass in front of the camera and move it around, or try vaseline on the lens (use a skylight filter for that one!).

If you want to be really fancy you could also experiment with mixed film stocks, push/pull processing, and cross processing.

[Jim T]

Thanks for your reply. I suppose that I just had to be inventive as the cameras are very basic tools with not that much room for madness in themselves.

One question that has been bugging is how to get achieve the wonderful burning sensation that can be seen at times over footage in super 8 films? I understand that every time the film is removed in bright light you lose a few frames and some light will most likely leak into a number of frames but how would you purposely achieve some nice burning for a few seconds?

I love the first 10 seconds or so of this super8 film where the image is bubbling nicely with reds and yellows. Oh and please excuse my terminology as I'm not au fait with the correct terms.

http://www.vimeo.com/11153293

Thank you

[Blue Audio Visual]

The film you linked to is Standard 8, it is much easier to achieve this effect (whether by accident or design) than with Super 8, as the film is on an open reel.

[Will2]

Standard 8mm film ( the precursor to Super 8 ) was a small 25' reel of 16mm film that was perforated with smaller sprocket holes. You'd run the film through once, exposing just one side of the film (8mm) then open up the camera and flip the film around to run it through again on the other side of the film. In processing it was split down the middle and spliced together to form one 50' 8mm film.

The process of opening up the camera exposes the film to light and generates that "burn out" effect (not to be confused with a projector burn). Its wildly unpredictable but can be done manually by simply opening the camera's film compartment just a little at strategic points in your filming.

It's harder to do with Super 8 due to the design of the film cartridge. Very little of the film is exposed at any one time.

[MovieStuff]

Standard 8mm film ( the precursor to Super 8 ) was a small 25' reel of 16mm film that was perforated with smaller sprocket holes. 8) .

The holes were the same size as the holes for 16mm but there were twice as many.

Roger

[Will2]

What he said.

You can get brand new film for those cameras here:

http://www.zerelda.com/internationalfil ... lfilm.html

[BK]

Shooting with "real' film and with experimenting with filters you can get some really funky effects in camera. But I also like editing and adding everything in post to get the results that I want, where I want it. Effects like film burns and fogging is one of my favorites, I just use my fogged bits off my transfered footage, combined them and slow them down and overlay it on top of the clip. I also like to shoot at high speed with a small shutter angle ( higher shutter speed ) and ramp the speed up fast and normal using my NLE for that stutter effect, or using jump cuts with a few fogged flash frames cutting from normal speed to slow-mo.

Lighting can add to the piece as well, contrasty lighting and using different colour gels can give you that "dramatic" look and feel.

Bill

[S8 Booster]

pinch a needle size hole in the s8 cartridge body at a strategic place somwehere aside from the "gate" area cover the hole with tape and now and again take it out in a dark room, tape/cover the film gate properly, bring it into subdued light of some kind, remove the pin hole tape ,advance it a little by hand while flicking it around a little maybe even your face will show up in the film accidentally ala "The Scream" by Munch ;) - put it back in the cam etc.... repeat....

in NLE you may add this and more clips onto each other (superimpose) as your creativity may play....

anyway, have good fun...;).


shoot....

[Jim T]

Thanks guys, much appreciated!