Mixing Super 16mm with standard 16mm

[Phil Thompson]

HI there,

 

I am in the process of making a super 16mm feature. Unfortunately all shooting relies on having the DOP available as he as the Ari 2 camera. I have a cinema products standard 16mm camera and would like to shoot my own stuff to incorporate in the final cut. My question is, what is the impact of doing this? Obviously I won't be getting a 35mm blow up and it's likely that I'll try and get the neg final cut re-scanned at 2K but what impact will this have on the standard 16mm stuff?

 

Anyone had this issue?

 

many thanks

 

Phil Thompson

[Adrian Sierkowski]

You can do it, just frame for 1.85:1 on the reg 16mm and matte it later on. of course, grain may differ, as you'll be enlarging the 16mm frame but i'd just go with a stop slower stock, (eg instead of 500T go 200T, though that's really 1 1/3 stop diff, or 100T instead of 200T). Since you'll wind up in the DI anyway, there won't be too much of an issue I can forsee.

[Phil Connolly]

If your composing for 1.85:1 the difference in negative area is very significant, super 16 is about 55% larger. So on a 2K scan your going have a very noticeable increase in grain and drop in resolution. I guess this could be minimized to an extent by using the slowest possible stocks for the reg 16, but its still going to be pretty noticeable.

 

If you are going to do this I would probably not try and match the formats as they won't inter cut that well, but maybe heighten the differences - make the different textures look intentional.

 

I few years back I shot a project that mixed D-20 HDCAM SR, Super 16 and Super 8 - non of the formats matched but the end result looked ok - because the different textures looked intentional. I used film for flash backs and dream sequences and the HD for real time sequences.

[Phil Thompson]

If your composing for 1.85:1 the difference in negative area is very significant, super 16 is about 55% larger. So on a 2K scan your going have a very noticeable increase in grain and drop in resolution. I guess this could be minimized to an extent by using the slowest possible stocks for the reg 16, but its still going to be pretty noticeable.

 

If you are going to do this I would probably not try and match the formats as they won't inter cut that well, but maybe heighten the differences - make the different textures look intentional.

 

I few years back I shot a project that mixed D-20 HDCAM SR, Super 16 and Super 8 - non of the formats matched but the end result looked ok - because the different textures looked intentional. I used film for flash backs and dream sequences and the HD for real time sequences.

 

 

Thanks for both of your responses, great stuff. Im not looking for grain conformity TBH - it's a very slash and hack film, what i was slightly concerned about was the aspect ratio. Obviously Standard 16mm is 4:3 whilst Super is 16:8 - I don't really want to 'pop' in and out of aspect ratios. I'm not the DOP, the director so i maybe missing something fundamental here.??

[Adrian Sierkowski]

you would just mask the 16mm to S16mm, same as when you're shooting full 4 perf 35mm film and going for a 1.85 ratio. That can easily be done in Final Cut Pro, for example, but is best accomplished in the scan as you can "move around" the frame a bit.

[Kevith Mitchell]

I would have the same concerns to. I would ask several HD houses and see what they say. Because chances are high they will charge you in some way for the format change. and it won't be cheap. Your best and least expesive route is to shoot on one format. This will eliminate the problem before it starts. Hope this helps