Bloop light and tone.

Paul Bruening · November 17, 2006

Hey gang,

Bruce McNaughton is putting a bloop light and tone on my 35R3. My video tap is a Canon XL2 in 24p. Both the light and tone will go in sync onto the DV tape along with the normal audio and ground glass image. I hope this will reduce some of the hassles on the camera crew (including reducing inherent take ratio consumed by clapping) as well as in post. What do you think?

Jon Kukla · November 17, 2006

What sort of system exists on the film image for actually recording the take information?

Paul Bruening · November 21, 2006

Hey Jon,

The camera is a Fries version of the Mitchell GC. That's the old High-speed version of the Mitchell Standard. Fries put a new front on it to make it reflex viewing and included a video tap position. The camera has been converted to 2-perf (techniscope) pulldown also by Bruce at Aranda. He's pulling the old Nikon lens works out of the front of the 35R3, opening the path for the XL2 with a macro lens to see and fill its frame with the ground glass image.

Is that what you were asking?

Paul

Jon Kukla · November 21, 2006

No, what I was saying is that I don't see the point of the bloop system if you're not going to be able to record any take info on it (a la AatonCode or just plain using boards). Obviously I don't know what you're planning on using the system for, though, so it might not matter. Just seems a little odd, that's all.

Paul Bruening · November 21, 2006

Sorry, now I see what you mean.

Yea, it's not a perfect system. Aaton or Arricode would be better. I'm pretty low-budg. So, this helped some issues that I wanted solved. The XL2 records the ground glass image at 24P. It also records the mic audio at 16bits digital. The bloop light and tone go on the tape and the light goes on the film. I cut on Adobe AE. All I have to do is match the sync bloops and tones on the DV tape with the DI film image. I put the take data on the DV tape then match it with the camera shot list to verify the film take.

More...

I couldn't get an edit through. It's really all about saving some time in AE during the syncing phase.

Jim Feldspar · November 23, 2006

I'm not sure that I understand. Are you using the XL2 as your dual-system audio recording device? Is

your dialogue and so forth on Mini-DV? Is that good enough compared to a Nagra or some DAT recorder

designed for dual system?

Edited November 23, 2006 by Jim Feldspar

nathan snyder · December 1, 2006

Hey Paul,

It sounds like you are using the video tap to create an off-line edit so you can generate an edit decision list without an work print or telecine. Is that right?

Paul Bruening · December 4, 2006

Hey Jim,

Yup. mini-DV, 16 bit audio is sufficient. Sure, there's better, but the price is right.

Hey Nathan,

Yup, I can use the mini-DV for work print. There's still a chance that the matching 35mm footage may not be up to snuff, especially with short ends. I was going to get around that by shooting digital stills of the heads of the workprint's matching takes and checking them digitally before commiting them to scans. It ends up being a little more time consuming but way cheaper than having telecines of every foot. So, you're figuring out my "on-the-cheap" methods.