Home movies

[Superbus_]

Are there other filmmakers who like to make films about the family and just every day life using super 8 or 8mm? As a member of this forum since 2005 I just realised that a lot of us here [ not me] are pros or semi-pros making music 'videos' or documentaries or shorts, but I think the strong side of this medium is the useage for family films, because the look is more like an older memory or a dream, so It makes more easier to feel that something happened and never come back... I don't know I like to shoot digital video too but I always feel it's like happened a few minutes ago - so I can not experience the time as a reality. Using super 8 it is just different. I was also thinking about the reason of this feeling. Is it a social phenomena, because we just know when we are watching an 8mm movie or super 8 it's like family memories or is this a more deeper thing based on our cognition and mental nature or something like our subconcious?

[71er]

I have been filming on super 8, single 8 and standard 8 the last six months and did it for the only reason to preserve family memories. Just before I started, it struck me that the footage my grandparents shot about 50 years ago still looks like it was taken yesterday! I also own a video8 and a miniDV camera but nobody in my family is willed to edit the hours of footage. With 8mm film you think twice before you press the trigger because of the price of the material; so I have only done 130 meters by now. But I tell you: my kids really enjoy setting up the projector and watching the silent (!) short films!
Have a good New Year! Alex

[Charlie Blackfield]

I've made some short films over the last few years on Super 8 and Standard 8, but I also regularly use these formats to make holiday movies or to film friends and family. I agree that 8mm is great to be used in this way, and when you watch the footage with your friends, it's much more of an event than sticking a DVD into a player. One of the nice things - apart from the better picture compared to video - is the cinema feel that 8mm projection has. Grainy picture, the lights are out (or dimmed), and the projector rattles away, and then you suddenly see yourself or other familiar faces and places on this miniature cinema screen, there's something magic about this. In some way, the silence (apart from the projector noise) adds to the mysterious atmosphere and sets your film even more apart from the comparatively dull realism of a video.

Edit:
By the way, my avatar picture is extracted from a holiday movie. It's me on a ferry between Holyhead and Dublin in April, filmed with my Standard 8 camera.

[Superbus_]

Have a good year Alex and Charlie!

Mainly I use super8 but recently I've bought a standard 8mm camera and I'm willing to use it but the last few mounth I had no time for it. I hope I will have enough time for filming from february. I'm also very qurious about a new canon 310 camera for low light filming, so there are a lot of nwe things could happen in this year. So, it is nice to hear that there are other super 8 fans who are filming tehir family as their main subject.
I have the same feeling when proyecting for my 5 years old son, it is a unique experience and very emotional.

[brokenflashlight]

.... because the look is more like an older memory or a dream, so It makes more easier to feel that something happened and never come back...

Absolutely. Though, being 25 y/o I have yet to make my own family; and I have no rush in doing so. This idea, feeling, or concept you speak of, though, fits well into an ongoing series I'm creating. It's more or less a time log series of little solo adventures I take around Cape Breton Island, or; Documentations of Witness I call the series. They could be landscape shots, woods, melting icicles, abandoned houses i find in the woods, my legs dangling from a dead tree, ANYTHING that I see and that I love to see. I shoot some frames at the beginning and/or end of the shots with the date, time and locations. With super 8mm I almost feel like everything I'm shooting through my viewfinder is like my mind's eye. And you're right: digital just doesn't have the specific aesthetic and emotional depth that super 8 does. It harkens back to the constant debate: film vs. digital.

Film is far, FAR more aesthetically superior. Think about it. Film (specifically 8mm in this case) is a hyper-solar-sensitive piece of emulsion. Our star, the Sun... literally BURNS whatever you are seeing through your viewfinder onto this hyper-sensitive 8mm piece of emulsion. Your MIND'S EYE, I call it. To me, you can't even come close to comparing the 1's and 0's that make up digital video to this special, special thing we call film.

I'm very interested in memory and how we recall things and how our memory changes and fades over time, etc. Fascinating! My interest in memory directly corresponds to my passion for 8mm and 16mm film.

It also leaves a legacy for other people to tap into your mind's eye when we're dead and gone. Like a portal into my head when I was witnessing it as I shot it. And, hopefully, feel as I felt. 8mm is the closest way to get to that feeling; or for that idea/concept to come to complete fruition. A realized concept. Digital just won't work. Maybe I'm insane. Does anyone get this? This is kind of what you were getting at, Superbus, but maybe taking it a few steps further.

Great topic!

[Superbus_]

This idea, feeling, or concept you speak of, though, fits well into an ongoing series I'm creating. It's more or less a time log series of little solo adventures I take around Cape Breton Island, or; Documentations of Witness I call the series. They could be landscape shots, woods, melting icicles, abandoned houses i find in the woods, my legs dangling from a dead tree, ANYTHING that I see and that I love to see.

This idea reminds me a recent award-winner documentary which has won the 1. price in Carlovy Vary (Chech republic) in its category.It was filmed in Hungary in the riverside of the Danube:
http://www.magyar.film.hu/object.f54367 ... 43875d.ivy

[71er]

I watched the film - or what was left of it on the computer screen - and I have to admit that it produced something like a nostalgic feeling with me. I guess it is the calmness it is able to transmit; this was suddenly interupted by the appearance of the bobycat - surely a wanted shock.
I watched the film without sound (as I didn't know in the start that there is one), which I always considered more interesting as the sense seeing is on its full concentration. And: I once watched a short film (its original title was "Die Täuschung des Auges durch das Ohr", which would translate to: The Delusion of the Eye by the Ear), which had a relatively short scene that was dubbed in three different ways: one time tragic, one time comical, one time criminal. The texts all fitted the scene and you could not tell, which one was right. In the end they showed the same scene in original tone: the actors just said numbers.
Do you bother making sound for your home movies or do you leave them pure?

[brokenflashlight]

This idea reminds me a recent award-winner documentary which has won the 1. price in Carlovy Vary (Chech republic) in its category.It was filmed in Hungary in the riverside of the Danube:
http://www.magyar.film.hu/object.f54367 ... 43875d.ivy

Ahhh, great stuff! Very inspiring for my project. So beautiful. I love the loose musical arrangements with the chatting and talking, too. I just wish i knew what they were saying! Haha. Thanks!

[Superbus_]

...
Do you bother making sound for your home movies or do you leave them pure?

No, I use and enjoy as silent films.

[8mm]

I started filming in super 8 in 1999 and only used it for family films instead of using video. This gave me great experiance whit the format for when I started using 8mm film more "professionaly" for short documentaries and manuscripted films. I still use 8mm to capture family mebers and frieds on film and has never owned a video camera. All my films are edited by cutting and splicing the film together and I seldom transform them to digital. 8mm film is best when viwed with a projector and a computer can never take the projectors place for me.

[Ektagraphic]

I'm using 8mm and Super 8 to shoot family movies and travel movies! Great stuff.

[cineandy]

yep, i shoot home family movies, although i've had a rust camera since 1992, hi8, dv now hdv, i've only ever filmed one family event on tape. Infact the only decent record my cousins have of their 1999 wedding is my super 8 and 16mm home movie, they're vhs tape is unwatchable. Mainly shoot local history, events etc, the odd wedding, whatever rocks my boat. Family stuff is now recorded on my stash of double 8 k25 and k40..

[Ektagraphic]

You guys are all lucky that were able to shoot Kodachrome. I love Kodachrome and I shoot it all the time in 35mm. I never really thought about getting good quality movies until recently.

[Superbus_]

Yes, kodakchrome was great I had the opportunity to shoot a few casettes and I like it, what a great colours...

[Ektagraphic]

Kodachrome does have great colors! I really really enjoy shooting it in 35mm!