The inspiration for this project came to me as I was falling asleep, wondering what I could do for Echo Bloom's upcoming music video. Making these projects different and interesting is always a challenge. I decided to approach this (as is typical for me) from a technical angle first. How could I shoot this to make it different?
Film, would, of course, be my first choice. Super-8 is always fun, and after some research, I found some resources in the UK to make this possible.
DSLR would be a non-starter for me simply because of the over abundance of material already out there. I thought that video in general wouldn’t work for the creation of an interesting look that I would want to create “out of the camera”, versus baking in a filtered “film-look” in post.
Super-8, initially, seemed like a great fit. It would be cost effective and easy to manage. The film, processing, and transfer could all be from The Widescreen Center in London. The Super-8 version of the music video would cost just over £1100.00 (including the camera). With Kyle’s plane ticket, that would be within our budget.
That’s when it occurred to me…
The idea for the using the LomoKino for this project, at first seemed utterly daft. The footage I was seeing on the web was shaky and awful. The film was colour shifted and looked as if it had been stored on the dashboard of a '81 Dodge Charger in Arizona.
What I liked about the camera was the widescreen aspect ratio, the grainy, ubiquitious film look and it’s simple overall process. I wondered what I could do to smooth out the rough edges of this little camera’s output.
The technical challenges are presented by the LomoKino are:
The frame rate of the camera varies from 5-8 fps.
The exposure can vary by as much as a stop to a stop and a half from one frame to the next.
The frame itself isn’t terribly stable and the handheld shaky look is jarring and not pleasing. (This could be taken care of by motion tracking stationary objects within the frame in post to make the picture more stable.)
So, I came up with a list of ideas:
First, using better film.
Second, using a tripod.
Third, using a different frame rate tricks to smooth out the motion.
How hard could it possibly be?
How much could it possibly cost?
How long could it possibly take?
Oh God, was I about to find out...
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