Awhile back my good friends Laura and Dan offered to come up to Carmel and be the videographers for our wedding! So, with August 1st slowly approaching I figured it would probably be smart to start thinking about all of this. With a little research I decided the amazing Super 8 had to be our format of choice- basically this is old school 60’s film that your parents as kids was shot on.
Shooting on Super 8 is kind of a pain in the butt though, or so I’m learning. For instance, you have to get a camera. This seems simple enough, but when you realize all the cameras you’re getting are from the 60’s and 70’s, the amount of potential issues you can have with them is pretty daunting. Also many of them use these little 1.35 volt mercury batteries for their light-meters. Mercury batteries no longer exist as they’re bad for the environment, so you have to get like these similar hearing-aid batteries, but the voltage is a touch off. Then comes the film itself. The film is a little pricey at around $15 a pop, and each ‘roll’ only holds about 2.5 minutes. Then once you’re done, you have to get it developed at around $13 a roll, and from there you have to have it telecined, which essentially means having it color-corrected and placed on a mini-dv tape. That costs like .30 a foot [there is 50 feet in a roll]. Phew, it’s going to be insane. With that said, today I bought my Super 8 Camera! Its a beautiful Nizo S56, a really nice quality camera made in Germany.
