K Borowski

What Chris said: Last job I worked 12 hours was basically the minimum. MAYBE ther was an 11 in there somewhere. I think 12 was where double OT kicked in, so they would usually work us right to 12 since it was budgeted for. So yeah, you want to work in the business, deal with 12 hour days, or sve yourself disappointment and get out. Trust me, you'll never see an 8 hour day in the US doing this professionally. . .

If you REALLY need to use computers/smartphones to keep track of a day of shooting (unless you are shooting HS all day, it really isn't that hard to use paper), just use Microsoft Excel and make yourself up a spreadsheet. . . Most smartphone platforms have support for this. Good luck explaining where all the data went if your phone gets wet, crashes, etc though! :blink:

I see the point of using common sense and establishing a common procedure, but when a thread about lens handling reaches two pages, discussions arise as to which hand one should hand off with, that is taking it too far! I've worked for some pr*cks that want to control you to that level. You want to prevent gravity and a sudden deceleration caused by concrete or asphault from shattering your $4,000 rental lens. Common sense, establishing someone has control of a lens before letting go yourself, and preventing said lens from getting smudged are all I would do. I agree with bringing the case over to the camera, rather than taking it out elsewhere, unless there's a serious cluster going on. But pre-setting a lens, or putting it in a position where it gets smudged, scratched up seems more of a hassle than just keeping caps on until the very end, maybe take off the rear cap and hold that upwards or towards you to avoid the potential for a hurried cleaning. I'd take the front cap off as soon as someone else has "control" of the lens. As far as RED glass, how is that relevant? I assure you, 35mm glass, a long zoom or prime can get very heavy as well. I wouldn't worry about RED glass being heavier, I'd worry about its fragility. Some of the lighter lenses are far more fragile, but no lens likes bouncing off the concrete. Even a small fall can jar all of the elements and ruin shots.

No, you should shoot whatever slow-speed stocks or high speed stocks you need. Kodak discontinuing Plus-X without a suitable replacement is their problem. I would never shoot Double-X in broad daylight. I'm just saying that some of these ideas would actually make things worse rather than helping anything. Anyway, unless you shot a lot of XX, you're not going to offset even a 1% loss. Not knocking what you're doing. Just keep in perspective the amount of film they're losing compared with a single 16mm doc. Who knows how much Kodak makes (if anything) on B&W. It's certainly not their profit leader. If you want to help Kodak, you need to shoot 35mm, their 500T (or whatever their most expensive neg. stock is - yeah and no discount 500T, '80, '60?)

I'm sure that story is true. And I'm sure it's irrelevant, because losses elsewhere have still brought total film sales down 30-40% in the past year. Profits tend to be dropping at least 30% year over year over year. Marketing film?!?! To the consumer? Are you guys nuts? Half those idiots in the theatres think their camera phones are good enough to shoot movies with (the resolution is technically a bigger number than theatre screens at 2K). Saying "this film was shot on 35mm" will be received as "who cares" by about 70% and "it'd be better if it were DLP" by the other 30% many of whom are the same IT guys that regularly post here with a delusional sense of authority. Sorry, but this all seems way off base. Kodak needs big film productions, therefore its ads are geared towards them. They have PLENTY of support in the US for filmmakers. You just stamp "shot on 35mm film" on the tail of a print, and you'll give the cleaning crew a good laugh. About 2% of movie customers, if that, stay 'til the projector rolls out. . . Anyway, I guarantee that most of what is being said here is irrelevant. In a year 90% of US screens are going to be digital. That is going to cause another 30-40% drop in film sales, at which point we will see if it is profitable for Eastman Kodak to continue making film at all. Probably the other 10% of theatres are going to go out of business if they can't organize and fight the studios, who want Eastman Kodak dead as much as the chains.

David: How, in your expoerience, has F64 compared to 5245? Maybe Fuji doesn't see the need to upgrade it because you DP types are in love with bigger numbers :P I'm amazed how many shoots opt for mid-speed daylight to shoot at high noon, or go 500T everything, some with 16!

Umm, you are talking about which part? Because the planes in "Pearl" were real in several parts. I mean "CGI Faces" as in bad digital camera exposure/color on the live action. Of course they were real people. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if Lucas did eventually go for the "Simone approach. . ."

Rob :-) You found my plug! Happy New Year to you and your crew, my man. How's life at the new digs? BTW, do I remember correctly from a year and a half ago when Brad said that he bought that on eBay? If so that certainly tops my most infamous acquisition there.

Once again, please don't pretend to know the lab industry. More B&W labs than not (I've only seen one that had this) DO NOT have IR sensors in their film processors. You'll want to send a test roll first, some guys load the stuff in the darkroom in a changing bag to be doubly cautious, but IR film can be handled by all machines that don't have any IR sensors, cameras, or other supplementary illumination. A lot of the B&W labs or B&W sections of a lab are running older equipment anyway. The high-tech stuff goes on the E-6 or ECN machines, usually. I've never heard of Fuji Infrared film, ever. Kodak just discontinued their last IR stock (no not B&W it was color) at the end of last year, and Agfa Geveart still makes one. It gets knocked off like crazy in still photogrpahy, have seen the Agfa branded I think as Rollei AND Maco. All just cut down 70mm aerial film. . . If you're shooting 35mm movie film for just about anything other than cel animation, titles, timelapses (and with Vistavision this is twice as easy @ 180 feet/minute @24), he should have no problem with getting to the magic number of 5,000 feet (at least this was Kodak's magic number, whatever the length of one master roll is at FujiFilm, probably 1500m or 2000m. . . I personally haven't had any experiences, positive or negative with Glen, so if you're implying, Keith, that I am being critical of him due to persoanl bias, that is not the case. I know that all is definitely not as it seems on the internets, and am only critical of the lack of footage I see. Hell, I happen to know where one of the only Vistavision printers in the US is at the moment, a model formerly in use at Lucas Film Ltd., although it's an optical printer, I believe. Rob can shed more light on the subject.

A 35mm print loses roughly 30% of the negative (not to mention the dynamic range in the highlights, shadows that are obliterated in a high-contrast print), in a 4th generation contact print. I'd say that a 4K DMR is less than 5%, maybe more like 2-3% because the resolution of the negative far exceeds the information that has been blown up on it. I'd say IMAX blowups, optical or digital, come close to 4K projection, definitely with better colors and contrast ratios. Just FYI most "4K projectors" show movies through 3D lenses (less than 2K resolution) or only have 2K files even if they DO have the right lens. For practical purposes film IMAX decimates its current digital competition. I personally dislike grain reduction, but that is another can of worms. It can be applied just as oppressively to a 4K DI master.

It is good that companies are showing increases in film processing. We had a 250% increase in film processing last year. . . BUT HOW MANY LABS WENT OUT OF BUSINESS THAT WE PICKED UP, OTHER LABS STARTED SUCKING? The real figure to look at are the billions of feet/year figures for Kodak, Fuji. They are in very real decline, especially Eastman Color Print (theatrical film prints), and this is a worrying figure, because it may take Kodak's film sales into the red if it drops to zero. The United States will very quickly become 90% digital. All of the chain theatres have already inked deals to convert. There is no room for making 35mm film production, coating, manufacture more efficient at Eastman Kodak. I'm sure FujiFilm is in a similar predicament. If the volume drops, I assume they can cut some more cost and make it profitable, but from what I understand, there are only a DOZEN people working to manufacture roughly half the world's color film at Kodak. There aren't any more jobs to slash there. There are very real issues with the rpice of silver last year that hopefully will be fully abated in 2012. But the volume of a low profit margin product like Vision 2383 are still offset by the shear volume of it that they are losing.

Is that supposed to be a good thing? I mean, it honestly looks as bad as an F900 movie from 1999. . . I'm not a snob, but it makes whatever camera system used look bad. I'd run screaming if this were used to try to sell me this system to shoot some dramatic short. @Phil: Why do you want to remake "Battle of Britain?" You want it to look like this? If you're talking about the movie I'm thinking of, it is still one of the better aerial WWII films out there. I think they ripped off stock movie from this film in several others. Anyway, I'll take matte lines and good color over the entire movie looking cartoonish, even the live action. That movie has me cheering "Go RAF!"

TWO link answers? Ouch. There was Plus-X Neg, Double-X Neg, then there was either Tri-X or 4-X neg. Plus-X Tri-X 4X reversal. The ASAs were all over the place depending on the time period.

I thought he was talking about an IMAX print, regardless of the movie there should be a 70mm projector in an IMAX booth (well unless it is "IMAX" digital. . .) No offense, but I really think you are nitpicking me. The point I was trying to make is that an IMAX blowup of a 35mm movie should look really good, but from an IMAX neg will look a lot better, and, either way, a film IMAX presentation will look better than just a couple of crummy 2K projectors with an IMAX logo stamped on them ;) That's optical DMR, 8 perf. 15 perf., whatever. 70mm blowups look better than 35mm, unless the projector's out of focus during the duplicating process.

Don't have the bandwidth to watch it, but what's the use bragging about high-quality footage and then you process it in your bathtub or something? So many filmmakers out there that love makign film look, well, bad. One thing if it were a music video or a distressed print for effect here and there, but there are guys that shoot whole movies embracing the "make film look bad" aesthetic. Anyway, B&W rates are so cheap anyway, assuming that's what he used and not desaturated color, I don't know why he wouldn't get his film done at one of the many good B&W labs still out there. . .