Paperjam

Best of Straight8: 7inch cinema

Film // Steve // 25th February 2008

It's our first time in the Hare and Hounds, sister to the Bulls Head in Moseley, and we're impressed - it's a lovely Victorian pub. Lots of original looking tiles, a smattering of 60s retro furniture, plenty of decent beer on tap (although I'm on lime and soda tonight), and the bar has that array of leaded windows above it that screams “you are stepping back in time”. Two gulps of a pint and we're already hatching plans to move here.

Up the deadly, narrow stairs - thankfully I'm not wearing heels, tonight - to the 7inch cinema, which tonight is thrown over to annual lo-fi film competition Straight8.

The idea is that you send them £70, they send you a 3 minute Super-8mm film cartridge. You shoot your film, and send it back to them, unprocessed, along with a soundtrack. They do the processing, and if all goes well, the first you'll see of your film is when you turn up at the premiere night at a cinema, possibly at Cannes if you're lucky.

So - there's no editing in post. No post-processing. No bleedin' big-eyed cartoony computer generated furry models neither. Just 3 minutes 20 seconds (or thereabouts) of scratchy, flickering film, with all the edits and effects done in camera, which generally means plenty of under/overcranking and stop-frame animation. One clever-clogs managed a split-screen effect.

And admittedly this is a best-of, but it's really good fun. Our favourite is probably the filthy Flying Lizards-esque pop-video Stick and Balls by Jacqueline Wright and Alice Lowe. I know paper-jam Jim will appreciate Jour de Glories, performed by a brave man with plenty of room for all that beer.

If you fancy giving it a go yourself - the closing date for entries for Straight8 '08 is March 26th, and there's plenty more films over at Straight8's website.