This may be interpreted as an excuse but its just an explanation as to where I am with this projects.  And then I wonder who I need to explain myself to but its out there and I am going to let it roll. 

So somewhere between my full time job at Duke, which gets really hectic as the semester starts, a video project for Rob Logic and my part time job catering I am find that I am left with about one 2 days off per month.  And this does not include the 3 days a week I am at Krav Maga.  Which by the way I have had to stop for the last three weeks because of my full time job.

I have finally settled on the script and have begun to storyboard the project.  I am not sure how things will play out but since this is The Molested I am rather confident that if I just roll the dice, we should see some kind of  product.  I really don't want to give too much away but as I mentioned in an earlier post, or maybe I didn't, I am going to section this documentary into three parts.  I have been working on a music bed for video so I have a rough idea where I was going once i started the script.  But to be honest, I let the music dictate the feeling then I crafted the script to follow, so hopefully this will look like a documentary but sound like a music video.

I looked into all types of techniques to transfer the 8mm to video and found that the cheape and quickest way was to set up something at the house using a camera and the projectors.  The set up was simple.  The only trick I used was to lower the shutter speed to avoid the "flicker" during the transfer.

Would I say this method is ideal?  For me, yes, it was quick simple and gave a reasonable good transfer that works of rmy project.  I wouldn't suggest this method for anything that your expecting "reasonable" quality.  Some other thoughts on the transfer, the projectors you will use will most likely be old & the film may be worn.  So you will need to pay attention to the entire process.

In my case, some of the 8mm films would jam if I did not keep a finger on the film feed.  It was slipping out of the track so I gently place my finger on the side and kept the film rolling through.  The 8mm projector ran slow, which threw me off for minute.  I decided that I could just let it run and transfer as many films as possible before the motor took a dive.  To my surprise I got through all the films, and yes, I knew that I woudl have to adjust the speed in post.

My initial thoughts revolved around this idea of a music video but with some text to support the images.  Cool, this would be a snap.  But as I began to compile the material I was pulled more and more into a process that could become my “Apocalypse Now”.  

Largely unscripted the project soon took on life of itself.  I started to see the progress of ideas fall into place and at the time of writing this I feel as if I have a very solid idea of the three sections that will make up the entire documentary.   This has me in a good state of mind since I started the project almost eight months ago.

"I am glad a grabbed a sandwich"  I thought as I sat in a parking lot waiting to meet some person from Craiglist who was going to sell me an 8mm projector and 5 films.  Its was about this moment that I realized that this short film was my Apocolypse Now.