Help!! In the middle of 4-day Super 8 Shoot and camera is broken

[Super8Seal]

We are in the middle of a 4-day shoot and we've gone through FOUR cameras! They've all inexplicably stopped working. It's not the batteries, they weren't dropped or damaged and they didn't get wet; they all just gave out after about half a day of shooting. The shooting has been mainly outdoors and the temp is around 56 degrees. Our DP has shot lots of Super 8, with one of the cameras that stopped working, and has never seen this happen before. Two of the cameras that broke are a Canon 514 xl-s and an elmo 1012s-xl

Could we have gotten bad film stock that wore out the motor? We bought our Kodak Tri-x Reversal stock directly from Kodak and I put it in the fridge for about three nights and then took it out the night before shooting. Also, we've been taking the camera on and off of a tripod and folding the handle grip; could it be the electrical connection that goes through that hinge that is getting damaged? Anybody have any idea what could be the problem? We still have two days to go and can't find any more cameras to shoot on!

[Alex]

Wow. The colder the temperature, the less viscous the lubrication will be inside the camera. Always do a test inside to absolutely verify the cameras are not working.

Sometimes manually advancing the film spindle at the beginning of each cartridge helps. But you have to turn it the right way.