Super 8 Surf Cinematography, From A to B
Is Spat Out in Glory's quest to create a Super 8 surf film an exercise in audacity, doomed to failure by excessive hubris? Certainly. But Spat's willingness to humble itself equals its delusions of grandeur.
Thus the following video, running Kodak Ektachrome 64T film through every setting the Beaulieu 4008ZM4 has on its heavily knobbed, knurled and buttoned chassis. Shot mid-April, at Rincon. ...
The Spyder Willses and Greg Weavers of the world set the mark in surf cinema, Super 8-wise. Gems like The Forgotten Island of Santosha, shot on Super 8, inspire Spat to pursue its Quixotic, expensive goal.
Now, 6 months into filming, the obvious occurs: What about actually testing different film stocks under different settings, recording what film speeds, ASAs and f-stops work best? Seems sensible, yes?
Super 8 enthusiasts may find this exercise in Ektachrome 64T through its paces in bright outdoor sunlight a day late and a dollar short. You see, Kodak is discontinuing the film stock, in favor of 100 speed film that's actually balanced for outside use. So the 100 film should work better for Spat. But we shot a dozen reels of it down in Nicaragua. The tests in the video here were shot before Kodak made its announcement. C'est la vie, Cher!
Spat posts this in the spirit of helping other newbies learn the ins and outs of the Super 8 format. In terms of interpretting the settings, take note of the following: The film starts with all settings displayed. Each subsequent take includes a notation of which settings have changed. And so on and so on.
Spat has two more reels shot this same day at Rincon. To follow ...
Film, Super 8, Surf Films, Surfing, Video | tagged Beaulieu 4008ZM4, Ektachrome 64T, Greg Weaver, Rincon, Spat Out in Glory, Spyder Wills, Surf, Surf Film, The Forgotten Island of Santosha | May 2, 2010 at 7:22 PM 
Reader Comments (4)
You have many, many toys
Those are "tools," not "toys." It's just that I have so much fun being productive with them that they're easy to mistake for toys. That's all.
The Beaulieu 4008 has a 1/86 angle shutter @! 24 FPS or 1/65 @18 FPS after getting your meter reading you have to open the a half stop more to compensate for the light loss and then you will get nicer footage.
Thanks Alfredo. That's tremendously helpful.