A film recorder is the other half of Level 3 on the roadmap: not playing film, but writing it. Digital footage in, real Super 8 film out, ready to load into a cartridge like any other.
Getting there started with taking apart the thing best positioned to already do this: real Super 8 cameras. We bought a handful of Nikon Super 8 bodies, broke them down to their film gates, and worked out how to open that gate up so it could sit directly against an OLED monitor instead of a lens. An OLED screen makes an unusually good light source for this specifically: full control over exposure, color, and palette, frame by frame, with nothing analog getting in the way of the signal.
The optical path spacing between the gate and the screen is worked out, and the path there is real. It’s paused for now, this is downstream of Levels 1 and 2 actually shipping, but the groundwork is done and ready to pick back up when it’s time.