"That's all, folks!"

Well, that's the Super 8 silent film wrapped up. Unfortunately, due to blogger's 100MB file size limit, I can't show it to you here (I've tried compressing it to an .mp4, and it's still over 200 meg!), but to compensate, here's a step-by-step guide to the creation process...

Step 1: Sex on Negs

Alright, so here we have the raw, negative Super 8 film playing at the Cube Microplex (and looking great, well done team). As it was playing, this film was itself filmed using a DSLR so that we could get it into Final Cut Pro (FCP) for fancying up. Easy!

Step 2: Double Negative

Okay, so here's a shot of the DSLR footage in Final Cut Pro. Looking good! 

Now it was time to apply the "Negative" filter to each scene, to return the film to its.. positive shots (ahem)? Anyway, this was the result:

100% negative was needed to reverse the colours fully, but even at this rate, it wasn't perfect. I came back to it later. 

Step 3: Ageing the Masterpiece

Next it was time to make this blooper reel look like Chaplin's lesser-known college days. 

In other words, I threw on the "Aged Film" filter.

I'm going to be 20 this year. *Sigh*.

Anyway, since I didn't want to distract the viewer from the frankly fabulous comedy going on, I reduced the "Grain", "Scratches" and "Dust" amounts that the filter applies by default to zero. After all, these things were included in the Super 8 footage for free (hurrah!). 

Step 4: Shadows of the Past

The film now looked old enough, but the look still wasn't right - the contrast needed some work. It as a bit of a chore finding the right filter, but "Colour Correction" eventually made itself known. Flicking it on and slightly increasing the "Shadows" setting in the "Exposure" tab made the dark tones of the film stand out more. This in turn makes the film much easier to see, even though the change is quite small. 

Step 5: The Jingle!

With the visuals sorted, I proceeded to sort out the film's audio. I decided to start by applying a film projector noise to the piece. Unfortunately, the projector audio that was recorded via DSLR was masked by talking and other background noise (ahem, silence in the cinema, please!).

I punched up the foundation of our current society that is Google and looked for a decent sound. It was a bit of a pain to find one that wasn't too loud (so that it didn't distract the viewer), but eventually I found the right sort of noise (simply called "Old Film Projector") and imported it into FCP.

It was soon apparent that audio was way too short and the sound of the projector powering up and down was also included in the clip. I used that to my advantage with the "Blade" tool, splitting the clip into three ("power-up", "rolling" and "power-down"). Then I simply stuck "power-up" at the start, "power-down" at the end, and copy-and-pasted "rolling" throughout the rest of the film. Sorted!

Now for the main music. Another quick jaunt across the Internets provided me with an upbeat, .mp3, royalty-free soundtrack called Hyperfun (big thanks to Kevin MacLeod - check out the full track here).  

I imported this into FCP and began the long, strong and awful-if-you-get-it-wrong process that is syncing. The music clip was slightly too long for the film so, using the "Blade" tool, I once again had to cut out a small portion of the melody (near the end) and sandwich it with the raw ending of the music.

Yes, eww. However, it was eventually completed, and didn't sound bad in all modesty. Messed up my nicely-organised "Old Film Projector" clips though!

Aaand Step 6: "Roll Credits!"

With the visuals and audio wrapped up, the final touch was to add a Keaton-esque ending title. I wanted something archaic enough to emphasise that the film had been made to look like an old silent movie, but also something to remind the audience that it had been shot in 2016. The "Natural" title card in FCP fit the bill nicely, possessing Art Nouveau-style shapes of 1830-1910 furniture (which was still popular in the 1920s), in a sharp vector quality (see below).

Job done. I've had a lot of fun during this Experimentation Project, especially making this film. The Super 8 camera was surprisingly easy to get to grips with, and working collaboratively to create the film was a welcome change of pace to the lone-ranger projects that I've been used to since the start of college way back in September. It was also great to do some more work with Final Cut Pro, and improve the audience appeal of my final piece over that of my guitar documentary due to the comedy theme. It would be great to do some more silent films in the future, and hone my skills with old-school film further. 

If I were to redo this project, I would explore more interesting locations outside of Weston College (such as Weston seafront, local fields and  in order to increase the scope of our group's comedy sketches in the silent film. Speaking of which, huge thanks to the team (if they're reading this) for all their hard work, comedy, and patience with an artist such as myself!

Psst! The finished film is now viewable on YouTube. Hooray!