35mm matte for Super8

[Nofare]

How should I go about creating a matte to give my Super8 footage the 1.85 35mm aspect ratio? Where should I install it? What should I make it with?

Thank you.

[Supa-eight]

Well unless you depend on staying at the same focal length, you will run into problems. Remeber, if you did matte the shot for widescreen, as soon as you zoom in or out your matte will become larger or smaller and lose focus. In addition, by cropping the frame you lose critical frame space on that little pea size frame, which you can't really afford. I suggest an anamorphic lens which I, nor many others have gotten to work successfully. So maybe not, that's just the way we "should" do widescreen. If you want to go the cheap widescreen way, how about you shoot with widescreen in mind (maybe mask your viewfinder with little pieces of tape on the top and bottom) and then when you project you can mask the projection with some pieces of cardboard or something. Then, no matter what focal length you use, your shots will always consistently be matted. It's also a great way to hide splices!

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[Supa-eight]

I think if you've got the money to blow up to 35, you should be consulting a professional! Well to tell you the truth the best I've done with Super 8 is a rank transfer to miniDV, nothing invoving going back to film. I suggest if you can afford the transfer back to 35mm, you should consider using an anamorphic adapter. Of course I could be wrong about this. Anyone out there know how much it costs on average to go to 35? Last I heard about two hundred a min. Anyways, that's as far as it goes from my experience.

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[PhillipF]

Go to www.interformat.com (I think that's it). They can tell you everything you'll need to blow up your film...(funny sounding isn't it?)
You can also go to optex (www.optex.com). They make animorphic lenses that screw onto your cameras lens PROVIDING that it has a thread of 52mm (or around there). If you do blow up your film, they will ask for the original film and not a video copy. Film -> Video -> film looks horrible. So, you will either: A) Edit your film completely on an 8mm editor then have them blow it up, or B)Let them enlarge your footage, create a negative and a workprint, edit the workprint and have someone edit the negative as well. Over all, it's best just to ask them how to go about it. )

PhilF

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[Nofare]

Thanks for the answer.
The thing is I would like to shoot in Super8, digitize the footage, edit the film on my home computer and then blow up that digital cut to 35 mm (to work on the sound before getting a 35 mm answer print).
Renting an anamorphic lens would be great but expensive, difficult to use and would require more light on the set.
... But now that I'm thinking of it, I could mask the viewfinder while shooting, get a 35mm blow up and project it the way they do it in regular venues, that is with a 1.85 matte.
Does this sound right to you?

[Nofare]

Thank you for the info.