[Frameworks] super-8 to 16mm blow ups?

[David Tetzlaff]

Well, first, the only way the scales are tipping in any venue is toward digital projection. Setting up a 16mm micro-cinema requires finding a working projector that won't eat prints, finding the increasingly rare short and fast lenses that will fill a decent sized screen, and dealing with beat-up rental prints... But that whine is just mere preface to my central point... to wit:

It strikes me that just as we have traditionally distinguished between "acquisition" formats and "distribution" formats, we are now at the point (if we haven't been already) where it makes sense to distinguish between "post-production" formats and distribution formats, and the choice of the former is best made based on aesthetic concerns, and ought to be relatively agnostic toward the latter.

A number of years ago at the Flaherty, I was surprised to learn that some of the most visually striking experimental shorts I saw had been shot on Super-8, gone through a high-res scan and a digital intermediate, and then finished on 35mm. That was something I never would have thought people would do, but the process produced what struck me as a unique and engaging "look". And, though I don't know absolutely, I'm pretty sure we were watching 16mm prints, since I don't think Vassar had a 35mm projector. So my hypothesis is that regardless of how you screen the work, blowing up Super8 to 35mm will produce a visibly different effect than blowing it up to 16mm. Now, IFF that's an effect you want, and if, as Scott says, the cost of going to 35mm is not significantly higher than going to 16mm, then 35mm would seem to make more sense.

Again, it all depends on your aesthetic goals. I know Roger, for instance, is "all about" an integrated low-fi, low-budget everything-has-to-fit-in-my-trunk 'praxis'. Give the man access to a Xerox machine and he's in his element! But we all have different elements, (if we have elements... I'm not sure I do... but I digress.

djt


On Dec 7, 2013, at 6:33 PM, Beebe, Roger wrote:

> Just wanted to say RE: 35mm vs. 16mm, that Scott's sentiments seem to echo the traditional wisdom about the omnipresence of 35mm, but with the rapid scrapping of 35mm projectors from almost every multiplex (and most of the art houses) in the U.S., it seems the scales may be tipping back in the direction of 16mm.  If nothing else, it's easy to throw up a 16mm classroom projector to convert any darkened room into a microcinema; not so easy to do that with 35mm (even with my "portable" Chinese projectors that come in 8 boxes & weigh hundreds of pounds).
> 
> 2 cents,
> Roger