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OT: Super 8 and X
This is going to sound a bit odd, I know. I just recently purchased a Super 8 camera off of eBay, waiting for it to arrive. Very interested in using a film camera with real film, and hoping this fad catches on so film will make a comeback.
With that said, what would be a good film scanner to get everything into FCP X after the film is processed? Is there anyway to connect a scanner directly to the Mac? I have thought about using the BMCC to capture the film then import from the card but that would be more trouble then it is worth. Any insight is greatly appreciated.
Planning on making silent, corny movies as a hobby on the side.
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8 Replies
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Film hasn’t gone away, many major motion pictures and TV shows are still being shot on it- for example Star Wars VII. So, not sure if you were being serious about restarting a trend but it’s not necessary if you were.
To scan Super 8 yourself you would need a motion picture film scanner. Scanning the negative directly in say a desktop scanner would result in a lot of registration problems- i.e. the frame would jump in every frame. And filming off the wall with another camera will look really cruddy.
The one you want is https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/cintel with the 8mm gate.
That said- buying a $30,000 scanner to scan 8mm film is probably not what you had in mind.
I would instead just suggest having a telecine house do the scanning for you.
Or to be honest shoot digitally and make it look like scratchy super 8. Lot more cost-effective. Tons of camera phone apps can also do this effect very convincingly as well for a lot less $$ to get visually nearly identical artifacts.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training -
You could try the Logmar
https://www.wired.com/2014/07/logmar-super-8/ -
I’ve seen Super8 telecined to SD digital video. Had a neat grainy look.
There is an open-source method for scanning 8mm film that I believe is Linux based and uses a flatbed scanner.
Also there are other film scanning equipment like the FlashScan8.
https://www.flashscan8.us/ -
For DIY:
Retro-8 Professional. $2995 from https://www.moviestuff.tv/moviestuff_home.html
Company based in Texas.Local transfer facilities:
https://www.texasmicrocine.com/HDTelecine.html
https://www.videopost.com/pages/contact.htmlTransfer facility in Los Angeles:
https://www.yalefilmandvideo.com/filmprocessing8mm.phpDon’t know specifics about the equipment or the companies. VPT has been around a long time. So has Yale.
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These people are good too https://www.pro8mm.com/
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Thanks to all the informative and quick responses, much appreciated. Richard, thanks for the link. I might purchase that Rhonda camera, looks interesting. Glad to see someone producing those cameras, hoping Super 16 cameras will be in production again, if not already. As much as I love my BMCC, film is a more appealing medium. Probably will shoot on film, edit in X then back to film with a digital copy as a backup plan, just in case. What would the workflow be with color grading? Would like to use Resolve but open to other options. Nucoda looks interesting but not sure if it runs natively under OS X, which might be a consideration. Again, much thanks for all the feedback!
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Here’s another one: DIY with things you have around the house —
https://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/smozes/8mm.htmljPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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I would do it outside, because doing it with cheap equipment results in poor results. I have used Video Conversion Experts out of Arizona and they have different levels of quality. They claim that the below conversion to 2k, you will be losing quality from the super-8. I don’t know what film and processing costs these days, but high quality conversion can be had for less than 50 cents/foot.
Of course if it is just for fun there is always projecting and filming, I have used that to sort through large quantities of unknown film to decide what is worth doing a quality transfer.
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