My new B&W 16mm music video

[woods01]

Finally finished this music video I shot this summer for a garage rock band I know. All hand processed 16mm! (with some snippets of super 8)

I shot Orwo N54 & N74 and cross processed & pushed Tri-X. It was all shot at 12fps on a Bolex with a Tobin motor and then made 24fps in post. Film was digitized with a DSLR on a JK Printer. Here's the 'official' YouTube link, compression artifacts are bad in the beginning, I'll soon upload a 1080P version to Vimeo with (hopefully) better quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99OvkgqYVYY

Band site:

http://therepossessors.bandcamp.com/

[carllooper]

Beautiful.

Will be good to compare it with a 1080P version, but this version looks great. I love the 12 fps effect - that motion blur effect you get ... where the image oscillates between space and time.

The work is formulaic of course: musicians playing guitars intercut with hallucinations inspired by the lyrics. But that's not a criticism. The formula doesn't impose any restrictions on what ideas or techniques you might want to inject into such - and musicians (or their management) are quite willing and happy to fund such work.

An interesting thing to do (which musicians, for some reason, wouldn't fund) is to change the sound track. This is not suggest there is anything wrong with the soundtrack. On the contrary, it's precisely the independant nature of the soundtrack (that it can work on it's own) that will tend to compromise the image. The image is always at that threshold where it threatens to become background to the sound, rather than a partner.

That said, the shots of musicians playing their instruments (vocal as much as technological) is the clever way around that. To locate the sound as if it were originating from within the image. It is a part of the allure of the formula.

C

[Nicholas Kovats]

Great jobs, Wood1!

Love that Orwo b/w look. Well done! What lens did you use in combination with the Bolex camera?

[slashmaster]

So I take it these guys are looking for a Bass player? Where are they from?

[woods01]

1080p version:

https://vimeo.com/109416229

Much like the band's music, the video is very basic rock video cliches. $200 budgets don't afford much more than meant & potatoes in today's economy ;)
Two years ago, when I first saw the band, I suggested a bass player and they said they'd take it under consideration

[Wade]

1080p version:

Sweet. 1080p looks great. Excellent value for the money--great shots! You processed Tri-X as negative? Does processing as negative help maintain the contrast if Tri-X is pushed?

[woods01]

Wade,

l I had two rolls of Orwo sitting around for months to test out and a music video seemed like a good way to try it out and not worry about stocks matching one another, Tri-X is what I had on hand to fill out the footage (I shot 500ft total). The 12fps was both a stylistic and practical choice. It allowed me to get twice as much out of the film and let me do entire takes of a 4 minutes song on a Bolex. I love the motion blur and the frenetic, choppy motion but it caused problems with the lip sync looking correct.

Once setup in the room where all of the band shots are, I realized that I needed a certain stop to get decent depth of field so that I wouldn't be worried about focus issues when I panned and tilted around the musicians (almost all of the video is shot on a Switar 10mm). This was not an issue with the 400 speed Orwo, but Tri-X cross-processed loses a stop of sensitivity. So I shot the film as rated and pushed when I cross-processed it. The Orwo was used for the exterior shots in the alley and for the coverage of the drummer. Everything else is Tri-X. The Orwo came out a little brighter than the Tri-X and had more shadow detail. You can tell in the band 2-shot that the drummer is a bit darker and there is more contrast, than in the drummer's close ups.

[Will2]

Looks like it was fun to shoot.

Not to start a YouTube vs. Vimeo thread but the YouTube version had way too many compression artifacts. The Vimeo version definitely looked better, I downloaded the original to compare it and the heavy grain in that format looked much better even though it was H.264. Too bad Vimeo can't stream at that quality level since they retain the originals for download.

It's unfortunate that our grainy films CAN look great in a digital format but almost all streaming players destroy the quality due to grain...they just can't handle all that randomness.

[woods01]

Yes, between the grain and the hand processing inconsistency there is far too many random artifacts for the free streaming services to handle. I just used the default export settings for web streaming with Compressor. Preparing video for the web is an art form all in its own.

[sk360]

Great video. The image of the Neko lucky cat moving along the alley was brilliant! Twenty years ago MTV would of played this right along with other 16mm/ super 8 videos like Veruca Salts "Seether" or Smashing Pumpkins " Cherub Rock". What was the total budget for this?

[woods01]

Thx sk360. Ah yes Cherub Rock, such a classic video. I had a $200 budget, although I think cash expenses went to about $250, some things like the beer budget went undocumented ;)

The song is about the singer's cat "Mr. Angry" and apart from a tiny super 8 clip, his recent passing prevented Mr. Angry from appearing in the video. We considered shooting another cat but I was worried I'd waste a bunch of film trying to get the cat to 'perform'. Then one day close to the shoot date, I was getting lunch in Chinatown and I saw one of these cats in a shop window and knew I found our star.

[milesandjules]

Nice work mate i can see why those 10mm switars are popular it works perfect...and great job on the home developing…by the way what tank did you use ?

[woods01]

I use a 100ft Lomo tank. Works pretty good, but occasionally there is a bit of damage, particularly at the head and tail of a roll, which is frame damage that I included in the final cut.

[milesandjules]

Nice ….i love the film/developing damage its something that is difficult to fake in post….we got a 50ft lomo….those lomo 100ft are hard to track down….im going to try my luck with a morse winder type tank as they seem to be cheaper and easier to find.

[woods01]

I've got the 50' model too, I was very lucky to get the 100' three or four years ago, I already had the 50' model and on eBay one day searching for other Lomo products and low and hehold there was a 100' one with a BIN, it was pricey, $200-250 IIRC, but its paid for itself in savings from a lab & shipping, plus encouraged me to develop a 16mm practice based on hand processing.

I've used the Morse rewind tanks and they tend to give more uneven developing and sometimes the results are very cool with all the random effects you get by using it. I feel film processed with a Morse is going to be much more 'experimental' in its look, which can be quite a good reason to use it! The main reason I stopped using my Morse is that it was just so damn time consuming, its about triple the time.