Cable Car : home processing and DIY digitized Super 8

[chrisgavin]

I've just put another short cine film up on Vimeo. 'Cable Car' is all shot on Argenti B&W negative (APX 100) super 8 film.

These are the first few rolls of super 8 that I've home processed, some scenes are processed in Caffenol C-M, and the rest in long-expired Ilford ID11 developer. (I think a lot of the blotchy marks on the film are down to my sloppy/impatient drying of the film.)

I've also been trying out something new for the digitizing too. I've hacked together a home made device comprising of stepper motors and a Sumix 150M machine vision camera. The device captures the frames one at a time, but I have to sit and manually initiate each capture (i.e. it's not automated yet!). The stepper motors turn some 3D printed sprockets that advance the film. The registration isn't tight by any means, but doesn't seem to 'drift' and it is good enough for the After Effects stabilizer to correct it pretty well in post production.
The industrial camera I'm using is monochrome only but shoots single frames as 1280x1024 tiff files. The camera does have the facility to accept a trigger signal, but I've not figured out how to do this yet.

I'm not sure if I can embed a Vimeo film here, so here goes...

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/76724027?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="500" height="213" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/76724027">Cable Car : super8 film, DIY processed & digitized</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user727987">Chris Gavin</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

And if that embed code doesn't work, here's the link...
https://vimeo.com/76724027

There's clearly work needed, both on the processing and digitizing but I felt that putting shorts like this together would help me work a few things out along the way...

[Wade]

Hi Chris:
The aspect ratio is very wide. It's very nice. Are you using an anamorphic lens?

Kudos on your DIY processing and telecine.

[chrisgavin]

Hi Wade.

Yes, I should have mentioned, all the footage was shot with an anamorphic adaptor. I use the Panasonic LA7200, which is designed to turn 4x3 footage into 16x9 footage (for older Panasonic camcorders). So it's correct to widen the X scale of the footage by %133 in post.
For this film I sometimes dialled in a bit less (by a few percent) but never more, so hopefully all the footage is about right within the frame.

The overall framing of course is really wide-screen. I made the project 1920x817 pixels, so the overall framing is a ratio of 2:35:1.
You can see most of my pictures are a lot smaller than the frame (to get that picture in picture or split-screen look) and in the few frames when the picture is larger, it's the top and bottom of the footage that gets cropped off.

Hopefully it's 'correct' if a little unusual.
Thanks for watching : )

Chris

[JeremyC]

but I have to sit and manually initiate each capture (i.e. it's not automated yet!).

A number of people take a mouse and electrically 'hack' it to automate this part e.g. the guy at the very good cinedigits website. That may relieve you of wrist sprain.

[JeremyC]

I should've said.... a good film, very well shot and nice choice of music. How long did you need to spend shooting it and what stock and camera did you use? Entertaining and impressive.

[JeremyC]

Argenti B&W negative (APX 100) super 8 film.

Apologies for previous post. Doh!!

[chrisgavin]

Thanks Jeremy.

I've been using a Nizo 156XL camera for the last couple of years, usually with the Panasonic anamorphic adaptor. I used a tripod for all the shots apart from those shot within the cable car.

I went back to the area about 3 times at weekends over the past few of months, so just a few hours there altogether and I only shot about 2.5 cartridges to make this. I went back one more time last week just to record some sounds there too.
The music track is something I made last year, then re-mixed / re-purposed slightly for this film.

I'm familiar with the 'mouse hack' because I had a go at the slow projector/frame by frame/condenser lens hack a good few years ago... I got it sort of working too. https://vimeo.com/1782411. Back then I borrowed a standard def. DV camcorder, but I found the whole condenser lens optics a nightmare to work with. My Chinon projector is pretty much just a broken thing now, and I decided to try something else.

Unfortunately in the current system, I have to click on 2 buttons on the screen; one to click the Sumix capture software and the other to click the Stepper Bee software to advance the film. Lot's of wrist action per frame capture unfortunately...
It's tedious, but actually I found myself just capturing one scene at a time (200 - 400 frames), then stopping to tweak/improve the system in various ways. It's do-able this way for an odd roll or two with no deadlines, but far from ideal.

The solution eventually is to master the Sumix trigger input. The Stepper Bee card has some digital switching outputs, so it may be possible to control it all from the PC... OR, I've just bought an Arduino card, and it may be possible to get that controlling everything...
It'll all take a while though, because I've got plenty of electronics / programming stuff to learn.
I might well be back on here asking for help/advice on this further down the line.

Many thanks for the positive comments.

[grainy]

Chris, I love this film - it's beautiful. Congratulations!

[jpolzfuss]

Great!

[chrisgavin]

Thanks again for the positive feedback, it's really encouraging.

For anyone at all interested in the film scanning / digitizing aspect of the Cable Car film, here are a couple of photos of the DIY rig I used...

IMG_0017_002.jpg

There are two 20 tooth sprocket wheels which drive the film along (each one has a stepper motor underneath) and a third stepper to turn the take-up spool. All the stepper motors are running together under control of the Stepper Bee card. The machine vision camera you see is the Sumix 150M. The light source is 10 rectangular white LEDS with a small piece of opal glass diffuser in front of them.
The 2 sprocket wheels, the 4 pulley wheels, and the film gate are all pieces I've designed in 123D Design and had 3D printed at Shapeways.com.

IMG_0018_002.jpg

The camera sits on a Manfrotto plate and there are crude wooden guides for sliding the camera backwards and forward and sliding the main deck from side to side. I pack layers of card under the deck to achieve the correct height. So this is not exactly precision engineering...

Although I've been fooling around with this for quite a long time now, there's still a long way for this to go... As I mentioned before, there is no automation of the scanning yet and the camera only captures in monochrome. The registration is not great, but I'm using the Stabilizer in After Effects and getting passable results that way.

I've ordered some more bits from Shapeways so will soon be tearing this one apart and starting again...