8mm Vintage Camera app for video (Part 2)

-(Update: Jan 11, 2023. Nexvio updated this app. It's now called 8mm II. This is a review of the original 8mm Vintage Camera app, version 3.1 or 3.2. If you have this app and you update it, you lose the old version. The biggest loss, is that you don't get the full sensor field of view in 4:3 mode. Which I kind of miss. But this may change in a future update.)

The 8mm Vintage Camera app for Apple IOS is the best retro film look for video. This is part two of my look at the app. The previous vid I made on this topic was about shooting the app in its’ native form. In this video I focus on shooting video with the Apple stock video app and applying the 8mm look in post. Which the 8mm app allows you to do. Which is very helpful.

This way you retain the stabilization from the stock app, which is important for movement or longer static shots. There is a limit to how much shaky footage you can watch at one time. The 24p frame rate is maintained though, which is okay. 60p will convert to 24p with acceptable judder. 30p to 24p has too much judder. 48p converts to 24, perfectly. And 24p converts to 24p, perfectly. The latter two options are best but are hard to use on the iPhone.

The iPhone SE has no 24p options in it’s stock video app and third party apps like Filmic Pro are very glitchy and difficult to use. The iPhone XS has 4Kp24 which converts very well with the 8mm app and has low judder. But I don’t use it because there are strange flashes of light that appear on the video and I have no idea why. So I’m forced to use 1080p60 in both the iPhone SE and XS. It works.

Set the 8mm app to 16:9 aspect ratio as it matches the stock app videos perfectly. 1080 or 720 resolutions both look about the same because they’re so soft. I used 720 because the film is supposed to be soft and grainy so it’s okay to use 1280x720 and then just enlarge it to fill whatever screen you’re viewing on and it will be fine no matter how bad it looks. This is the genius of the app, it allows you to cut corners on the production value and focus more on story. Shooting is more fun as well.

The second issue I focus on in this video is my efforts to duplicate the 8mm app film look in FCPX. This allows me to shoot the Apple stock video app using 4Kp24 and then add my own preset in FCPX. It’s not the same but it’s close-ish. I’m sure it’s possible to nail it perfectly if I was better at editing with FCPX.

The third issue I touch on is the interest that filmmakers have in using apps like 8mm to alter reality. It’s a big deal in photography as well. We seem to dislike reality as the eye sees it but we still love recording reality with movie and still cameras. But when we do record the world around us we want to alter it so that it doesn’t look real. We want to record the way it feels…or that way we wish it felt. This is fascinating and deserves a whole other video.

There’s also a fourth issue that the 8mm app raises. Because it degrades the image quality and that allows both filmmaker and audience to focus more on story. Filmmaking becomes easier, cheaper, quicker, and allows the filmmaker to focus more on story and content. This mindset is something all filmmakers could benefit from.

-Gear: iPhone SE. iPhone XS. Apple Screen Recorder. 8mm app. Edited in FCPX. Rendered for Youtube with iMovie. Audio via built-in mics. All handheld.

-Location: Metro Vancouver BC. March 27–30, 2019.