Homemade Telecine Machines

The telecine process transfers film to analog or digital video.

Since the advent of broadcast television, production houses have used the telecine process to transmit images captured on film or to transfer film footage to video for further manipulation. Telecine is an expensive process; building the perfect homemade telecine machine is something of a holy grail for small format filmmakers.

Frame-by-Frame Telecine

Some filmmakers and archivists have successfully built homemade, frame-by-frame telecine machines. These units combine a CCD chip for digital video capture with a film projector capable of advancing film frame-by-frame.

Real-Time Telecine

Because true telecine transfers film on a meticulous, frame-by-frame basis, real-time telecine is a misnomer. Nevertheless, many tinkerers have made non-archival "telecine" machines that capture footage as it runs through a film projector in real time. Real-time telecine is merely a variation on a traditional film chain transfer and involves a film projector aimed at a miniature rear-projection screen or the lens of an analog or digital video camera.

Flatbed Scanner Telecine

Richard Kinch developed the Flatbed Scanner Digital Telecine (FSDT) method. The home user scans short strips of film frames at high resolution and then crops and reassembles them using a non-linear editor (NLE). Though time-consuming, FSDT qualifies as a true form of telecine because the user captures each film frame individually.

References

• Movie Stuff: CineMate 20
• Movie Stuff: Why Frame Discretion?
• God Is Kind: Retro Telecine: Building an 8 MM Telecine Machine with Style
• Truetex: Flatbed Scanner Digital Telecine (FSDT) Project
• "Independent Feature Film Production"; Gregory Goodell; 1998