Shooting on an old and cheap SD camera to make feel like 8mm or 16mm

[Matt Kieley]

1 hour ago, Ed_David said:

damn that looks good.

the bmpcc - I wish I didn't sell it - some really nice looks you can get from that little tiny guy

Thanks. Yeah, I'm loving my Pocket cam.

I might have posted this on the board somewhere, but this is the alternate Super 8 footage to my short film "The Ballad of Crazy Pete". It was conceived as a Super 8 short, but one roll didn't turn out, and I couldn't get the digital backup footage to match, so I went with an all-digital version. This is telecine I did at home by taping a Lowel frost gel to a cardboard box, projecting the film onto the gel and recording it with a GH1. It ended up having kind of an interestingly shitty look:

 

[mercer]

On June 23, 2016 at 10:43 PM, Ed_David said:

 

I bought an old Panasonic SDX900, it's the dvx100's big brother.  I thought maybe SD had something interesting about it - lacking resolution and dynamic range.

I tested it quickly against my Sony F65 going to 8mm or 16mm, and it seems to have its own weird unique feel that's kind of interesting.

Anyway let me know what you think - post workflow I can post as well how I kind of "destroyed" the image too.

Looks cool Ed. I think there is an equal mix of analog video and old 8mm. Didn't you do a similar test about a year ago?

On June 30, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Ehetyz said:

I've done something similar.

 

Had an old Sony Handycam Hi8 camera from my childhood lying around at the back of my shelf, and one day decided to see if it still works. Much to my surprise, it did, and even the batteries were functional. Those things were built like tanks, I abused the hell out of it in my teen years shooting backyard movies, and over a decade later it works like a charm.

So I fitted it with a cheap 35mm adapter, ran a few tests and then went out to shoot a small art short. Since the 35mm filter was mirrorless, I was practically shooting blind - the loop displayed a mirrored, upside down image, which really messes with your brain when you're trying to operate.

Nevertheless, I'm happy with what we got. We dubbed it our punk movie, because it has that look of cheap, grainy 16mm film from old underground stuff.

 

Yeah, this looks wicked. It definitely has that old film look. Good job. 

[mercer]

14 hours ago, Matt Kieley said:

Thanks. Yeah, I'm loving my Pocket cam.

I might have posted this on the board somewhere, but this is the alternate Super 8 footage to my short film "The Ballad of Crazy Pete". It was conceived as a Super 8 short, but one roll didn't turn out, and I couldn't get the digital backup footage to match, so I went with an all-digital version. This is telecine I did at home by taping a Lowel frost gel to a cardboard box, projecting the film onto the gel and recording it with a GH1. It ended up having kind of an interestingly shitty look:

 

Pretty interesting. First it looks really good and disturbing.  The content has this weird Buster Keaton forgot to take his meds vibe. 

I recently bought the BMMCC and I have been having a blast using old c-mounts with it. The camera mixed with those lenses seem to give an instant vintage vibe.

We're actually very lucky to have the resources available to us. Back in the 90s, it was shoot on film or don't make a movie. Then The Conversation was made in the early 2000s which helped to usher in the notion that SD DV can be used and acceptable for feature films. And then, etc, etc, etc and we fast forward to today where a filmmaker has so many options to make their films look modern and clean with high resolution or vintage or anywhere in between. 

It's an interesting experiment to revitalize these old SD cameras, but I believe the consumer cameras of today can excel at achieving a high end 70s film look, or a nostalgic 60s home movie look, or a gritty underground 16mm, or the French New Wave... The possibilities really are endless. 

[Matt Kieley]

9 hours ago, mercer said:

Pretty interesting. First it looks really good and disturbing.  The content has this weird Buster Keaton forgot to take his meds vibe.

Thanks. That's the best comment I've gotten on the film.

[cantsin]

Sorry to go (literally...) against the grain, but all videos posted here don't really look like projected Super 8, rather like Super 8 scanned with 1990s low-end SD video transfer. This is what well-scanned Super 8 reversal film really looks like:

And this is modern Super 8 with negative (Kodak Vision) film stock:

 

[Ed_David]

who cares what super 8 looks like now - it's mostly an image in our heads.  It's all psycosemantic. As long as you like the look, thats good, whether or not it confirms to "reality"

[mercer]

6 hours ago, cantsin said:

Sorry to go (literally...) against the grain, but all videos posted here don't really look like projected Super 8, rather like Super 8 scanned with 1990s low-end SD video transfer. This is what well-scanned Super 8 reversal film really looks like:

And this is modern Super 8 with negative (Kodak Vision) film stock:

 

Shooting in Super 8 and planning to project it in the 90s was about as useful as shooting with a Flip cam for a feature film today. But I do agree with you that these samples do not look exactly like Super 8 but they are reminiscent of it... Which is what I think was the point.

With that being said, your video samples look nice. I am amazed to see how clean Super 8 negative stocks are now. A few months back, a bunch of videos were posted that looked absolutely stunning. 

3 hours ago, Ed_David said:

who cares what super 8 looks like now - it's mostly an image in our heads.  It's all psycosemantic. As long as you like the look, thats good, whether or not it confirms to "reality"

I also agree with this, but I will say the biggest culprit of the "looks" in this thread is the shallow depth of field, especially with the wide shots.

Super 8 had wide depth, so when the shallow depth of field reared it's head, it took me out of the small frame feel original Super 8 had. 

With that being said, I still think it's a very cool experiment. I wonder what an early HD cam could do... Maybe an HV20 windowboxed or using 4:3 guides... It may have a nice mix of definition and color that really could reproduce that Kodachrome feel.

Also, I think Frank Glencairn has a highly regarded Kodachrome LUT that may be neato to mess with. 

[Matt Kieley]

It's amazing how sharp and clean modern Super 8 looks, but I'm much more interested in this kind of feeling. I wonder if they had to add more grain and dirt to make this movie shot in 2009 look old and nostalgic (romantic).

5 hours ago, Ed_David said:

who cares what super 8 looks like now - it's mostly an image in our heads.  It's all psycosemantic. As long as you like the look, thats good, whether or not it confirms to "reality"

Exactly.

 

[Matt Kieley]

So, I finally decided to buy FilmConvert. I'm loving it so far.

[Rudolf]

On 3. Juli 2016 at 2:28 PM, Ed_David said:

who cares what super 8 looks like now - it's mostly an image in our heads.  It's all psycosemantic. As long as you like the look, thats good, whether or not it confirms to "reality"

Now I got it and I agree! If I get you right you are trying to create an amateurish yesterdays lofi look. Which some people could remind on small gauge film. This approach is often used for documentaries or musicclips I think. And in 20 years you are maybe after that feeling of the beginning of the century with its iphone footage in funny aspect ratio... (Btw the problem is no one can fake the projection. I own two blurays and a shelf full of super 8 Feature films - I am really into cinema)

[PannySVHS]

5 hours ago, Rudolf said:

Now I got it and I agree! If I get you right you are trying to create an amateurish yesterdays lofi look. Which some people could remind on small gauge film. This approach is often used for documentaries or musicclips I think. And in 20 years you are maybe after that feeling of the beginning of the century with its iphone footage in funny aspect ratio...

 

Well, talk about amateurish look and apect ratio. Film friends of mine and I did a 4 cams challenge, 2 DV camcorders and 2 HD hybrids in the mix, 4 to 3 ratio. Was fun to do without planning other than having four people going crazy on our actress and filming like little devils. Mixing SD and HD cams wasn´t exactely my idea, neither having four cameras, but I decided to agree on it and I´m happy we did it that way. So old school look is not only cool for the look but also for the way how to approach filming. Really loved the approch of our lowfi project. In the end I had 1hour of footage at my hands to sculpt what became 3min in the final result. Matching the cams and grading was fun too. The beautiful autumn day helped the colors quiet a bit.

 

 

[mercer]

39 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

 

Well, talk about amateurish look and apect ratio. Film friends of mine and I did a 4 cams challenge, 2 DV camcorders and 2 HD hybrids in the mix, 4 to 3 ratio. Was fun to do without planning other than having four people going crazy on our actress and filming like little devils. Mixing SD and HD cams wasn´t exactely my idea, neither having four cameras, but I decided to agree on it and I´m happy we did it that way. So old school look is not only cool for the look but also for the way how to approach filming. Really loved the approch of our lowfi project. In the end I had 1hour of footage at my hands to sculpt what became 3min in the final result. Matching the cams and grading was fun too. The beautiful autumn day helped the colors quiet a bit.

 

 

Beautiful. I liked this a lot!!! Such rich colors. What cameras did you use?

[PannySVHS]

On 6.7.2016 at 2:43 AM, mercer said:

Beautiful. I liked this a lot!!! Such rich colors. What cameras did you use?

Hey Mercer,

thanks a lot! Used two Mini DV cams with interlaced SD resolution: Canon XL1 and Panasonic DX1.

The two other cams were Panasonic G6 and Canon 70D.

HD footage was cropped at the sides to 4:3 ratio. Edited and graded in Davinci.

[tweak]

This thread got me interested, here's my quick try at emulation today.
If you can guess what steps I took let me know  . I didn't add any film burns or flickers but I guess that would make it look more nostalgic if that were the look you were chasing.