BURBANK — Pro8mm (www.pro8mm.com) recently collaborated with cinematographer James Chressanthis, ASC, who used Super 8 film on scenes that appear in TNT’s made-for-TV movie,
Hide. The feature is based on a thriller mystery novel by Lisa Gardner and was directed by James Gray.
Chressanthis chose to shoot full Max 8 using a Super 8 camera that’s been modified to shoot in the 16 x 9 aspect ratio. The goal was to punctuate the numerous flashback scenes by the program’s different characters.
Hide focuses on a Boston Police detective who is called to the grounds of an abandoned mental hospital where a buried chamber is discovered. Inside are the mummified remains of six young women, who have all been missing for years.
Chressanthis selected Pro8mm’s MAX 8 1014 XLS camera with crystal for the Super 8 sequences. Shooting was done with Pro8/19, a Kodak Vision 3 200T film stock that is highly versatile for both bright and low light conditions. The film has 13 stops of latitude, extremely fine grain, and an ultra wide exposure range.
Pro8mm scanned the film in native 1080 to ProRes 4:4:4 HQ with 3 separate passes at different frame rates.
"We shot mostly at 9FPS on the Max 8 camera,” notes Chressanthis. “Editorially they used all the frame rate transfers: 24, 12, 6 fps. I shot the various frame rates to speed up, slow down, and blur the image and also to increase the grain. That's because normal Super 8 is so clean that it can look like good 16mm but we wanted an edgy, grittier look in representing the deep memories of the characters. It looks fantastic! "
Chressanthis has used Pro8mm workflows in other project, including No Subtitles Necessary (2008) and
Brian's Song (2001).