Jet Benny

[MovieStuff]

Hi, Scott!

Jet Benny hardly has the production values that seem inherent in your project, based on the stills I've seen, but here is the skinny on JB.

I had been working for years with a local theater group called Main Street Theater in Houston, Texas. One of its more talented members was a guy named Steve Norman that bore a funny resemblance to a sort of characture of Jack Benny, one of my favorite comedians. Benny had made a variety of low budget, theme based movies like "Buck Benny Rides Again" etc.

I thought, what if Benny had lived into the Star Wars era and had done a science fiction film? Thus, "The Jet Benny Show" was born. We shot it across several summers and keeping everyone interested in the project (including me) was tough. The guy that played Rochester (the black android co-pilot) actually quit after shooting a variety of key scenes. Unbelievably, he had never heard of Jack Benny or Rochester and was surprised to find that his part was less than flattering to his constituency, even though it was all in fun.

We wrote in a silly plot device about a rubber mask to cover the change in personel and kept hacking away at the film, piece by piece. We had originally envisioned shooting it in 16mm Kodachrome, for that super saturated 50's look. Then decided that super 8 K40 would be cheaper and would add to the over 'panache' of the movie.

I cut the original using a Ciro splicer and then transfered to 3/4 inch video using a non-telecine Elmo HD 1200. The flicker didn't matter because I was just using video to work out the sound. I fed a tone through the contact switch of the projector and recorded the resulting pulse on one open track of a 3/4 inch tape along with the picture. Then I made dubs and worked out my sound. Later, I ran the original 3/4 inch tape with the pulse on one track and sound effects on the other in synch with another 3/4 inch tape containing voice on one track and music on the other while mixing it all down to a Super 8 Sound fullcoat recorder. This would later be transferred to a sound stripe print.

I finished the mix only to find that Kodak had stopped making my beloved Kodachrome super 8 prints! I poked around the Kodak directory until I got hold of the head engineer of the Kodak lab. He checked and they had just enough stock to print the movie but not enough to do any tests! I told him to take his best shot and sent him the film. Jet Benny was the last Kodachrome print that Kodak ever produced, as far as I know.

Later, I won the Lawrence Kasden Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. That was my second win there. I had won two years previous with a short film called "Chains". The sponsor of the festival called and said they wanted to keep Jet Benny for midnight movie showings. It played there evey week for about three or four months. There was even a Jet Benny fan club that I used to get mail from. Weird.

Later, I read about a company called United Entertainment in Tulsa Oklahoma. They had pioneered the direct to video low budget feature market and I checked out some of their movies. Jet Benny has many flaws but made some of their stuff look like "War and Peace". I hopped a plane and went up unannounced to meet with them.

I sat in their lobby for the entire day. Finally, just as their receptionist was closing up her purse to leave, the head of the company finally had pity on me and let me set up my Elmo projector (yes, I took it with me) in their conference room. I even came prepared with a briefcase that I had put a speaker in and a small screen cut from illustration board velcroed to the side of the brief case. (yes, I was a nerd in grade school)

The boss watched only about five minutes and then said, dryly,"Okay. That's enough." And then he left the room. I felt pretty rejected and began the slow process of rewinding the film. I had started putting away the briefcase/screen assembly when the boss reappeared with about a half a dozen department heads. They all sat down and proceeded to watch the entire film.

I left there with a contract to direct one of their horror films and a distribution deal for Jet Benny. There was no one Ranking super 8 that we could find, so Michael Hinton at Interformat in San Fransico blew up the entire film to 16mm negative, which was then Ranked like normal.

I was written about in two different articles in American Cinematographer regarding super 8 production and later sold the rights for Jet Benny to Super 8 Sound. I still get mail and email from Jet Benny fans. Up until about a year and a half ago, there used to be a Jet Benny website.

In all, my epitaph will probably read,"Here lies the man that made Jet Benny." All of my other efforts will probably fade to obscurity. Life's funny that way.

Roger

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Alex:
For the record, Versatile Video was doing Super-8 Rank Cintel Transfers sometime in the early 80's, they were in Palo Alto, or it might have been Sunnyvale, or San Jose....

I think they told me only five companies in the world were doing Super-8 Transfers back then!
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, every Rank house we found said they COULD do it, but charged a huge fee for renting the super 8 gate. We were told that there was only one in the United States (at that time). Ultimately, their attitude was that it was only super 8, so why all the fuss about quality?

One place we sent it to claimed that they Ranked it and then sent back a transfer that looked like a rear screen job, complete with a hotspot in the middle. Just awful. But the blowup Hinton did at Interformat was great. I've thought several times about getting a release print off the neg. That would be fun.

Roger

[Scottness]

Well for what it's worth Roger (as the starter of this thread) I almost fell off my chair when I read wageslave's comments - and wageslave if you're just trying to wind someone up, why do that? - this is a constructive forum - I'm sure you've got a lot more worth while things to contribute to everyone than that -- Also Roger I'm going to have a little page on Super 8 features on my web page - do you mind if I reproduce your run down on Jet Benny there?

Thanks

Scot M

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[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Scottness:
Well for what it's worth Roger (as the starter of this thread) I almost fell off my chair when I read wageslave's comments - and wageslave if you're just trying to wind someone up, why do that? - this is a constructive forum - I'm sure you've got a lot more worth while things to contribute to everyone than that -- Also Roger I'm going to have a little page on Super 8 features on my web page - do you mind if I reproduce your run down on Jet Benny there?

Thanks

Scot M
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Wage Slave's post was so over the top it was kinda sorta funny. I didn't see it as a serious post.



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Alex

[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MovieStuff:
nt.

There was no one Ranking super 8 that we could find, so Michael Hinton at Interformat in San Fransico blew up the entire film to 16mm negative, which was then Ranked like normal.

Roger<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

For the record, Versatile Video was doing Super-8 Rank Cintel Transfers sometime in the early 80's, they were in Palo Alto, or it might have been Sunnyvale, or San Jose....

I think they told me only five companies in the world were doing Super-8 Transfers back then!

I doubt they are still around, although I have not checked.

Very Nice People, they gave me a tour and really inspired me to keep shooting Super-8 when I saw the results of the transfers they were doing.

But, it was around $350.00 or dollars an hour to transfer.

And back then, everyone transferred to one-inch, which was another $300.00 -$400.00 an hour to edit!

I considered 3/4 okay at the time, but not for broadcast mastering, and it was around $75.00 - $125.00 and hour if you opted for the fancy switcher and time-base correctors.

If low cost Beta-Cam Sp had come on the scene 10 years earlier, in the early 80's, Super-8 would have been the biggest beneficiary of all the formats available at the time.

Super-8 was ahead of it's time for the video revolution.



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Alex

[Matt Pacini]

Well, Roger, I haven't seen Jett Benny yet, but after I spent a while on your website, I think you've been up to a lot of pretty cool things since.
In fact, I'd really like to see some of the footage that these pictures of your effects, miniature work, etc., ended up in.
Any chance of that?

Matt Pacini

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[MovieStuff]

Hi, Matt!

Thanks for the kind words.

Some of the photos have AVI clips you can download. Just click on the photos and there's an icon that says, "wanna watch the movie?" Not great quality over the net. I can send you a tape of Jet Benny and some other stuff, too, when I ship your WorkPrinter.

Roger

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Scottness:
Well for what it's worth Roger (as the starter of this thread) I almost fell off my chair when I read wageslave's comments.

Also I'm going to have a little page on Super 8 features on my web page - do you mind if I reproduce your run down on Jet Benny there?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sure, no problem! I realized after wageslave's second post he was just trying to get me inspired to do greater things. I'm just not sure I have any great things left in me! Worse, still, perhaps "Jet Benny" was the greatest thing I ever had in me?

Oh well. Time for this old fart to go to bed.

Roger

[ulrichsd]

Just ordered my very own copy of Jet Benny, and am looking forward to watching it. That story of the guy in Tennessee even cracked me up the second time I read it.

I read above that you said the titles were shot in Tri-X, was the rest of the film shot on K40, or is the whole film in b&w?

Later,
Scott

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[MovieStuff]

Aaaaghhh! No, not this topic! And just when you all thought it was safe to post again.....

I hope you enjoy the film, such as it is. The titles weren't shot in Tri-X but the opening scenes of the show were and the rest was shot in raging Kodachrome.

Roger

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Roger Evans
MovieStuff http://www.afterimagephoto.tv/moviestuff.html

[This message has been edited by MovieStuff (edited January 16, 2002).]