Sent 97 rolls off to the lab this morning - we've already had 98
rolls developed - so that's 195 rolls altogether or 7 hours and 35
minutes of footage - OH MY GOD! (this is based on 2:20 per roll @ 25
fps)
6/7/2001
This will be my last update here for about 6 weeks - I'm going
overseas in a few days for a long needed holiday - to Ireland, France
and Germany woohoo! The status with the film is the other rolls came
back from the lab two days ago - all appears to be in order with them
so now I'm madly splicing them together onto 400ft reels for the Rank
Cintel telecine in Sydney. This will be done early next week so I don't
think I'm going to be able to see it all until after I come back -
which is dissapointing - but I'm going to look upon it as a good thing
- because a break might allow me to approach it in a fresh way, and see
it all in a newer light
All the minidiscs are being backed up at the moment and may be
split into seperate scenes while I'm gone - I'm yet to see about
organising that -- but basically everything will just sit till I get
back
The Brisbane International Film Festival will be on while I'm gone, and I think The Letter
will be shown in that, so I'll miss that unfortunately but can see it
when I get back -- Tristan Currie has got a show starting on Briz 31
about film-makers where he interviews people in different crew
positions - it starts tonight, and runs weekly -- and in about 4 weeks
Lana Calnan is interviewed on the day we shot the Jainantu hut scenes
-- again one to see when I get back -- but if you're in Brisbane it's
on Fri nights at 10pm (after the monster movie!)
Richard and Jennifer have given me photos they took over the
shoot, which I'll have to post later - and there are also some digital
phots from the wrap party (which was great) which again I'll post later
Finally a sincere thanks to everyone who has helped and supported
the film thus far -- we've still got a long way to go, but it's been
great so far - so thankyou to all the crew and cast and other people
who have helped out - I think we've all done something we can be proud
of -- and thank you too to the international Super 8 community - via
the internet - your constant support and advice has been a great help!
See you all in 6 weeks! - Scot
31/8/2001
Well got back a week ago after a great 6 weeks in Ireland, France
and Germany - still recovering and settling in! - I decided not to get
the film telecined before I left (basically just ran out of time) - but
will shortly - I've also got to get a few hardware upgrades too to my
computer, so don't expect I'll be able to start editing for about 3 to
4 weeks - but that's alright.
Didn't get to see I am Josh Polonski's Brother
either in France - which was a bit dissapointing - but it would have
been hard to organise from where we were (a bit of a distance from
Paris) and I'm not even sure if it was still on, but that's okay too!
5/9/2001
Sent the film away to be telecined - should have it back in about 10 days I think
26/9/2001
I've been quite busy at the moment, but alot has happened with the film - which I can now put down:
I got the film back from the telecine lab about 2 weeks ago -
they rang me whilst it was being done to tell me there's some camera
flicker or vibration on a number of the rolls -- there was quite a bit
at the start actually, but thankfully it settled down after that, but
it would appear to be on 15% of the footage -- basically the image is
jumping around vertically and will need to be stabilised - there's
software packages, plug ins etc that we can use to do this, and though
I don't know yet I'm confident we'll be able to fix it. I'll put an
example of it up in due course - I think it may have been caused by the
loose handle which would have allowed for the body of the camera to
vibrate - but there are a number of possibilities we're looking at, and
hopefully the problem with the camera can be fixed.
Probably 4 or so of the rolls have a vertical blue line (scratch
I presume) which dances around the image - quite annoying and we're
trying to work out if it happened in the camera or in developing - and
again something we're hoping the great god of miniDV will be able to
remove for us!
Overall though the footage is quite good - there's a few other
things like some colour correction - alot of the footage from the first
shoot at Natural Arch appears very blue and I wonder of the daylight
filter accidentally engaged (as in a mechanical fault - not someone put
it in) - it might be best to remove it I think, and just have an
external filter for that purpose
The film is pretty moody and dark at times (visually) but I think
that will work for our purposes, and something we wanted rather than a
grainy half light caught on the Super 8
We've only had time to capture images from about half the film shot - and will do the rest soon
When we capture those images we'll also capture some of the
miniDV footage Alan Beale took on the first day's shoot and post them
next to the Super 8 images for comparison
I'm working on my computer now getting it all set up now to start the editing - I'll detail the specs etc at some stage
Bought a Ju 52 model today for the composit shots with the plane! - and will have to start making it soon too (only it won't be in the army markings or colours!)
I've been projecting some of the film and it looks fantastic - there's nothing
like projected film and I'm even tempted to cut it all on film - except
1. I'd be cutting the original 2. it'd take forever and 3. there are
all sorts of problems with running the sound as well - not to mention
the parts of the film which will have to be finished or manipulated
digitally -- which is a shame because it looks fantastic - and nothing
even a Rank transfer running on SPbeta or DVD will look as good, but
that's okay - I might shoot a short one day on Super 8 and finish it on
film just because it looks so good
5/10/2001
David Rusanow has written this article on how he lit the film
I asked Roger Evans the maker of Jet Benny for some information on the making of it and he had this to say
10/10/2001
Alot of people, especially fellow Super 8 filmmakers have
expressed an interest in what we're doing and buying a copy of the end
product, which is fantastic - but just so everyone knows - the expected completion date for the film is June 2002.
Hopefully we can get it done before then, but I've set that as the
deadline in order to have sufficient time to do the job really well. I
want to get as much out of what we shot as I can, and I especially want
to spend alot of time getting the sound right - removing camera noise -
adding the right kind of atmos etc. We only have one chance to get it
right, and doing the job properly rather than rushing it through I
think is paramount to what we are doing. The amount of interest and
support we've been receiving from people all over the world is
fantastic, but I just want to let everyone know the clear time frame
involved - keep checking back to see how it's progressing, but
unfortunately don't expect the end product till then!
And have also started working on the sound files - cutting them
into individual takes and cleaning them up, as well as have captured
the first 4 rolls of film, but am going to need some more hardware
modifications before I can do too much more
I won't be adding to the web page now for quite a while whilst I work on the editing
2/4/2002
Well it's been a long time between updates not because nothing
has been happening - quite the opposite actually - which I'll endeavour
to summarise below
The editing is in full swing - all of the footage that has been
shot (about seven and a half hours) has been transferred to the
computer and almost all of this has been synched up with the sound
(more on this later). About two thirds of the film has been edited to a
rough cut stage, and the rest is being worked on now.
Over all it's coming together well - but there are a few problems
that will need extra work - I'm going to start a "problem page" to look
at how we will be doing this. A few of the more obvious problems are
non lip synch in a few of the scenes, the notorious jittery cartridges
(owing to a manufacturing fault) and how to back up about 100 gigs
worth of data!
We've had to reshoot a few shots - mainly owing to technical
problems - and have done or are doing a few shots we never did the
first time around. Virtually all of these have been of bits a minute or
less in length - so I've done it with virtually a skeleton crew (not
wanting to call alot of people out for such short shots)
I received 16 rolls back from Switzerland just the other day -
which includes the scene one reshoot and scene 105 - which has a number
of people in traditional Papua New Guinea dress - which looks great.
I’ll post captured stillphotos of this shortly - though there are
some behind the scenes stills of this posted already (see the links
below). These 16 rolls will be telecined in the next week or so. The
remaining shots now are mainly sunrises, and some shots of the model
plane for compositing.
The time frame now is to have the first stage of the rough cut
done by the 1st of May, with the remainder of the whole film completed
over the rest of the year. I've been approached by an organisation
which wants to hold the premiere of the film, so hopefully that will go
ahead, and if so most likely in December. I have a big commitment
coming up at the start of May so I won't be able to do much work on the
film for a few months after that - but at that stage what I'll mainly
have to do with the film is sound mixing - whilst a few others do their
work - the special FX compositing, the musical score, colour grading
etc - so it will still be progressing well over that period.
Tony Jones, the composer, has a portion of the rough cut that has already done, and is starting to work over it.
I met with the sound editor John Willsteed a short while ago who
has given me heaps of good practical advice on how to improve the sound
mixing and sound design of the film.
Inside Film magazine is interested in running an article on us -
but I'm not sure yet whether that'll be in the magazine, or on their
web site
I've posted more behind the scenes photos (those these are yet to be captioned) and also some more stills from the film - but more will come there too once I get the recent 16 rolls telecined
There's another small entry on the equipment page as well
There won't be too many more changes here for a while as we keep working away on the film
11/8/2002
Well it's been a while since the last update - the biggest piece
of news is that my wife and I celebrated the birth of our second child
in May - which has obviously effected the work rate on the film - but
that's okay! :-)
I've just about finished the rough picture cut - except for a few
sunrises etc to film - and the scenes where the battery was flat on the
crystal synch - which I'm synching up by hand - a very painstaking
process
I've found the Dynapel Steadyhand video stabiliser is solving
almost all of our jitter problems - some I don't think can be
satisfactorily fixed due to the fact the film must have bowed in the
gate and the image is blurred - but there's not too much of that - but
it is dissapointing
Was lucky enough to get this good article
in the Courier Mail, and I was then offered an interview on radio
station 4BC - which went well - unfortunately the battery on my
minidisc recorder was too low and I didn't record it -- here's a tip:
the battery level was fine for playback, but not for recording - I saw
it in playback mode and thought it would be alright for recording - it
wasn't - don't be trapped!
The script is now posted in pdf format, along with other works
Recorded a whole lot of bird calls out in the bush in stereo with
2 microphones at 90 degrees to each other - and it sounds great - heaps
more presence and life than the mono bird recordings I've made
I've had some farily good success with removing the camera noise
which unfortunately got onto alot of the indoor scenes. Now let me just
say prevention is better than cure - but given that, this is how I had
some good success with the situation we were in - (and I'll illustrate
this much beter when I get time to set up the problems page) but anyway
- for each particular take where there was a problem I grabbed about 3
seconds of just camera sound - put that into Cool Edit - did a
frequency analysis and looked at where the peaks were - and in almost
every one there was a big peak around 53 Hz, and occasionally ones
around 700, 1100 and 2000 - but if you mess with ones above 1000 or so
you start to effect the vocals -- so anyway I jotted down where the
peaks were - went back to Adobe Premiere brought up the parametric
equaliser effect on the take then set it to 53 Hz, with a bandwidth of
99 and a boost/cut of -100 and got really good results - sometimes
removing it altogether, other times markedly dropping it - with out effecting the tonal quality of the vocals
- although they did drop in volume but that can be corrected. You could
probably export and import it a number of times to increase the effect
too I imagine. I'll provide .wav examples later but the point being
when I was trying to use the parametric eequliser by ear the results
were average but after I did the frequency analysis they were great.
The camera was a Beaulieu 4008ZMII so 53 Hz must be significant to
that, but would probably vary for others.
Had a preliminary production meeting with the producer of the
next film The Sash - which hopefully will be on 16mm (getting my R16
serviced, synched and set up now!)
Still looking on track for a December completion
27/11/2002
Well the rough cut's finished. The initial assemblage of all the
scenes came to 2 hours and 4 minutes, and I've cut that down now to 1
hour and 34 minutes - based on some good advice from Ben Gibbs, Roger
Evans and some others. I've really found that at this stage I'm so
close to it I just don't have that fresh perspective anymore - so I've
been relying alot on advice from others so it's really been helpful.
I'm circulating the tape amongst cast and crew, and a few others and
may cut it back more yet - but I don't think it will take much more!
It's a very dialogue heavy film so obviously keeping the pacing going
is one of the main considerations.
There is a few more establishing shots to get - I'm going to
Townsville (in the tropics here in Australia) for Christmas and will
get a few more establishing shots of beaches and some buildings etc -
and along with some sunrise footage I've already got and the plane
shots all fo this will be put in in January
About the plane!: Roger Evans is doing it - owing to other work
committments Andrew Jackson couldn't so I was going to - and then Roger
offered. Roger's got a wealth of experience and as most people would
know has done a hell of alot for small gauge film making his site
really is worth checking out. The footage we had that the model was
going to be composited into isn't suitable because of the breathing -
or small movement of the frame - brought about by the film only being
registered with one pin. What this means is that if the plane was
composited in on the ground as the ground (and the whole frame moves
slightly) the plane won't move with it - so it won't look right. So the
scnese with the plane will be reshot in DS8 with the plane as a
foreground miniature. Thus if there is any movement (and there
shouldn't be as this is 2 pin registered) then the plane will move with
it and it will look realistic. Some preliminary work on the plane is
shown below -and there's a good discussion thread on the whole process
of making this scene at http://www.hostboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=409&t=2681&p=1
As for a completion date now - I'd have to say around March - I
think it will be finished a fair bit before that - but I want to leave
some time to really publicise the event - and if possible try and get a
run in one of the cinemas here that can project it off a DVD player -
or some video master
4/2/2003
Just got back from holidays in Townsville in north Queensland -
while I was there I took a number of pick up shots - mainly beach
scenes and some buildings - all for establishing shots - I haven't got
the film developed yet - but I took some back up footage on my miniDV
camcorder and have edited that in, just to get an idea of how it looks
- and it looks pretty good!
So what I'm essentially doing at the moment is tweaking and
cleaning up - you can watch the film from go to wo - including credits
- but I'm just making adjustments here and there as I get feedback from
people and ideas myself. I'm probably sounding a bit too blase - some
of it's quite important - we recorded some ADR for some scenes and that
has synched in pretty well, and I'm adding a bit of foley here and
there and correcting the jitter - which is a major pain.
I must stress too of course that this cut hasn't got the final
few establishing shots cut in - they're going to be developed in the
next fortnight, but as mentioned I'm just using miniDV footage I shot
right after the Super 8 to give me a sense of timing/feel etc. Once I
get this footage back (and telecined) and Roger's as well (see below)
then it will all go into the film. I'm also investigating the
possibility of stock footage too of village scenes in the Papua New
Guinea highlands - this would be important again as establishing shots
- and something I can't go and film myself. It's an expensive
proposition though and I'll just see - should be getting a tape
tomorrow to review, that was originally shot on 16mm - so it should cut
in okay if I use any of it. One such establishing shot happens to be
this yacht - I had a very pleasant day out on Moreton Bay with Michael
Howcroft - a friend who has a boat and we got this shot (again here a
miniDV still shown) of a yacht for an establishing shot. Michael was
also brought up in New Guinea and I'm currently reviewing his
collection of Super 8 home movies to see if there's anything suitable
in there as well for general establishing/montage material
I've come across 4 different programmes to deal with it and the best I've found for my purpopses is Deshaker which is a Virtual Dub plug in written by Gunar Thallin. It's freeware - though I've also bought Dynapel Steadyhand plug in for Adobe Premiere - but I've found Deshaker is better. There are two others that I've found Karl-Heinz Huber's video stabiliser and Digistudio's video stabiliser
- but the best success I've had is with Deshaker. I might write a a
more detailed review of them sometime. Below is two screen captures -
one of Steadyhand on the left and Deshaker on the right. Unfortunately
some of the jitter I just can't get rid of - overall it's on a very
small amount of the film - but with what it is on I would say about 50%
of it can be solved fine, about 25% still has slight movement (but much
reduced) and 25% just won't give a useable result. I think this is
because the film has buckled in the gate so the image is actually
blurred and there's now way you can realign the frames to a give a
consistent sharp image. It's very annoying and very dissapointing to be
honest to put in all this work and end up with this kind of problem
(which takes alot of work to get rid of or reduce) and this is one of
the major reasons I want to get out of Super 8 and into 16mm. Kodak say
the problem is fixed (which some disagree with) but I just want
soemthing more reliable and proffessional basically.
Roger Evans has started doing some preliminary SFX shots with the model plane - more can be seen at this link
but here are few preliminary miniDV stills of the effect in action. At
the link there is also an mpg which can be downloaded which looks
fantastic.
The music has to be added yet which is another major thing - I
think Tony's waiting for a locked off cut (the minor changes going on
would still be frustrating for a composer I reckon) but over all it's
still heading for completion in a month or so - I'm hoping it will
still be able to premiere at the Brisbane International Film Festival -
but I haven't heard back from them yet! I'd be interested in doing a
talk about Super 8 at the festival too if I could
I was going to wait for a while but I've decided to upload the
web page for the next film now too - it's called The Sash - and is in
very early preproduction now - but there's a hell of alot I've learnt
out of this one that will go ionto that one! But that was part of the
purpose of this anyway - learning
And finally - I couldn't resist as well (perhaps dancing with the
devil!) but I've been experimenting with what kind of film look effects
you can get with video shots and posted a few of them here on the Shooting 8mm forum
to see if people could tell the difference. To be honest it was my
first go at doing this and I didn't do it very well, but the results
were interesting and I learnt alot about it ie. I learnt how to make
them look more like film - and, in my opinion, that (currently at
least) you can't actually make it the same as film. Kind of reassuring
actually, but I was investigating it mainly for economic reasons and I
certainly would shoot on video if ever had to, but now I'm more than
ever keen on film - and am particulalry excited about getting my 16mm
camera back in a week :-) Below are two rough examples but there were
alot more on the thread at the forum from both me and others.
19/6/2003
I didn't realise it's actually been so long since I've done an
update here - since I've been posting them all on the front page -- so
anyway to bring this up to date - we got the film back from the lab and
unfortunately one roll didn't turn out - it came back black - this was
a roll of beach scenes from north Queensland - this limited the editing
options, but I still had a number of other shots of beach scenes to
work with. Over all the material looked good - including the actual
footage that was shot in New Guinea in the 70's by Neville Howcroft.
Roger Evan's SFX shots of the model plane look fantastic as well
- and they and some other stills can be seen at the link just below
So as it stands now - the final cut of the film is done - and the
composer, the DOP and myself all have a time coded copy - so all that
has to be done now is the music added, some grading done - and some
final image stabilisation done - then we'll look at premiereing it
somewhere! and organising video and DVD sales direct from the web page
26/8/2003
The screening date of September 24th was agreed about a week or
two ago - QPIX have very generously agreed to hold the launch in their
screening room - and it should be a great night - considering this has
been going for years!
It will be projected via a video projector - most likely off a DVCAM tape - or even possibly straight out of a computer
There's not much else to say actually - the final touches are
still being added to it - but having the date set has I think added a
bit of focus which is good
Videos will be for sale as of the 25th of September in both PAL
and NTSC formats with a DVD to follow. The extra features of the DVD
aren't finalised yet - but are expected to include deleted scenes, a
directors commentary and a making of video. I've started a no obligation no deposit pre-order list to help keep track of all the people who have expressed an interest in obtaining a copy of the film
The poster's done - and I'm pretty chuffed too!
11/9/2003
The final touches are still being put on - and it's looking good!
Just added this article
about comparing the practicialities of shooting on Super 8 and 16mm - I
actually wrote this a few months ago - bu had forgotten all about
putting it on
24/9/2003
The film has premiered at last! - read all about it here
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