The Slow Mo Guys is a YouTube channel dedicated to showing how things work in slow motion. They use high frame-rate cameras to show, for example, bullets passing through water or fireworks exploding. I’ve been a fan for a while – they have a great deal of respect for, and interest in, the phenomena they […]
Category: Filmmaking
At OFU, and in our production attempts in the years afterwards, we probably fancied ourselves as quite professional film-makers. We had a real film camera, a proper crew. We had scripts and storyboards. We’d read up on photography techniques – on lighting and mise-en-scène. And we were creative – full of ideas and the energy […]
From the BBC: The resurgence of Super-8. We know about apps like Instagram and PhotoFunia that can make pictures and film look like they were shot in a different time. But, there’s now a huge resurgence in popularity of the original format that inspired that retro look – Super 8 film. I’m increasingly sceptical about […]
Just uploaded: three “new” OFU films from the archives. If you liked seeing the early shots of Stag Hill in the Rag ’69 and Under Construction films, why not take a look at Peter The Cow, in which a panto cow tours campus? Then, head over to our most mysterious film, Kidnap!, a short thriller. […]
“The ritual of 35mm is gorgeous. But it’s only a ritual. It’s not the movie.” Article in The Guardian by Danny Leigh. It’s an argument we’ve heard before, and with which I largely agree: it is more satisfying to make a film (or a photograph) without artificially constraining yourself by the technology. Unfortunately, one of […]
Article on local radio station 96.4 Eagle’s website with accompanying OFU footage.
Categories
Super-8 is back
Against all the odds, Kodak – which went bankrupt as recently as 2012 – has announced that it’s “reviving” Super-8 cameras and film. Kodak’s got a press release from CES 16 and here’s the Super-8 Revival product page. They’ve also lined up a load of top Hollywood directors to sing the praises of this “analogue […]
Categories
New YouTube channel for OFU!
When we started uploading old OFU films onto the Internet, we genuinely thought that YouTube would be a “flash in the pan” and that it would be cleverer to host our own. We were quite wrong. At long last, then, OFU finally gets its own YouTube channel. It will take a while to migrate the […]
Categories
Spielberg loves celluloid
The Joy of Celluloid, an article in The Guardian about the artistic merits of film over digital. Cinematographer Dick Pope: “16mm is very much alive and well, and it’s crucial it remains so, yet its future is seriously under threat. Before too long, I fear it will be film itself that’s cast out, and in […]
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Saved for the nation
Long ago, in November 2005, in fact, we reported that the University / Union had begun disposing of OFU’s assets. One of the last of OFU’s Old Guard, Scoot, told us that the Fumeo projector and rewind table had gone. More disturbingly, the cupboard containing OFU’s 16mm, 8mm and VHS archive had also ominously disappeared. […]