814 goes Widescreen

Pro8mm introduces a new wide gate modification to the extremely popular Pro814. The new modification gives 20% better resolution when scanning in HD because it allows for expanded image on the negative. Introduced just over a year ago, the Pro814 is an affordable rebuilt, recalibrated super 8 camera, modified to optimize the results of modern Super 8 film stocks. The modification is priced at $300.00; This is an inexpensive way to achieve widescreen capability for your Pro814 camera. This is a modification to the gate and block only, and does not include 16 x 9 viewfinder or optical centering. The Pro814 is priced at $795, which includes a water tight Pelican Case and 85 filter. The intro price for the Pro814-Widegate is $995.00, a saving of $100.00.

More at Pro8mm.com

Shikashika does MOMA

Shikashika, Steve Hyde's observational study of a family of Peruvian ice sellers is screening in the "New Documentaries shot on Super 8mm" strand of the this year's Documentary Fortnight at the world famous Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York.

Screening on Thursday 12th and Friday 13th of February, Steve's beautifully poetic film shares a 90 minute programme of films, all of which were shot on Super 8mm.

We want to congratulate Steve on this very special screening - a real achievement!

For information on Shikashika, click here
To see the MOMA page, click here and look for "New Documentaries Shot on Super 8mm"

Wabi-Sabi Dagie

One of our favourite Super 8 filmmakers, Dagie Brundert, has got a great new website up and partially running - curiously entitled "The Wabi-Sabi in Super 8"

Super 8 has the capability of teasing out and capturing the wabi-sabish soul of things and occurences. More than just displaying, picturing one-to-one-wise – it soaks up beauty molecules, cells, souls and spits out beauty grains – simply because Super 8 is magic.

Click here for a dose of Wabi-Sabi (English & German)

Best of the Cambridge fest. and more

A selection of the very best films screened at The Cambridge Super 8 Film Festival in 2008 with be shown this Thursday at The Lothbury Centre. There will also be the chance to meet some of the film makers including creative powerhouse Colin Dewar and French maestro Thierry Bonnaud.

Simon Mullen of the Cambridge Super 8 Group will give an entertaining introduction to Super 8 and its evolution from home movie format to modern creative platform. He will also be giving tips on cameras, film stock, and an insight into film materials and technique as well as the digital formats that Super 8 filmmaking can complement.

Where/when...

Thursday the 29th January 2009 - 7:30pm
The Lothbury Centre, Church Lane, Weston Colville, Cambridgeshire. CB21 5PE

Ticket/entry price: £5.00 (Students £3.00)

England Flies on the podcast

(Click image to watch the film)

This week on the podcast a music video that first caught our eye in our selection of the Salford Film Festival Super 8 strand last year.

Steven Wallace's rocking Super 8mm video for bar-punk outfit Automatic Erasers was shot on Tri-X and cross processed as negative, with live performance footage pushed 2 stops. Processing was undertaken by Niagara Custom Lab in Toronto, Canada and telecine by Cinelicious in Hollywood, California, USA.

For more on Steven's work go to his blog/site at www.scwfilms.com

Click the image above to watch the film in either Flash or higher quality Quicktime versions. Alternatively, follow the link below to download the original H264 file (Quicktime 7 required);

• England Flies (.mov file, 35.8MB)

Remember, you can also;

• Subscribe to the Super 8 podcast via iTunes here
• See our Blip.tv channel for non iTunes solutions
• For more on the onsuper8.org podcast click here including how to get email updates

eBay - how to buy a camera guide

Does exactly what it says - eBay "How To Buy A Super 8 Movie Camera"...

...click here

More than 15m in a Super 8 cartridge?

Wittner Cinetec have published an interesting article that discusses their experiments with just how much film will fit in a standard Super 8mm cartridge.

How and why we hear you ask - well it's to do with the thickness of the film and the available real estate hidden in those little back boxes. Some headlines;

• Kodak Ektachrome 64T - 15.25m
• Wittner Chrome 100D - 15.20m
• Wittner Chrome V50D - 15.10m
• Wittner Chrome 40T - 15.60m

More here in German, or in English (via clumsy robots).

LIfe Spam - BBC Three

Jacqueline Wright and Alice Lowe's pilot comedy 'Life Spam' airs this Friday on BBC Three (UK) at 11.00pm featuring a bunch of cult-ish faces and some outlandish costumes.

The attentive amongst you will know both names from successive straight 8 entries over recent years including the fab Sticks and Balls (as on our podcast) and last year's brilliantly groovy Queen B.

More on Life Spam at Facebook

OT: Polaroid coming back?

Slightly off topic we know - but there's a chance that Polaroid type film might just re-emerge...

Impossible b.v. has been founded with the concrete aim to re-invent and re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras. Therefore Impossible b.v. has acquired the complete film production equipment in Enschede (NL) from Polaroid, has signed a 10-year lease agreement on the factory building; and has engaged the most experienced team of Integral Film experts worldwide.

More at http://www.the-impossible-project.com

The Morning Run: Podcast

(Click image to watch the film)

On the podcast this week we've got Patrick Barry's great promo spot for Mizuno running shoes.

Cut to "Learning to Land" by Crash the Satellites, this three and a half minute runners film was shot on was shot on 10 cartridges of Kodak 200T Vision 2 negative film stock with a Canon 1014E camera without any filtration.

Processing was undertaken at Alpha Cine (Seattle) and telecined to mini DV by CinePost (Marietta, Georgia). Final edit and color correction was in Final Cut Pro.

For more on Patricks's work go to www.bluellamastudios.com where you can also see the gorgeous teaser trailer for his new Super 8mm film 'Veer'.

Click the image above to watch the film in either Flash or higher quality Quicktime versions. Alternatively, follow the link below to download the original H264 file (Quicktime 7 required);

The Morning Run - Mizuno Ad (.m4v file, 39.1MB)

Remember, you can also;

• Subscribe to the Super 8 podcast via iTunes here
• See our Blip.tv channel for non iTunes solutions
• For more on the onsuper8.org podcast click here including how to get email updates

Remodernists seek help

Last summer we post a short piece about the emerging Remodernist agenda. Jesse Richards, artist, filmmaker and photographer, is seeking outside help to see new Remodernist films come to life.

For the full Remodernist manifesto, click here and to find out more on how you can help these films become real, click here.

Wittner dangle B&W carrot?

The ever informative Wittner Cinetec website mentions the possibility of the Orwo UN54 black and white film stock (fine grain, panchromatic, ISO 125 as reversal, ISO 100 as negative) being loaded in Super 8mm cartridges.

With a date slated of Spring 2009 - does this mean we have a rival to Kodak's stalwart Tri and Plus-X products...? If you're interested, remember to drop them a line as they're presently gauging market interest.

Here in German
Here for comical English bot translation

Light to sound in 8mm

We're a bit late to this one - artist/modder Eric Archer has given a bunch of 8mm cameras a new lease of life as light to sound transducers - converting vintage machines into optical microphones...

Recently I’ve begun designing electronics to convert film cameras into audio transducers, or optical microphones. Obsolete 8mm film cameras are exciting to work with, partially because their design aesthetics are so different than what you get with new products today. Besides that, the 8mm format interfaces nicely with the size of semiconductor light sensors - not too big, not too small.

...more here

Ciny.com moves

Change your bookmarks - the Super 8 Forum over at Cinematography.com has moved! It's now here;

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showforum=31

Fab tees at Echo Park

We're loving this from the line of 8mm-wear at the Echo Park Film Centre in LA - price, just $12. They also do dvd's, buttons, patches and posters too! Ace!

Click here for more

twittering all things Super 8

This is fun - all "twitters" mentioning Super 8...

twitter me

...shame those darn hotels keep turning up though!

8 Fest goes live

With its manifesto of "... unique festival that presents all forms of small-gauge film: 8mm, Super 8 and 9.5mm, as well as works in installation, loops, and 'proto-cinema devices' like zoetropes", Toronto's 8 Fest is live on the internet with their great festival website.

January 30th to February 1st sees their second annual festival taking placing at the Trash Palace, 89-B Niagara Street (Just West of Bathurst) Toronto, ON - tickets are just $5 per event (of which there are numerous of all tastes).

For more info on the 8 Fest go to www.the8fest.com

An early Spring clean?

onsuper8.org a bit like it's editor, has got a bit flabby of late - so with New Year's good intentions still fresh we've embarked on an early Spring clean.

So, it's out with the dead links and outdated information and in with a fully checked and updated resources including some web 2.0 additions.

There's also a simplification of the front page and the navigation as well as a general spruce up across the site.

There's more to come so keep your eyes peeled!

Flicker Chapel Hill screening

News from the Flicker chapter in Chapel Hill, North Carolina...

Ring in the New Year with the fabulous films of Flicker! We have quite a treat this month, as our program features many longer-form films, both narrative and documentary. Please see below for the lineup.

The show will take place at the Cat's Cradle on Sunday, January 11th; doors will open at 8pm, and the show starts at 8.30 pm. As usual, we will have delectable baked goods for your dessert pleasure in addition to the show, and all for the low price of $3.00 at the door.

Many of you know how much we like to play games at Flicker. Well, this show I'm going to try something new, and I'm calling it MYSTERY MEAT. I'd like to invite anyone who has anything on film to bring it along, whether it's old family Super-8 films, unedited films you've shot yourself, or even films you bought at a thrift store and maybe haven't even seen yet: anything goes. Everyone with a film to show can enter his or her name into a drawing, and we'll draw at intermission to see whose surprise film will wrap up the show. We'll also be playing the Flicker staple, the Hat Trick game, where one lucky individual wins a roll of Super-8 film and the use of a camera to shoot their own film. Come out and play with us!

The lineup:

Twitch – Leah Meyerhoff – 10:00
Chicamauga – John Henry Summerour – 14:40
B for Beekeeper – Thomas O'Keefe – 12:13
Barbara Leather – Seth Lind – 10:00
50 Feet that shook the world – John Cannizzaro – 3:00
Elegy – John Warren – 6:00 – 16 mm, super 8, handpainted film

More on Flicker Chapel Hill at flickerfestival.com

Best of the Fest goes East

The Cambridge Super 8 Best of the Festival touring programme makes its furthest forray yet with a screening this Sunday in Beijing, China!

At 3pm at the Wudaokou, 5 Xiwangzhuang Shuangqing Lu, in Haidian District - 15 award-winning short films from last year's Cambridge International Super 8 Festival will be shown.

Entry is free. Sadly (and unsurprisingly) we won't be there!

More here or in English here

Halogenuros - HD on the podcast

Another ground-breaking first in with world of small gauge film...

Those of you with long memories may remember previous articles we've posted about Daniel Henríquez-Ilic ambitious Halogenuros project, conceived to demonstrate the capacity of the Super 8 image when coupled with 2k scanning technology and a workflow resulting a 35mm theatrical print.

Today, we are genuinely thrilled to be hosting the full 9 minute 14 second version of this remarkable film in both Standard and High Definition versions. As you watch this impressive short (links below) don't forget the workflow that got these images to you;

Shot entirely on Super 8 using Vision2 100T (Pro8/12), Vision2 200T (Kodak 7217), Vision2 50D (Pro8/01) and Vision2 250D (Pro8/05) - Spirit Datacine 2K telecine (10 bit data) at the world famous Park Road Post, New Zealand - editing, colour grading and cropping - grading for the film-out on Quantel eQ using a Look Up Table and mantaining the LUT for the internet delivery (so this version has similarities with the look of the 35mm print) which was undertaken in Chile - for internet delivery output to H.264 with Rec 709 colourspace


We've uploaded both the SD (89 MB) and the amazing HD (301 MB) options to our iTunes podcast which automatically downloads the full h264 versions. Or, you can directly view the h264 files here;

Halogenuros SD version (89 MB)
Halogenuros HD version (301 MB)

or watch on Blip.tv here for SD and here for HD in the lesser quality, streaming Flash format.

Note: you will need Apple Quicktime 7 (download it here) to view the native h264 files and fast computer to watch the HD version


We are hugely grateful to Daniel for letting us host his remarkable film and we're particularly thankful for his huge patience whist we sorted out the technicalities in getting the film prepared for the internet.

Further information on the film will be shortly available at www.filmhalogenuros.cl including a full report (at this stage in Spanish) on the making of this ground breaking Super 8mm film.

The future of Super 8 is here!

Remember you can...

• Subscribe to the Super 8 podcast via iTunes here
• See our Blip.tv channel for non iTunes solutions
• For more on the onsuper8.org podcast click here including how to get email updates

One Take Super 8 Screening - Vancouver

A special collection of 18 of the best One Take Super 8 films, produced over recent years will be screened on Monday 19th January at the Pacific Cinematheque on Howe Street in downtown Vancouver, 7.30pm onwards.

Toronto-based filmmaker Alex Rogalski, the event’s producer, will present and project 18 selections from the archives including films made in Regina, Winnipeg, Montreal, Ottawa, Fort Lauderdale, Syracuse, and Oberlin, OH

For more click here or go to the One Take Super 8 website

Catalonian celebration of Super 8

Over the three days of the 8th, 9th and 10th of January the Super 8 format will be celebrated in grand style at the Centre of Contemporary Culture in Barcelona.

Over three evenings every aspect of 8mm will be explored through a variety of screenings encompassing everything from home movies, experimental film and high art.

For more information see;

CCCB (in English)
Zaragoza Cine Group (in Spanish)
Zaragoza Cine Croup (bot translation)

We're twitter-ing!

Yes, along with other luminaries such as Stephen Fry, we're twitter-ing on a very regular basis!

To get your automatically updated twitter fix of of onsuper8.org goodness - just click here. If you haven't a clue what we're on about - click and learn here!

Film stock data - updated

It's a brand New Year so we've been busy updating some of the core data on the site. Today, we've cleaned up the film stock areas which have been updated with the full range of available Super 8mm filmstocks.

Click here to view online, or here to download a handy cut out and keep .pdf version (181k).

Cambridge - was down - now not out!

Our chums at the Cambridge Super 8 Festival were the unfortunate target of hackers today who nuked their website from 3pm.

The good news is that normal service has now been restored so you can submit your last minute entries (your entry must be postmarked by January 9th) to the UK's best-est small gauge film festival.

For more go to www.cambridge-super8.org