A Note from the Alive Studios Team About Covid-19

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Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this global outbreak, and as a great number of our customers are retired, we want to do everything possible to help in any way we can.

Alive Studios remains open for business.
If you have an order with us, nothing will change, and if you are about to send material in, please go ahead as normal.

We are very fortunate that we do not open to the public, instead offering free collection and delivery to safely transport your films and photos to/from our studio.  We have worked this way for over 10 years, and find it a safe, efficient way to work, so nothing changes for us in terms of receiving or delivering your films and photos.

Being an online business, all our staff are able to work from home, meaning we don’t anticipate any disruption to our normal lead-times, and our team remains available by phone and email as usual.

We’ve been listening to you, and talking about ways we can help our customers during this difficult period. Here’s a few changes we’ve made today: 

Look After My Films
We understand some people are concerned about taking delivery of parcels whilst in isolation.  If you would prefer not to take delivery of your films just yet, we will upload your movies to Karishma Cloud so you can watch and share them with friends and family. We will then store your original material free of charge for as long as you need, shipping them back to you only when you are ready to take delivery.  This applies to both new and existing orders.

 

Free Door-Step Collection
You don’t need to leave your home in order to use Alive Studios. We send DHL to your house to pick up your films and photos.  For those self-isolating, please wait for your driver to knock at your door, he will then move away to a safe distance so you can put your parcel on your doorstep and close your door. He will then retrieve it and take it to his van. You will not be asked to sign anything.  This system means you can hand over your box without having any contact with the driver, keeping everybody safe.

Extended Free Hosting
On completion of your job, your films are uploaded to our own private server called Karishma Cloud. This Netflix-style portal gives you access to your movies anytime, anywhere, from any device, and you can invite upto 8 additional users to give all your loved ones access to your cherished memories.

This is normally free for 30 days, with the option to extend by 12 months for £22.  We have extended this to 60 days to help our customers in self-isolation.

20% Discount – All Orders
We know that creating family films to share with loved ones, especially with elderly relatives in isolation, brings comfort and a welcome distraction. Whilst we can’t offer our time for free, we can reduce our rates to make it more accessible to everyone. We haven’t had a sale of any kind in over 5 years, so this is rare, but we feel important to do at this time. From today, all orders are 20% off, regardless of size or value.  We’re also waiving our normal 30% fee for express orders to accommodate those in the unfortunate position of a gravely ill family member. If you’re in this position, please make this known to us and we will process your order with priority status.

Shop Now, Pay Later
We normally request payment with order, but we appreciate these are financially difficult times for many families just now.  To help, we can now offer ‘Payment on Posting’ to delay your financial burden as long as possible.  Small orders of just a few reels or tapes will still be completed in a week or two, but larger orders can take us several weeks to process. This buys you some time to get your money together, as we will only request payment upon completion.

If there is anything more we can do, please let us know – we are very flexible and open to change at this time, so please tell us what you need from us.

Finally, many thanks for the positive and supportive  emails that we have received from regular customers, they are much appreciated and are keeping us smiling.

Stay safe and positive, and eat lots of biscuits! My Grandad said they are the key to a long and happy life!

All the best from Jennie, Steven and the Team x

 

New Website

We are developing a brand new alive studios web site to be released in early 2020. This will be a faster more responsive web site with more help and support for our customers.

Why it’s important to clean Super8 film (2019)

Super8 Cine Film picks up a lot of dust and can suffer from mould and staining which occurs over time. It’s also common to find Super8 film has been projected in a room where people are smoking, which results in the film getting coated with smoke which makes the picture dingy and discoloured.

For this reason it’s really important to thoroughly clean the film prior to digitising it.

In this example we’ve run a piece of film through our scanner without any cleaning.
We’ve then put it through our cleaning machine, then run it again.

The difference is very clear…
If you want your films professionally transferred, choose Alive Studios.

Hot Property

Another awesome film by one of our customers. Film-maker Bob Lorrimer used Alive Studios to digitise this 400ft reel of 16mm film shot in 1969. Digitally remastered as a silent ProRes file, ready to have this amazing soundtrack added. Fantastic job Mr Lorrimer! Glad to have played our small part.

Watch it on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/353549468

Karishma Cloud 6.1

You can now share individual films with your friends and family in Karishma Cloud!

Today all Karishma Cloud customers have been upgraded to version 6.1, so you can now choose which individual films you want to share with each different family member. So easy to set-up, just visit the ‘Add Users’ area within your account.

With the Add Users tool you can create up-to 8 users, giving them tailored access to your home movies, no matter where in the world they are.

Login to Karishma Cloud

Find out more about Karishma Cloud

New 16mm Cine Film Example in UHD

16mm Cine Film from the 1930s to the 1980s scanned and transferred to digital, by Alive Studios in Devon, UK.

This short video has been taken from 16mm Cine Film, scanned frame by frame in 4K and output in UHD ( 3840×2160).

The clips we’ve used are from genuine customer films to show a true representation of typical 16mm home movies. You will notice scratches, dust, warped film, water damage etc. We don’t cherry-pick the best films for our demos – we try to use very ‘normal’ home movies to show you what you can expect from a transfer with Alive Studios.

New 9.5mm Cine Film Example in 4K UHD (2019)

9.5mm Cine Film from the 1930s to the 1970s scanned and transferred to digital, by Alive Studios in Devon, UK.

This short video has been taken from 9.5mm Cine Film, scanned frame by frame in 4K and output in UHD ( 3840×2160). The clips we’ve used are from genuine customer films to show a true representation of typical 9.5mm home movies. You will notice scratches, dust, warped film, water damage etc. We don’t cherry-pick the best films for our demos – we try to use very ‘normal’ home movies to show you what you can expect from a transfer with Alive Studios.

New Super 8 Cine Film Example in HD

Super 8 Cine Film from the 1960s to the 2019 scanned and transferred to digital, by Alive Studios in Devon, UK.

This short video has been taken from 8mm Cine Film, scanned frame by frame in 2K and output in HD (1920 x 1080).

The clips we’ve used are from genuine customer films to show a true representation of typical Super 8 home movies. You will notice scratches, dust, warped film, water damage etc. We don’t cherry-pick the best films for our demos – we try to use very ‘normal’ home movies to show you what you can expect from a transfer with Alive Studios.