KICKSTARTER for new Super 8mm Sound print digests?

[Osi Osgood]

Actually, I have always loved the thought of that first reel, the D-Day landing, "Saving Private Ryan"!

[Phillip Campey]

I would also love to have the first reel of saving private ryan.

[Philip Hamilton]

Any KICKSTARTER title would be sourced from the original negatives which have made their way to a digitized copy. Then printed to Super 8mm - thus providing the best SOUND AND PICTURE. Purchasing an original 35mm or 16mm negative is not going to happen. Why? Availability and cost. Its not practical.

The point here is to provide a SUPERIOR edit with excellent SOUND and PICTURE on Super 8mm low fade polyester film. For those who are purists (which I respect) then they will only have 30 to 50 year old prints to watch which will have your standard wear and fade.

I really appreciate all the responses. However, i am a bit puzzled on the LACK of response even negative ones. It's as though I am suggesting that we raise money for Purple Llamas. I thought I would get more responses and also at least some responses regarding the same title. Presently it shows diverse interests which I do like to see as I am curious what people think would make a good digest.

Would lowering the price to $150 per copy bring in more responses? That can be done ! - but the campaign will need a lot more participation.

thoughts - comments - suggestions??

[Steve Lee]

Hi Philip,
I totally agree with you that the use of digital should be used as the master for our hobby to survive into the future, not for just the reasons of cost and availability but importantly quality, surely if you are going to produce an edited version of a movie you need to start with the finest copy of that movie that is known to exist, and it pains me to say it but this will be on digital not film,
I personally don't see the sence of using film prints as the master in this day and age, where these could be be twenty generations or more down the chain before you have started, with low contrast and high grain.
Digital would also be so much easier for editing and would produce a squeaky clean master negative to make the prints from.
At the end of the day I don't see that it matters where the master comes from, it's actually having a copy of of a particular movie on film to lace into a projector that counts not how it started its journey.
If it meant that more digests could be produced for a sensible price, I would even be happy for them to have optical sound as this would greatly reduce the cost of production.

May I put forward a suggestion for a digest.

A Great film.
A Fantastic cast.
Easy to edit down.
Scope.
And totally watchable over and over again.



Tim Burton's
Mars Attacks

[Russ Green]

How about a 600ft of Blade Runner.

[Russ Green]

Or Blade runner 2049 that would make a great digest.

[Ed Gordon]

Considering that the majority of movies made today are done digitally, going with digital sources makes sense.


Source: https://stephenfollows.com/film-vs-digital/

Which raises the question: Does anyone make a digital to film recorder? Wikipedia says "yes":

A film recorder is a graphical output device for transferring images to photographic film from a digital source. In a typical film recorder, an image is passed from a host computer to a mechanism to expose film through a variety of methods, historically by direct photography of a high-resolution cathode ray tube (CRT) display. The exposed film can then be developed using conventional developing techniques, and displayed with a slide or motion picture projector. The use of film recorders predates the current use of digital projectors, which eliminate the time and cost involved in the intermediate step of transferring computer images to film stock, instead directly displaying the image signal from a computer. Motion picture film scanners are the opposite of film recorders, copying content from film stock to a computer system. Film recorders can be thought of as modern versions of Kinescopes.

Here is one that was mentioned:

The Arrilaser is a digital film recorder made by Arri which writes digital movie files onto film after compositing and audio mastering on the computer. Files are sent to the device via a fast gigabit Ethernet connection. The Arrilaser uses three solid-state lasers (red, green, and blue) as a light source, and significantly reduces the cost of recording digital images onto film. Its chief competitor is Celco's Film Fury CRT-based recorder. As of July 2009, there were more than 250 Arrilasers installed worldwide...

In 2002, the manufacturer of the Arrilaser was honored with the "Scientific and Engineering Award" (Oscar Academy Awards) from the "Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences" (AMPAS) in Hollywood: "The Arrilaser film recorder demonstrates a high level of engineering resulting in a compact, user-friendly, low-maintenance device while at the same time maintaining outstanding speed, exposure ratings and image quality."

That was 20 years ago which is the moment in time when digital surpassed film. I doubt that there is a large enough demand for film as a medium for movies to justify a "film recorder" service. Hell, with the rise of streaming, the demand for physical media in any format is dropping rapidly.

I am an avid movie collector but do not plan to buy any more films. Yes, they are expensive, but not that expensive. Four hundred dollars today would be about $40 in 1960 when many on this forum started to collect films. I think the major problem is that nobody is making analog projectors anymore. If you have enough projectors and spare parts to last your lifetime, you are more likely to buy new films.

Maybe someone more ambitious than I would look into building a Super 8 Film Recorder.

[Larry Arpin]

Philip-Now I'm confused. The normal process for creating multiple super 8mm prints is to make a 16mm negative. How do you propose to make the super 8mm prints?

[Rik Jackman]

Interesting discussion.
I'd love to get a 600' of The Italian Job although I suspect I'd be in a group of 1 person
Looking at the your potential breakdown it would appear it costs more to get it striped and sound recorded (140€) than the price of the actual print (135€) so at those kind of prices I'd be inclined to go for mute prints with separate sound file and sync the sound file myself while projecting.

In fact I'd even be tempted to go for a mute full feature

[Philip Hamilton]

Philip-Now I'm confused. The normal process for creating multiple super 8mm prints is to make a 16mm negative. How do you propose to make the super 8mm prints?

Interesting question. All I know is what ANDEC in Germany does. They can take a digital movie digest and produce a 16mm Negative from that. Then from the 16mm Negative they print two copies side by side on Super 8mm polyester. These are 'split' into two prints. That is how Andec does it as I understand. Also, I know. that they have actually skipped the middle step of creating the 16mm Negative and can print directly to Super 8mm. Now, how they do this - I have no idea - would love to know. But I understand they tested this and it works. It would be great if they adjusted their pricing to reflect this 'skipped' step but I don't think they are doing this at this time.

Seems to me this would be less work and SHOULD lower the cost. But I am not running ANDEC and they can choose however they want to charge - why? Because unfortunately resources and services that do super 8mm prints are hard to find. ANDEC produces a good product. But as you can see from my earlier post - they are expensive.

I did find another individual in that can produce a Super 8mm print from a digital source inexpensively compared to ANDEC. (a fraction of the cost) But, they are tough to get a hold of and do not communicate very well or in a timely manner. It's very frustrating indeed. I have one of his prints. It looks great and sounds great. He does striping and recording too. If only he would respond to email questions a good amount of business could be sent his way. But maybe he is just too busy. I have tried.

[Philip Hamilton]

Interesting discussion.
I'd love to get a 600' of The Italian Job although I suspect I'd be in a group of 1 person
Looking at the your potential breakdown it would appear it costs more to get it striped and sound recorded (140€) than the price of the actual print (135€) so at those kind of prices I'd be inclined to go for mute prints with separate sound file and sync the sound file myself while projecting.

In fact I'd even be tempted to go for a mute full feature

Now that is interesting. I remember the days of trying to get that Americom record to sync with the silent CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HORROR OF DRACULA. AHHHHHH!!!! Never would sync. I ended up making my own soundtracks on a small reel to reel I could play along with my silent films. I could barely afford to buy digests back then much less have a sound projector.

But yeah - the striping PLUS recording seems way over priced. Not the striping though by itself - only because you are forced to purchase both! I hope that someday Movie Magnetic changes this policy to allow striping only. Though I will say Alberto does great work from what I have seen.

[Burton Sundquist]

Digital to film then count me out. I have suspected this business for some time but I do not want nor will support any part of it. I am a film collector. No digital prints wanted. Carry on with those who do.

[Larry Arpin]

Marco in Italy does conversions from a digital file to 16mm optical sound. When he first started it looked exactly like you would expect, video to film. But it was just for replacement footage. So I stopped using him for a few years until I got a film that was missing 10 minutes. So I figured it would be better to have it than not. When I got the footage back I was just amazed how good it was. On it's own it would almost pass as an original. I spliced in the footage and it matched almost perfectly. No one would even notice. So Marco had made a considerable improvement over his past efforts.

[Phillip Campey]

Hi Burton, most films for the past 20 years are digital scans, any film with sfx are scanned back onto film as the shots are created on a computer, the lord of the rings was shot on film then colour corrected on computers then scanned back to film. The latest Dune film was shot digitally then scanned to film then back to digital as they wanted the grain and colour only film can give you.

[Lee McCaffrey]

A company in London prints 35mm theatrical prints from digital files that get screened around the world. To produce 8mm prints you would require a supply of print stock (most likely 35mm positive perforated and slitted),a suitable display frame-locked to a camera and then an ECP processing line, for sound there would also need to be striping and recording. In this respect 16mm would be simpler as the print stock is still available and the soundtrack is optical, and could be printed at the same time as the picture. The trick would be to adjust the image to what the print stock is expecting to 'see' ie a very flat, low contrast negative image with a tungsten colour balance, also print stock is incredibly slow so you would either need long exposures or a very bright (and consistent) light source.