Phil Connolly

Depends on the shot size and what you need it to do. Its probably plenty for tighter shots. Larger reflectors are probably at least as useful

https://www.scenarist.com/ Is what the pros use for PCs. Before that Spruce was great. As Tyler states DVD studio pro on the Mac is probably the best "affordable" masting programme. The professional tools allow you to set up a "first play" command for auto starts, you can also build in loop points, chapters and menus. The more domestic DVD tools (iDVD) tend to have burned in menus. Perhaps one of easiest ways of making an auto play DVD is to use a stand alone DVD recorder - one where you hit Play and Record and burn the DVD directly in the same way as a VCR. Personally I've not touched a DVD in about 5 or 6 years. Optical media is pretty dead

I think film out records are a useful solution for long term archiving. But on films that are mastered as a digital file (most of them), they are an optical generation away and re-scanning in the future could result in shifts in colour and density compared to the digital original. Its perhaps a cost effective solution compared to migrating the digital files from one medium to the next every 10 years or so. That process gets expensive. But technically its not the best possible version, it being an analogue generation from the digital master. It would be technically preferable to retain access to the uncompressed digital file in its original form (or a lossless copy). From an archive perspective thats better and allows for perfect digital copies to be distributed (the advantage of digital) Of course we know the archiving of digital files is a really difficult problem and the current typically magnetic solutions are not good enough. I've worked with LTOs and 1", D5 - the future long term stability of those formats isn't great. However, it is a problem that needs to be solved, the vast bulk of Human knowledge and information is sitting on magnetic media. Not just movies, but the entire internet. So more stable long term digital storage technologies will need to be created. Right now we are in a transitional phase where current tech can't really deal with the mid to long term archiving of everything being created. I wouldn't not be surprised if firms like Google and Amazon are throwing millions into R & D for the next generation of data storage. Quantum computing technologies that seem sci-fi now, will at some point become practical. Ideally we need to find a way to secure these digital film masters long term. Holding onto the camera neg is useful for revisions of films, But If I wanted to watch a film I'd rather have digital master if thats the format the film was produced in, then a new version created by reconfirming and scanning to OCN. For instances: Take 'O Brother Where Art Thou?" - one of the first 2K DI's. Thats the version of the film, I'd want to watch, the 2K version that had Deakins in the suite making the grading decisions. Digital scanning and grading has moved on since that film was produced. But the film is an achievement, partially because it is using the then available tech. Sure, you could go back to the camera neg, re-scan in 4K+, reconform etc... Technically you could create a "better" version of "O Brother Where Are Thou?". It would be sharper more detailed, more subtle grading, perhaps be HDR etc.. But it wouldn't be the version that represents the filmmakers original intent, or the version that audiences saw in cinemas. It would be close to impossible to recreate a matching version of "O Brother Where Art Thou?" By going back to the OCN and rescanning. Not matter how careful the restoration team would be, its going to risk changes e.g the scanner may be different, the grading tools different, it could be close but its different. I might event enjoy watching the new Dolby 4K HDR, ATMOS version of "O Brother", but not at the expense of loosing the original. Now, I'm not against restoration, I'm glad Lawrence of Arabia was restored by Robert Harris, because it he hadn't done it the full version of the film would have been lost. Restoration should rightly happen when the original elements are damaged or faded and work is needed to try and match the film makers intent. But its preferable not to loose the film in the first place.

Thats not really a like-for-like comparison. The article is question is discussing the increase in domestic use of reel to reel players nothing to do with how music is generally produced. Its no different to the hardcore of super 8 and 16mm collectors that run movies for nostalgia reasons. This is a response to the intangibility of mp3 and the desire to have physical copy. Film production has its own demands The reel to reel domestic revival is also very limited by the tapes being produced in the format. The proper analogue 15 inch per second recordings are v expensive to make: https://tapeproject.com/product/the-band-stage-fright/ . So even in this case digital is vastly cheaper and no domestic analogue tape is not going to sound better then a 24bit 96Khz uncompressed file with even a mid range DAC. In terms of the use of analogue tape for music production, it never went away and there are plenty of studios that track on 2" prior to editing on Pro Tools. Blank analogue tape (even 2") is of course a lot cheaper then filmstock and can be reused and re-recorded - so the comparison is becoming tenuous. Analogue tape is often used in music production a much for its technical flaws e.g harmonic distortion

If your looking for EF mount maybe try the Canon CNE primes. They are a bit underrated partially due to the lack of PL and limited range of focal lengths (although thats improving). They are a really nice solid lens, renders skin tones nicely and cover full frame. The only downside is they do breath more then your going to get with with Master Primes - but not unmanageable. Totally worth considering if they hit your price point.

Indeed you can see those films a mile of, where most of the budget has been run through the camera and every other corner is cut. Throw in a crazy low shooting ratio, poor lighting, miss matched short ends and a non-sync camera and you do have to ask the question if "the magic of film" is worth it. Personally I do love the look of film. But when I have my producing hat on I have to be a realist. I've never been able to make the budget work for film on any project I've produced. Sometimes its hard enough to scrape enough profit margin or make it doable on digital. Film is rarely doable. I have produced projects that technically could "afford" film origination. But it would have compromised the other departments far too much. Getting the production design, art dept and costume right on a narrative file can be quite expensive if you've got more then a couple of actors/locations - I'd rather spend the money on that as it has a bigger impact. Sources of funding have got wise to the fact that digital is "cheaper" certainly in the UK. The film council short film fund that was £10k 15 years ago is now £5k. More and more filmmakers are competing for increasingly small pots. More production is happening, but at lower and lower rates. If your trying to make a living as a filmmaker, you need to be super efficient and its competitive. Some art film funds (in the UK at least) have in the past stipulated digital origination, I guess they wanted the budget to be visible on screen then burn through the camera. Sure I could use film on personal projects, but its harder to have spare money to spend on films (for reasons above) and I'm less and less keen to try and get people to work for free - so my DIY short films get more expensive (and less frequent) even when I'm shooting on cost effective digital formats. The other point that can't be ignored is digital is really good. I've been taking the black magic pocket 4k out on jobs and the footage looks great. Same with the discussion around 35mm projection. Unless you were in a major city with access to show prints (and viewing the film within 2 -3 days of opening). 35mm projection usually looks horrible - my local multiplex managed to get prints covered in diagonal platter scratches by second screening of opening day some times. Digital project is a step up

If the car is running, won't the inverter power the headlamps. Otherwise I guess you'd be able to use an external power source with a rectifier and step down transformer to give 12V DC and patch that in parallel to the battery. Maybe a car battery charger would do the trick if the drain of the lights isn't too much. The fast chargers are about 100W - so if the lights are less then that might be do-able. Or just have a couple of spare car batteries you could swop out and charge up

At that budget level I'd second the recommendation for tungsten Fresnel's. Get Arri's if you can, they are built like tanks and last years. On small digital shoots - I find myself using 300w and 650w most often. Dedos are good, but would tend to be a bit more expensive. Budget LED's are hit and miss colourwise - I'd avoid and focus on getting the basics in tungsten. If you need punchy brute force lights DIY halogen work lights can give you a good amount of light for a low price. Not good for direct light, but can be bounced and shaped with flags. Same with PAR64's they can be picked up very cheaply and useful when you need a cheap punchy light to bounce or push through diffusion.

A big theatrical follow spot would have more then enough punch to do this. To be honest with faster digital cameras - you'd probably be able to replicate this shot using a source 4 for the key. Source 4's have built in cutters to shape the light. http://www.etcconnect.com/Products/Lighting-Fixtures/Source-Four/

Personal taste is of course personal taste. My previous comments were a bit blunt.

I think it would be difficult to get even fog, in anywhere beyond very small spaces. At $102 that's v pricey. You can get disco type fogger for half that. Which would better be able to fill a space and give you more flexibility in different fog fluids. Looks like an expensive vape pen

Yuck - bit too magenta for my taste. I wouldn't hold those LUT's (or whatever) as great examples of grading. The photography is good (maybe your responding to that), but for me the colour correction is working against the footage.

Well Heart Shaped Box is pretty stylised as well, def feels like its a studio. Which is fine if thats the look your going for. There are other films that have built exterior sets indoors and made them look like day light more convincingly. e.g Sleepy Hollow, Labyrinth etc... I would stick to tungsten film. The result of using tungsten lights on tungsten films vs daylight lights on daylight film - should be roughly similar colour wise (thats the point). 200T or 500T are much more workable lightingwise. It would be very hard to get the light level bright enough for 50D. When you look at period films shot on slow speed stocks (wizzard of oz etc...) the lighting looks really fake because they are having to punch in so much hard light to get exposure

Maybe dig through the archive and read David Mullens excellent thread on Manure. Lots of discussion around studio based EXT sets.

I would take the naturalistic approach. I would only add lighting depending on whats happening in the scene. There wouldn't be any light beyond what the actors are carrying if they are exploring a new bit. Or if it's a tourist 'show cave' it would be lit up like a Christmas tree. Something like flashlight, glo sticks and practical lanterns used carefully would give you enough shape. Keep it motivated and these days you don't need much light for exposure on modern cameras. The Desent is probably a good example of caving portrayed well on film. Even of the first hour is about one of the most stressful film watching experiences you can have.

It really depends on the prod co and the job and the kind of overheads. Normally you'd cost the job, add extra to cover overheads (e.g office rent, insurance, internet, marketing etc..) then the profit margin is a per cent on top. Probably closer to 10 or 15% then 50%. Or there may be no profit on some jobs, which is still fine if everyone gets paid and it generates turn over. Profit might not be expressed in the budget as a percent on top, since thats the first thing the client would haggle on. But normally each line item is padded. For instance I could hire a crew member for £350 per day, the client would be charged £500 per day for the same crew member. That padding would be to cover the additional costs of hiring (insurance, admin etc) and some profit. Profit is simply whats left over, so if your billing the client £50k and it costs you £40k then your profit is £10k. However if you've fully accounted for your costs against the budget a job my be worthwhile with little or no profit. Since profit is the money you make on top of your fee's, you still make money on a job that breaks even (e.g everyones salery, overheads and expenses is covered) . You might opt for less profit on jobs that give you a good showreel etc.. Also some companies have more overheads then others so would have to either charge more or spend less on each production. Profit is separate to fee's and salaries. E.g your director wouldn't normally get any profits. They would just get an agreed fee for the shoot. So would everyone, including the producer. The company owners would decide whats done with the profit, either reinvest it in the company or pay it out as dividends to the owners/shareholders. Profit is useful for expanding and mandatory if you have shareholders. But a small to mid size company has to be flexible. I once went to a business seminar with the MD's of Framestore (Oscar winning VFX firm). Although they turn over 10's of million a year. They work on a very tight profit margin of about 5%.

I think its quite hard to judge anything from the examples because they've been effected by youtube compression and maybe bounced to lower formats. The distortion at the top of the frame on the love parade video - looks pretty extreme for Beta-SP, more likely this is Hi-8 or U-Matic. Although its possible the footage was digitally originated Digit-Beta came out in 93 and I understand German broadcasters always focused on quality and adopted the format quite quickly. I worked for Channel 4 and they went digital in 1994 for programme delivery. Initially with D5 which was used by some people before Digi-beta took hold. Its also possible the footage could be D3 9 (composite digital-yuck) which came out in 91 and then copied to analogue later. On a good day with a good source Beta-SP can look pretty close to digi-beta. I worked at a broadcast TV channel 2004 to 2008 and we got the odd music video master in on Beta-SP (mostly film originated) a lot of the time they still looked really good. You had to look quite close to tell the difference between them and Digi. But by the time they were mashed up on transmission, its really hard to judge the difference. It was always a shock to see how horrible the off air feed looked compared to the master tapes. Beta-SP as a format is better then DVCAM, it is pretty representative of what the cameras captured. So if you want a 90's look and want to save on tape. You'd get very similar results using a 90's camera and capture to a digital disk recorder. If your after grunge I think Hi-8 has a bit more texture and more visible drop outs. The other option would be to shoot digital and bounce the rushes to Hi-8 to pick up some artefacts. Then you have the work flow advantages of not lugging a large camera/tapes/caputre etc... For instance with careful post its probably possible to make iphone footage look similar to 90's SD tape Another feature of the period is CCD cameras give quite different results to the modern CMOS. So if you good with a digital cam - picking somethings got a small CCD chip and then bounce to analogue tape is going to get you close to the look. Colour balance, contrast, highlights are easily manipulated in post. Older video cameras typically gave more contrasty images - clipping sooner. This can be faked in post if your using a modern camera with more lattitude.

https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/standard-8-film.html

Part of sitcom process is the have the lights on dimmers controlled via a desk. This lets you dial in a look very quickly. Also its nice to quickly dim the lights between takes to limit heat build up if your using lots of tungsten

More and more sitcoms are tending to single camera shoots. These are lit the same way as anything else and don't have "sitcom" lighting, just film lighting. Depending on the look can be achieved with minimal lighting units. At the lower budget range this is the way to go. To do a proper multi-cam sitcom you need a lot of resources. I directed a multi-cam sitcom when I was an MA student at the NFTS. The logistics were not for the faint of heart. We built an office set which took 4 workers about 3 weeks to complete. The set took 2 days to pre-light. We went fully tungsten on dimmers about 80 to 100KW worth of fixtures. Giving a nice bright look that was like filming in a blast furnace. We had a couple of image 80's on floor stands that could be moved around as well. Its quite difficult to pull of an interesting cinematic look this way, ours ended up looking a bit flat and sitcom. If I was remaking the script I'd be looking for a location, shooting single camera and pushing the look darker. The main advantage of multi-cam is the speed. With well rehearsed actors and good crew you can smash through an episode in about 3 hours to shoot.

Focal length's really depend on what look your trying to achieve, same with normal cinematography. That said I would imagine a lot of the time you might err on the longer length of lenses to give the animators a bit of room to work. With wider focal lengths you might end up with the camera and lens butting right up against the model and risk being within the MOD. I don't do stop motion, but whenever I'm doing product photography - my go to lenses tend to be the 85mm and 135mm - but thats very much a personal thing.

My local has been providing the service for awhile: The rooms smell of damp to enhance horror film basement scenes The chairs move and vibrate - due to minimal leg room encouraging seat kickers Surround sound is offered in the form of teenagers and pensioners chatting all the way through Interactive lighting effects are provided using various phone screens Multiple Language's offered by the "English as a foreign language" students from the local collage summer school Not being a fan of such gimmicks, i tend to watch more and more films at home.

Aardman have be using old Nikon lenses for their stop motion films

I am not arguing against film or that it's not worthwhile. Just that to shoot film cheaper then digital you tend to have to jump through some hoops. E.g short ends, very low shooting ratio, very expensive digital. I know of a filmmaker shooting films on tiny budgets with 16mm. But it's DIY processed 16mm on a 2:1 shooting ratio. It's possible to make a good film this way. But it's pretty non standard. So yes film can be done cheaper and maybe digital can be expensive too. What I am against are these blanket statements that go out on this forum of "film is cheaper" without qualifying them. Because 9 times out of 10 it's not

Still its a bit of a straw man argument, film is cheaper because on expensive shows Panavision and Union DIT's over charge for digital gear. I guess its possible to argue that digital is more expensive on the grounds that big budget productions don't budget carefully ( and of course we know they don't). But on a modest production, with a good PM thats shopped around to source all the staff and equipment - as Tylers own figures show film costs more. If there was minimal price impact of shooting on film vs digital, we'd all be doing it a lot more