Some questions for an experiment on Arriflex SR2

brandon kaufman · October 11, 2022

Hello!

I'm thinking about doing a little experiment on my Arriflex SR2 — the first time I'll be shooting on the camera — and have a few questions.

Has anyone tried doing double exposure on the camera? I'm not entirely clear on if this is even possible, but do you have recommendations for mathematically finding the correct exposure times which would be using variable shutter speeds?

We would want to re-expose the film using different speeds in the followup exposures, but we are curious if there are tools that would assist in matching up our exposure times for re-exposure.

Thanks so much!

Dom Jaeger · October 12, 2022

I used to do a lot of double exposure steady tests and my approach was to expose the second pass about a stop under the first. That seemed to give two images with similar densities. If you err on the side of underexpose you won’t blow out too much information, but I think it’s the sort of thing that needs testing and experimentation, and depends in the scene in question.

In terms of exposure calculations, filming at half the speed will reduce your exposure by a stop. If you want to get more precise, calculate the exposure times by multiplying the shutter angle as a fraction of 360 degrees with the inverse of the frame rate. So 24 fps with a 180 shutter is

180/360 x 1/24 = 1/48th second.

Double exposure work best when there are complementary light and shadow areas that allow each layer to be visible, so don’t overlay two bright sky/dark landscape shots for instance, reverse it so the second shot has a dark top and light bottom, etc.

Arris generally aren’t the best cameras for experimental filmmaking like this, you’re probably better off with a Bolex that allows you to hand rewind, with a frame counter, behind the lens filter slot for mattes, and the possibility to do single frame and shutter fades etc.