Straight 8

December 22, 2007 2:10 AM

Straight 8 challenges anyone to make a 3 minute film on one cartridge of super 8 film, editing only in-camera, with a separate original soundtrack. The best of each year is shown at Cannes Film Festival. [Some NSFW videos]

There are quite a few more Super 8-centric links (to tutorials, individual films, streaming sites, festivals, etc.) at onsuper8.org—I'll let you find your way.

posted by carsonb (14 comments total)

Straight 8 '08 is now open. £70 + shipping gets you a slot in the competition and one cartridge of super 8 film.
posted by carsonb at 2:19 AM on December 22, 2007

Wow. There are a lot of really great little movies there.
posted by chillmost at 2:40 AM on December 22, 2007

Yep and no YouTube comments!

Also, I should clarify the title of the Cannes link: title="BBC article about Short Film at Cannes, first video is on Straight 8".
posted by carsonb at 2:44 AM on December 22, 2007

I so hoped this FPP was about the 225 cu. in. Buick 8 cylinder inline engine, of some reknown.

But, no...
posted by paulsc at 3:50 AM on December 22, 2007

Uh... what's Super 8 film?

Just kidding, of course. In fact, I'm old.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:51 AM on December 22, 2007

Sounds like you've got a post to make, paulsc!

I like this one, though. Evol in particular is very sweet.
posted by Drexen at 5:52 AM on December 22, 2007

Wow. There are some extraordinary shorts here. In and of themselves they'd be fantastic but you throw in the in-camera editing and the work makes a leap to the incredible.
posted by dobbs at 7:03 AM on December 22, 2007

Straight 8? Sounds like a satirical gay porn film.
posted by three blind mice at 7:08 AM on December 22, 2007

Didn't read the link, but is this some Hitchcockian "Rope" homage?

(which also sounds like a satirical gay porn film...)
posted by jpburns at 8:13 AM on December 22, 2007

In this day of desktop editing equipment it's nice to see some more down to earth film making.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 8:34 AM on December 22, 2007

I made a two-reel Super 8 film a few years ago for a summer workshop that felt pretty constrained as an exercise—my shooting script was a little weird and Concepty, and had about a hundred splices, so I suppose there's a labor/planning tradeoff between camera-only editing and way-too-much-cutting after the fact—but I can see doing it this way as a tremendous amount of (nerve-wracking) fun.

There's something just fantastically straightforward about pull-to-shoot on a light little gun camera. There are fancy Super 8 cameras out there if you really want to remove some of the chanciness from the process, but it's an awful lot of money to spend on a dead format when most people are just buying twenty dollar thrift store relics and hoping for the best.

A Super 8 reel is more like three minutes twenty, actually, though I suppose you might lose a second or three on one end or the other.
posted by cortex at 8:37 AM on December 22, 2007

Evol in particular is very sweet.

It caused a bit of a stir in the Straight 8 community because, you know, how the fuck did he do that in-camera? The most plausible explanation so far (scroll down) is that he used one of the few Super 8 cameras that can record in reverse, upside-down, rigged to shoot through a mirror.
posted by carsonb at 10:02 AM on December 22, 2007

Awesome FPP! Thanks!

When home video was becoming popular, I bought a VHS-C camcorder to tape family events and, of course, my little girl's exploits. The VHS-C format allowed "only" 20 minutes per tape. I had sat through enough excruciatingly long home movies that I bought some books about in-camera editing. I was pretty proud of how my stuff came out. On one 20 minute tape I could fit a birthday party, Christmas, New Years, and Easter! 5 minutes is plenty to get the highlights of the event and tell the story.

It goes without saying that nothing I did was anything like this stuff!
posted by The Deej at 10:09 AM on December 22, 2007

My favourite is the surrealist brothel...
posted by chuckdarwin at 8:07 AM on December 23, 2007