Super 8 to 35mm Blowup

[Nigel]

When you look at rates per foot for 16mm you can find some very good rates. Close to S8. I have had FotoKem process some of my S16 for 8 cents a foot.

Remember when you blow up you will have to pay for the blow-up stock and the processing of it as well. So if you blow-up to 1000 feet of 35mm you will pay for the 1000' of Interneg as well as the 1000' of Workprint. You may also have an Interpos in there depending on the original stock. So you could end up paying for 3000' of 35mm plus processing which could be about 25 cents a foot.

Good Luck

[lightfeat]

For a sound film, I personally would shoot on a crystal Super8, transfer to digibeta, sync sound and edit, then put back to digibeta, then transfer digibeta to 35mm film.

You won't see that it was ever on video. Digibeta is excellent. It'll look nice, cost a lot less and be a lot less of a headache to all concerned than any method previously mentioned IMHO.

Lucas

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by lightfeat:
I personally would shoot.. Super8... transfer to digibeta... edit, then put back to digibeta, then transfer digibeta to 35mm film. ...You won't see that it was ever on video. Digibeta is excellent. </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi, Lucas!

While I agree that Digibeta is an excellent medium, the simple fact that the film is going through an extra generation will be noticable in some respect. I'm not saying that it will look bad but it will not be anything close to blowing up optically directly from S8 to 35mm. However, I do believe that some things could be done during the initial telecine transfer to accomodate the conversion to 35mm later on to make it viable such as compression of the contrast and some edge enhancement. Maybe even some "rezzing up" of the resolution through some additional image processing.

Now, if you're working in PAL, the frame to frame transfer characteristic will work out normally. Each film frame will stay independent and reside on an individual video frame and then, ultimately, on individual 35mm film frames. In other words, if you start with 528 super 8 film frames, that will equate to exactly 528 DigiBeta PAL video frames and then also 528 35mm frames. Everything will be discrete and very clean and 1:1.

However, for NTSC it's not quite that simple, since for every 24 film frames, there are an additional 6 pulldown frames included to stretch 24 film frames out to 30 video frames. Therefore if you start with 528 frames of Super 8, that will produce 660 video frames on the NTSC DigiBeta (due to the additional 132 pulldown frames). So, when transferring the DigiBeta to 35mm, you would have to skip the pulldown frames so that you maintained the 1:1 nature of Super 8 film frames to 35mm film frames.

Further complicating the matter is that every time you do a dissolve or transition, some of those pulldown frames can get intermixed. So, even if you wanted to skip the pulldown frames when transfering to 35mm, you will run into problems during transitions, especially if you had a pulldown frame from clip "A" appearing just before a pulldown frame from clip "B" in a dissolve. You can't skip them both and you really don't want either one, as the goal is to maintain the film look which pulldown video frames would taint.

So, ideally, one would want to transfer in NTSC with NO pulldown frames (i.e. 30fps) and do all of the editing on a program that can play your video frames at the native 24fps rate of film and not the 30fps rate of video. That way, there would be no pulldown frames to "skip out" when transferring to 35mm later on. Then, one would want to be able to play this footage out to DigiBeta at the higher 30fps rate to maintain the frame discretion that the edit program allowed. Granted, the footage will look fast on the DigiBeta at 30fps but that doesn't matter since the DigiBeta is only a carrier of the frames prior to digitizing for frame by frame transfer to 35mm.

Hmmmm. Perhaps our resident code-whiz DigVid (Jeff) could whip up an edit program that would allow 24fps editing of super 8 frames without pulldown.

If only....... [img]wink.gif[/img]

Roger

[lightfeat]

Dear Roger,

I was refering to PAL, obviously, because it's what we use where I come from, and because it's better.

When you say there will be a loss of quality because of the extra generation, well of course, but the only people I know who've done sync sound films on S8 and blown up to 35mm are people like Scorcese etc.

For people in the real world, who want to do this without it costing a ton (and I mean loads) and driving them nuts, my suggestion is a really tangible and sensible solution, which will look great if telecined well (dare I say Pro 8mm? who I've never used btw) to digibeta on a rank cintel.

With a direct blowup, if you wanted transitions, you'd have to do a and b rolls etc., effectively editing in a linear way, as edl's are almost impossible to get on S8. NLE and Digibeta is EASY and looks good in PAL. If you want optimum quality, don't shoot on Super8, or get Columbia pictures to bankroll you. That's my conclusion...

Lucas

[lightfeat]

Oh, I forgot to mention, Digibeta can do the transfer in progressive scan. If you want better quality still, you could go to Arri-digital. It would cost silly amounts again but Amelie was shot Super35, and transfered to Digital to clean up the image and do a whole plethora of special effects. It was then transfered back to 35mm, and looks arguably better than 35mm, as reported in a UK cinematographer's magazine. Heracy! I hear you cry. I am no purist. I like what works over the ideal.

Lucas

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by lightfeat:
Heracy! I hear you cry. I am no purist. I like what works over the ideal.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Absolutely. I am no purest by any means. In fact, Jeff and I have been brain storming about creating a 24fps edit program for super 8 with some sort of print back from a rezzed up DV file. So I think the idea of shoot film, edit video and print back to film is terrific. However, I have had a number of super 8 films blow up at Interformat over the years and, ease of video editing aside, going directly from the original reversal film to the blow up is always going to give the best results if your original was well exposed and in good shape. An extra generation is an extra generation, where positive to positive duplication is concerned, whether it's digital or not. Digitizing from negative is totally different, though, which is why movies like Amalie and other films that are digitized work so well going through the process.

I did not know you were referring to PAL in your previous post and I only wanted to show the problems inherent for those of us poor bastards working in NTSC (sob, snif). But there is a difference between transferring to DigiBeta from, say, a standard Rank and transferring from a unit that scans in high rez frame by frame. While I agree that scanning in high rez would work terrific (and I am sure that is what they did for Amalie), scanning in standard NTSC or even PAL will definately be noticable when going to 35mm whether DigiBeta is part of the process or not. In that respect, I assumed you were talking about a standard video transfer to DigiBeta and not high rez scanning of each frame, which is what is done for 35mm motion picture films, since that sort of treatment is generally beyond the budget of most Super 8 users. Of course, for that matter, printing from digital files back to 35mm is beyond the budget of most Super 8 users, as well! [img]wink.gif[/img]

But it's all fun to dream about. Shoot film, edit digitally, print to 35mm. Totally cool. No herecy here that I can see!

Roger

[rollemfilm]

"Year of the Horse" used the shoot film/edit digital/print 35mm. Although watching the video won't show the way it looked in the theater. I did see this super8 feature at the theater. Parts were so bad, even for me, one who loves to destroy and explode grain, it was barely watchable. Other parts were so nice and rich. I thought the worst look of the film was the HI-8 interviews. The best was the color 16mm shot 20 years ago. But the concert footage was excellent. At times you could see video noise, but it was hard to notice. I was looking for it in the obvious super 8 sections. I'm sure this film was not a hi-rez print. It works well with good film stocks and good cameras.

[lightfeat]

I believe that Buena Vista Social Club was shot on Digibeta, and I sat in the cinema the whole way through, quizing myself as to the format, concluding that it just had to be 16mm, and probably Super16. I was amazed at the quality of the latest Dogme movie, Italian for Beginners, which was shot on Vid too and transfered to film. Year of the Horse was Super 8 - dig - 35mm and if, as you say, it was unbearable, I would suggest that this is because of the format and the cinematography. You say it was bad "in places" which suggests that it was badly shot, being a docu made on an unforgiving format which requires more effort than 35mm filming. We all know Super8 can look dodgy as anything, but it can also look simply exquisite. I won't be blowing up to 35mm in a hurry, not from S8mm anyway. I'd rather buy a Super16 for that, and I can't see myself ever making a sound release print of my movies on S8 either, which is a shame, as the idea is nice (I show stuff on a video projector at the mo.) It's just too darned difficult to do.

As you say though Roger, it's nice to dream [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

Lucas

[rollemfilm]

Only the concert footage of Buena Vista was DigiBeta. The rest was some other digital format. And, if you saw the film in the theater (as I did), the strobing could make you sick! I think Wem Wenders could have afforded 16mm. Too bad, it's a great movie. Could have looked even better.
I think the best looking film I have ever seen that was shot digital is "Down from the Mountain"...the concert footage didn't really look like film, but it looked great. I think the stage lighting had a lot to do with the richness. In the theater, I was stumped for a while. I knew that the backstage footage was video, but the concert looked very rich. Still, film would have been a step up.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 12, 2003 10:30 PM: Message edited by: rollemfilm ]</font>

[avortex]

When Jarmush saw the first Super8 transferred to video for the documentary, he didn't liked it very much because it looked as clean as 16mm. Then he went to another post house looking for that "home movie look" that appears in the movie.

Interesting, mmmh... In "Super8 stories" a film by Emir Kusturika, the k40 shots (very few) looked really good (those vibrant colours...ah...no grain), and the Tri-X shots (the most) looked like "Clerks". Grainy but cool. The film mix some digital takes too, that looks like digital takes. Too much cold for me. The film was edited on Digital Betacam and transferred to 35mm. The super8 shots were filmed with a Beaulieu 4008ZM.

Ah! And I saw the movie on 35mm in a theater. I assure you the process super8-Digibeta-35mm can give very very good results.