Super 8 Wide Home Movie

Since my last two video experiments created by using only still images captured in a fast burst mode on the camera were successful and actually came out better than I expected, I decided that perhaps I should try to come up with a way to effectively mimic old Super 8 home movies too.  For this new experiment, I chose a short clip of our grandson, Lukey, playing tabletop shuffleboard at Agave Taco & Tequila Casa.

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I should start with a disclaimer...  This particular video clip was perhaps the most challenging clip I could have chosen for this experiment.  I did this purposely just to see what I could do.  This video clip was a high contrast clip with deep blacks and dark shadows.  Additionally, it was a highly compressed video which minimizes any leeway in editing the file.  In the future, if I want to mimic old 8mm/Super 8 home movies, I'll use a more appropriate clip captured using more appropriate camera settings.

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I used to shoot a lot of 8mm and Super 8 home movies when I was a kid.  My dad had a couple of movie cameras that we used often at family events as well as while on every vacation.  I was the one who manually cut and spliced all our home movies.  There are some things I miss about that process but there are many things that I am glad are well behind us today.  Digital video has really opened the door completely to amateurs producing almost professional results.

That being said, there was something pleasantly unique about those film movies that seems to be lost in today's digital footage.  Part of this was the color warmth of the film.  Part of it was the grain.  Some of the more unpleasant characteristics of those old film home movies albeit characteristics that made them easily recognizable home movies was the low frame rate, uneven framerate, flicker from frame to frame, light leaks in the camera, some highlight blooming as well as overexposure at the beginning of every roll due to light hitting the film while loading the film.  Yet, somehow the result was pleasantly unique.

There is no doubt, though, that these old 8mm and Super 8 home movies had a unique look.  I think the first thing people expect to see from a home movie is erratic and unnecessary zooming as well as the footage being very shaky with jerky panning.  Our 8mm Keystone camera was incapable of zooming so we didn't have that common trait when we shot 8mm footage.  If I remember correctly, the Super 8 camera did have some zoom capability so we probably did do some zooming occasionally which is usually a no-no in filmmaking.  As far as shaky video goes, my father and I were always careful to keep the camera as steady as possible and to pan slowly.  However, since we never used a tripod and those old cameras had no image stabilization, we did still capture some camera shake and uneven panning.  

The color and tone of those old film movie cameras was unique too.  Shadows tended to be in the blue/teal family as opposed to most digital video having reddish shadows.  Highlights on film were often yellow to red while digital highlights typically are white.  Those yellowish highlights are what contributed to the feeling of warmth in film.

Shadows in home film movies were relatively bright compared to digital which, consequently, made for a lower contrast movie compared to digital.  The colors were deep (darker) but less saturated than typical digital.  And, of course, film had a grain and often had less-than-crisp focus.  Some of that soft focus was due to less-than-ideal lenses and some of that soft focus was due to the grain of the film.  Also, sometimes the film was a bit loose behind the pressure plate which caused the focus to sort of drift in and out every now and then.  

In short, digital video is more crisp, clean, almost sterile while film movies have character and an atmospheric dynamic quality.  I'm not sure that one of better than the other though.  They are simply different.  

So, for today's experiment, I took a short video clip that I shot with my new-to-me Fuji X30 one afternoon when we were out and about with Lukey and Kenzie.  I shot this in a typical digital movie mode which is less than ideal for editing and converting to a film-like look (or any edited look for that matter) but it was a nice clip to allow me to better understand the differences between the two formats.  

I dropped the contrast.  I raised the shadows.  I adjusted the color to be warmer with highlights in the yellow family which warmed up the footage.  I added grain.  I added light leaks.  I added a glow to highlights.  I added a vignette.  I added a Gaussian blur. I even added a slight flicker.  

I could have removed the sound completely but since our old Super 8 camera captured sound, I left the sound as is but added a sprocketed film motor sound.  

Here, below, is actually my third take in this experiment to recreate an old film home movie appearance from a digital video file.  I had originally posted Take 2 here in the blog but I wasn't happy with that one after coming back to it the following morning.   In Take 2, the video was darkening too much at certain points of the video.  This was a problem because this video already started out rather dark so those darker sections were far too noticeable and bothersome.  Removing the BCC Film Damage effect resolved the darkening issue.  I also lightened up the shadows a bit more in this third take by using the basic "Lighting Adjustment" feature.  Additionally, the Gaussian Blur effect was simply too strong so I removed that.  Even at its lowest setting, it was still too strong of a blur.  I needed more of a fine control for this feature was there aren't much in the way of controls for this effect filter.  In the future, I will use a diffusion filter on the camera to soften the video to appear more film-like.  

After this little three day experiment, I have a better understanding of the tools in my video editing software and I have a better understanding of the camera settings.  if I want to replicate this old home movie filmic effect, I will shoot the original footage differently which will (should) allow me to better produce a more accurate effect.  Seeing and understanding the differences was the purpose of this experiment and that was definitely accomplished.

So, here is the third take in this experiment...