Film the Straight 8 Film Making Challenge March 21, 2012 Straight 8 is an open film-making challenge utilizing the gloriously vintage medium of Super8 film.

In an age where cameras can play back the images seconds after they are recorded, it is easy to forget what it used to be like in them olden days. Now, if you don’t like it, you delete it. But, believe or not, there once was a time where each shot cost money, and a person had to economize as well as wait. (I know you all know this, I’m just trying to be romantic.)

Like all good ideas, Straight 8 is simple. Film-makers submit a single three and a half minute cartridge of unedited and unprocessed Super8 film. Film makers shoot, compile a soundtrack and send it back fro processing. There is no editing, no nothing. Once it is shot is shot. The first time that anyone sees it is at it’s premiere.

Straight 8 is a great reminder of how different film making used to be, and a wonderfully simple creative brief that has generated several gems of short films in it’s thirteen year history. (See the clay-mation zombie movie below.) Though all constrained through process, no editing and three and a half minutes long, the breadth of films made is both fascinating and entertaining.

There are three more weeks to enter this years. So if you are interested, get cracking.

And, it’s a bit early to announce anything, but keep your eyes open as this June: a Straight8 premiere will be coming to a cinema/warehouse/venue/carpark near you!