Small film canine capers

Since we discovered the Dog Years series of Super 8 films, we're raved about their down to earth simplicity and witty take on the canine condition. The films have developed a life of its own and with the second episode, "Health" now released, we caught up with Sam Hearn, one half of the production team to ask him about hairs in the gate, mongrel Ben and the future of small film.

onS8: We believe that you and Richard Penfold met at filmschool, where was that?
Sam: Yes, we met at The International Film School of Wales. We sat near each other in an early film class and found we were laughing at all the same things and stuck together ever since.

onS8: Was Super 8 a key component of the course?
Sam: Not really, we shot a couple of films on 16mm and cut them on an old Steinbeck but never Super 8 on the course. That said, it was very open in the mediums you could chose and Richard always loved using Super 8. We really wanted to get into title sequence design and used to experiment a lot with Super 8 and re-filming projections. We followed the work of an agency in London called Tomato who used to experiment in all kinds of mixed media.

onS8: Where did the idea of Dog Years come from?
Sam: It was more or less forced upon us by the restraints of the competition The Joy of 8mm (a Bristol based single cartridge Super 8 festival). Richard was actually living with the two stars of the films at the time and was already watching the subtleties of their relationship but we needed an audience friendly idea that was simple to produce but effective and let's face it....you can't really go wrong with talking dogs!

We made sure that we had a solid radio play first, almost like you would do with an animation, and played it on the iPod throughout the shoot to make sure we were hitting the marks. The only real complicated thing with the first film was the final 'into the sea' shot as we had no idea if we had anything left at the end of the single roll of film - luck was on our side with that one I think.

onS8: Why shoot it on Super 8?
Sam: Again, partly due to the restraints of the event but the idea very much leant itself to that old memory, emotional, old holiday feel that only Super 8 can achieve. The second film and all future films will be shot on exactly the same format as it is a joy to shoot on, plus the excitement of getting a film roll back from the processors can't be matched with digital.

onS8: Why do you think there is that excitement?
Sam: The only way I can really describe it is like opening Christmas presents as a child, compared to being given a bit of money to go and buy your own. No one remembers receiving the money but everyone remembers sitting around the tree with your heart pounding.

onS8: Why did you choose a more conventional approach for the second installment?
Sam: Fear! We still wanted to keep the ratio of stock to screen time tight, (we were shooting approx 5 to 1) but we had no reason this time to shoot in-camera as this was a commission from Atom Films Studio which gave us much more freedom.

We were very wary not to get stuck in the 'Second Album' syndrome. The one where a struggling artist comes up with an amazing first album independently and then is thrown loads of money only to loose all there creativity to 'The Man'. Atom were great in this regards, they granted us complete creative freedom with the second Dog Years chapter and just kept their fingers crossed that we would deliver. I think for a Film Studio to do this, it's amazing.

onS8: What equipment did you use for the shoots?
Sausages, ham, cheese and biscuits! Other than that, we just had the one camera, no light meter (not a good idea), no tripod, just one man, his dog and us. We have four Super 8 cameras in the Omni Productions office but the most reliable is the Canon Auto Zoom 814, the others are pretty old and seem to lag when running.

onS8: What filmstocks did you use?
Sam: Kodak Ektachrome 64T was the ammunition of choice. We didn’t really experience any problems accept the ubiquitous pubic hair in the gate!! No matter how much you air squirt the gate there always seems to be a pube in it! What's with that? Still, there has probably been £100,000's of pounds spent in the digital market trying to replicate that pube so we should be grateful we have it for real!

onS8: Where did you do the telecine?
Sam: The transfer for the first film was done at Rushes in Soho as part of the Joy of 8 event but the second were undertaken at Kahl Film in Germany. All the editing and colour grading were all taken care of in-house here at Omni Productions.

onS8: Who does Ben's voice and how do you go about recording the dialogue for the films?
Sam: Richard was on the phone to a very talented storyboard artist called Richard Haigh in relation to another production we were working on and suddenly the voice just hit him! He was in the middle of writing the script so Ben's character was very much in his mind and the two just married together perfectly. Richard comes into sound studio here at Omni and we just work through the script until we all feel like; "Yes, that's what Ben would say". We don't normally call it a good take until one of us is trying hard not to laugh.

onS8: How many chapters do you envisage in Ben's story?
Sam: We would like to produce around 8-15 episodes. We have some fantastic ideas for some future episodes that go much grander in vision but keep the simple aesthetics and honesty of the first films. We have friends who watch the film when they feel a little low and it brings a smile back to there face's. We love this, it feels like we are making a little difference in the world and this is something we definitely want to keep doing.

onS8: How have the Dog Year's films done from your point of view?
The first Dog Years film has been transferred to 35mm into Dolby sound and played at the Curzon Cinema in Soho, The Watershed Cinema Bristol and in festivals all over the world including the Oscar Accredited Aspen Shortsfest, The LA Film Festival and it picked up two major awards including the UK Film Council Award at the 10th Brief Encounters Film Festival. It has played on a giant screen in Manchester and on numerous short film programmes on ITV and BBC. It is featured on DVD's in Australia via Flicker Fest, London via Future Shorts and America via The Colorado Film Foundation. It has also been picked up by Atom Films and been commissioned as a series featuring on there home page and is currently at the number one slot in the drama section. Dog Years has been viewed over 30,000 times online in various places and we are being paid via ad revenue every time it's being watched, it has it's own website and MySpace and is being requested by other film festival almost every other week.

The film has directly given us directorial work on other award winning shorts and even helped our company secure some design work for the Independent Cinema Office...so for an innocent little film produced for around £4.50 (as the camera and stock were supplied by the Joy of 8mm and me and Rich worked on a Saturday.) I really don't think it is doing to bad right now. ;-) I have my fingers firmly crossed for the second film.

onS8: What's next for Ben the mongrel?
Sam: We are currently developing several game ideas including the arse dragging Olympics with a bonus leg humping round. We also set Ben up with a MySpace and hoping that people may send in there pet related questions to an 'Ask Ben' feature. We'll see what happens there over time. The internet is an incredible place and is reaching a high of communication like never before, I think that if we can somehow tap the dog owner market, maybe some pet food product placement in the next film or a dog years commercial we could find an audience of millions.

onS8: Do you ever use Super 8 in other Omni Production endeavors?
Sam: We used Super 8 on two other production. The first, for Big Issue Magazine South West, involved giving super 8 cameras to homeless people and taking them back to their roots to film memories of the places they grew up. We interviewed them and put the two together trying to bridge the gap using dreams and memory, between the viewer tucked up at home and the homeless. This was produced into 20,000 CD-ROMs and put on the front cover of the magazine and was one of our first ever jobs 4 years ago.

The second time we used Super 8 was for a music video production for Neil Halstead on 4AD records. I think the aesthetics of Super 8 are unmatched by any other digital grading software. Techies can get it close but you know when you are watching it if it's film or not. I read the other day that "digital was great, but the universe still seems to be Analogue" and it doesn't look like this is really going to change any time soon so. I think when you use an analogue format it just seems more real and natural, for my sins I watched 'Poseidon' the other day and I am just sick to death of going to the cinema and someone is just projecting a computer game, maybe one day it will be seamless but Oh Man, Shocking!!

onS8: I'm guessing with 4AD's strong track record in printed and moving visuals they got your Super 8 pitch?
Sam: Neil Halstead had seen our Big Issue project and had just released an album call 'Sleeping on Roads' which was a reference to a time he had once spent on the streets, so it wasn't hard to pitch the aesthetics as they had kind of already agreed they liked it.

onS8: Is there a future for Super 8, is there a renaissance of use?
Sam: It's difficult to say. The world is changing so fast and shorts/virals are being viewed on the internet, spread around the world and quickly
replaced. The world is based on an impatient disposable culture which is pushing technology, film and story telling into overdrive, and certainly don't seem to have the time to wait for processing and checking light meters! For example, broadcast documentaries are taking up the American formats of showing the whole programme in the first 5mins then spending the next 20 repeating it. Credits are pushed to one side after 2 seconds to reveal what's next for fear of people reaching for the remote! This is evolution, and for all its bad points, it will inevitably churn out the genius film makers of the future who will develop ideas that push all boundaries using technologies not even invented yet but Dog Years, in the middle of all this, stands out as a moment of altogether more peaceful. A little honesty and simplicity...and Super 8 is helping to keep it pure.

It really all comes down to your story and whether the medium you choose reflects the feel of the production. I do believe that we could have shot exactly the same on film on DV and it just wouldn't have come close to what we have achieved.

Super 8 has lasted like an old dog who never seems to die. I would be one of the first to welcome a renaissance but you have to face the facts of economics. It's becoming harder and harder to find processing and at some point there may be only one or two places in the whole world that still have the passion enough to keep the labs open whilst not making any money from it. The problem is with any renaissance is that they don't last and tend to hit hard and fast then disappear until the next time they come round. This just isn't a good business model for someone trying to run a lab and needing a consistency of work to keep going.

That said, from all the film formats 35mm, 16mm etc I think Super 8 has the most character, and for this reason it will always be loved and remembered but in a world changing so very fast I can only keep my fingers crossed that demand will be high enough to keep it alive. We are certainly going to keep using it to the very end.

For more on Ben, Omni Productions and the Dog Years series, see the following sites;

Omni Productions
Dog Years (Atom)
Dog Years 2 (Atom)
Ben's myspace page
Dog Years website

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