A pro's approach to Super 8
It’s sometimes far too easy to forget that there’s a whole world of film out there - from the enthusiastic amateur shooting his first reel of Super 8 right through to the awesome imagery in big budget Hollywood productions – it’s all film (apart from digital but that’s another story) and it all utilizes the same basic but essential principles.
This year we were lucky enough to attend the Cine Gear Expo in Los Angeles where the latest cinematic gizmos and gadgets were proudly shown off to the attending throngs of Hollywood’s film and TV machine. Amazingly, buried deep within the glitz and glamour of this multi billion dollar industry is Super 8mm film, still carving out it’s own niche in both film and TV – more than proving that small film is as viable as it’s ever been.
We were introduced to Cinematographer James Chressanthis - a two times Emmy nominee with countless acclaimed TV shows under his belt (currently Cinematographer on ABC's Ghost Whisperer) as well as credits for the cinematography on Urban Legend and additional cinematography on Chicago plus nearly 100 music videos – a man who actively shoots pro Super 8.
Grabbing a few minutes with him, we asked this member of the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers when and why he would consider using Super 8 film, “I always use Super 8 or any camera format for stylistic reasons. How does it pictorially advance the film I am making? Well usually, I’m using Super 8 to create a different texture within a piece filmed in 35mm or Super 16mm and more recently HD. The obvious use is often that of time shifting, shooting Super 8 as faux archival footage.”
It was on Brian’s Song, the 2001 TV film chronicling the tragic and brief life of Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo, that James made extensive use of the format. “We opened the film with two cross cutting Super 8 home movie sequences: one of the young Gale Sayers playing football with his Dad and Brian Piccolo playfully scrimmaging with his. We shot these sequences at 9 and 18 frames per second and telecined at both rates as well as at 24 FPS.” Director John Gray and Editor Scott Vickrey subsequently incorporated this telecined footage at all speeds within the final cut of this memorable movie.
Later on in the film, when Piccolo is undergoing chemotherapy for the cancer that eventually kills him, Super 8 was again used to dramatic effect. “John and I wanted to show the excruciating pain he suffered (typical of this treatment in the 1960's) as well as the emotional anguish he felt” explained Chressanthis. “We used Super 8 at 9 frames per second, transferred at 9 FPS but I also shot through a handheld 138mm diopter that I used to bend and distort the actor’s image. I was able to achieve this effect moving, walking and even ‘craning’ the camera. His body distended and distorted in what appeared to be a very painful way.”
The Super 8 footage was subsequently transferred to Digital Betacam and again to HD 24p with a 2:3 frame pull up and then to 35mm for the final print. It was this complicated workflow that added further motion artifacts into the imagery, artifacts that made these emotional shots even more disturbing.
“I learned the 9 frames per second approach on the pilot for American Family back in 2000” explained James. “Director Greg Nava and Second Unit Director Barbara Martinez Jitner had used it on their feature Selena with Jennifer Lopez the previous year. We shot home movies and the 9 FPS blurring especially with a handheld camera made Edward James Olmos and Sonia Braga convincing twenty year old newlyweds. Later in a funeral scene for Sonia's character, super fast 800T film allowed us to use only candlelight to film this grief stricken Goyaesque scene. This resulted in an extremely impressionistic, almost pointillist scene, it seemed like a painting come to life.”
But surely the selling the concept of using Super 8 in a major movie production must be difficult task? “John Gray pitched the idea of doing this in my interview, I think he expected the opposite reaction from my enthusiastic and experimental approach. You need a brave director collaborator to take this to such extremes, I was lucky that I had this for both Brian’s Song and American Family.”
Combining Super 8 within a mixed media production can be tricky, and we wanted to know what James did do to make sure his productions ran smoothly, “Testing! Always test your camera, your frame-rates, your stock, lab and post finishing. I often lean toward the grainier high-speed stocks, otherwise the Super 8 looks as good as 16mm or what people used to think of as 16mm. Of course with digital telecine technology and scanning 16mm can look like 35mm and I think the same holds for Super 8mm looking like a completely transparent professional medium. With care this is possible, but our testing on the projects always pointed us toward using stocks that would degrade the result, other wise the Super 8 looked too good! This suggests that shooting low speed super fine grain stocks with digital post can achieve really astonishing results for an entire film not just for an ‘effect’ within a film.”
Film stock is as important a weapon with the cinematographer’s armoury as his equipment, with the vast range of Super 8 stock now available what is James’ film of choice? “I’ve not shot any reversal since my music video days in the late 80's and early 90's: Bobby McFerrin, MC Hammer, NWA and Dr. Dre videos all incorporated Super 8 at some point. For me the break through came with the packaging of color negative stocks, I’ve worked with Pro 8mm in Los Angeles and I usually go for the grainier look of 5218 500T (Vision 2) high speed film. There used to be an even faster 800 ASA stock which we used on American Family and Brian's Song.”
As low and no budget filmmakers, we’ve all come across the limitations of the Super 8mm format, but what’s the view of a pro cinematographer? “If there is a problem with Super 8 it is that it can look too good! On the whole, it’s poor camera viewing systems that’s why I love the Beaulieu and the Pro 8mm camera conversions, they have none of those problems.”
James’ latest film is an ambitious project documenting the lives of Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, two men who during their youth chronicled the Hungarian Revolution and made a dangerous pilgrimage to the United States to present their work - the first step in each man's path to becoming ground breaking and now highly respected cinematographers. Whilst at Cine Gear Chressanthis and his crew were shooting interviews on site with those whose lives had crossed with the Hungarians. “We’re shooting Super 8 as an additional camera on interviews and using it as cinema verité while shooting. It’s a texture I may well shift it to black and white in post” explained James after literally coming from behind the camera.
And so the circle of film is complete, the cinematographer chronicling the cinematographers using (in part) the most accessible format in film. “Any camera is a way in to cinematography”, says Chressanthis. “I forgot about all my student films in Regular 8 and Super 8, it looks like they did lead to something!”
by Giles Perkins
This year we were lucky enough to attend the Cine Gear Expo in Los Angeles where the latest cinematic gizmos and gadgets were proudly shown off to the attending throngs of Hollywood’s film and TV machine. Amazingly, buried deep within the glitz and glamour of this multi billion dollar industry is Super 8mm film, still carving out it’s own niche in both film and TV – more than proving that small film is as viable as it’s ever been.
James Chressanthis, ASC
We were introduced to Cinematographer James Chressanthis - a two times Emmy nominee with countless acclaimed TV shows under his belt (currently Cinematographer on ABC's Ghost Whisperer) as well as credits for the cinematography on Urban Legend and additional cinematography on Chicago plus nearly 100 music videos – a man who actively shoots pro Super 8.
Grabbing a few minutes with him, we asked this member of the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers when and why he would consider using Super 8 film, “I always use Super 8 or any camera format for stylistic reasons. How does it pictorially advance the film I am making? Well usually, I’m using Super 8 to create a different texture within a piece filmed in 35mm or Super 16mm and more recently HD. The obvious use is often that of time shifting, shooting Super 8 as faux archival footage.”
It was on Brian’s Song, the 2001 TV film chronicling the tragic and brief life of Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo, that James made extensive use of the format. “We opened the film with two cross cutting Super 8 home movie sequences: one of the young Gale Sayers playing football with his Dad and Brian Piccolo playfully scrimmaging with his. We shot these sequences at 9 and 18 frames per second and telecined at both rates as well as at 24 FPS.” Director John Gray and Editor Scott Vickrey subsequently incorporated this telecined footage at all speeds within the final cut of this memorable movie.
A still from a Super 8 excerpt in 'Brian's Song'
Later on in the film, when Piccolo is undergoing chemotherapy for the cancer that eventually kills him, Super 8 was again used to dramatic effect. “John and I wanted to show the excruciating pain he suffered (typical of this treatment in the 1960's) as well as the emotional anguish he felt” explained Chressanthis. “We used Super 8 at 9 frames per second, transferred at 9 FPS but I also shot through a handheld 138mm diopter that I used to bend and distort the actor’s image. I was able to achieve this effect moving, walking and even ‘craning’ the camera. His body distended and distorted in what appeared to be a very painful way.”
The Super 8 footage was subsequently transferred to Digital Betacam and again to HD 24p with a 2:3 frame pull up and then to 35mm for the final print. It was this complicated workflow that added further motion artifacts into the imagery, artifacts that made these emotional shots even more disturbing.
“I learned the 9 frames per second approach on the pilot for American Family back in 2000” explained James. “Director Greg Nava and Second Unit Director Barbara Martinez Jitner had used it on their feature Selena with Jennifer Lopez the previous year. We shot home movies and the 9 FPS blurring especially with a handheld camera made Edward James Olmos and Sonia Braga convincing twenty year old newlyweds. Later in a funeral scene for Sonia's character, super fast 800T film allowed us to use only candlelight to film this grief stricken Goyaesque scene. This resulted in an extremely impressionistic, almost pointillist scene, it seemed like a painting come to life.”
But surely the selling the concept of using Super 8 in a major movie production must be difficult task? “John Gray pitched the idea of doing this in my interview, I think he expected the opposite reaction from my enthusiastic and experimental approach. You need a brave director collaborator to take this to such extremes, I was lucky that I had this for both Brian’s Song and American Family.”
Combining Super 8 within a mixed media production can be tricky, and we wanted to know what James did do to make sure his productions ran smoothly, “Testing! Always test your camera, your frame-rates, your stock, lab and post finishing. I often lean toward the grainier high-speed stocks, otherwise the Super 8 looks as good as 16mm or what people used to think of as 16mm. Of course with digital telecine technology and scanning 16mm can look like 35mm and I think the same holds for Super 8mm looking like a completely transparent professional medium. With care this is possible, but our testing on the projects always pointed us toward using stocks that would degrade the result, other wise the Super 8 looked too good! This suggests that shooting low speed super fine grain stocks with digital post can achieve really astonishing results for an entire film not just for an ‘effect’ within a film.”
Film stock is as important a weapon with the cinematographer’s armoury as his equipment, with the vast range of Super 8 stock now available what is James’ film of choice? “I’ve not shot any reversal since my music video days in the late 80's and early 90's: Bobby McFerrin, MC Hammer, NWA and Dr. Dre videos all incorporated Super 8 at some point. For me the break through came with the packaging of color negative stocks, I’ve worked with Pro 8mm in Los Angeles and I usually go for the grainier look of 5218 500T (Vision 2) high speed film. There used to be an even faster 800 ASA stock which we used on American Family and Brian's Song.”
As low and no budget filmmakers, we’ve all come across the limitations of the Super 8mm format, but what’s the view of a pro cinematographer? “If there is a problem with Super 8 it is that it can look too good! On the whole, it’s poor camera viewing systems that’s why I love the Beaulieu and the Pro 8mm camera conversions, they have none of those problems.”
Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond
James’ latest film is an ambitious project documenting the lives of Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, two men who during their youth chronicled the Hungarian Revolution and made a dangerous pilgrimage to the United States to present their work - the first step in each man's path to becoming ground breaking and now highly respected cinematographers. Whilst at Cine Gear Chressanthis and his crew were shooting interviews on site with those whose lives had crossed with the Hungarians. “We’re shooting Super 8 as an additional camera on interviews and using it as cinema verité while shooting. It’s a texture I may well shift it to black and white in post” explained James after literally coming from behind the camera.
And so the circle of film is complete, the cinematographer chronicling the cinematographers using (in part) the most accessible format in film. “Any camera is a way in to cinematography”, says Chressanthis. “I forgot about all my student films in Regular 8 and Super 8, it looks like they did lead to something!”
by Giles Perkins
Labels: feature
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