I have the place to myself unusually just for this evening, so with no football on to watch, I've decided to treat myself to a double Die Hard extravaganza this evening while chilling with a few blue moon beers. ("They Taste Better Every Time We Play")

More on this delightful pairing tomorrow with a couple of screenshots from each to follow.
I'm hoping for much better things now this time around now that the 8Z is firmly in position on the machine for this evening.



And the necessary 1800ft take up spool for this one now just collected c/w 35mm film can!.

Yippie Kay Ay!

Not one but two????

You teasin me boy??

Its interval time here having just watched the first half of DH1.

The 8Z has made one hell of a difference to the sharpness here when viewing this one again now, but it can be quite a dark film in places so what I get back from the video footage we will just have to wait and see. It looks great to the eyes as they adjust to the on screen brightness levels, but the camera LCD image did appear very dark in parts and when it is normally this way, the resulting images can often be too blurred to post.
I need a special low light video camera ideally. Anyhow I am bound to get some decent images even if not throughout.

I also have the need to charge the camera inbetween 1200ft and 1600ft spools with this amount of video taken.

End of Part One as they say,.. just finished DH1 and now onto the viewing of DH3 after a quick brush up and head clean etc!

When it comes to posting any shots of either of these films, it will always be the second viewed tonight that gets my vote first.
Why? Well simply because DH3 is an LPP Scope print with an original Derann Stereo track whilst DH1 is a Scope Agfa re-recorded print by myself.

So from a sound perspective, while DH1 was abysmal when I first received it for sound quality, very low and extremely hissy, it now is right up there with some of the best I have aside from being extremely bassy when action fires or Hip Hop kicks in!
DH3 has better sound from original than DH1 but yet still contains far too much superfluous hiss for my liking and definitely needs recording again once I get time on my hands to do so!

So why then is DH3 the better print in my own opinion? ... Simply because colours are truer, no blue cast throughout and a genuine cinematic experience from watching this film here again tonight. A Beautiful print as is DH but the original release is let down ever so slightly I feel by being overly blue in cast and somewhat dark for much of the print.
Nevertheless I was smitten this evening having the very privilege this evening to be able to view and enjoy to the full, both of these films and prints. The Beaulieu as ever got on with the 5hr task in hand admirably and almost silently, never once with any complaint or stutter in performance levels. An example of a truly professional piece of kit if ever there were one!!!
More reliable and trustworthy on a day to day basis than a twelve month old Mercedes Benz!

As i have said umpteen times recently here, we were extremely lucky to have been granted these prints and many many more like them from Derann in an era when real film was supported far less than it deserved or was acceptable from all of those, including myself I hasten to add, who abandoned ship for pastures newer and greener,... or so they thought at that time!!

Nights like tonight however, are simply where it is at for me now and forever till my parting breath, I will never forget the sheer pleasure I receive from screening films such as these two tonight on Super 8mm, using REAl film on a very REAL and fully working exemplary projector!

"I see Cookie, other people need food!"

Boy oh boy, this original Die Hard print is proving all over again to be nigh on impossible to capture anything at all from it that could possibly do it any justice at all.

It appears unbelievably dark aside from one or two very odd scenes here and there, very very grainy, which it is not, as well as being a very soft focused image which equally, it is not!

It is all down to scope, screen size and the camera's complete inability to deal with moody scenes and shadow detailed films with any aplomb whatsoever. It is a shame but It will be difficult to post much in the way of meaningful screenshots that can do this print any justice here using just what I have to photograph it with. Die Hard 3 will be easy but this one is the worse I have ever tried to capture here.

Here is one solitary shot that was one of the better ones I captured.



And a couple more of the marginally better ones I found...

The ridiculous part about this is it looks superb when you are viewing it on screen. Very sharp, no noticeable grain and just a bit too much of a blue hue in parts and shadowy in other parts but otherwise Just great!

One thing I did learn from capturing it this way is it is actually an LPP print not as I thought an Agfa one.
I think the other one is too so there is an incredible difference in the colours.

Always thought it an odd decision by John McTiernan to use a flat 20th Century Fox logo at the start. I know it's what he wanted but it really REALLY bugs me!

I'd never really thought about that one before Stuart to be honest.

I shall post some shots here from the beginning of Die Hard With A Vengeance in the next few hours. I'm expecting that these turned out far clearer and cleaner as the on screen image was nowhere near as Moody or atmospheric for the most part of this film.
Far less smoke and mirrors. 😂😂😂

Great images Andy.
I'll swop you for my spare NT1.
Goes OK and only dropped several times by royal mail

I have just been snapshooting images from the first quarter of an hour of this film now and I have to say the humour from Samuel L Jackson (One of my favourite actors btw ) with his nephews and then Bruce Willis in the opening of the film is some of my personal favourite lines of any of "modern day" films that I own. The lines are just brilliant! Hey Zeus not Jesus!! Do I look Puerto Rican to you??? etc etc, just brilliant!!

Anyhow, here is the opening 15 minutes of a great action packed "modern day" film,...

Both look brilliant to me, I remember having Die hard 1 & 2 in the nineties but the projector and lens never gave me the great qualities the films deserved.

I myself have come now to the conclusion Del, that for THIS camera of mine to be able to do the original Die Hard film I have, any justice at all, then I would either need to reduce the image size drastically just while capturing the necessary shots or I'd need a Xenon, HTI or HID conversion on one of my own machines at this screen size to do it any justice whatsoever.

All I can say in its defence, is because human eyes adjust to the resulting light output on screen far far better than any camera ever could or would, this film looks just fine when viewing it live.

I am even surprised now to see how much detail is lost from the Vengeance shots also, when remembering just how brilliant it looked on screen just a few nights ago.

That's Scope for you though and one of the many reasons why ultimately I will always prefer flat films projected through far fewer planes of glass.

I was however extremely pleased on both films to see the difference in sharpness since last viewing them both using only the Proskar scope lens previously.

DH3 - Reel one- 1x1200ft continued,...

DH3 - Reel one- 1x1200ft continued,...

All looks good Andrew, went to see this one at the cinema, I was disappointed at the time, lacked something from the first two.

It doesn't scale the same dizzy heights as the first two Del as an epic piece of cinema history it is true, however to have a feature film on Super 8mm that contains Samuel L Jackson, is a massive coup for me on film just for that fact alone!
I love guys like Samuel L, Denzel Washington and Eddie Murphy and only wish there was more out there on real film that can be collected on my gauge of choice from these actors.

It isn't a bad action film by any means Del as you know, just not as good as the first two as often is the case with sequels.
This one is just simply one long adult game of Simple Simon, and all of the antics as a result of it..

Would I swap it with Pulp Fiction if it were available on 8? ... You bet your bottom dollar I would!
Jackie Brown would have been nice too!

To have had Bobby Womack belting out that opening number after re recording it again into top notch quality, would have been quite something in itself!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOF3TG2IJ0s