Some really silly newbie questions

[Jeremy Lunt]

Hello all,

Me and a friend of mine are both aspiring filmmakers, and since we're out of college for the summer we've decided to make our own Super 8mm movie (it will be called ISLAND OF DOOM, and we envision it as a very cheap-looking, silly and ghetto little horror film in the style of many 60's and 70's exploitation movies). However, we don't know too much about the format and the issues surrounding, so I was just wondering if anybody here could illuminate them?

1) Sound recording - We know that sound Super 8mm film is no longer being produced. My friend has heard that a Minidisc recorder might be the way to go for recording production sound (we intend to edit this with our computers), which he likes because he's been looking for an excuse to get one anyways. Is this true? Other than that, if we can't record dialogue on-set, that's no biggie for us, we'll just record it digitally with our actors (since we're going for the cheesy low-budget feel, if the dialogue doesn't totally synch with the actors lip movements, it just increases the effect we figure).

2) Film stocks - We're thinking about actually shooting a mixture of B&W and color scenes. The problem we're running into right now is that we're not sure what film stocks to use. Most of the production is going to be filmed outdoors, preferably in bright sunny daylight conditions (although considering how much rain the east coast has been getting, we may end up filming in a lot of overcast weather), although there will likely be a few indoor scenes. We had planned to film all the B&W stuff with Tri-X stock, but today I saw it mentioned on Kodak's website that because of Tri-X's high speed, it can very easily be overexposed in bright sunny filming conditions. Would it be better to just shoot all the B&W stuff with Plus-X, or should we use Plus-X for the outdoor scenes and reserve a few rolls of Tri-X for the indoor stuff?

As for the color, we're thinking that all the color scenes are going to be shot outside, so would it be better to use Ektachrome or Kodachrome?

3) Editing - Like I said, we plan to edit this digitally with my friend's computer, but here we're running into some confusion. One of the things we plan to do is splice in some stock footage from other films (since this project is just for fun and won't be shown publicly, we're not concerned about copyright) into it. The source of the stock footage we're going to use is VHS tape, which runs 30 fps, while my camera can only film at 16, 18 and 24 fps. Will this be a problem? Also, do you know of any services that transfer Super 8mm film to VHS or digital video relatively inexpensively?

I hope these don't sound like stupid questions, and thank you for any answers you can give me.

[al77]

Hello,
1- minidiscs are a good way of recording sound for super 8. the cheapest way is to make a clapper board to use at the start of each scene so that you can marry up the clapper sound to the clapper closing visually on film. you do this manually on your edit program. it can work well but is time consuming & the sync can easily drift in longer takes; however, the alternative is a crystal sync unit which aren't cheap.
2- K40 great outdoors, lovely colour. Tri-x would get whited out on a sunny day but is great for low light / indoors.
3- Transfers to PAL or NTSC? I think www.moviestuff.tv does NTSC transfers & http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/transfer8mm.html transfers to PAL mini dv.