help needed

[jmatfin]

hi. i'm a poverty stricken student thinking about investing in a nice super 8 camera i've found in a pawn brokers. i'd like to get any super 8 films i make converted onto cd to edit digitally - so i was just wondering roughly how much it would cost to get a few films converted onto disk (i live in london uk)?

sorry for such a boring post.

jonny.

[Xenobious]

Yeah, you know that's the exact same situation I was in 2 years ago. Since then I've learned alot, the hard way -$$$$$-

Let me tell you, my scmeme was to shoot super8, pay for developing and then have the film professionally transferred to a miniDV cassette, after which I'd upload the footage into my PC with firewire and edit my movie with a cheap consumer editing program (like Pinnacle 8.0)

What I didn't realize was this:
1. Professional transferring is good, but too expensive for a no-budget filmmaker like me.
So I started doing it myself with good results (but you'll need a mini-DV camera and a super8 projector)

2. PC editing didn't work very well until I spent alot of money upgrading to a much better computer (Pentium 4 2.4GhZ, 1 gig of ddr RAM, larger faster hard drive, I reccommend using Serial ATA- and a better video card (GEforce 4 TI4200, 128Mb RAM). I also bought a reasonably priced DVD burner to burn my movies on, and it worked great. Altogether I ended up spending like $600.

3. MOST IMPORTANT- I thought it would be easy to shoot super8. It is, unless you plan on doing INDOOR scenes in which case you'll need tons of lighting. Just remember that your super8 film will be super slow at absorbing light because it's filmstocks are ASA40 (Kodachrome40) and ASA125 (Ektachrome).

Do you want to actually make movies and learn to be a filmmaker? Super8 is great but challenging to light scenes without looking too dark or having hotspots. I use a photoflood lite (cheap and easy to find anywhere) encased in a reflective softbox for my key light. Then I have a "Fresnel" for backliting and a regular photoflood for fill light.

So you see, if you actually make the decision to buy that super8 camera, you will have made a decision to buy so much more. It's not easy to do film but it's so worth it if you can appreciate the quality of films compared to these crappy "digital" movies they're coming out with now- looks like some kid took his daddy's cam corder and decided to shoot a little movie....well I could go on & on about that but Check out the "Flickers" super8 film festival samples at http://www.flickerfilms.org/films_2001_la1.html

You can actually watch super8 films online that have been given actual awards for being original and creative. Good luck in your endeavors, hope you decide to buy that camera and become a super8 filmmaker!

"You can learn everything you need to know about filmmaking in 10 minutes or less" -Robert Rodriguez, 10 minute film school