Silent Canosound

Samantha recently found a blog at The New York Times website by a man named Jeff Scher. He is an experimental film maker and on his blog you can catch a few of his videos. He uses old formats, in this case a 16mm wind-up that allows him to film for only 30 seconds at a time. Actually, both examples use the 16mm. While You Were Sleeping really got me thinking about the strange, emotional effect that this old format lends to the film.

An even more exaggerated example is 8mm silent film. Silent film lends an extra layer to just about any subject. Take away the sound and all of a sudden you're looking at these tones and nuances you never realized were there. Or perhaps, and I'm sure Mr. Scher would prefer me to say, that feeling is brought about by the fact that the photographer can no longer rely on sound to tell the story. When you enter into this purely visual world, you're forced to make decisions, to propel your narrative without dialogue and that is what really intrigues me.

Long story short, I'm the proud new owner of a Canosound 514XL-S, which, ironically, is one of the few super 8mm sound cameras I've seen lurking around the internet. It took quite a bit of research to find a camera I thought would be well balanced between quality functionality and low learning curves. I'm not sure if this is the one, but it'll have to do because I already paid for it. Of course, after my long, adjective-soaked description of why silent film appeals to me, I should say I don't plan on actually using sound film. It's probably more expensive to develop anyway.

It was a good deal, $35 after shipping on eBay. Hopefully it will be here soon. Next I need more disposable income and after that a projector. I've been researching how to digitize super 8 for editing, and it looks like digitally recording the film from a projector is the best bet. After the projector I'll need some more disposable income, then after that I'll get some film developed and after that I'll be uploading and playing with editing.

So, family and friends who are willing (even if you aren't) could be showing up in silent, exaggeratedly emotional versions of themselves. The only danger here is that simple films highlighting people often come across as in memorandum.

I submit as evidence: