A Presentation formula
Say, I introduce my premise in person, while showing in the frame our grandkids'
Bichon. I can announce: 'A dawg is a reflection of its owner's
personality'.
Following the introduction, I can show examples of our sundry dawgs' behaviors,
with bare- necessity voice-over commentary.
A conclusion ? Return
 to where we started. 'There's the Bichon,' as I utter a summarial
comment about "mutual affection".
What have I got to work with ? Just silent movies; 8mm brief sketches of
what the family did with our dawgs. So, I'll dig up from the boxes the 8mm
film reels to find examples of our past dawgs. A half-hour each reel of the
stuff on a dozen reels.
Nostalgically, I look back at one main feature of each dog from
Sausage (1961), through Rusty, Mutty - all three in Queensland;
to Mac and Yoshi in Canada. |
  The Technical Dimension
The dormant old bootlace film had been transferred to DV, of course. You
may be somewhat surprised at the unexpected sharpness of the resulting digital
conversion . I have no doubt that part of this quality of image resolution
derives from the high quality lenses I had on my Bolex camera - for you bootlace
buffs, a f1.5 12mm lens Switar and a f2.8 Switar 37mm lens. Cleaning, lubricating
and filling in the vertical scratches with a waxy ingredient in the film
renovation goop, is worth the trouble.
One hundred percent monitored, during digital capture, I had to occasionally
re-check the focus as displayed on the 35 inch Sony tv. My aim was to get
maximum film grain detail. (For those born in the video age: when it was
projected, analog film could be focused using the faint, swirling pattern
of graininess caused by the chemistry of the film itself. Get the grain sharp
and any other focus issues were down to the camerawork!)
As I've done with all my Hi-8 and DV movies, both the raw stuff and the completed
edits, I've entered in "three-ring" binders references according to Master
tape numbers and time codes.
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OK. This is a petty-fogging, cotton-picking piece of cookery at the time
of making the entries,
-
but how sweet the cake tastes as I later search for a specific entry. I can
go to the layered boxes of Masters and within minutes I have a heap of selected
masters on my editing desk.
For a movie using voice-over, I write pieces of a rough commentary , and
while choosing my edited scenes, I match the commentary words. The "voice"
will be the same one as in the introduction. They will fit Now I record the
real commentary "takes" . |
