Celluloid Dreaming educational foundation

Tyler Purcell · October 23, 2015

Well, I've been keeping this secret for quite sometime and we're officially launching monday, but today we're doing a soft launch. You can read more about it here or below: http://celluloiddreaming.com

My goal is to create an interactive educational platform revolving around the continued use of motion picture film. Using well produced tutorial videos, interactive hands-on training and up to date resource guide, in order to educate and preserve filmmaking on celluloid for future generations.

As everyone knows most film schools have moved away from shooting on motion picture film. Digital cinematography has taken over due to it's lower cost and ease of use. This means, students and young budding filmmakers aren't shooting on motion picture film. At the same time, many of the experts are retiring or sadly passing away. It's becoming more and more difficult to find educational resources about shooting on motion picture film and the support necessary to do so. Many of the rental houses and online resources, have stopped dealing with film cameras all together. Even though there are boutique (art house) and professional filmmakers who continue shooting on film, many of them aren't sharing their knowledge to the masses.

With Celluloid Dreaming, we're going to build an interactive website. We'll have manuals and online text-based guides to basic operation/quick reference guides to cameras, lenses, film stock and most accessories. Our video's will go into great detail on almost every camera on the market. Discussing bodies, lenses, batteries, magazines, storage and basic maintenance. This way, someone interested in buying a camera can watch a single video and learn all about it's operation. We'll also make video's focused on lenses, film stock, processing, lighting, metering and other basic cinematography techniques related to shooting on film. Finally, a video series all about young filmmakers experiences shooting on film for the first time will explain the pro's and con's in much better detail. We'll focus on 16mm and 35mm to begin with, adding Super 8 up the road once we get going.

Our hands-on experience will be held monthly and will be free to filmmakers who already have experience shooting. The goal is to put the cameras in the hands of people without the tremendous cost of going to film school, taking specialized classes or renting. The courses will be very small, 2 - 4 people maximum per month. Each class will be jam packed and be spread over three days. The first saturday will be camera break down, learning about lenses, magazine loading and basic cinematography. Some film will be shot saturday indoors in a lighting situation with charts and single subject to shoot. Sunday will be on-location, where students can shoulder or tripod the cameras, shooting anything they want. The only cost to students will be heavily discounted film stock and processing. Film will be processed during the week and stored for the following weekend. The second saturday will be analyzation of a one light print of what was shot the weekend prior. Everyone in the class will critique each others film and be able to take the negative and positive home. Eventually we will purchase a telecine machine and go through that process as well so students can use their footage on a demo reel.

Once the course is completed, students will get a certification card saying they're up to speed on our equipment. This way, when they wish to borrow from our stash, it's a simple sign-out sheet like film school and away they go. There will be a small cost for rental, just to cover our insurance expense. We'll have online scheduling system and plan to eventually have many camera bodies and different lens selections, so students partaking in our class can have a wide-range of shooting possibilities. We plan on having Super 8, S16mm and 35mm cameras. We'll also have special deals available for sound packages and eventually transfer will be done in-house by students for a much lower rate then any lab.

Students will also be invited to participate in our "short film" series, where they can shoot a short film for our educational foundation. We plan on shooting one film per month and our students will be able to use that film on their demo reel. These films will be fully sponsored (no out of pocket cost for the student) and in some cases, students can earn pay for their work.

Our funding comes through donations, website advertising and industry sponsorship. Since we're going to be a non-profit, we'll require substantial industry support to get us going.

We plan to go live March of 2016 after we've collected enough video and film content.

Thanks for reading and I really hope some of you have interest in getting involved. We need to come together and make this a reality!

All of the pertinent links are on the main website, including a "Donate" tab which puts you into our crowd funding site. Here are the links separated:

Website: http://www.celluloiddreaming.com

Funding: https://www.gofundme.com/celluloiddreaming

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/celluloiddreaming

Video:

Jay Young · October 23, 2015

I'm on board, and would love to help. Taking a look at your website now. This sounds like an awesome opportunity.

Just yesterday I was reading a post about how a student was "forced to use a Canon Scoopic and hated every minute, never wishing more to get back to digital shooting", but they did not go into detail about what exactly they hated. I couldn't believe for someone wanting that "Film look" they hated film! HA!

JD Hartman · October 23, 2015

Way cool Tyler.

James Compton · October 23, 2015

Well done, Tyler. I will certainly send people your way.

Bill DiPietra · October 23, 2015

Sounds great, Tyler. Let us know what we can do to help out. Have you considered a crowd-funding effort?...

Tyler Purcell · October 23, 2015

On the main page of the website, there is a "Donate" tab, which leads to our crowd funding. All of the pertinent links are on the main website.

However, here are the links separated;

Website: http://www.celluloiddreaming.com

Funding: https://www.gofundme.com/celluloiddreaming

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/celluloiddreaming

Video:

Tyler Purcell · October 23, 2015

The big thing I need help with right away, is getting the word out. If you guys have a facebook page, like our facebook site and share the pinned post with the video at the top of the page. If you use the crowd funding donation, you can also hit the share tab on there as well.

Support will come once people know about this initiative and get excited.

I've also started advertising with facebook, but so far no click-through's

Once we launch, I'm going to need a lot of help. The big thing will be articles written by professionals about certain subjects. I also need professionals in our video series, but that's harder when we're all spread out. Still, I think there is a good chance we can organize once we get money and equipment flowing.

Bill DiPietra · October 23, 2015

The big thing I need help with right away, is getting the word out. If you guys have a facebook page, like our facebook site and share the pinned post with the video at the top of the page. If you use the crowd funding donation, you can also hit the share tab on there as well.

Support will come once people know about this initiative and get excited.

I've also started advertising with facebook, but so far no click-through's

Once we launch, I'm going to need a lot of help. The big thing will be articles written by professionals about certain subjects. I also need professionals in our video series, but that's harder when we're all spread out. Still, I think there is a good chance we can organize once we get money and equipment flowing.

I don't consider myself an expert in 16mm, but I'd be happy to help in some capacity. I'll also throw some publicity about this whole thing on my company Twitter account.

Tyler Purcell · October 23, 2015

Great, that would be awesome Bill! Thanks!

Tyler Purcell · October 25, 2015

Well, I did it! Celluloid Dreaming has officially got off the ground and we've acquired a camera!

I think what I got was an amazing deal. I must thank Scott, the absolutely awesome guy I got the equipment from, who understood my cause and was VERY, VERY, VERY generous!

I met him over at his storage facility and saw the camera. It had some issues, the mirror was hitting the inside of the front case. I explained to him that I'm a pretty good technician and could fix it no problem.

So this is an unusual camera, it's a LTR modified to an LTR 7, with all of the super 16 updates done to the mags and of course body. It will run at 54 fps without an external crystal, the batteries have recently been re-celled (been testing and they seem to be great). Comes with three magazines, four batteries, color video tap which can run a monitor off the internal battery, it's pretty much everything I wanted as a "B" camera.

Then we got started talking about lenses. He showed me what he had and I went crazy. He had the full 6 lens Optar prime kit and a beautiful Zeiss 10 - 100 F2.4 and adaptors so I could run all the lenses on either Aaton mount OR PL mount. After examining everything, I decided to make an offer, but I didn't want to be a jerk and low-ball. So I told him the truth, I have this great program I'm running to help people who want to shoot film. I told him this equipment would be in good hands, loving hands. I told him how much I was trying to get lenses for and how much I could afford. After some cattle prodding and almost two hours of discussion, we decided on a price that was worth it for both parties. He got rid of old stuff he wasn't using and I got old stuff that will make someone's life so much happier.

I wound up getting everything for $5600.

I went home, stripped the camera down and fixed the problem as I suspected. No damage had been done yet, but had it continued running like that, it would have broken the mirror. It was some sound insolation material that had come loose, probably from the heat we've had recently here in LA. I glued it back together again very carefully and re-assembled.

Man, I LOVE this camera. Having been an Arri guy for so many years, I'm astounded how much BETTER this camera is in so many ways. All of the things I didn't like about the Arri, like the magazine threading and shoulder mount comfort, these things are fixed. Sure the Aaton has it's weaknesses, the battery system is kinda bogus and the viewfinder is ho-hum. However, those things aside, this camera is quieter for sure, it has a bitchin' and reliable pull down system, far better then I expected. Its well made inside, the little connectors are dynamite, I wanted to take pictures of them because they were so cool, so european.

So now all I need is decent light meter, another camera, matte boxes and follow focuses for both cameras, new cases, sticks/quick release plates and odds and ends. I'm going to buy the XTR I've been eye balling once I have some more money coming in.

Man... can you tell I'm happy? This is the first time I've had a 16mm camera in my possession for nearly 14 years. I must have walked around the house for an hour with the camera on my shoulder running dead stock through it, testing the mag's, batteries, everything to make sure it worked and it's pretty flawless.

Just got the first script for our first short film! Should be in production mid November! Canna wait to bring it to you guys and show you what we're doing! :)

Tyler Purcell · November 6, 2015

I can't believe it's only been a month since I came up with this idea and in only a few weeks, I've been able to secure all the equipment necessary to start shooting.

I'm feverishly working on securing more equipment, hoping to use my connections and get tax deductible donations. It's hard though because everyone wants to donate, but I don't have a charity as of yet. That paperwork takes a long time and costs a lot. So I'm scrambling to make something happen. I've got some meetings setup for next week, a great new powerpoint presentation and a budget.

I'm also going to start shooting very soon. I've got some great little projects lined up from now until the end of the year, just waiting for some funding to arrive. I can't wait to do my "camera tests" though they'll be a bit on the creative side. :)

More info coming in the near future!

Satsuki Murashige · November 7, 2015

Nice! Would love to come visit next time I'm in LA. Maybe I'll bring the Moviecam. :)

Bill DiPietra · November 7, 2015

Nice amount of gear! Good luck!

Tyler Purcell · December 31, 2015

Well, I just got back the first 16mm footage I've shot in 10 years!

My friend Eric Walter and I, had a great time up in the Angeles Forest capturing some test footage with my Aaton LTR and Yushica Super 8 camera. He's working on a documentary and wants to shoot some stuff on film, so I figured why not get test both, super 8 and S16? It gave me an excuse to waste a roll of film to test the camera anyway.

I must admit, shooting film again is a breath of fresh air. Yea, I made a few rookie mistakes... but nothing too detrimental. I got the material I was looking for and it came out great. I used some old Fuji 64D stock I bought a few months ago that barely passed a fog test. I figured that it didn't really matter how much grain there was, after all it was just a camera test. I struck a one light print of the material instead of doing a telecine because in my eyes, it's better for testing a camera and it's a lot cheaper. I was going to use Cinelab in Boston, but Fotokem offered me a great deal I couldn't pass up (sorry Robert) and the print came out great.

Watching the print for the first time was nerve wracking. The first two shots didn't come out because I had accidentally adjusted the focus wrong. I don't know why, but it was clearly an operator error as the foreground was in focus and the background wasn't. Still, I kept watching and got near half way, which is where I started capturing material I'm going to use in my next Celluloid Dreaming promo. Eric posed for me with the super 8 camera at magic hour, it's some great stuff! Even though the Fuji stock is very blue/green, it has amazing red's and pinks, it's really amazing looking honestly. We shot some digital material the same day and compared it to the film, it was pretty spot on color wise. I'm very happy how that material came out, even though it was pretty grainy for 64D.

Once I have some money again, I'm going to send the negative out and have someone transfer selects for my next promo video. I really want to include "FILMED" material in all of my promo's from now on. I can't wait to see what the Super 8 stuff looks like, that's going to be processed early next week. I just hope my antique camera still works and the damn thing has an image!

Now... I'm embarrassed to post this because I took my pocket camera and shot the screen to get it, but here is the 16mm roll in its entirety. It looks 10X better projected, the digital copy doesn't do it justice. Of course, my projector is square, so the true aspect ratio doesn't shine through either. Also, I only shot the stuff of Eric, the rest he shot because he was experimenting with different things. But it gives you an idea of what I'm talking about. http://tye1138.com/stuff/LTRcameratest.mov