ROFL!!!!!!

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

I'm sorry to see you go!

The mercury and other toxins in the film process will
make your eyes blurry and cause more headaches.

Some of us were blessed with more imagination than others, the rest
of us face our eyesight decreasing with the number of gray hairs left on
our heads.

Good luck!

I've often wished that Vegas could emulate 8mm film in an important respect.

When playing back and the cursor gets "stuck", I'd like to see a hole burnt in the middle of the frame.

It's hard to define the magic associated with actually looking at images on film. It's a long time since I did cement splices, certainly somewhat before Leo Cattozzo got an Oscar for the design and development of the CIR-Catozzo self-perforating adhesive tape film splicer. Any good camera with a high quality lens was capable of better images than prosumer video cameras now produce, even, compared to SD, Super8. But like video cameras there were a lot with crummy lenses used by people who had little idea. Where video wins out is in the cost of mass produced equipment, cheap tape stock (all tape is very very cheap compared to film) and ease and low cost of post production. I shot double system sync sound even on 8mm. So, we've given up quality for low cost. I guess convenience too, although I've still got the 16mm projectors in my booth, standing ready for that nostalgic showing of real movies.
However, I'm not about to go back.

The day TV and cinema no longer exist, well, people are simply gonna do something else...





Ok, reading time now, gotta wake up at five ...

There is a magic to it huh?

I once had a fischer price camcorder that recorded black and white video on a cassette tape. What an image! Absolutley horrible but it had a certain style to it that made it actually enjoyable. Like a silent movie.

Aug

Have you ever shot and edited film?
Sure it's a tedious, expensive, exhausting experience, so is writing a letter with a pen compared to shooting off an email. So is getting together in person much harder than typing something on a keyboard and clicking Post Message.

But in the end I don't recall it taking much longer to cut film than video, assuming you were working to the same standard, I find handwritten letters more personal and the content more well thought out and it's much easier to communicate face to face than through disembodied text. No doubt some day we'll evolve USB connectors in our heads and this will change.

Bob.

I think the biggest win that Video has is the much smaller use of expensive and dangerous chemicals and therefore it's much more eco friendly. This also means that the cost difference between video and film will continue to widen, probably eventually to prohibitive levels for film.

The other big win is instant playback. While this benefit is probably of more use to pros, i'm sure it's more attractive to amateurs. Not having to wait a couple weeks (for amateurs) or a couple hours (for pros) to see what you've shot is a huge plus.

Reminds me of a wedding i videotaped ages and ages ago, like probably 1983 or so (gosh). After the ceremony was over and the wedding party were trying to figure out what to do for pictures, i rewound the tape a bit and was playing it back through a little 5" color TV i had brought along. The bride's parents looked over my shoulder and were amazed! All they could ask was, "don't you have to send that out to be developed first?" The groom's grandmother got scared, thinking that some sort of witchcraft was involved. It took a LOT of talking to get her calmed down.

Forget the 8mm - just mentally project images onto old VHS tapes (in SLP mode).

What do you enjoy getting.......
a handwritten letter or email?

I was hoping I could come up with words of wisdom to keep
riredale from leaving......but film seem more fun!

But 8mm? Why not 16mm or better 35mm at least there a few theaters that
haven't converted to digital.

I think you're right, there's almost nothing that can be done to reduce the cost of film, it's tied to the price of silver, even though almost all of it is recovered. Still wonder why it's used for xrays and CAT scans, what a waste.

We shouldn't forget though that film is a digital acquistion format, video is always analogue. That had me laughing for a while until I realised Kodak's claim is technically correct.

Having recently had the privilege of using real cine glass in front of a good sensor with 12 bit recording I have to agree, it's so damn close to film (apart from the smell) that the decline of film cannot be far off. However I think as one DOP said of 3 strip, there'll sure be a scramble to work on the last feature shot on film.

It's not all good news either. Many seem to think the digital age is going to make life easier for the indies. Yet everything I've read about the DCI indicates they'll find life harder than they did with 35mm.

Bob.

Wasn't that some kinda movie or something :P

Dave

Yet everything I've read about the DCI indicates they'll find life harder than they did with 35mm.

Correct.

Know why?

Because there are so many more choices today, so many get paralysed instead of just focusing on making the best of the few choices available before.

Bah! 8mm is like cheating. I'm going to draw flip books and color each page, one at a time. Except for the pad of paper...I control everything.

Actually not so, well maybe but that wasn't the aspect I was referring to.
Today you can hire almost any cinema on the planet and screen your won 35mm print. Or for that matter an independant cinema can screen any 35mm print it so desires.

Under the DCI specs:

a) A cinema must meet the DCI spec to get a 'print'.
b) You can't just load anything onto the server.
c) The distributors hold the key to the 'print'
d) It looks like the distributors will own the projection equipment, this mostly because the cinemas can't afford the cost.

Maybe I'm reading it all wrong (and I really hope I am) but I've so far not found anything that makes me feel the indies and their needs were even remotely considered. The good news though was we can unplug the projector and feed it from our own playback device, all you need is a complaint dual HD-SDI feed, maybe single HD-SDI.

Talk to Guy Madden.

Jack

Yeah, it was when the editor of "Two Lane Blacktop" burned a hole in the end of the film. Classic.
JJK

I remember being utterly fascinated by the splicing block my father used to put together his 8mm home movies. The way you trapped the film in one side of the block and snapped the other side down to trim it, the delicacy of scraping off the exposed emulsion, and then the unique smell, unlike any other kind of day to day smell, of whatever it was that was used to weld the ends together, and the way the block would clamp the ends while the weld cured. No mouse click could ever compare to that ineffable experience....

Those "glues" were Eastman 910 and Dupont 901. I think.
JJK

Those "glues" were Eastman 910 and Dupont 901. I think.

If you can remember their names, you weren't really there.

:O)