Category Newbies

In July, Lina Gasser from Switzerland interviewed me for her Matura thesis SUPER 8 – AN ANALOGUE SHORT FILM. I answered her questions.

How did you come to filmmaking? What attracts you to it?
In the beginning there was a huge passion for cinema. The films of Truffaut, Godard, Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and John Ford told me more about life than other art forms. After having given lectures on selected films by my favorite directors during my studies in 2003, it was studying abroad in Paris in 2006, during which I attended the Cinémathèque française almost every evening, that I got the idea to try filmmaking. Back in Germany, full of ideas and having hundreds of subversive-transgressive experimental films in my head, I took a camera and went into the woods. The resulting short film was then very positively discussed by friends and film students. Over the years I made more and more short films, which then even ran regularly at festivals. What makes me excited about filmmaking is the moving image: while a painting is quite static, in film, one can now show movement, relate music and sound, and create a unique rhythm through editing. Film as the art form of the 20th century unites almost all other arts in itself. A unique tool to express yourself.

Auch bei der 43. Ausgabe des Filmfests in Weiterstadt wird es am Samstag 10. August 2019 abends ab 22.00 Uhr den traditionellen Super8-Filmwettbewerb geben.

Das Wettbewerbsprogramm bestehend aus acht Super-8-Filmen ist seit ein paar Jahren in 2 Blöcke aufgeteilt, unterbrochen von 2 digitalen Projektionen (Platz 2 und 3 der Satirischen Kurzfilmtage Rüsselsheim). Das Filmfest will durch diese Mischung die Zuschauer an den Samstagabend mit seinem Super-8-Wettbewerb binden, da Super-8 mittlerweile leider nicht mehr den üblichen Sehgewohnheiten entspricht. Das sonstige Filmprogramm wird seit Jahren komplett digital projeziert.

Umso schöner, daß es die analoge Super8-Ecke in Weiterstadt noch gibt !

Perhaps others here also know the chronic problem of too-dark b&w reversal films. At least for me, b&w reversal films turn out much more often too dark than too bright. This happens especially in the case of expired films or obscure russian film stock etc., as well as in the case of negligence in development or lack of potassium rhodanide additive.

Often you just have a basic fog (so, bad Dmin) … There are many reasons.

Since my childhood I am fascinated by the sea: the view into the sheer infinite, full of reflections, wild and full of life. It leaves no human soul untouched, everyone seems to recognize a part of itself in it. Herman Melville‘s stage for American dreams gone insane in the personification of Captain Ahab, poets like Chateaubriand saw in it a “philosophical painting”. Of the latter, I filmed the poem La Mer in Brittany in 2010, and for the first time fell in love with the unreal, wild and seemingly untouched nature found there. Eight years later, in 2018, I again traveled to Brittany, this time to the southern area around Quiberon. There I was looking for a new film material and at the same time I wanted to break new ground.

In 1978, so more than 40 years ago, the photochemistry legend Patrick D. Dignan published a highly interesting script with the title
“How to Compound … Simplified Color Processing Formulas.“

Unfortunately, this script is extremely hard to find, and the Dignan family has no further copies either.
Darkroom mate Adrian C. from England was so nice and scanned his copy, Filmkorn now makes it available as a searchable PDF download!

The document is very interesting. While it does not list the exact formulas of the original processes, they would be very difficult to recreate. Rather, it offers a variety of simplified and tried-and-tested alternative processes with often startlingly good (or even indistinguishable) results.

The collection includes recipes for alternatives to the C-41, C-22, E-6, E-4, E3, Agfachrome and some paper processes (including a developer for Cibachrome!).

Great reading, and a printout shouldn’t be missing in any ambitious lab. You can learn a lot here.

Digit is a WDR project in which new photos and films from everyday life of the past are added to a database every day.

Digit is designed to prevent these images and memories from being forgotten. Instead, we want to use Digit to save analog material into our digital age. Digit stands for digital, but at the same time is a prompt. Because “Dig it” is also English! So like treasure diggers, you’re supposed to sift and sort. You can make your material available to the general public via an upload at Digit or make it available to us for digitization.

A complete list of all the narrow films already digitized by Digit can be found here on Vimeo. It’s fun to let yourself drift there!

Alberto Vangelisti is more than a tinkerer — he is apparently a gifted engineer: He managed something that the most proven machines failed in recent years: Design, construction and operation of a machine that reliably magnet-stripes any type of films (including polyester), precise and extremely inexpensive.

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Fresh from the scanner: The complete repair manual for the Nikon R10 as a searchable PDF. In large parts, of course, also valid for the R8.

Enjoy reading and tinkering. The Nikon R10 is not an easy patient, but worth every effort!

Many amateur lab workers have their darkroom in the basement or in the attic, but at least in places that are otherwise rarely used. In addition, there is often a lot of electrical equipment in a small-format-film-suitable darkroom, such as a heat plate, heated bain-marie, film dryer, sunlamp, lighting – and other things like e.g. an exhaust air system, a water lifting system, a radio or a water boiler.

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Those who splice their film with tape know the air bubbles that occasionally gather under the adhesive film. From Würker (and later Wittner) there was the practical tape roller with which this air could be removed. Splices processed in this way are less visible and audible.

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