Options For Techniscope.

Connor Drake · August 21

Hello All,

I've got the opportunity to shoot a lowish budget short film on 35mm due to a friend donating a bunch of short ends from his career to myself and the director. Currently the plan is to shoot 4 perf on an Arriflex 35III and we have approx 3000ft of film. That feels very tight for what is at the moment a 12 page script with 4 pages of dialogue. Since we don't have the budget to buy/development/scan more film I've been looking into shooting 2 perf and am looking for any info/advice you have to give.

From what I can tell doing a 2 perf conversion of the 35III doesn't make sense. I am something of a technician and have repaired/serviced Bolexs and the Aaton XTR/LTRs but this seems beyond my abilities.

My other thought was the rent from Panavision and hope I could negotiate a 2 day week but the only evidence of them having a 2 perf camera I could find was a thread on this site from 2007. Does anyone know if such a thing exists and how affordable it might be to rent?

Just to wrap up, I'm aware that the best thing to do would be cut down the script but directors are going to director. Our last project together was 16mm and no sync dialogue. We managed to make a 12 minute short on 800ft of film and I fear they're a bit over confident because of that. I'm really looking for any solutions from the camera department that could help us stretch film a little further. Thanks!

David Mullen ASC · August 21

I'd just call the rental houses to see if they have any 2-perf cameras; if not, 3-perf is another option.

Aapo Lettinen · August 22

12pages with 4 of them dialogue sounds undoable on 3000ft of 35mm. Even on 2perf and especially so on 4perf. Sounds like they were confusing 16mm running times per ft when budgeting not realising the 35mm has insanely higher frame and it eats up the rolls in minutes.

I would get more 35mm rolls or even shoot the dialogue on S16 to get enough takes to ensure that you get the movie shot without running out of raw stock mid shoot

Edited August 22 by Aapo Lettinen