My first and last roll of Kodachrome

[photoman]

Hello!

 

As always it has been a while since I've posted anything here but I have been lurking! I have a new project now that I figured I should post a WIP of.

 

First a little background:

 

As my forum handle suggests, I am a photographer. I shoot a lot of digital but have in the past year gotten into analog photography. I now shoot my own B/W film and develop myself.

 

The very popular and famous film, Kodachrome, was discontinued last year by Kodak. This film which is truly unique will never be made again. Also the one lab in the world that can still process it will stop processing at the end of this year.

 

I managed to get a hold of a single roll of Kodachrome 64 the other day and I thought it would be great to make a video/documentary about me shooting the roll, sending it off to be developed, and studying the slides, as well as including a brief history about that film.

 

ANYWAY, the reason why I am posting this here is that I plan on doing the title sequence with A:M.

 

The plan for that is to have a stack of the K64 boxes and then have the title text drop down on top of them. Pretty simple right? Well I want them to be ultra realistic and professional so I am going to take my time in decaling each box carefully and exactly.

 

I will post more once I get the ball rolling a bit more!

 

Photoman

 

(Shot with my Digital Camera)

[Darkwing]

I know how you feel about this. Being a projectionist at a movie cinema, 2 of our 7 projectors have been replaced with digital ones and in the next 1-2 years, they intend for them to all be digital. I much prefer the 35mm over the digital ones.

[photoman]

Well I started the modeling/decaling.

 

I modeled the box by first taking another box of 35mm film (Fomapan if your interested) and unwrapped it into a "T" shape. I then modeled that, took a screenshot of that. Then I pulled the K64 out of the freezer and setup my dSLR on my tripod like a copystand and photographed each side. Then using the screenshot in photoshop I cropped each photo of the sides of the K64 box into the "T" shaped model. THEN in A:M I made a pose and folded it into the box, and exported that decaled pose as a regular model...

 

Here is a quick render, only used 3 z-buffered kleigs, took about 3 minutes to render at 720p.

 

 

Photoman

[John Bigboote]

"Mamma- Don't take my Kodachrome away!"- Paul Simon

 

Film had a great run... but it wasn't the most ecological of mediums. For many a year during it's heyday Eastman Kodak was one of the larger of corporate polluters. Viva digital!

[HomeSlice]

Nice looking kodachrome box! I processed hundreds of rolls of kodachrome back in the 90's when I managed the darkroom in a custom photo lab. I also did quite a bit of color and B/W printing. Ahhh, the sweet smell of chemicals! I really liked that job, but I don't miss the chemicals.

[fae_alba]

Oh the memories! I used to work at a photo processing plant (I was one of the blokes who developed and printed your rolls of 35/110/126 film (am I dating myself or what!?) One of my jobs was running the b&w film developing machine. I remember one night a bunch of guys in suits came knocking on our door (we worked from 3pm till around 2am). Turns out they were FBI, and had security camera film that they needed developing. I spent the night in the darkroom with these guys, explaining every thing I was doing, step by step.

 

And yes I printed a lot of pics of moms and dads doing photo ops late at night in the privacy of their own bedrooms..funny how folks will do such things behind closed doors..then blissfully send them to a commercial film processor!

[photoman]

This is sure been a quick project, rendering as I speak, averaging 30seconds/frame @ 720p without multipass...

 

I'll post when its done.

 

...

 

I am glad this is bringing back memories , I will post my faux-documentary when I finish it as well

 

Photoman

[phatso]

I always thought it was interesting that Kodachrome was developed by a couple of "Leopolds," both musicians - L. Godowsky Jr. and L. Mannes, who were known as "God and Man" at Kodak. After Kodachrome they never bothered with chemistry again. Godowsky became a performing violinist and Mannes succeeded his dad as president of the Mannes School of Music.

[photoman]

Here is the final rendered title sequence:

 

Photoman

[TheSpleen]

you never cease to amaze.

[Darkwing]

is that using like that newton physics thing or something?

[HomeSlice]

That looks great. Way to go

[NancyGormezano]

terrific

[Rodney]

Nice!

 

...and TOO appropriate for a guy named Photoman.

[itsjustme]

Great job, Josh!

[pixelplucker]

I forgot what film boxes looked like....

Used to run a big stat camera here in the mid to late 80's. Fond memories when the help dumped the waste fixer in with the waste developer in the recovery drums. Ahh such good times :0

[John Bigboote]

HA! I used to run a big stat camera in the 80's too! I loved coming home reeking of chemicals... we dumped our used fixer/developer right down the drain-made me SICK... what were you recovering... silver?

 

I don't miss it one bit.

[robcat2075]

My dad shot lots of Kodachrome slides in the 50's and 60's and 70's. And he'd set up the projector and we'd sit thru slide shows of our various trips. I'm impressed he got the exposure right so often since he was always shooting on the run with a manual camera and no light meter.

 

 

 

He was a chemist for 3M and every now and then they'd come up with their own slide film but he was always disgusted with it when he tried it.

 

He always said the brand name "Kodachrome", never just "slide film". When he made the jump to print film in the 70's he was always an unhappy customer, frequently bringing things back to be reprinted.

 

I'm not sure if he's aware Kodachrome is being discontinued. I'll have to try that out on him next time he calls.

[fae_alba]

HA! I used to run a big stat camera in the 80's too! I loved coming home reeking of chemicals... we dumped our used fixer/developer right down the drain-made me SICK... what were you recovering... silver?

 

I don't miss it one bit.

 

We had big drums that collected the used chemicals...and yes silver was reclaimed from them...