Shooting with Widescreen Ratio

[SuperDork]

Here in Toronto there is a guy named Rick Palidor who is making a feature-length film in Super8.

He gave a Super 8 workshop at my school and spoke of several experimental things he has been doing with the super 8 camera itself.

Since few people are having their films sound-striped, there is portion of the film which is not being exposed. His technician friend basically files the one side of the window (I'm sure that's not what it's called) to allow more film to be exposed.

His super 8 films have the look of widescreen as a result of the filing.

Some day I may ask this technician if he could do the same to my camera.

Jesse

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[Matt Pacini]

I did this to my Nikon Super Zoom recently, and shot some film on it.
It's been dubbed, on this board as "UltraSuper8".
Anyway, I was surprised to find, that it only added a tiny amount to the width of the film.
Anything helps in Super 8, and I'm going to use it from now on, for the effect of decreasing apparent grain, but I don't think most people, if anyone is going to notice it being more widescreen.

I suspect your freind is just cropping the image on the top & bottom to give it the widescreen look.
It just doesn't add that much to the width to be that noticable, unless you were really looking for it.

Matt Pacini

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[SuperDork]

I think the reason it was noticeable might have been that we were watching his work on a television.

To fit the screen he had a transfer made in which the top and bottom of the screen were black since the ratio was different.



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[Matt Pacini]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by SuperDork:
I think the reason it was noticeable might have been that we were watching his work on a television.

To fit the screen he had a transfer made in which the top and bottom of the screen were black since the ratio was different.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It being on television is irrelevant to what I was saying.

My point is, if you saw anything but a small sliver of black on the top and bottom, and I mean a TINY strip of black, then he did that intentionally in the video transfer, and it wasn't all from filing the gate wide, because there isn't much to file off.

When you transfer to video, you could tell them to mask out everything but one inch of image across the middle, if you wanted to.
So I suspect he told them what aspect ratio he wanted, and they masked out that much, and maybe a little bit was from the gate filing, but not much.
If you hold some exposed Super 8 film up, you can see exactly how much extra space there is on the side NOT where the sprocket holes are.
It's a really thin strip.
It's worth doing, and I am filing my gates now, but it certainly isn't a big noticable difference as far as the widescreen thing goes, as you will see if you simply examine some film.
Try it!

Matt Pacini

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[SuperDork]

If I was to file the gate wide, is there a particular file width or type that would work best?

I might try it on one of my cameras.

Thanks for any advice.

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[SuperDork]

If I was to file the gate wide, is there a particular file width or type that would work best?

I might try it on one of my cameras.

Thanks for any advice.

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[Matt Pacini]

Well, the important thing is that you don't want to file it too far, because it holds the film steady. (See some of Rogers posts on the Workprinter over the last few months...)

Take your gate out of the camera, and put a piece of film up to the gate to see how it fits.
You can see where there is some extra space on the film, where the soundtrack used to go.
That's the width you're filing down, but DO NOT file it all the way out to the edge of the film.
Really, it's only like 1/32 or 1/16 of an inch.
Like I said before, I did it, because I'm a lunatic about trying to get the finest grain image I can, so I will do anything to make that happen.
But it's certainly not getting the frame anywhere near, say even 16x9 ratio, let along true widescreen.
Also, that metal needs to be buffed REALLY smooth, or you will scratch your film, big time.
So test it on some junk film, not stuff you want to keep...

Matt Pacini

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[mattias]

> But it's certainly not getting the frame anywhere near, say even 16x9 ratio, let along true widescreen.

you can get to about 3:2, and if you crop the top and bottom to 16:9, you end up with almost the exact same emulsion area as the regular 4:3 image. i know this is not what you were talking about, but it's a way of getting a 16:9 image that's as sharp as a regular 4:3 one, for 16:9 tv (actually common in europe) as well as blow ups to 35.

/matt

[zakarachion]

This is an interesting conversation for me... I am currently in pre-production for a short film I am making.

I am shooting on Super-8 simply for the aesthetic look of the film. I am editing on a 8mm steinbeck flatbed table, and doing sync sound with a Pro Tools workstation. I am transferring to 16mm for the final print.

For shooting and transfer: I am shooting in a widescreen format, and to achieve this, I am going to frame with the bottom of the frame, and letting the top of the frame go where ever it wants knowing that I will mask it out. For the mask, I am using an optical printer.

I love the color and grain structure of 8mm, and have seen very fine results blowing it up to 16mm.

Ok...

zak

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