The Super 8 Revolution

Tip 3 and 4 for shooting Modern Super 8 Film

#3 Correct Exposure:

Having the correct exposure is one of the most critical aspects of getting the best-looking super8 pictures. There are books written on this subject where you can learn the nuances of lighting and exposure reading. The fundamental issue for super8 filmmakers today is that too many filmmakers are relying on their aging super8 cameras internal exposure system to make this critical setting. Some of these systems were not even that good when they where new, let alone 30 to 40 years down the road. Photography is after all, painting with light. To get your best results, you have to learn about light, how it relates to different film stocks, and how to choose the best exposure setting. My super8 images improved dramatically when I bought an inexpensive light meter (About $75.00) and started taking some readings and doing some experimentation. I found that even the factory settings prescribe by the manufacture of both the film and cameras were not always optimum to make the best-looking Super8 pictures. So many factors affect your exposure. Did you know that your best exposure would be different based on if you are in wide or telephoto on your zoom? For your camera’s internal system to work, it has to be able to recognize the notch system in the super8 cartridge and be calibrated for it to work well. The ASA notches were designed to cover a wide range of ASA original films from 10 to 640 ASA measure in 2/3 stop increments. Some Super8 cameras can only recognize a single setting where others can read all six. None of this means much if the system has not been calibrated in 15years. Once you own a light meter it is possible the do some comparisons if only to understand how your system is working. I use my cameras internal system all the time but I always have my light meter to check and compare settings.



#4 Focus

Focusing a lens was such a standard fundamental procedure to taking photos or shooting movies that it is difficult for those of us that grew up with this tradition to understand that today many filmmakers do not need or know how to focus. Good super8 filmmaking depends on good manual focus because there are no auto focus systems. Filmmakers need to spend some quality time understanding it, practicing it and learning when it is the most critical and when they could let their guard down. In the “good old days “a lot of photography was restricted to outdoors because of the slow ASA. Today you can have Super8 with 500 ASA so you can film in some pretty low light. This makes seeing focus more difficult. The original design of super8 cameras did not consider this. If you are going to get good super8 footage, you need to understand focus and depth of field, and practice.

To focus a camera with your eye, the system starts with the correct setting of the cameras internal diopter. Everyone’s’ vision is slightly different so the diopter in a camera calibrates your eye to what the camera is seeing. There are many methods prescribed for setting the diopter. I learned using the infinity approach. You set the focus ring of the lens on infinity and then looking at something far away, you focus the diopter to your eye. There are numbers on every super8 lens that should correlate to the focus distance between the camera and the subject. These make great reference points to check if you are really getting the correct focus by “eyeing” it.

Most super8 cameras (except for Beaulieu) use a range focus systems. (Range Finder) This is not the easiest system to use and without the diopter, set correctly there is little chance of getting correct focus. The difficulty for modern super8 users is that when you look through the super8 camera you do not see all the information for easy focus. In particular, the F-stop or aperture and 85 filters are after where the focus optic is, so you do not see the effect of this on focus.

The other way to approach focus is to understand when it is critical and when its not. When you shoot at full telephoto, (the most zoomed in) and at full aperture (F the smallest number) on a big 10 to 1 super8 zoom the focus depth is less then an inch. This mean if your focus setting is wrong by even the slightest, or you move the camera as little as a few inches, you are out of focus. On the other extreme if your at full wide on the zoom and the smallest aperture (F the largest number) the focus depth is huge, maybe 50 feet or greater. In this situation it doesn’t’ matter where you set the focus you will be in focus.

Since most super8 film is shot in available light, you cannot change that. If you back off a little on that gorgeous lens to a wider setting and use slightly higher ASA film you will find focus to be much easier. At minimum, always make sure to vary your shoots so even if you are wrong you have a chance of having some focused material.


(c) Pro8mm 2009 www.pro8mm.com

8 Tips For Shooting Modern Super8, by Philip Vigeant

A Few tips can go a long way

Parts of my job as senior colorist at Pro8mm, is that I get to scan about a million feet of super8 film each year. In doing so I get to see what is happening in the super8 world with some vantage point based on volume. I look at my work as a two-part job. One, as a creative colorist, trying to get the most information off of the frames for our customers, and second, as an inspector looking for bugs in the over all super 8 process. When I see something that needs improving, I try to see what I can do with the technology at hand to facilitate a positive change. Internally, I can talk to my employees who are the people most responsible for each area and together we try to attack the issue. Externally, it is much more difficult. You have competitive concerns to address, and some companies just do not see these problems as issues the way I might. In addition, there are things that are totally beyond my control that can play a major roll in great looking super8 footage. These things are up to the filmmaker. Each year the technology for scanning film to digital seems to improve, resulting in more things that I can fix. Native 1080 HD film scanning now provides me with tremendous processing power to do many things that were impossible just a year ago. There are new things on the horizon as well, which will give us even greater ability to improve an imperfect image. However, there are a few things that if the filmmaker does not get right, there is very little that can be done to remedy the problem, no matter how much technology you have at hand.

As the years progress the problems seem to change and evolve with each new generation. For those who grew up with film as the main picture-taking medium some things were learned at every juncture of the photographic process. Things such as focus were so common knowledge of that generation that we often forget that this is knowledge that you have to learn. A colleague of mine who teaches filmmaking here in California said that he has to spend days of the semester going over some of this basic stuff. Therefore, here is my short list 2009 of the 8 most common areas of concern I see every day in transferring film. I hope that a few quick tips and expatiation can help you create better images with your super8 camera.

# 1 Hair in the Gate:

Because of the nature of film and the way it travels through a camera and exposes each frame, the system will build up debris in the gate that if it is allowed to accumulate, and this will block some of the image. The metal gate frames the film with what should be a smooth black border. Because you are running film over metal, it tends to leaves tiny deposits on the gate as the film passes over it. This emulsion residue is a gummy substance that is barely visible to the naked eye. If this is not cleaned, from your camera, from time to time you can have several problems. First, the gummy glue can trap foreign

Substances like hair, lint, and dust and hold it firmly, often where the image is taken in a camera. The result are these ugly black globs which start around the boarder that blocks some of your image usually on the edges but sometimes big enough to block a lot of picture. Depending on the size of these foreign obstacles, a hair in the gate can ruin a shot. In addition, the build up of emulsion can get so bad that your camera can physically scratch the film. The fix for these problems are very simple. Go to the store and purchase a child’s toothbrush. Gently brush a few strokes between every cartridge. Every, single cartridge! It is amazingly simple but incredibly effective. Do not use compressed air as all that will do is blow dirt around and it might blow debris into somewhere you cannot get it out. In addition, compressed air does not often have the force to move the object because remember, it is stuck in place. Do not use a Q-tip, as the chance of leaving a fiber of cotton is greater then the good you will do by performing the cleaning.

If your camera has never been cleaned, you might need to do some more extensive work. Once it is clean, the brush trick is all that should be need to keep you hair free.

#2 the 85 Filter Situation

In the beginning, all super8 film was Tungsten Balance, which means that the film will produce true colors under tungsten light. If you wanted to get correct colors in daylight, you had to use an orange filter called an 85 (sometimes called 85A). For convenience, every Super 8 camera was built with an internal 85 filter. The filter was usually ??? in place because most filming was done outside in daylight. There were some clever ways to take out the filter when you were filming in Tungsten (Interior Light). The filter removal system could be activated by the super8 cartridges notch system, or by a switch, or by sticking something into a place in the camera to take it out or some combination of these things.

Every super8 camera manufacturer had their own idea as to how this should be done. Today, you have dozens of super8 film stocks that can be either daylight or tungsten color balanced. When you film in daylight with daylight film, you do not want to use an 85 filter. At Pro8mm we. have been taking the internal filters out of super8 cameras for many years now. When this is done correctly, it can greatly improve the optical performance of a camera. Today because you can buy daylight film, it is actually inconvenient to have the internal 85 filter. Some film manufacturing companies prescribe to the cartridge notch for 85-filter removal and some do not. The standard for dealing with this 85 thing are a mess, so it is up to you the filmmaker to understand what how you camera handles this and that film you are using the correct film for your filming environment, daylight or tungsten to get this correct. Although you can do some amazing color, correction in post if you do not get this right you will never achieve the brilliance in color your images can have. In addition, all this correcting takes time, which cost money.

(insert photo EXAMPLE: Pro8-85 shot correctly Daylight no filter Shot on New Pro814 Wide. Pro8-80 shot incorrectly attempted fix in post)

What make this a little challenging is in most super8 cameras the 85 was placed behind where it can be seen with the viewfinder optics. If your camera has a switch or you toggle between the two setting for filter in and out you will not be able to see the effect of having the filter in by looking in the viewfinder. The major exception to this would be Beaulieu cameras that have a reflex viewfinder where the entire image path is viable in the viewfinder.

If you do not own a Beaulieu you must open up the camera door where you insert the film and look through the camera body. Put your eye in line with what the film will see. You must run the camera to see through. It also will help if you point the camera at something dark so the exposure system is open, or manually set the camera to exposure wide open. Once you find a position where you can see light through the camera body flip the switch that goes between the 85 filters in and out. You should see the light turn a darker orange when the filter is in. However, you are not done. Take the super8 cartridge you are about to use and put it in the camera. While doing so, look to see if it is flipping and if there is a type of lever in the camera. Now go back to check your camera and make sure that the position the cartridge has not effected the switching. The other approach is to make sure all your settings are correct and the cartridge has the correct notch for the 85 filters. A cartridge with a notch for the 85 filters will not remove the filter. A cartridge without a notch will automatically remove the filter. In some cameras, an external switch can override this, but in others, if the notch removes the 85 filter it cannot be returned with the switch.

Pro8mm Tip of the Day: How to Pick a Place to Scan Your Super 8 Film

As I was working on updating my own VIMEO and You Tube Channels this weekend, I lost myself in the many great Super 8 films that people have posted. I found that I can spend endless hours just watching everyone’s stuff, and of course, since this is my profession, I am always curious about the cameras, film, processing and scanning workflow. Some of the DIY folks have produced some really good stuff. Great in fact. Filmmakers who enjoy the power of one, and have the time to maticulate over moving their super 8 film to digital can achieve a decent result, providing they understand how to minimize the dirt, and the film was lit correctly to begin with.

What I found somewhat interesting however was how many scans done at facilities are producing results that look so bad. In many cases, worse than the DIY telecine that filmmakers have done.

So here is a tip I hope you will use. Before you choose a place to scan your super 8 film, go to YouTube and Vimeo to see what kind of quality a scanning facility can offer. Most companies now have samples of their stuff up there, or their clients have tagged what facility did the scan. Check out as many as you can find. You will be amazed at the range of what you see.

As I looked at all of my competitors stuff, as is human nature to do, it validated for me the differential between the quality of the scans that we provide far exceeds the differential in the price. One more thing…don’t be fooled by “fake” HD. HD is a native 1080 scan that comes directly off the scanner, not an SD telecine scan that is up rezzed in a computer.

Check it out for yourself.

www.pro8mm.com © Phil Vigeant, Pro8mm 2009

Why You Should Not Transfer Your Home Movies To DVD

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT TRANSFER YOUR HOME MOVIES TO DVD

As hundreds of people around the world prepare to attend Home Movie Day this Saturday, October 17th, I started thinking about how much misleading information there is on the internet from transfer houses about preservation and archiving your home movies. First and foremost is that a DVD does NOT preserve your film. A DVD is only a copy of your original film master by which you can watch your home movies. You cannot even edit a DVD transfer. As more and more people begin to think about putting their super 8, regular 8 or 16mm home movies into their Mac or some other edit program, so they can “do something” with them, I think it is important to think about why having your home movies scanned to DVD might not be the best choice. Most importantly, you never ever want to throw your original home movies away. This is your master that you will return to time and time again as scanning technology and applications change, and it needs to be cared for and protected.

The Center for Home Movies is a 501-C-3 not for profit organization that has done a tremendous job in raising the collective conscious of the public by having this annual Home Movie Day event worldwide. Home movies are our legacy, and offer a unique “you are here” view of decades past. They are an important part of personal, community, and cultural history. Go to their website www.homemovieday.com to find a Home Movie Day event near you. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed! The event is this Saturday at numerous locations around the world. Participation is simple: Bring one or more reels of your 8mm, Super8, or 16mm home movies to the event. They will inspect, and project them on a first-come, first-served basis. Damaged films will not be screened, but preservation specialists will offer expert advice on caring for at-risk materials. No films of your own? Just come and watch the show! It is free!

So as people begin to think about their archive, and perhaps select a reel or two to bring to Home Movie Day, this leaves the question, what should I do with MY home movies? You may no longer have access to a working projector, and more importantly, you would like to share your home movies with other family members. You may want to find out who else in my family has films. Maybe aunts, uncles and first cousins have films that show a different perspective or event than what your dad shot.

Pro8mm has scanned millions of hours of regular 8 , super 8 and 16mm film for the worlds most famous faces AND the general public. We feel so strongly about home movie preservation and that it should be done by a reputable company who will handle your one and only archive with integrity. Your home movies are just as import to you as the Hewlett/Packard’s, The Coppola’s. The Eagles, Van Halen, Bette Midler, Evan Picone, Estee Lauder (I could go on and on) are to them. Do you think that Richard Nixon would have sent his home movies to be transferred at Costco? To me this is like needing an organ transplant and finding a place that will do it at www.hearttransplants.com or the Kidney Depot. It is the same with your home movies. You only have one set of originals. So why not take the time to find out who is transferring them, what kind of experience they have, what kind of equipment they use and is the equipment safe for your film given its age and condition. Trust me, I have heard all the horror stories and many transfer facilities use primitive homemade equipment, some of which I have actually seen at trade shows. You could not pay me to put my film on anything that looked like it would scratch it, tear the perfs or chew the film!

Some places offer home movie transfers to DVD’s very cheap on equipment that only cost a few hundred dollars. We scan home movies on a one million dollar piece of equipment that was originally bought to do production work and documentary work of super 8 and regular 8 film. Your home movies are treated the way any professional production would be treated. Nothing drives me crazier than people who have the attitude why go to all that trouble .. “well it is just some old home movies” . I think people feel this way because your typical cheap transfer looks so bad compared to the original film which looks so incredibly good projected on a big screen. Well, here is a clip that I put up on FACEBOOK of “just some old home movies” from the 1940’s that were my grandfathers. www.vimeo.com/6974965 I had no idea that he was on the Board of Directors at The Blue Hill Credit Union, or that my great grandmother Rachel was so shy when the camera was on her. I never “got that” from the stills I had seen of her. My relatives went absolutely CRAZY! They loved it. Now I am getting my family to help me tag who these people were. Just think…The Power of Home Movies and the power of the internet. In order to do this though, your film has to be encoded to a file format not DVD. Films that are scanned as files can be used in an edit program on a Mac or PC, and, you can create stills from you film clips.

If you think having your home movies scanned by a professional motion picture company, here is what I suggest.

Set a budget. even as small as $100 -$200 dollars
Scan to file format only what you budgeted for. I would go for best quality , not quantity.
Share this high quality scan with your relatives to see if family members would like to share the cost and pool their films together to create a family archive. I think you will be surprised how many people might be interested in contributing
Do not feel that you have to scan everything at once. For my family, we scan an hour a year. You can also edit little clips and put them up for special occasions; For example, for my daughters 25th birthday, I put on FACEBOOK her 3rd birthday shot on Super 8 film. It was the greatest gift!
No matter where you scan, please take the time to find out the following by asking the facility these questions:

Find out what kind of equipment the facility has. Is it a film chain where they video tape your images as it goes through a projector. If it is, it will never render the quality that is on your original film. Or is it a flying spot scanner that is sprocketless. These render superior quality to film chain or single image capture telecines, and allow you to color correct the film. Many Ranks have a daVinci color correction system. This is like photoshop for your movies . Flying Spot Scanners are especially ideal for shrunken or badly damaged film.
2. If it is a flying scanner, what kind is it and how old is it? Transfer technology has been progressing rapidly since the 1980. The newer equipment can make substantially better images form your film.

3. Who is doing the transfer? Is it a real company or a home based business? Is it a trained film handler or archivist, or is it a minimum wage employee without professional training that is paying more attention to the internet or cell phone then your transfe

4. Do you have a choice of one light (single pass) or full scene-to-scene color correction? One light is best economy. Full color correction offers best quality and is done at a 3-1 ratio.

5. Is the film cleaned first and how? Dirty film will render a dirty transfer. Do they have technology to minimize the appearance of dirt and scratches on your transfer, such as Y Front technology?

6. Do you have a choice of standard definition or high definition? Is the high definition a “native 1080” HD scan, or is it “up rezzed’’ in a computer. Many places will call your scan an HD scan but it is film that has been video taped with an HD camcorder.

7. What do you want to do with your home movies? Do you want to edit clips to put up on Facebook, YouTube or on your iphone? Do you want to generate stills? Do you want to over-lay audio to take oral histories from family members? If so, then you do not want to transfer to DVD. You want to put them in a file format on a hard drive.

Whatever you decide, take the time to do the research. Think about how you want to share the movies. The internet now makes this so easy and so much more fun. You only have one archive. Preserve it for yourself, and for the future! And remember. Never throw away you original film! (c) RhondaVigeant, owner Pro8mm, October 2009 www.pro8mm.com

8 Tips For Shooting Modern Super 8 #2 - 85 Filter

8 Tips For Shooting Modern Super 8 #2.... The 85 Filter Situation

Now here is a topic of controversy and conversation…the good old 85 filter. There are many differences of opinion about the 85 filter. This is ours at Pro8mm. – Rhonda

In the beginning, all super8 film was Tungsten Balanced, which means that the film will produce true colors under tungsten light. If you wanted to get correct colors in daylight, you had to use an orange filter called an 85 (sometimes called 85A). For convenience, every Super 8 camera was built with an internal 85 filter. The filter was usually in place because most filming was done outside in daylight. There were some clever ways to take out the filter when you were filming in Tungsten (Interior) light. The filter removal system could be activated by the super8 cartridges notch system, or by a switch, or by sticking something into a place in the camera to take it out or some combination of these things.
Every super 8 camera manufacturer had their own idea as to how this should be done. Today, you have dozens of super8 film stocks that can be either daylight or tungsten color balanced. When you film in daylight with daylight film, you do not want to use an 85 filter. At Pro8mm we have been taking the internal filters out of super8 cameras for many years now. When this is done correctly, it can greatly improve the optical performance of a camera. These inernal filters are often made of plastic which deteriorate over time and can greatly interfere with the quality of the image. They are also dirt magnets! Today because you can buy daylight film, it is actually inconvenient to have the internal 85 filter. Some film manufacturing companies prescribe to the cartridge notch for 85-filter removal and some do not. The standards for dealing with this 85 thing are a mess, so it is up to you, the filmmaker to understand what the 85 filter is and how your camera handles this. You need to make sure that you are using the correct film for your filming environment, daylight or tungsten. Although you can do some amazing color, correction in post, if you do not get this right you will never achieve the brilliance in color your images can have. In addition, all this correcting takes time, which cost money. What make this a little challenging is in most super8 cameras the 85 was placed behind the viewfinder optic where it can not be seen. If your camera has a switch or you can toggle between the two settings for filter in and out , you will not be able to see the effect of having the filter in by looking in the viewfinder.
You must open up the camera door where you insert the film and look through the camera body. Put your eye in line with what the film will see. You must run the camera in order to see through it. It also will help if you point the camera at something darker so the exposure system is open, or manually set the camera to keep the exposure wide open. Once you find a position where you can see light through the camera body, flip the switch that goes between the 85 filters in and out. You should see the light turn a darker orange when the filter is in. However, you are not done. Take the super8 cartridge you are about to use and put it in the camera. While doing so, look to see if it is flipping a lever in the camera. Now go back to check your camera and make sure that the position of the cartridge has not effected the switching. The other approach is to make sure all your settings are correct and the cartridge has the correct notch for the 85 filters. A cartridge with a notch for the 85 filters will not remove the filter automaticly. A cartridge without a notch will automatically remove the filter. In some cameras, an external switch can override this, but in others, if the notch removes the 85 filter it cannot be returned with the switch.

(c) Pro8mm ™ , by Phil Vigeant, 2009



Cartridge on left is 7219 without 85 filter notch. On right, the notch added by Pro8mm
One thing you may find interesting in that we repackage the Kodak Vision 3 7219 which we call Pro8/19 ASA 500T with our prepaid processing and add the correct notch for the 85 filter. ($30 stock and processing…add a scan to Pro Ress that inclues prep and clean for one stop work flows with progressive discount, a yummy deal!) www.pro8mm.com

8 Tips for Shooting modern Super 8

I read allot about Super 8 in chat rooms and forums and I am always amazed how much misinformation there is. There seems to always be an on going battle between people trying to jockey themselves as the most informed expert. This wrong information and half truths hurts filmmakers. I checked on AMAZON.com and there is nothing on MODERN SUPER 8. The last book I found was written in 1981. So I though it would be helpful to have some tips for shooting modern Super 8.

Instead of giving you all 8 tips at once, I'll give them to you one at a time so that hopefully you will keep coming back and read my Super 8 blog! While some of the tips I am going to give you are “old school” common sense that any film maker working with super 8 or 16mm film should do/should have done at any time in their shooting career , some have to do directly with the new modern negative film stocks, our Max 8, 16 x 9 super 8 cameras and native 1080 HD scanning.


A Few tips can go a long way, by Phil Vigeant, owner and senior colorist at Pro8mm

“Parts of my job as senior colorist at Pro8mm, is that I get to scan about a million feet of super8 film each year. In doing so I get to see what is happening in the super8 world with some vantage point based on volume. I look at my work as a two-part job. One, as a creative colorist, trying to get the most information off of the frames for our customers, and second, as an inspector looking for bugs in the over all super8 process. When I see something that needs improving, I try to see what I can do with the technology at hand to facilitate a positive change. Internally, I can talk to my employees who are the people most responsible for each area and together we try to attack the issue. Externally, it is much more difficult. You have competitive concerns to address, and some companies just do not see these problems as issues the way I might. In addition, there are things that are totally beyond my control that can play a major roll in great looking super8 footage. These things are up to the filmmaker. Each year the technology for scanning film to digital seems to improve, resulting in more things that I can fix. Native 1080 HD film scanning now provides me with tremendous processing power to do many things that were impossible just a year ago. There are new things on the horizon as well, which will give us even greater ability to improve an imperfect image. However, there are a few things that if the filmmaker does not get right, there is very little that can be done to remedy the problem, no matter how much technology you have at hand.

As the years progress the problems seem to change and evolve with each new generation. For those who grew up with film as the main picture-taking medium some things were learned at every juncture of the photographic process. Things such as focus were so common knowledge of that generation that we often forget that this is knowledge that you have to learn. A colleague of mine who teaches film making here in California said that he has to spend days of the semester going over some of this basic stuff. Therefore, here is my short list 2009 of the 8 most common areas of concern I see every day in transferring film. I hope that a few quick tips and expatiation can help you create better images with your super8 camera.” – Phil Vigeant(c) 2009

TIP #1 HAIR IN THE GATE

Nothing is more aggravating for us and to you when we get absolutely gorgeous footage up on the scanner and there is a big yucky piece of dirt or hair in the frame. Just a small effort on your part will make your footage sparkle! BRUSH YOUR CAMERA GATE!

“Because of the nature of film and the way it travels through a camera and exposes each frame, the system will build up debris in the gate. If it is allowed to accumulate, this will block some of the image. The metal gate frames the film with what should be a smooth black border. Because you are running film over metal, it tends to leaves tiny deposits on the gate as the film passes over it. This emulsion residue is a gummy substance that is barely visible to the naked eye. If this is not cleaned from your camera, from time to time you can have several problems. First, the gummy glue can trap foreign substances like hair, lint, and dust and hold it firmly, often where the image is taken in a camera. This results in these ugly black globs which start around the boarder that blocks some of your image usually on the edges, but sometimes big enough to block a lot of picture. Depending on the size of these foreign obstacles, a hair in the gate can ruin a shot. In addition, the build up of emulsion can get so bad that your camera can physically scratch the film. The fix for these problems is very simple. Go to the store and purchase a child’s toothbrush. Gently brush a few strokes between every cartridge. Every, single, cartridge! It is amazingly simple but incredibly effective. Do not use compressed air as all that will do is blow dirt around, and it might blow debris into somewhere you cannot get it out. In addition, compressed air does not often have the force to move the object because remember, it is stuck in place. Do not use a Q-tip, as the chance of leaving a fiber of cotton is greater then the good you will do by performing the cleaning. If your camera has never been cleaned, you might need to do some more extensive work. Once it is clean, the brush trick is all that should be need to keep you hair free.

Pro8mm includes a free camera gate brush with every rental or purchase. They are also available for sale on our website for $5.00 at www.pro8mm.com. A nifty little tool that folds up small and has an attached cover, so you don’t have to worry about loosing it. Once you use it on your camera, we do not advise using it as a substitute for gum or mints when you have been on the set all day, or for that matter, the other way around! www.pro8mm.com