Homemade Wet-gate for my Retro-8

[Nate Williams]

Inspired by Fred's film tutorial, I set out to make a quick and easy wet-gate for my Retro-8.

I used a small round container, with a screw on lid.. I dremeled out some notches, just enough to let some film pass through, and mounted it to an upside down plastic bin with some strong velcro.

01-Dremel-Out-Grooves-Mount-To-Plastic-Bin.jpg

I used some coarse sponge wrapped with Pec Pads. I put some velcro on the lid, and the black sponge sticks to it, so it makes applying the pad to the lid easy.

03-Wrap-Pec-Pad-Around-Sponge.jpg

04-Same-Thing-On-Lid-Smaller-Sponge-Velcro.jpg

Then spray each pad with a small amount of FilmGuard.

06-Apply-FilmGuard-To-Top-And-Bottom-Pads.jpg

08-Apply-Lid-Capture.jpg

Then Load the film and gently attach the lid (not tight). This is my first crack at it and the results are pretty amazing. Thanks for the idea Fred!

[Nate Williams]

A comparison of before and after.

01-Before.jpg

02-After.jpg

[slashmaster]

You have a way to rotate the cloth? If the same spot on the cloth keeps getting used, eventually dirt will build up in it and put new scratches in the film.

[Nate Williams]

Good point! Between films I can move the pads or replace them easy enough. I usually do a manual cleaning of films w/Edwals to do a prelim cleaning as well.

[slashmaster]

Good point! Between films I can move the pads or replace them easy enough. I usually do a manual cleaning of films w/Edwals to do a prelim cleaning as well.

You should make that container so that strips of cleaning cloth can be pulled through it as the film goes through. I think even if your films are only 50 feet it would be risky to clean without rotation. You know the film-o-clean machine? I've got a machine like it. Even though it always moves the pad there is a 5 foot scratch on one of my films because of it. So you can just imagine how long the scratch will be on a film where the cleaning material is not rotated. By the way, it may not look to good if your putting that filmguard on just as your transferring to digital. It takes several passes for it to spread out evenly. Your films will have an inconsistent look if you transfer on the first pass.

[Nate Williams]

Yup, it's not perfect. I haven't been able to get a film-o-clean, those seem to be more rare than a unicorn.

Here's a before and after example:

Before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b9FpDt5p0o

After: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgzOFDrqygw

The after is obviously better, but you can see some wavey smudges on the right side - I think that was caused by the rubber rings on the first roller of the Retro-8 smudging the flimguard around on the first pass.

[slashmaster]

Yup, it's not perfect. I haven't been able to get a film-o-clean, those seem to be more rare than a unicorn.

Here's a before and after example:

Before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b9FpDt5p0o

After: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgzOFDrqygw

The after is obviously better, but you can see some wavey smudges on the right side - I think that was caused by the rubber rings on the first roller of the Retro-8 smudging the flimguard around on the first pass.

Nice footage! Nice Buick! Tell me something, is your goal to have something good on that film or just to have something good digitally? Either way there are a lot of scenes where the camera guy pulled the trigger too early. Should have waited til the actors were already in motion. You've got to remove the first several frames of each one of those scenes. If you're going to use a splicer to fix it, be sure to use a cement one. The tape I already see in this film would be just as bad as leaving those frames. Regardless I really like what I see. Are you one of the guys in this?

[Nate Williams]

Haha thanks! No, I can't take any credit for the film. It was shot by my partner's brother (Stan Fure) for a high school project. They played it for the class along with "Bad to the Bone" as the soundtrack.

My goal was to see what FilmGuard could do. I knew that film was pretty scratched from being watched many, many times over the years on different projectors so it was a perfect candidate to see how much FilmGuard could fix.

[slashmaster]

Haha thanks! No, I can't take any credit for the film. It was shot by my partner's brother (Stan Fure) for a high school project. They played it for the class along with "Bad to the Bone" as the soundtrack.

My goal was to see what FilmGuard could do. I knew that film was pretty scratched from being watched many, many times over the years on different projectors so it was a perfect candidate to see how much FilmGuard could fix.

Oh ok. Did you put filmguard on both sides or just the base side? I believe another chemical such as "Vitafilm" would be better for the emulsion side. Have you played this in a projector? It looks a lot better than this in a projector doesn't it?

[Nate Williams]

Yes, applied to both sides. The film has been played through a projector, but doesn't play well because of damaged perforation holes. It will jump, stop, jam. Very risky. It's even a wonder it's able to be captured/digitized and viewed today.

[slashmaster]

Yes, applied to both sides. The film has been played through a projector, but doesn't play well because of damaged perforation holes. It will jump, stop, jam. Very risky. It's even a wonder it's able to be captured/digitized and viewed today.

Yeah, you can really tell someone did some bad splices! Especially that one at the end. Did they actually tape over the sprocket holes? I'm not 100% sure about this but I feel like the film loses something when you put filmguard on the emulsion side. But being that you already have, at least it helps protect it from scratching. Next time you get a film like this put filmguard on just the base side and use a film cleaner like vitafilm or film renew for the emulsion side. You'll probably like that better!