Phil Connolly

I think so - they are both very good for the money. The both have large focus throws, but the travel on the CN-E's is much smoother and a bit heavier. The Xeen's are very light - so if your doing lots of shallow depth of field work with focus pulls - you do benefit. However I work at a University and the Xeen's are great for the 1st and 2nd years where their focus pulling is less likely to be smooth and I mean't I could buy more lens's for my budget. Best to try them. Canon lent me a couple of lens's to test prior to my purchase - it sealed the deal for me, I didn't want to give them back On an undergrad film programme the lens's do get a lot of hammer. 3 years in we have only had to get one lens serviced and that was because it was dropped. The jury is still out on the Xeens, we've only had them 9 months. For use build quality and serviceability are just as important as optical performance. 2 sets of CNE's represent quite a big investment for us - so I need them to last. Zooms are the next thing on my list to get, as we only have a mixed collection of DLSR zooms - been interested in the Sigma's but not had time to test them yet. The fact a lot of the lenses cover FF is also great. Our CNE's look great on super 35, but on larger sensors, I assume they'd look better and the CA would seem smaller.

We've got the 24,50 and 85 - I think they are great lenses. The look good and they solidly built. E.g compared to the slightly cheaper Xeen's - they have a much smoother focus rotation. I think optically they are quite decent, but a bit chromatic aberration and some breathing. I think they offer a really good combination of optical quality, great build quality and price. I think at the price point they are great option. I think they would be more popular if they were offered and PL. But EF isn't a huge bind if you have an EF camera, we pair them with a Sony FS7 and adaptor. Lots of cameras either have EF or can be adapted to EF so its not a huge handicap. I think the only other issue is they were slow to bring out enough focal lengths. For ages it was just the T3 14mm and then a jump to the 24mm at T1.5. That was a pain to navigate in smaller locations you wan't something a bit wider then 24mm and 14mm is a bit too wide for naturalistic work. Although its still a nice lens, I did a music video on the 14mm: Really glad they do a 20mm now.

Had to google that one - but not read it since '91, time for a re-read. Although I have been putting off attempting "Infinite Jest" for about 6 months. Maybe should try that first.

Get started on Stephen King - that should keep you busy for a few years. Maybe start with Misery, or The Long Walk and move up to the Stand or IT, if you get on with him. Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere, The Graveyard book, American Gods Kate Atkinson - Behind the Scenes at the Museum, A God in Ruins Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park - much better then the film David Mitchell - Cloudwritten, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

On the camera front I always had bigger problems pronouncing Ikegami... You know what I mean Arry?

The Sennheiser MKE2 EW Gold Laveliers are a solid option. Good for speech, very small and un-intrusive in the shot. https://www.thomann.de/gb/sennheiser_mke2_ew_gold-c.htm Can't comment on the countrymans. At the Uni I teach at we went with the Sennheisers for our kit store, mainly because we are using the MKH 50, 60 and 416's as boom mics. So felt maybe sticking to one brand would help keep the sound more consistant when mixing microphones. Not sure if it actually matters... We have two of the gold series and they are very good

I guess if your time-lapsing you could use longer exposures and get away with a smallish light. Maybe a small rotolight would do the job? Something like a NEO, runs on AA's https://www.rotolight.com/product/neo/ That would probably work with smaller objects on slower shutter speeds. I think timelapse projection could be quite fun - it would help with exposure and perhaps make those smaller battery powered pico projectors work.

I'd believe that wasn't the F900 only 3:1:1 colour sampling at 8bit. So digibeta's 4:2:2 10 bit is going to beat HDCAM in everything but resolution.

Why don't you actually project the image onto the object? Then is going to look nice and organic and have a real flavour. Then your going to get the glow to look right - if you comp it in post it would be very difficult to make it look convincing. You can get very small lightweight video projectors these days. I did project with projection, some clips on my showreel: www.vimeo.com/71019937 (@15sec in - experimenting with the projectors and lighting was half the fun)

Your right standard DTS is 16-bit. But didn't spot the higher bit rate special venue version. Mag compares well to 16 bit - the theoretical signal to noise ratio of 16 bit is 96 dB A really well setup mag reproducer should be able to hit 60-65dB of SNR and if you put dolby-sr encoding on that buys you another 23-25db's. So your close. Old school DTS as a sample rate of 44.1khz - so that gives a theoretical frequency response of 22khz - which is reality will be closer to 19-20khz when you factor in the hard low pass-filter required to stop digital audio aliasing. Mag tape running at 15ips can hit 20khz and 70mm film runs faster then that. with tape frequency response is defined by linear head speed and head gap. Of course 96/24 will destroy any analogue audio reproduction system on the market technically. But I was still assuming 70mm prints were still using the original DTS system - as would have been the case when the first 70mm DTS prints were produced in the mid 90's. I built a 16 Bit DAC using the resistance method while at uni. The parts indeed were a lot more expensive then using a 1-bit IC.

Prints can't be mag striped any more because the glue they used to use to stick the stripe on, has been banned due to environmental reasons. I guess theres not enough demand to find an alternative source. Mag prints are also much more expensive to produce - since you need an extra pass done in real time to record the audio. They can't be printed at high speed. Mag tracks are also much more easy to damage, they wear quicker and can become demagnetised in projection picking up all manner of clicks and ticks. DTS-70 (sorry Datasat) prints are cheaper and thats whats probably helping make the new 70mm revival more economical. The only shame is its based on early 90's technology. Its not even CD quality, CD's after all are uncompressed. I think DTS was of the order of 4:1 or 5:1 of lossy compression. Ideally these new prints should use the DTS time code on the film to drive an uncompressed track off a server. So good mag 70mm more then gives DTS a run for its money - if its a pristine recording encoded in Dolby SR its going to have a signal to noise ratio that approaches 16bit digital and possibly have a frequency response thats close to 20khz, so in the ball park of what 48khz digital can do. But when a basic audio interface can do 24bit/96khz - the compressed DTS tracks do seem a bit old school. I guess there isn't the demand for an updated 70mm audio solution, even if its probably quite simple to engineer once you've got the timecode decoded.

I did a short film on the PAL DVW-970 it looked surprisingly good, progressive scan - recorded using PsF so just split across 2 fields on the tape. We ran it through a Snell and Willcox upconveter for a screening at the BFI. It held up really well, it could give the first generation Panasonic HD Varicam a run for its money. In the UK most channels demanded Digi-Beta origination and these cameras cost in the $30-40k bracket and now you can get sub $5000 cameras that meet broadcast specs...fun times. When I was cutting my teeth on miniDV, I was always trying to seek out opportunities to shoot on digibeta - I normally ended up compromising on the loverly Sony DSR570WSP - the DVCAM workhorse of the digital indie film crowd. Thats the one in my profile pic - 1/4 black pro-mist and de-interlace in post and try to convince yourself its film

Hi Tyler - yes the sound was super tinny and harsh, lacking the much on the lows. The mag print I saw 17 years ago sounded much better. The first reel looked poor. I remember being wowed about how crisp the opening logo's looked when I saw the older print in Bradford. This was more like a super 35 blow up. Grain was very much visible - I took a class of cinematography students with me they all commented on the grain (and the horrible sound). I would prefer a more restored print - but its always good to see it and even with the picture issues its vastly better looking than many of the 70mm rep prints doing the rounds. When I finally managed to catch Lawrence of Arabia in the early 00's the print was pretty scratched - unfortunately. In the case of 2001 I think a proper 4k restoration would resolve the printed in neg dirt and tears - that could have been painted out etc.. I didn't get a sense that the print was resolving much more detail than 4k most of the time and certainly not during the first act. But in the case of Chis Nolan projects you do get the sense of its photochemical at all costs - even when digital tools might achieve better results and still maintain the intended look. I agree with David a proper 4k restoration in Dolby cinema would be something, meanwhile this is a decent stop gap

Watched the new 70mm print today in London (picture house central) - awesome as always. I last saw 2001 - in 2001 on the Cinerama screen in Bradford also on a new print. I think the new print had better colour and contrast but its wasn't as clean as the previous version with printed in film damage and tears. The opening sequence is really grainy and dupy looking - but the quality improved as the film progressed. It still amazing and the 70mm image does have a luminous quality. There was some weird coloured spots at times and the monkeys were quite low contrast and their fir timed a bit green on the print i saw Sound was a bit disappointing. I belive the print I saw in previously 2001 was in Mag SR and although lots of tape hiss the sound was rich and warm. This print had a DTS track and it sounded quite harsh and to my mind the dialogue + Hal was less directional but the main issue was the cinema ran it at ear splitting volume it was completely painful at several points. I'm wondering if that was Chris Nolan's influence rather then the cinema. If he had a hand in the remaster. His films tend to be oppressively loud if run at reference level. This was in a screen with a very good sounding Dolby Atmos installation - so I'm assuming its well aligned. Would be curious to see how the print sounds in other theatres I recommend the new print - its always great to 2001 on a big screen, but maybe bring ear plugs. Picture House central did a good job on the presentation on a bigger screen than BFI southbank or Prince Charles. So if your local check it out.

The BBC were very into Digi-Beta but life on Mars was made by Kudos productions. They were really into shooting on film - I remember Spooks using the Aaton Minima in interesting ways.

If you using the built in media player on the TV. That would limit the codec you could use - e.g its unlikely your typical TV would cope with ProRes. I've found different TV's cope with different codec's and data rates differently - so its always worth testing on the screen your using. Particularly if you need it to loop for an installation, not all built in players have built in loop settings H.264 is probably a safe bet, at a nice high bit rate - 50 mbps would be more then plenty for a 1080p file.

The scratches in the print you saw would have all come from poor projection. Prints from the lab typically should be pristine and free of scratches. Mag scratches would for instance probably have prompted a reshoot or rescue with wet gate printing. I saw 'Once Upon A Time In The West' in 35mm about 12 years ago (Curzon Mayfair) - it looked pretty good at the time. Its possible you've seen the same print with another 12 years of wear and damage. Typically black scratches are on the base side of the print. Coloured scratches (normally) green are on the emulsion side of the print. The colour of emulsion scratches is dependant on the depth of scratches as they cut into the emulsion layer. Diagonal scratches come from badly setup long play platters. Typically scratches and general handling marks are worse around reel changes (every 20 mins or so). You often get different scratches from change over houses - e.g two projectors are being used and one projector is good and the other is bad. you can have a situation where every odd or even reel is scratched. I've seen that some times. Also you get prints that are assembled from the best reels the studio has. So they may go through 10 damaged prints to put together 1 ok print. Which could result in very uneven looking prints. The UK 35mm prints of Bladerunner I've seen are like this. Generally terrible but 1 or 2 reels that are somewhat ok. The source of scratches on projection are often due to either badly set up projection tension forcing parts of the film to rub against things. Also cleanliness - films shed and that gunk can build up in the projector gate and cause scratches. General dust and atmospheric dirt can also get on the print. Of course now film projection is so rare there are going to be less experienced projectionists around so damage is probably more likely. The Hateful 8, 70mm run had lots of problems due to inexpereinced operators running and ruining film Really the booth needs to be a very clean room. If you've ever seen an IMAX film booth they are kept pristine and the image on screen is a testament to that. Its rare to see dirt and scratches in IMAX film projection In some cases when a print has been built up and broken down for projection many times - the ends get damaged and frames go missing. Eventually it can mean the change over cues get chopped off and projectionists make their own change over cues by scratching X's on the print or using a hole puncher. With good handling 35mm can look great and their isn't an excuse for scratches since they all generally come from poor film handling, poorly set up projection equipment and general booth cleanliness. Wading through www.film-tech.com can result in some insights - you'll have to search the archive though since they don't discuss film projection as much as they did.

Ikonoskop!!! Class

Topboy 2.35:1 Channel 4 UK - Hawk 1.33X anamorphic on Super16 Utopia 2.35:1 Channel 4 uk - Digital cropped Master of None is 2.35:1 on Netflix

The choices you make in lighting, composition and art direction will still have a bigger impact then absolute best codec. Most decent codecs if shot carefully should look fine. I shot a feature on an EX1 (thats 8bit 35mbs HD) years ago and I'm still happy with the way a lot of it looks and the things I'm not happy about the look stem from my lighting choices. 8 bit can look acceptable if you nail the lighting and look in camera to minimise grading. "Blue Ruin" did fine using the 8-bit 50mbs internal codec on the C300, although these days I'm glad we have easy access to 10 and 12 bit cameras. Its nice to have the best stuff, but good enough is also good enough. The choice of camera is only one of the many choices you make in a film production and only partially responsible for the final image. I'm shooting my next film on an FS7 because its what I have access too and its good. I won't be worrying that its been replaced by the FS7Mk2 or that I could go high end and rent an Arri or a Red.

Would you be available for selfies next to some C-Stands?

I have a Sony HDR TV - all of the HDR modes look dull to my eye's on HDR encoded Netflix/Amazon streams. The best images came from manually tweeking the settings - what I ended up with was quite far from the factory presets. Most of those presets looked quite strange. I guess a lot of TV factory settings are designed to make the set's look attractive while in the TV store - so extra bright and saturated - so they are noticed. I've spent quite a bit of time eyeballing the settings and I'm still not convinced I've nailed it. But I'm pretty happy - hand haven't needed to mess with the black level for at least a couple of weeks. When you've got TV's that use very different imaging technologies - e.g OLED and LED aren't able to produce the same brightness range. As best home viewing is going to be a compromise compaired to cinema. The transition from CRT to Flat panel was problematic initially - since they looked quite different and the programme might have been graded on a CRT but viewed on a LCD. E.g the screen on my Imac looked great out the box and doesn't have loads of modes. Yet in my TV I am in Sony menu hell - with loads of settings in different menus. It may be that my IMAC screen isn't accurate either - but it doesen't give me pages of menu settings - so I don't worry about it. My Sony TV, just the existance of the settings wants me to be sure they are optimal - whatever optimal is....

Amazon are signatories to the WGA - it has very specific rules about plagiarism and procedures in place to deal with credit arbitration in the event of disputes. Your always at risk potentially, but as long as your can prove the date your wrote your script then in the event of WGA arbitration your going to get a fair hearing. In terms of people stealing you idea maybe they will, but they can't steal your expression of the idea without the WGA having an issue. So you could have an idea about Aliens invading earth and a school basketball team fighting them off. That big concept could be ripped off - but the detail the personal voice is yours. If your script is good why would amazon steal it? They would buy it, it would be good publicity for their scheme. If the script is not good, but the concept is interesting - they'd probably buy it off you and get it rewritten. It wouldn't be worth their while trying to steal it the WGA would come down on them like a ton of bricks if they did. I'm not saying stuff doesn't get ripped off - bit a WGA signatory isn'y going to do it on purpose. If the stranger things story is true - I doubt Netflix would knowingly have be complicit in any wrong doing...

I saw Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm on the Cinerama curve at Bradford photography museum . It didn't look great - partially because at the time the projector didn't have a D150 lens at the time and it was impossible to actually have the whole screen in focus with a conventional projection lens. The curve is so deep (about 15 ft on a 56ft wide screen) it was deeper them the depth of field of the lens. So you could have the middle or edges sharp but not both. D150 required specific projection lenses with a curved field of focus. I believe they have one now making the cinema capable of playing pretty much every format. Apparently David Lean preferred flat screens for LOA. I asked the museum about this and it turned out that screening LOA on the curve was a mistake made by the projectionist that day. The Cinerama cinema in Bradford has two screens - a deep curved Cinerama screen and a flat one rolls down in front of it for conventional screenings. They normally show LOA on the flat and 2001 on the curve. Personally I also prefer a subtle curve of a couple of feet depth, more practicle. Subtle curves also help reduce hotspotting - particularly helpful on silver screens. But these days most cinema installations don't even have properly masked edges, with more an more common width screens - forcing scope films into an ugly smaller letterbox.

Its better to get your work out there and risk being ripped off, then being too paranoid to share your work out of fear of getting ripped off. I don't think Amazon are actively trying to rip people off - just covering there back. Personally I've never had much success entering big competitions and high profile funds. Because the chance of success is litterally several 1000 to one. Not great odds. But more obscure funds exist - the last fund I applied to (and won) has roughly 7 applications per commission - much better odds. Opportunities exist in strange places. I only use the big competitions as deadlines to force me to complete a draft or a treatment. You can't pin your hopes on them to do any more then that.