Bolex H16 creative quest

[Abel van Dijk]

Hi all 16mm enthousiasts!

For some of my commercial work I Iove to shoot some additional 16mm on my Bolex besides the digital stuff.
It gives me some inspiration and opens up the possibility to make a directors cut with only the 16mm footage. 
In a search to feel even more inspired and to find some new creative ingredients I have some technical questions:

1. Do there exist accessoires for a bolex to achieve in camera effects?
I am looking for stuff like the 'Arri timing shift box' does, but then for a bolex. 
Or other stuff than can only be achieved when shooting on film.
If you have suggestions which are only applicable for 'professional' film camera's, please let me also know.
Maybe useful for other only celluloid shoots.

2. I am looking for a digital monitor for my bolex, what would be a good option? 

Hope you can help me,
thank you!

Abel 

 

[Robert Hart]

Long ago there was a rather primitive clockwork accessory which closed an iris. It was held immediately in front of the taking lens to generate a closing or opening soft vignette. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

2 hours ago, Abel van Dijk said:

I am looking for stuff like the 'Arri timing shift box' does, but then for a bolex. 
Or other stuff than can only be achieved when shooting on film.
If you have suggestions which are only applicable for 'professional' film camera's, please let me also know.
Maybe useful for other only celluloid shoots.
 

for that kind of "out of phase shutter" effect adjustable by external accessory you would need electronically synced shutter (no mechanical link between shutter and movement so that it is easy to throw the shutter sync to any direction instantly) or specially build camera which has mechanical adjustment built on the shutter timing link for such special effects purposes.

Arricams have this kind of fully electronically synced shutter which can be thrown out of phase it needed, but I don't know any other cameras which are intentionally built to allow this electronically as it is rarely needed effect anyway with mechanical links the adjustment is much more difficult to arrange.

It is possible, however, to throw the shutter out of sync on pretty much any camera by opening the camera and adjusting the timing mechanically, most cameras allow this easily if done by a technician but it is way too difficult and time consuming to do on set so you would likely need one camera with shutter adjusted "permanently" out of sync and another which has normal timing.

Don't remember how some Panavision cameras handle out-of-phase shutter effects, how they did it on Saving Private Ryan for example, was it easily adjustable on the fly or had they different camera bodies with different shutter tuning done beforehand?

[Aapo Lettinen]

on Bolex it is possible to arrange uncontrollable "out of phase" effect by arranging the loop formers into closed or semi closed position when filming, thus the camera feeds the film to the gate during exposure to get various degrees of effect. It can jam more easily and there is no way to know how much of the effect you get (probably more than needed) but that is one way to get interesting stuff happening with a Bolex 🙂   on my first Bolex roll back then I forgot to open the loop formers and it was pretty heavy "out-of-phase shutter" type of effect so it can work but the result can be anything

[Aapo Lettinen]

or you could try to get your camera custom modified with Absolutely-Way-Too-Wide-Shutter-Opening than the pulldown would allow for stable images, and have the shutter angle adjustable so that you can close it to normal position to get normal footage. so the shutter is not out of sync but you would for example use 200 degrees shutter angle with a pulldown which requires 144 degrees to get stable images! so in the beginning and at the end the film starts to move when shutter is still open. Rebalancing the shutter etc. would be lots of work so could be expensive but probably would be totally doable and this way you could get it adjustable mechanically with precision control

[Joerg Polzfusz]

You might want to get yourself an anamorphic attachment, a Cine Assist AniMo One , the titler or any other accessory, filters, … .