35mm Home Movie

[Uli Meyer]

Since it might take a while until I can get a film project started, I wanted to use up some of the stock that's been sitting in my fridge for too long. When the lockdown restrictions here in London eased up a little in June, I took my Arriflex 235 3perf to Hampstead Heath and surroundings and shot a home movie of my wife and son. A couple of rolls of Vision 3 50D and 200T and when the Kodak lab opened again last week I finally got it developed and graded the footage in Premier with the basic tools. Most of it was shot with a Zeiss CP.3 25mm and a few bits with an Arri Alura 15.5-45mm zoom. I wonder if anyone can tell which is which. I am aware that a home movie is only exciting for the parents and family but I thought some of you might enjoy looking at a bit of analogue footage.

 

[Ruben Arce]

I certainly enjoyed watching this. Wow 35mm film is so beautiful, that even when you shoot a home movie in a cloudy day it looks way better than a lot of stuff that I see people shoot on the newest digital cameras. Not trying to start a debate or anything, digital cameras pay my bills, but wow there is something about film that makes it look special.. And your skills of course.

[Phil Connolly]

Sure it looks nice and all, but a proper home movie should have continuous random zooms in and out.

Same with your subjects, they should stand around awkwardly staring into the camera and intermittently waving. 

What you have here looks a bit too much like a film, which of course is totally wrong. 

[Giray Izcan]

Uli, great work.. Reminds me of my kiddo when he was a baby too. He is almost 8 now. The lenses seem to be matching very well from what i can tell through compression. Next time though, in addition to Phil's input, you should have a lot more hand held shakes too. If I don't feel nauseous 30 secs into it, it could not be considered as a home movie haha. 

[Tyler Purcell]

Very nice Uli, really enjoyed! 

[David Mullen ASC]

Lovely!

 

[Jon O'Brien]

Very nice to see. I'm making a 35mm film myself soon, too. The film has been in the fridge too long.

[Uli Meyer]

All your kind comments are appreciated this Monday morning. Made me laugh too. ?

[Satsuki Murashige]

Love it, Uli!

I’ve said it before, but your son is so lucky to have his home movies shot on 35mm! Have you considered getting the negative rolls printed, so one day when your child is grown he might be able to see the footage projected (somewhere!) on a big screen? 

To me, that’s the one benefit of shooting home movies on regular 16mm, you can easily project a workprint or reversal roll for friends and family. 

For home movie film footage, I actually prefer shooting at 16-18fps. Both to extend the film runtime, and also to add the lo-fi home movie feel. Sometimes 35mm 50D can be too clean and modern looking otherwise.

[Uli Meyer]

On 7/14/2020 at 9:16 PM, Satsuki Murashige said:

Have you considered getting the negative rolls printed, so one day when your child is grown he might be able to see the footage projected (somewhere!) on a big screen? 

One day I might do that. I wonder how easy it will be to find a 35mm projector in 20 years time? If I had the space, I'd get a projector myself.Time to move out of London into a house with a big enough basement ?

[Jeremy Cavanagh]

Uli, there must still be hundreds of 35mm projectors lying around in storage across the country. I should wander down to the cinema museum at Elephant and Castle and ask them where they would look for projectors as they have a whole collection dating back over a hundreds years.

However, you are right, its time to consider moving from London especially if contemplating one’s own 35mm projector in the front living room.....

[Satsuki Murashige]

Is there a 3-perf S35 projector available besides the ARRI Loc-Pro? 

There’s been one on eBay for years at around $5K USD. 

[Uli Meyer]

13 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Is there a 3-perf S35 projector available besides the ARRI Loc-Pro? 

There’s been one on eBay for years at around $5K USD. 

I've read somewhere that Kinoton projectors can run 3perf.

[Mike Krumlauf]

So fantastic to see material that we all film for granted now on our iPhones done on the king of kings. Really wish I had the $$$ to do some "in the moment" work on 35mm but I'll stick with my F900R and Digizoom for now lol.

 

Beautiful work!

[Uli Meyer]

Shooting a bit of slow motion for the next 35mm Home Movie installment. Will post results soon ?

[Mike Krumlauf]

5 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

Shooting a bit of slow motion for the next 35mm Home Movie installment. Will post results soon ?

SO EXCITED TO SEE MORE FROM YOU! :D

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Nice work. Very odd to see 35mm home movies. Back in the day, the old time rich would use 16mm.

You had better put the details on the film. When you kick off it goes on eBay and no one knows anything about it. 

Edited September 18, 2020 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Will Montgomery]

Beautiful footage. You'll have that forever and it's totally worth the investment in processing and transfer. It's also fun showing up at your kid's soccer game with an old Arri 2c cranking away with all the soccer mom's with their huge DSLR's staring at you.

https://vimeo.com/54617132

[Uli Meyer]

17 hours ago, Will Montgomery said:

Beautiful footage. You'll have that forever and it's totally worth the investment in processing and transfer. It's also fun showing up at your kid's soccer game with an old Arri 2c cranking away with all the soccer mom's with their huge DSLR's staring at you.

https://vimeo.com/54617132

Hah, excellent. Thank you for sharing!

[Uli Meyer]

Here's some more 'Home Movie' Kodak Vision 3 goodness for those who are interested. I'm still not in any of the shots but next one maybe. Again, this is the 2k Quicktime used for editing which I graded in Premier with the basic tools. I have to figure out how to replace the footage with the 4k dpx files. Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Tyler Purcell]

Hey Uli, great stuff! 

In terms of re-linking to the DPX. If you made QuickTime directly from each DPX file and did not change the name of them, then it should be easy to fix this in Resolve. Simply export an AAF from Premiere. Make a new project in Resolve. Import all the DPX files first. Then import the AAF from Premiere. Upon import, you want to uncheck the box that says import media. Then it SHOULD re-link no problem. I've done this many times as our scanners are DPX and I generally edit in QuickTimes. You can get around the naming convention problem by force relinking each clip, but that's a time consuming process. 

Hope that makes sense. 

[Will Montgomery]

All home movies should be shot on 35mm Vision 3 stocks. It is now the law.

[Uli Meyer]

48 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Hey Uli, great stuff! 

In terms of re-linking to the DPX. If you made QuickTime directly from each DPX file and did not change the name of them, then it should be easy to fix this in Resolve. Simply export an AAF from Premiere. Make a new project in Resolve. Import all the DPX files first. Then import the AAF from Premiere. Upon import, you want to uncheck the box that says import media. Then it SHOULD re-link no problem. I've done this many times as our scanners are DPX and I generally edit in QuickTimes. You can get around the naming convention problem by force relinking each clip, but that's a time consuming process. 

Hope that makes sense. 

Hi Tyler, 

Thank you, Ill have a go at that. The QT was made using the dpx file so there should not be a problem. 
 

 

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

Hi Tyler, 

Thank you, Ill have a go at that. The QT was made using the dpx file so there should not be a problem. 
 

 

Great! Yea a lot of people take all the DPX sequences and stick them in one timeline and then export them all as one QuickTime file. That's where things get mucked up. 

Good luck don't hesitate to shout at me if ya need help.

[Satsuki Murashige]

14 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

 

 

 

Lol, this is great Uli! Your son is such a ham ?