Any actual flash frame elements available to buy or download?

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drummondb

Well-known member
So a lot of people offer light leaks, but they just appear to be filmed in a dark room, pointing a camera with no lens (or a not fully mounted lens) at bright light sources. Editors will often overlay these between cuts, but it's not the look I really want.

I'd like a look closer to the flash that happens on an actual celluloid film camera when you stop rolling. I guess it's most commonly called "flash frames?" You can see them a few times here on this test footage shot on Super 16: https://vimeo.com/74334513

Does anyone know of any way to get a look closer to that? I'm hoping for actual 16 or 35mm scans of such elements. No matter what I search I just find page after page of light leaks someone probably shot with a DSLR.
 
Do this:
Get a screen recorder app or some other app that can rip the video stream from that video you posted.
Put it in your editor and step through frame by frame to get a close look at this Flash Frame in action.
It appears to go by so fast that in the end it may be little more than one white frame and a frame or two of either something you could just copy - or it's a frame or two of some re-creatable distortion of the subject video that came just before it.

I think you could probably re-create this effect without needing any other external footage like with light leaks.
 
Thanks, not a bad idea, But I'd really like the real deal. I'm surprised with the proliferation of light leak downloads that there aren't some good choices. I'm half tempted to rent an SR16 and shoot a roll of super 16 film, see if I can make my own.

The best ones I found so far are from vision-color: http://www.vision-color.com/free-stuff/
 
Seems like there should be plenty of these in the trash bin that could be scanned.

What causes the flash frame? Is it from the film being exposed when the camera is stopped and the mirror/shutter is in the open position? If so couldn't you just create the same with a still camera and scan the result?
 
I think there are different kind of flash frames (people seem to want to call them "film burns" but I think that would technically mean when a film catches fire in a projector).

The way I understand it, in professional film cameras, the speed will ramp up and down when started and stopped, so the shutter stays open, letting more light in? Causing frames to blow out? Something like that.
 
The reason you can't find what you want may be because, unlike the "light leaks" which you see a lot of, the flash will look entirely different depending on the content of the frame. You can't have a template that you just drop over the the top of any clip; it has to be customised for that particular clip.

You can probably emulate it pretty closely with keyframes and a combination of exposure & blur, as well as a slight wiggle in the motion parameters. You don't want to go all the way to white, just far enough to make the effect noticeable. All these effects need to be placed underneath a layer of grain because that texture needs to remain in the flash-frame, rather than going to a clean white slate.
 
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The look you're talking about comes from the fact that the leading end (and sometimes the tail) of movie film gets exposed to room light. When you load, say, a 16mm camera, you pull raw unexposed film through the camera's mechanism and into the takeup reel. The first few frames of your shot have been exposed to room light but this stops rather abruptly when unexposed film comes from the mag or reel.
 
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