A TRIP TO LONDON WITH SUPER-8
I live in Germantown, Ohio in the
United States, but for one week in August of 1996 I was happily vacationing in
London. I was nervous about taking my Super-8 camera overseas, so I left my
trusted Elmo 612S at home and brought along a Sankyo 60XL sound camera that I
had purchased used three years ago, even though I had never even used the camera
since I bought it. It wasn't worth much to me so I wasn't too concerned if it
got lost or
stolen. I
left the microphone at home, because I didn't want to be bogged down by a bunch
of equipment. So, all that went with me was the Sankyo, six 50' rolls of
Kodachrome silent film, and a monopod. This was in addition to my Nikon 35mm
still camera and film, which I take with me wherever I go.
I was rather rushed before I left for London, but I did have sense enough to shoot a test roll of film and found the colors to be greenish and on the cool side, so I bought an 81A filter and put on the lens to warm up the colors a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't have sense enough to check the film gate for dirt, and the result was that every roll of film came out showing some dirt in the gate at the top of the frame. Need to go back and review the filmmaker's checklist in Brodsky & Treadway's book Super-8 in the Video Age. ALWAYS check that film gate for dirt, and blow it out. All was not lost, as I have found that by projecting the film a little over the screen, thereby cropping about 10% off the top of the picture, nobody can tell. Another blunder was to bring only 6 rolls of film. I ended up stopping at The London Camera Exchange to buy 5 more rolls of Kodachrome 40 at the end of the third day. Surprisingly, the cost was equivalent to U.S. prices. I paid $21.80 (U.S.) per roll for the film, but that price included processing. Since this is the only way in Europe that the film is sold, and the prepaid processing is not valid in the U.S., I paid for processing that I couldn't use, but I was desperate for film at any price, and The London Camera Exchange was a welcome sight. As in the U.S., the average store that sells film in London doesn't stock Super-8 anymore.
Prior to 1996, I had been in and out of the Super-8 filmmaking experience since
the early 1980s. I made a couple of short films for fun in 1993, and hadn't
touched the equipment but a couple of times since. However, once in London, the
Super-8 bug got hold of me all over again. It was such a thrill to shoot home
movies in Super-8, and that Sankyo that I didn't care much about performed
beautifully. Adding that filter definitely helped the colors, and while the
lens still didn't give me the rich colors that I get with my Elmo (using an 81B
filter), it created very real "natural" colorization with the Kodachrome. The
focus was excellent and easy to use. And using the monopod gave some very
steady shots. I used that monopod for everything, and I'm glad I did.
Once back home I had eleven rolls of film, but almost two rolls were overexposed, and I'm not sure how I goofed on that, but the other nine rolls turned out excellent. I always shoot at 24 fps so this yielded over 22 minutes of usable footage, which I edited down to about 14 minutes. To spice up the film, I filmed some titles for some of the places we visited. I got a copy stand made for taking still pictures of old photos and put the movie camera on the stand and filmed (using the macro focusing) still 4x6 prints I had taken with my 35mm camera in London. On top of each print, I placed vinyl letters, from a title kit of different sizes and colors of lettering. So, for example, the title "THE RIVER THAMES" looks like the letters are super-imposed over a still picture of us by the Thames. It's a great way to get some family pictures of the event that were only caught by the still camera in the film, and to also make some informative titles as well. At one point in the film I wanted the people to be walking very fast and backwards for comic effect, an effect that would have been impossible if I had used a camcorder instead of filming in Super-8. I achieved this by refilming the scenes (at 12fps) right off the screen of the projected film in reverse. This method amazingly works, however the contrast is increased and the colors are not as true as the original, but it was good enough for the short segment that I needed. The end result was now a 16 minute edited film with over 100 splices!
Once the editing was done, I shipped
the film off to Paul Yost in California for sound striping. Even though I
never use a balance stripe, I had Paul put on both the main and balance stripe
on the film, as it was almost 400' long and I did not want the film to lean to
one side of the reel. Finally, it was time to add a soundtrack. In the past I
have always used my Elmo ST1200 projector's sound-on-sound film method for
mixing music and narration and only achieved fair results. This time I wanted
to mix music, narration, and sound effects. I found a cheap way to do this by
purchasing a SIMA brand video sound mixer for only $45. I have noticed that
there are all kinds of nifty products out there for the videographer that work
just as well for Super-8. This sound mixer has two inputs, plus it comes with
its own microphone to add narration to the two mixed sound inputs, so in effect,
there is total control for mixing the three tracks.
The music I recorded on a cassette tape, and timed it to the projected image of the film. For the sound effects, I took another cassette and recorded the effects on it. On this one, I knew it would be impossible to have anything closely resembling synch, so I got around it this way: If in the first minute of the film, there is a 6 second shot of a fountain, and I wanted the sound of water, I recorded a full 60 seconds of the sound. Then when the tape and film were running, I could mix that sound effect in at any point in the first 60 seconds, so even if the tape got quite a few seconds out of synch it wouldn't matter. This method only works when you have a few sound effects here and there, of course. Thank God that the British still support Super-8 and thank God that Cresta Electronics exist for their 4 cassette series of sound effects was invaluable. In fact, one of the four was titled "This is London" and included many wonderful sound effects of the city. But I strongly suggest buying the complete set of four. You won't be disappointed. Finally, in order to prevent the sound of the projector getting recorded while doing my narration, I had the film projected on a screen in one room, and mixed the sound in another room that had a TV. I had a camcorder aimed at the movie screen, and ran 30 foot cables connecting the camcorder to the TV, as well as the output on the mixer back to the projector's recording input. In this set-up, I could see the actual projected image on the TV (used as a monitor) as the film ran, and thus could mix my narration, music, and sound effects to match the action in total silence. A little clumsy but it worked. (And it's always nice to know those camcorders are good for something!)
The final result is a 16 minute film -- a sort of combination home movie/travelogue. The narration includes some facts about the sights, yet it chronicles the order and main events of the trip itself. In addition, there is a funny moment here and there to provide some entertainment. All in all, I was very pleased with the result, and very happy that I chose to shoot silent. When shooting silent, I was able to concentrate completely on the visuals, and later was forced to come up with a creative and entertaining soundtrack, that with the help of Cresta Electronics' sound effects cassettes, included all of the sounds much better than I could have recorded myself. I think this method works quite well for a vacation home movie, and the result will look more professional than any home video you are likely to see.
