Ok, we all know the qualities and shortcomings of S8 and that this little format has many looks from the gritty B&W reversal look shot through a consumer camera all the way to the imagery of a 2k scan of low speed Vision2 negative shot on a Beaulieu with Zeiss optics.
Keeping in mind all of the incarnations of S8, I'd like to ask one question:
What major theatrical feature film do you think would of benefited by having been shot partialy or in it's entirety on Super8?
Let's try to keep the answers short.
What major theatrical feature would YOU have shot on S8?
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What major theatrical feature would YOU have shot on S8?
/Matthew Greene/
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mattias
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festen/the celebration. it would have kept the being there feel they got from the small handheld camera, and it would have looked as gritty which suits the story, but it wouldn't have looked as ugly. interestingly enough they planned on shooting it on super 8, at least the exteriors, but it never happened...
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FilmIs4Ever
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Believe it or not, Pulp Fiction is actually a film shot on 16mm, although they did it all on 7245 (EXR-50D for those that don't read Kodak numbers), which really shows the powers of slow speed filmstocks. Similar things have been said about K40A looking like 16mm since it is so fine-grained. I think that with EXR-50D, S8 could look decent on the big screen, although still quite grainy, but certainly better than the DV shit used on several movies these days. I would much rather see a movie shot on S8 and blown up rather than a movie shot on DV.
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greenplastic79
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steve hyde
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Re: What major theatrical feature would YOU have shot on S8?
sarmoti wrote:What major theatrical feature film do you think would of benefited by having been shot partialy or in it's entirety on Super8? Let's try to keep the answers short.
This is an interesting question, but it needs to be unpacked. What do you mean "benefited". Shooting a major theatrical release on Super 8 means you have to make 35mm optical print. I don't know about you but I don't want to sit through 90 minutes of blown-out Super 8. This would evoke a popcorn riot at my local movie house.
To be honest, I don't think Super 8 lends iteself to the feature form. Beautiful as it is, it is too hard to look at for long periods of time. As much as I admire the feature films that I have seen on Super 8, I have to say I have never watched a super 8 feature in one sitting. I just felt like I needed to take a break from it.... I'm not sure why, but that's just how I felt about it.....
... I recently watched "Ray".Iit is a nice picture, which scenes would you have filmed using Super 8?sarmoti wrote:My vote is:
Movies from this year, certain scenes in "Ray" and "The Sea Inside". For a full feature... hmmm, tough question... "Pulp Fiction" maybe.
Steve
I guess where the imaging characteristics of S8 would, in your opinion, have provided a particular scene or scenes a more effective visual aid to the story.steve hyde wrote:What do you mean "benefited".
I think the way to go with blowups from 8mm or 16mm nowadays is via a DI in the form of a 2k or a 24P HD master.steve hyde wrote:Shooting a major theatrical release on Super 8 means you have to make 35mm optical print. I don't know about you but I don't want to sit through 90 minutes of blown-out Super 8. This would evoke a popcorn riot at my local movie house.
I agree that sitting through a feature-length blowup from S8 is generally a less than attractive proposition. However, what interests me is to find out what sort of material/stories people think are a perfect match for S8 adquisition. If there is a feature that would have been better off shot on S8 vs 35 I'd like to find one I agree it might have been. It's certainly a matter of subjective opinions as we're dealing with a hypothetically desired choice of an inferior format for solely artistic reasons.
steve hyde wrote:Movies from this year, certain scenes in "Ray"
I was trying to come up with some recent films... For Ray I certainly think the childhood scenes and the hallucinations might have actually worked well if shot on S8. I'm not talking handheld, shaky home movie style but shot the same way while taking advantage of the imaging characteristics of S8.
In a certain way I thought that the digital & chemical deterioration they gave some scenes was too "clean" as it looked simply like grainier, processed 35, which I believe it was. I think S8 might have provided an additional visual/emotional relationship that could have only enhanced the scenes by providing the contrast both visually and emotionally from the "straight"35mm.
In the film, I liked the concept they used of the establishing shots being vintage reversal footage but I thought it cut in a little harshly since the film was for the most part straight, clean 35.
To me, it just feels right to go with a gritty look when we're experiencing the emotion of a character that has turned into the shadow of the man he used to be.
I also think it makes sense to me to have a coarse, textured image you can virtually touch when we're "feeling/seeing" the world from a blind man's point of view.
Sound designers deteriorate/characterize audio to highten our emotional response to the story that we're being told so it's highly effective, in my opinion, to do the same with cinematography.
If a complete feature is capable of benefitting by being produced this way is an intriguing but unanswered dillema to me.
/Matthew Greene/