A FILM IN A DAY
Last year, due to the purchase of a small business, I had much less time than desired for my filmmaking hobby, yet I did not want my creative energies to get completely abandoned by the many hours my new career was demanding. Looking for something simple to film, an idea came one Sunday morning in late June. I picked up the morning paper and saw my new documentary splashed all over the front page. The headline read "Life on the Road" and the accompanying article concerned the annual Wally Byam Caravan Club International Rally. Wally Byam was the inventor of the Airstream travel trailer, and for a couple of weeks each year, thousands of Airstreamers tow their trailers to the annual WBCCI rally, and this year the designated site was a University near my home. So I packed my gear (an Elmo 1012S-XL camera, microphone, Radio Shack cassette tape recorder, tripod, batteries, and film) and headed out to find a story.
: Over the course of that Sunday, and about three hours the following two days, I shot three rolls of Kodachrome sound film, and eight rolls of Kodachrome silent, at 24 fps. I was a one-man crew, which was made to order for the Super-8 format. One of my objectives was to see if a dialogue sound film could be made using relatively little sound film, due to the high cost of this now discontinued stock. The three rolls of sound film shot were used exclusively for three interviews, and the silent stock was used for everything else. I recorded three additional sound interviews on the Radio Shack recorder and when finished filmed an establishing shot of each person interviewed using the silent stock.
This picture was "grabbed" off of the TV screen while showing the VHS copy (on pause) of the Super-8 film
The high point for me was the section where the oldest Airstream trailers were parked. The oldest Airstream in the world, a 1935 model, was brought from Florida by the original owner, 90 year old Dr. Norman Holman Sr., who became the main focus of the film. I knew I was onto something when a camera crew from the Discovery Cable Network also stopped by to interview Dr. Holman. The head of the crew, a young woman from Australia, noticed and admired my Super-8 camera immediately. Fascinated, she and I had a short conversation about Super-8 while she was waiting for the sound man to set-up his gear. I was able to get a few seconds of her on-camera as well, which was included in the film.
When the eleven rolls came back from Kodak's lab in Switzerland, I noticed most of the film was exposed well, although some shots were slightly overexposed. Most likely this was the result of using the same set of batteries for the entire shoot. Nevertheless, there was plenty of usable footage, and the Elmo 1012 delivered exceptionally sharp, bright pictures. One nagging problem was some blue imaging that occurred in some places. Most of the film was shot on a hot sunny day, and apparently some light had leaked into the window that displays the film label on the cartridge, or perhaps through the viewfinder as I didn't always look through it while filming. I have found it's best to cover the plastic window with black electrician's tape, and to close the viewfinder if not putting one's eye next to it. The three rolls of sound film all exposed well, but unfortunately, there was so much wind noise present on two of the rolls I wondered if they could be used at all.
Documentaries seem to evolve over time, especially in the editing process, and this one was no exception. I had saved the newspaper I read that Sunday morning and used it as a prop to introduce the story, by shooting an opening shot of myself reading the paper and pointing to the headline. Another roll of film was exposed for some titles to be used at the beginning and end of the movie, once again incorporating the newspaper headline.
Everything was edited, except for the three sound reels, and then shipped to Cresta Electronics in the U.K. for sound striping. Cresta gives consistently good results at the best prices I've seen anywhere. When the film came back, the dialogue sound interviews were spliced in. One interview was quite long, so it was shortened, keeping in mind the eighteen frame separation between sound and picture. Now the interview sounded much better, lasting only about thirty seconds, and listening to it one could not tell some sentences had been deleted.
For sound mixing, I use a four track modified Fostex XR-3 tape recorder and a Super Sim Sync, all products of Cresta Electronics. The Super Sim Sync, when hooked up to the recorder and any Super-8 projector, will keep the two in sync because it utilizes a device that fits over the lens barrel of the projector, and sends one pulse for each frame of light the film emits.
With the Fostex, only two tracks can be recorded at any one time. For the initial recording, one track would be used to lay down a set of pulses (one per frame) from the projector which would later be used as references to keep the sound in sync. Another track would be used to transfer the dialogue. This posed a problem. A third track was needed, a guide track, to put down a description of the silent scenes as they were played, so I would know when to cue in the Radio Shack voice-over interviews and narration. All three tracks had to be recorded onto the cassette at the same time, so that the reference pulse track would keep the other two in sync. This problem was solved by recording the guide track onto the film itself, being careful to disengage the recorder when nearing the dialogue sections. Now when the film was played, there was my voice describing the scenes on the silent parts of the film, with the dialogue still intact as well.
Finally the film was ready for sound mixing. Recording the film onto the cassette tape used two tracks -- track #4 for the reference pulses and track #3 for the combination guide and dialogue track. That would leave two tracks -- one for music and the other for narration.
There were two problems that had yet to be conquered. One was that in the few establishing shots made of the people interviewed off camera with the Radio Shack recorder, those people were shown talking. The Radio Shack interviews were taken when I wasn't filming, due to the fact that I could only operate one thing at a time (the camera or the tape recorder). So on the guide track I had made verbal notes when the mouths were uttering words. At least this gave me an idea how many syllables were used. Somehow the pictures had to be matched with the words of each of the interviews that looked credible. This was accomplished by using these shots either at the very beginning or very end of each interview, and cutting them as short as possible, so that only three or four words had to be covered by the voice-overs.
It took a little trial and error to come up with interview words that fit over the mouths of the interviewees on the silent material. There was only one place where this looked off, and it was the best that could be done since there were no actual interviews recorded at the same time the film was shot. For the most part the sound and picture appeared in sync, and these interviews were recorded onto track #1.
Another problem was that annoying wind noise. Interestingly enough, when the film was played through an Elmo 912S editor instead of the projector, the wind noise wasn't nearly as bothersome. I decided to re-record the actual dialogue playing through the editor onto track #1, and at the same time listen to the same dialogue that had originally been recorded from the projector on track #3. It was possible to tell when the two were running in sync because the two voices would sound as one. If the two voices were not running in sync, an echo could be heard. Since the 912S editor has an adjustable speed control, the speed could be altered to run faster or slower if needed to maintain sync. After several attempts, everything started to fall into place and all three interviews were completed in a little over an hour, which created a much cleaner sounding dialogue track.
I then recorded on track #1 some background ambiance noise between the dialogue and voice-over sections, so that the transitions between the interviews and the silent parts of the film, would not be obvious.
The narration was recorded on track #2, and the music on track #3, which was supplied from one of Eric Pep's copyright free cassettes for amateur filmmakers. But before the final soundtrack could be transferred back onto the sound stripe of the film, there was one more edit to make. The thirty second interview was too long for a single static shot of two people speaking to the camera, so I cut out about half of the shot and carefully counted the number of frames of the piece extracted. I then replaced it with two other shots, making sure they added up to the same number of frames. In this way, the film stayed the same exact length, so as not to throw off the soundtrack.
Now the soundtrack was finally re-recorded and mixed onto the original striped film. I had expected there might be a difference of sound levels between the original Kodachrome sound striped stock, and the sound stripe that was added to the silent film, due to an experience I had once before with some film striped by Paul Yost in California that was intercut with Ektachrome 160 sound stock. In that case the after-market sound stripe was not nearly as loud or clear as the Kodak original. Cresta's sound stripe, on the other hand, caused no difference at all. I could not tell where Kodak's sound stripe ended and Cresta's began, or vice versa, as both recorded at the same levels -- requiring no volume adjustments. When projected on a large screen, however, the film has to be manually refocused every time the scene changes from Kodak stripe to Cresta stripe. Perhaps this is due to a different thickness of the two stripes.
The film was then sent off to CinePost in Atlanta, Georgia to have transferred to videotape via the Rank Cintel transfer process. The transfer was made onto Betacam SP, which became the master from which VHS copies were made. While the soundtrack did not sound as good on the videotape as when played on my projector, the Kodachrome made the transition to videotape beautifully, giving the appearance that the film was shot in 16mm instead of Super-8.
In the end, then film turned out well. Not exactly a film in a day as planned -- but a twelve minute documentary that met its objectives, hopefully entertained its audience, and kept my Super-8 filmmaking passion alive.
--- Chris Cottrill
E-mail: chris_cottrill@yahoo.com
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