Enfield, My Kinda Town

Over the last couple of years I've been shooting super 8 film around my home town; the North London suburb of Enfield. I was greatly inspired by the 1960s-1980s travelogue films of Harold Baim and it seemed fitting to use real cine film to get this sun-tinted, picture postcard look.

Tech Notes: This film was shot on Kodak 100D reversal super 8 film. I shot five rolls between 2011 and 2013. This was shot on my Nizo 156XL camera using a Panasonic LA7200 anamorphic lens adaptor to achieve the 16x9 footage. The film was sent to Andec Filmtechnik in Berlin for processing then to 18-frames.com for cine to data HD transfer.

Enfield on Super 8 film : Reel 04

I just got the fourth roll of super 8 footage back from 18 Frames in Germany this week as HD .avi files from their Muller scanner. Keen followers of this blog will remember that over the last year or two I have been out and about in my home town shooting lots of super8; old-style home movies on analogue film with my 1970s era Nizo camera.

Some of this footage will ultimately become part of my Enfield: My Kinda Town project, but in the meantime, here are some new stills.

Lana Del Rey and my home movies (again)

Lana Del Rey has licenced some of my Super 8 film footage again.

Back in 2008 I shot this short film whilst on a family trip to California...

Then last year, some fragments of my footage appeared in the official promotional video for Lana Del Rey's breakthrough track Video Games. As it turned out, this song became a huge hit with millions of viewers worldwide.

I am pleased to say that the makers of the video did make contact with me and we came to an amicable agreement for this usage. I can add that Lana and the folks at Polydor have just re-licenced the footage for use in a live concert recently held (Sept 26th 2012) at the London roundhouse as part of the iTunes festival.

Who'd have known that the first test footage I shot with my Nizo S800 cine camera 4 years ago would make the big time?

More Fun in 8mm

The last couple of weekends I've been taking out the Nizo Super 8 camera again. I hope to finally get my little Enfield project together soon (more about that later no doubt, but scroll down the 8mm page for a few stills).

This photo of my Nizo 156XL camera shows the fruits of some of my DIY metalwork... I've fashioned a baseplate of sorts that now lets me mount the Panasonic LA7200 anamorphic lens adaptor to the front of the cine camera; holding it level when I turn the focus ring. This is a huge improvement and makes use of the anamorphic lens much less cumbersome. It used to be a a real pain having the anamorphic adaptor spinning around when focussing: any kind of focus pulling was a total no-goer too.

I've also put a Manfrotto QR (Quick Release) plate on this, so it's easy to snap the rig (camera and anamorphic lens) on and off a tripod or monopod (as seen here). The monopod seems to be a portable and less intrusive option, so I used this rig to get a few shots at last week's Enfield Autumn show, this weekend's Mayor's Fun Run and the Bandstand Marathon event over at HillyFields.

Not exactly Woodstock maybe, but I'm trying to make the best of what's around...