last I heard, a professional may be needed, unless you can run the film into a projector and film it with a nice cam corder.

Batman Wrote:Perhaps a stupid question, but after watching ReelTodd's Cutting Room clip and some of the other clips he did (Cutting Room vid blew me away!)..

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed! It was a LOT of hard work, but I always wanted to do something like that.

Batman Wrote:...I recalled that many years ago I did stop motion with the parental unit's home camera. Not to date myself too precisely but this was around the time calculator's were new and fascinating..... and expensive.

I vividly remember playing with my Dad' calculator back in the mid 70's. It was the size of a modern cordless phone (not wireless/cell), perhaps a bit thicker. It had a light-up green display and a brown/beige color scheme to the outer plastic shell. When the "=" button was pressed, there was actually a slight pause and blink before the result would display - it was not instantaneous like today's credit-card sized calculators. I also remember that pressing the devided-by key followed by "=" would trigger it in to an auto-counter and it would keep counting up to infinity (or the end of the display screen) as long as you'd let it. I thought that was really cool too. I think my Dad said he paid about $40.00 or more for that thing back then. And as you know, $40.00 back in the 70's was worth a lot more than it is today.

Back in the early 80's... perhaps 1981 or 1982, I made a stop motion animation with clay creatures and my parent's Super-8 movie camera. It was a short sequence about worms moving around and then being attacked and eaten by a blue monster creature... who was then eaten by the worms when they all ganged up, formed a giant worm, and then ate him. It came out awful because I held in the button for a "1001" count each time and when the film was developed (a grueling three week wait) it played the exact same way - each "frame" was actually about a second. But that is how I was told to do it. Should have not listened to that little tidbit of "advice". Oh well. I still have it in a box somewhere, not sure if the film is any good now. The last time I looked at my old family films (a good 10+ years ago) small markings were present on the film indicating that it was chemically breaking down. I'm sure it is even worse now. Bummer.

Batman Wrote:Assuming the film is still viable, how would I go about converting to CD or DVD? I don't know how to interface with the 8mm film. Is there a service available still to put home movies on VHS? (now that's a medium I can deal with)

I think you can take old Super-8 films and have them converted to VHS or DVD if you look around. You'll have to do a little research but I bet you find a place that can hook you up. I have no idea the cost. You might be able to pull it off yourself too, but probably not with high quality results.

If you take the film and project it 1st against a mirror (to reverse the image) and then on to a blank, white sheet of paper that is propped up, and face a video camera toward the white paper "screen" from the other side, you may be able to capture the film on to video. Be sure to play with the camera's iris setting so that the film is not too bright and not to dark - do NOT leave it on auto-iris. Adjust the focus manually as well - don't leave it up to auto-focus. You may end up with a really bad flicker in the video though. Have to try it and see what you end up with.

Batman Wrote:Am I just a noob or what?

Hey - we all have to start out somewhere, right? I'd say follow through and see what you come up with. I'd be interested in seeing it if you're able to get it converted to video.