Burning Film with Projector

[dharmabum1949]

Hey there, Im a student working on a short 8mm film poem and would like to know the best way to cause the lamp to burn the image while projecting it. What im planning on doing is projecting it and as it reaches the place i want it to burn (towards the end of the reel) ill hold the already projected portion of film just hard enough for it to catch and let the heat of the lamp dissolve the film, i realize this is going to destroy the film at the point where it burns and probably rip a few sprocket holes but im not planning on projecting the film, im doing to the poor student film transfer and recording it of the screen with a borrowed DV camera. What im worried about is if this will harm the projector im using, is there a more equipment freindly way of doing this? Any advise is greatly appreciated
Dave [email protected]

[Alex]

I seem to recall accidentally creating this phenonmenom with a bell & howell slow motion projector. By putting the film projector into still
mode the film would indeed melt in front of your eyes.

I'm not recommending you try this.

[GREATwarEAGLE]

Yep. Same thing happened to me with a B&H. The problem was, it wasn't even my film. A guy I worked with lent me his 1970's Rangers hockey game footage he shot. And I put it in still mode, admiring the beauty of some of the images.

Man. I felt terrible.

If you're gonna do this, have a fire extinguisher handy.

[cameraguy]

The B&H's should have a metal shield that comes down when the projector is put into still mode. This prevents melting the film. If you simply remove the heat shield the film should melt in still mode. Will melt even quicker if you disconnect the fan [img]redface.gif[/img]

[Alex]

The film will "dissolve" even with the heat shield. The BH projector had a single frame advance also.