So what light is this?

[Samuel Berger]

This lamp reminds me of the old Sylvania Sun Gun that would plug into the wall but this version seems to be battery operated.

 

 

I've never seen this exact one in real life, any idea what it is?

Thanks.

[Phil Rhodes]

It does look a lot like a PAR36. Some of those are designed for 28V operation (for aircraft applications) so this does make some sense.

[Samuel Berger]

It does look a lot like a PAR36. Some of those are designed for 28V operation (for aircraft applications) so this does make some sense.

 

Whenever the lamp is on in the movie, it casts this strong yellow light. You know, it's odd but in spite of the film's popularity, you can Google "Cecil B. Demented" and "Eclair ACL" and it will turn up exactly one real hit, on a blog by some guy who bought an ACL for $4800 in 1999...He also seemed to dislike 7277 320T a lot.

[David Mullen ASC]

It must be on in daylight-balanced scenes then...

 

5277 320T was the replacement in 1996 for 5287 200T, which came out in 1994. Then it morphed into the 5284 500T Expression stock in 2001 though 5277 continued for another four years (I shot a whole season of HBO's "Big Love" in 2006 on Expression 500T -- I also used it for the first half of "Akeelah & The Bee" in 2005).

 

These were all lower-contrast stocks designed to compete with Agfa XT320, most famously used by David Watkin on movies like "Out of Africa", "Hamlet", "Memphis Belle". But pretty much as soon as Kodak came out with 5287, Agfa was getting out of the motion picture camera negative business so Kodak had the "low-con" field to itself (Watkin switched to the low-con Kodak stocks for his last few movies, like "Night Falls on Manhattan".) Personally, I think Agfa XT320 was a bit prettier, sort of brown and creamy, with blues sort of shifting to cyan -- the Kodak version was more color-accurate and sharper, less grainy. In 16mm, however, these stocks were rather soft & grainy, you need contrast when your negative is smaller, to increase the perception of sharpness.

 

Michael Ballhaus and David Tattersall were fans of 5277, and used it well as a sort of way of avoiding using 500T stocks and I think exposing well-enough to print down and get some contrast. Ballhaus used it on "Sphere", "Wild, Wild, West" and "Gangs of New York" and Tattersall used it on "Con Air", "The Green Mile", "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace".

 

Once D.I.'s became commonplace, the need for specialized-look stocks started to diminish -- one of the last ones to come out were the higher-contrast Fuji Eterna "Vivid" stocks.

[Gerald King]

You worked on Akeelah and the bee? Wow that was awesome. I liked that movie alot.

It must be on in daylight-balanced scenes then...

 

5277 320T was the replacement in 1996 for 5287 200T, which came out in 1994. Then it morphed into the 5284 500T Expression stock in 2001 though 5277 continued for another four years (I shot a whole season of HBO's "Big Love" in 2006 on Expression 500T -- I also used it for the first half of "Akeelah & The Bee" in 2005).

 

These were all lower-contrast stocks designed to compete with Agfa XT320, most famously used by David Watkin on movies like "Out of Africa", "Hamlet", "Memphis Belle". But pretty much as soon as Kodak came out with 5287, Agfa was getting out of the motion picture camera negative business so Kodak had the "low-con" field to itself (Watkin switched to the low-con Kodak stocks for his last few movies, like "Night Falls on Manhattan".) Personally, I think Agfa XT320 was a bit prettier, sort of brown and creamy, with blues sort of shifting to cyan -- the Kodak version was more color-accurate and sharper, less grainy. In 16mm, however, these stocks were rather soft & grainy, you need contrast when your negative is smaller, to increase the perception of sharpness.

 

Michael Ballhaus and David Tattersall were fans of 5277, and used it well as a sort of way of avoiding using 500T stocks and I think exposing well-enough to print down and get some contrast. Ballhaus used it on "Sphere", "Wild, Wild, West" and "Gangs of New York" and Tattersall used it on "Con Air", "The Green Mile", "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace".

 

Once D.I.'s became commonplace, the need for specialized-look stocks started to diminish -- one of the last ones to come out were the higher-contrast Fuji Eterna "Vivid" stocks.