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Topic: Shooting Movies w/Still Camera

John Lasher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 493
From: Newark, DE
Registered: Aug 2001

posted 06-06-2004 01:54 AM

I'm thinking about trying to shoot a short animated movie with a 35mm SLR camera (using 35mm color slide film).

My thought was to print out the individual animation frames-two to a page-then photographing said page with the camera.

It's a standard SLR camera with (optional)auto focus. Film loads from left to right(looking at the non-lens side).

I know the registration will be terrible and the film will (most likely) be silent (although I do have a program which can convert a sound file to and image).

So... any advice would be appreciated.

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Carl Martin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1424
From: Oakland, CA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 06-06-2004 05:09 AM

i've experimented shooting with a half-frame camera and, yes, the registration was terrible. but that's ok. go for it. expect to do a lot of splicing.

carl

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John Hawkinson
Film God

Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 06-06-2004 08:54 AM

What's your real goal?

If it's to have a 35mm 4-perf movie from your digital files, you're probably better off finding a somebody with a 35mm slide film recorder (e.g. local copy shop, photo lab, etc.) and paying them whatever nominal fee they charge for a roll of 8-perf slides. It'll certainly solve your registration problems, as well as exposure, and a myriad of other factors, and reduce generational loss and color problems from the paper step.

On the other hand, if your goal is to mess around with your camera, well, OK [Smile]

.

--jhawk

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-06-2004 09:21 AM

If you really want to do this and get anything resembling reasonable registration, you need one of these:

http://www.cameraquest.com/NF3Pin.htm

Shoot full 8-perf VistaVision frames, splice the negs together, and have the film optically printed to 4/35. It isn't clear whether the registration pin would work with BH-perfed motion picture camera stock or whether you would have to use KS-perf film ("normal" 35mm film for still photographs is KS-perf).

A much cheaper solution would be to buy a normal motion-picture camera (pretty much any super-8 consumer camera, 16mm Bolex, 35mm Eyemo, etc.) and shoot your single-frame animation with it.

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Jeff Stricker
Master Film Handler

Posts: 481
From: Calumet, Mi USA
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 06-06-2004 02:24 PM

I remember reading that a specially modified Nikon still camera was used to photograph the mine-car ride in one of the Indiana Jones films. This gave the impression that the viewer was riding on the mine car...I guess it was shot one frame at a time while moving the camera through the miniature set.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-06-2004 05:10 PM

Hey,
Sounds like another rental oppiortunity for my VistaVision projector [thumbsup]

.

Jeff,
Nikon made quite a number of pin regestered Nikon bodies, I believe thats what they used to do that. I think a max. of 8FPS was possible with them.

Mark

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John Lasher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 493
From: Newark, DE
Registered: Aug 2001

posted 06-06-2004 10:00 PM

Uhh... yeah. I may not have made this clear, I'm trying to do this very cheaply (all of the places around here that do 35mm slides from digital charge $1-2 per slide, which comes out to about $54 for 3 seconds of animation)

Slide film costs about $5 for a 36 exposure roll (and about that much again for porcessing which knocks it down to around $10/3 seconds).

So... correct me if I'm wrong: Let's suppose I'm holding a frame of film with text in it. (The text is large enough that I can read it just by holding the film up to the light.) If I hold the film so that the text is right side up and forwards (reads from left to right) the soundtrack will be on the left side of the film and the next frame in the sequence will be the one below the one I'm looking at.

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 06-07-2004 01:37 PM

http://apartment42.com/album2a.htm

quote:
"We made two sets of mine cars in different scales. The small ones of course, and some larger for high speed shots where we actually had to shoot with real models flying through the air. The smaller ones we were shooting stop motion using animated puppets, but when they come off the rails we have to be able to shoot at high speed.

"In shooting the miniatures, we used Nikon still cameras. I wanted to keep the scale down as far as possible to reduce the length of the sets and it occured to me that we could use a Nikon. Mike McAlister, who shot all the miniature sequences, worked on ways to steady the Nikon and put a larger magazine on it. Everything was dictated by the smallest camera we could devise, and it worked great. We could have spent $100,000 on building a special new camera, but a slightly modified 35mm Nikon with 30 feet of Vistavision film shooting at one frame per second worked perfectly.

"We shot single frame stop motion so that Tom St. Amand could animate the puppets each shot, and eventually Bruce Nicholson, who did the optical work, put a little "shake" into each element. This matched in with the live action footage shot in England on the full size set, where everything was shot "shaking" on that sequence to give the impression of speed and danger, as if the cameraman was actually in jeopardy shooting it."

http://www.theraider.net/films/todoom/making_7_bibliography.php

quote:
American Cinematographer, July 1984 has an article.

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