Prepare to be amazed - SLR Motordrive first test

[Boyd Ostroff]

Long ago I saw a "making of" feature about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There is a rollercoaster sequence in that film where they ride a train of ore cars through a subterranean mine. In order to get a POV shot from the cars in the model they rigged a modified motor drive Nikon and some sort of motion control to shoot 35mm stop motion animation one frame at a time. I haven't seen the DVD of this movie, but perhaps there's a feature on the disk that includes some info on this.

[Matthew Groff]

There are Super 8 cameras (such as Nizos) that will shoot 6 fps in a timelapse manner which, if you're not totally obssessed with resolution (although some people claim K40 can be used for HD), could be an answer you're looking for. One cartridge at 6 fps would last nearly 10 minutes.

I thought your footage of yellow plants was very interesting and I tend to like this sort of photography. I think you may be on to something here, even if it only has limited narrative uses. Good luck.


mg

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Boyd:

I've actually seen that "making of" many years ago. I had forgotton about that. I think they were shooting 1 image per frame, so that's not really a "motordrive film" just stop motion, but they might have been using the 250 shot back that was available for the F1 series.

I thought about buying a F1 and motordrive with 250 shot back, but turns out the 250 shot back is really rare and I only found 1 in the UK for over $1000. Plus the motordrive made an incredible racket.

mg:

That's an interesting idea. I had not thought of time lapse super 8. I wonder how to get HD rez though? I've only seen DV telecine for super 8...

Right now, I get my film scanned at 2k for $9 per 36 frames (which = 12 seconds).

[Matthew Groff]

I think it really depends on available light. K40 is obviously a stock with very little grain but it requires a lot of light. I have heard that it is possible to bump S8 up to HD. Flying spot www.flyingspot.com claim to do it . I guess it's a matter of workflow which you haven't described here. I only suggested S8 because I think it can give excellent imagery when used correctly in the right situations and many cameras have these features built in. In fact, I find it interesting that these "consumer" S8 cameras have so many cool features a lot of the time.


mg

[Stephen van Vuuren]

It might work, though they don't list their prices for HD transfers. But I might hunt around on ebay and see what Super 8 cams.

I recall my old Chinon had a similar time lapse feature but I sold it over a decade ago so I don't recall the frame rate.

Per workflow, this is how it stands right now:

1 - shoot 36 exposures at approx 3 fps
2- send film to local lab to get scanned at 2k ($9 per roll for scan plus developing
3 - import images into single photoshop file
4- align images and verify order
5- output, correct etc (batch photoshop)
6 - import as TIFF sequence into after effects and interpret as 3fps
7- create HD 1080 24p comp - apply twixtor to adjust 3fps to 24fps
8- output uncomprossed 1080 AVI file.
9 - bring into Vegas for editing.

For super 8, the catch would be getting the HD telecine onto a disk as individual frames since I don't plan to buy a HD deck...

[Richard Alvarez]

A number of good super 8 gameras will do the trick. Nizo of course, also look into Braun, Bauer and Sankyo.

[K. Forman]

As for the Indiana Jones trivia- It was indeed a 35 mm cam, modified to to take a film reel, and motor driven to take 25 frames per second.

[John Jay]

SVV,

as a budding experimentalist, you ought to check out the work of Michel Gondry, (his DVD is an essential), take a look at the video he made for the Rolling Stones - lots of tweening going on there for sure

way back in '96 I did some catwalk shoots with LX + motordrive @ 5fps for a client and used Elastic Reality for the tweening, I then reduced them to Greyscale and displacement mapped a background - the models looked like they were made of glass - took a week to set up and 2 weeks of rendertime on a Mac 840AV

also there is a Pentax 250 bulk back on ebay at present - $50 - item 3808575184 - might work with a MX...........

[Matthew Groff]

With regards to getting HD into your computer, here is a thread http://www.8mm.filmshooting.com/scri...ghlight=webcam

Unfortunately the guy gives very few details. A $50 webcam, a 45mm macro c-mount lens, and who knows what other ingredients, probably a projector. The clip looks pretty good to me and I'd probably construct one of these myself if I knew exactly what was going on with it. Any engineers out there with any ideas? Anyway, he claims 24 bit uncompressed frames. Might be worth looking into.



mg

[Stephen van Vuuren]

<<<-- Originally posted by John Jay : SVV,

as a budding experimentalist, you ought to check out the work of Michel Gondry, (his DVD is an essential), take a look at the video he made for the Rolling Stones - lots of tweening going on there for sure-->>>

I'm quite familar with him but have not seen the DVD. I did see the rolling stones video and some other pieces but though there was some tweening, it did not seem to be the same technique that I'm using (continous motordrive into full motion). Am I mistaken?

<<<--
way back in '96 I did some catwalk shoots with LX + motordrive @ 5fps for a client and used Elastic Reality for the tweening, I then reduced them to Greyscale and displacement mapped a background - the models looked like they were made of glass - took a week to set up and 2 weeks of rendertime on a Mac 840AV

also there is a Pentax 250 bulk back on ebay at present - $50 - item 3808575184 - might work with a MX........... -->>>

That's interesting - I've been thinking about a similar idea - shooting full motion video of actors against blude screen and then placing them in motordrived backgrounds.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

<<<-- Originally posted by John Jay : SVV,

also there is a Pentax 250 bulk back on ebay at present - $50 - item 3808575184 - might work with a MX........... -->>>

I've seen this before (and also one Minolta) but could never determine if they were compatible with motordrive speeds of 3fps and how to get them to work well with my Canon EF lenses.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

<<<-- Originally posted by Matthew Groff : With regards to getting HD into your computer, here is a thread http://www.8mm.filmshooting.com/scri...ghlight=webcam

Unfortunately the guy gives very few details. A $50 webcam, a 45mm macro c-mount lens, and who knows what other ingredients, probably a projector. The clip looks pretty good to me and I'd probably construct one of these myself if I knew exactly what was going on with it. Any engineers out there with any ideas? Anyway, he claims 24 bit uncompressed frames. Might be worth looking into.

mg -->>>

Interesting. I looked at super 8 initially and never came across this. There's another, equally vague post there about using a digital still cam but no clips or grabs

[Matthew Groff]

From what I gather, from pecking through other posts of his, he is using a modified bolex projector with a cool (as in temperature) fluorescent bulb. He modified the projector to step through the frames and then is using the webcam to capture the stills with the macro lens and maybe some condenser lenses. Don't know how much you're interested in spending on this, but I think with a little luck you could scrap together the same set up, since he's being so unnecessarily coy about divulging information. Let us know what you decide.


mg