Phil Connolly

I saw 2001 on the cinerama screen in Bradford - didn't mind the distortion and the stargate sequence worked great on the curve. The curve only works well on some seats though. If your sat on the sides it looks terrible, you have quite a small sweet spot in the auditorium to sit in. I think Imax is slightly better in that regard - more seats work well

Depends what your trying to achive - you want to make sure it doesn't bury the main dialogue since it will be in the same frequency range. So less is more - I'd keep it lower in the mix and roll of the highs above 1khz to make it sound a bit off mic. A small amount of room ambiance/reverb might be needed if you mic'd it a bit close - but you don't want so much it sound's echoey

The numbers are very much against you with Amazon - they have only commissioned a few writers based on this open submission thing and they probably get thousands of spec scripts. Still no harm in doing it - it could work and wouldn't harm you if it didn't - so you've got nothing to loose. Normally the powers that be, aren't that interested with screenwriters that don't have a track records - so most prod co's won't accept unsolicited scripts that haven't gone through and agent. This so you can't sue them, they might be working on a similar idea, so they won't look at your script incase they risk legal action. opportunities to get your script into peoples hands are difficult initially but the more you work the more chances you have. I met a filmmaker last week that met a movie director by chance on a train - she took advantage of the captive audience pitched the script and the Director offered her an assisting job. 4 years later this filmmaker is developing a proper TV series with the directors prod co - chances happen you have to be ready. I would try and get a track record - make films, write shorts and collaborate with other filmmakers - get into festivals, meet people, try to get an entry level job in the industry, win awards, hunt down an agent, write plays... get your work produced and gradually build up until your body of work speaks for its self and the gate keepers start coming to you rather then you chasing them. And you possibly could try the black list - but again its a bit (a lot) like winning the lottery

Normally you want to make some space for the dialogue - voices tend to fall most in the 300hz to 2khz range so you'd probably want to pull some of the music frequencies down in that range. Other things with parties is thinking about where the speakers are and adjust scene to scene. So if your in the next room - the walls will attenuate the high frequency and only the bass will get through. Attenuating more HF as you get further away from the source of music (e.g up stairs) will make it more belivable. Different audio e.q's for different rooms. If the sound perspective changes as actors move around the space - it helps sell the gag. You do have to be quite aggressive with the e.q to get the rumble through the walls sound - try cutting everything above 300hz by 12db's and start from their for your distant shots and bring the treble back for shots close to the speakers. Also put a subtle bit of room reverb on the music/hubbub to diffuse it. Again the size of the reverb room effect should match the physical space (lets is more). You might want to include a bit of audio distortion on the music - to warm it up and give a sense that its being played on speakers. A bit of distortion can make it sound like its being played on a overloaded sound system - rather then pristine audio thats too clean. Lots of plugins for this. Or you could put a hi-fi system in an actual room of correct size - turn it up, play the track, then record with a microphone in the space - that way you will get natural room acoustics and distortion burned into your music track - then overlay your recorded version of the music, rather then the pristine version from a CD Things that really help sell loud music dubbed onto party scenes is the actors performance - they should be shouting slightly and pitching up their voices to fight with the loud background noise to be heard. If they are talking normally and you overlay loud music, it sounds fake because their performances don't respond to the music. It is something you have to remind actors to do when doing dialogue scenes. Sometimes I play loud music on set during rehersals so the actors can practise pitching their voices at the correct level. So with the right shouty performance and lots of bass notes booming below 200hz - your going to get something realistic enough

The other advantage in doing these regular 70mm releases ensures the infrastructure is in place for the next Nolan, PTA, Rep releases. Doing semi regular print runs helps makes sure Kodak and the labs stay open and cinemas maintain the gear and projectionists keep handling film. A few years ago when Samsara was released a 70mm print was considered too difficult/expensive but maybe its easier now with more infrastructure in place. Also I believe 70mm prints do better in the box office since enough people seek them out. As stated by others a 70mm print should look better then a 2k or 4k DLP projection in terms of contrast. Laser projection is still quite rare - a 70mm projector would be a lot cheaper to install compared to laser.

Hi Jon I think part of it didn't stick for the same reason 65mm origination fell out of favour, cost reasons and the multiplexing of cinemas. Also the mega curved screens are more expensive to build and result in distortion. Some of the distortion is corrected by the D150 process - but in most cinemas the screens would also have to work for conventional 35mm projection. Apparently they had a special surface to minimise cross illumination. Never saw if it worked. Cinerama screens used 100's of vertical strips to stop cross illumination. Again making in the screen expensive - and in the case of the Bradford Cinerama screen the strips are quite visible - looking like base scratches on bright scenes. Maybe D150 fixed that. In general Super Panavision 70 was probably a better offer - still great images, but lacking the distotorama screens and lenses.

I here you on the solo gigs - super hard to be on top of everything. Its pretty minor but when your working with quite static shots - Its nice if its tidy, others of course may disagree. Like I said its always a negotiation with music gear - but sometimes its worth asking the question. And if you are stuck with a big mic, think carefully about placement it works better in some shots then others. The shot at 1,02 I think is one I'd try and loose - since the 414 piano mic is poking in at the edge - needs to be wider or tighter - include the whole piano mic or crop it out - edges are annoying. I can see its on a push in and it works better later (or earlier) - the cut at that point just happens at an unfortunate time Lots to like though the moves are nice, v smooth (especially for lone operating) and the look the material matches the mood of the music. How tricky is the footage to edit? Are you using audio from different audio/takes or is it all from one angle? Did you do a live take and then mime - how did you work out the coverage. The action looks pretty tight - only the CU of the hands early looked a bit loose syncwise

Shure SM 7 mics sound good, but they are really un photogenic and your stuck with a black lump in the shot. The problem is they are dynamic mics - so the singer has to right on top of them to sound good - blocking your shot of the lips. A large diaphragm condenser mic would allow the singer to be further away and let you get a clearer shot of his lips. Also they look cooler - a nice vintage Neumann in a shock mount photographs better. Or if the singer prefers a dynamic mic the Shure Beta 58 is good compromise of size vs sound quality Vocal mics are always a problem when shooting music. In this set up the mic in shot/placement is much more annoying then the any deficiencies in the lighting - particularly on the frontal shot. Of course mic choices have to be negotiated with the singer and they very much will have a preference, their priority is usually sound over vision - so its always tricky. Also make sure everything is tidy - there is a bit of green electrical tape looped round the XLR vocal mic cable. I would have cut that off

Rotolights are nice too

Looks intriguing.. on paper it has better then Alexa LF specs for 1/3 the price I'm actually more excited about the 20mm cine prime - we've got the 24,50,85 set at work and it really needs something at the wider end. I tested the 14mm and its too extreme. They are a great range of lenses shame cannon has been so slow to release many focal lengths

A dimmer allows you to change the brightness of a light by variably dimming it, it does this by reducing the voltage flowing through the lamp. In some systems the dimmers, dim the lamp by flashing it rapidly. A dimmer pack - is a DMX remote controlled dimmer for multiple lights on different channels A chaser (as I understand it) works with a group of lights to switch them on and off in turn to create chase effects - e.g for discos, like a rope light. e.g: More advance controllers could combine something like a chase programme with dimmers to create fire effects etc... using multiple lights - dimming them in an out in turn.

The script is a template for the move and the point they are making on script notes is you should be trying to get the feel of the move across to the reader. There are no hard and fast rules just what works for the story in hand. Generally you don't put camera direction in a script because it breaks the flow of the writing and perhaps treads on the directors toes. On the other hand if a specific shot or camera direction is needed to make that story beat work or make sense - then theres no reason not to include it. You probably shouldn't write - "the camera with a 28mm lens set at F1.3 tracks in on a stedicam" - thats too technical, too much... But you could include a note - "We see at this point from Jims POV as he walks down the corridor, his view blurs in and out of focus" I think camera direction is fine, important even - but it should be from a story perspective, you are the eyes of the audience - but doesn't need to be too technical.

I used to work for Channel 4/Film Four QC and failed quite few a high profile things for stuck pixels. Generally you miss them if its a few shots. But if they are persistent and on light backgrounds it would be a QC fail. (well it would have been in the good old days when I did it) Its a pretty easy fix - there a quite a few dead pixel buster plugins that fix the problem quite simply. I always used to reject programmes for dead pixels because its such and easy fix and only represents lazyness on the online editors part. Lots of post houses came to hate me over the years... I would also fix it because even if the audience don't notice it, I would notice it and then I'd worry that other people would notice it... Its a very simple fix - depending on your software.... google is your friend here, plenty of online tutorials

Also depends whats driving the comedy... Is it physical comedy, arch dialogue, gross out, prat falls, sophisticated, surreal... I'm a big fan of the sitcom "Spaced" - it uses the cinematography to drive the comedy - a lot of the jokes come from the way the camera moves and scene's transition. Its very much visual comedy and interesting from a cinematography POV. Its pretty much using every cinematic and action film cliche to comic effect. It also looks really good considering it was shot on Digi-Beta

My daughter loves those LOL doll things - they are an environmental disaster with all that packaging. She also like's youtube videos where toys are unwrapped, she'd probably like that one (I'm not going to show it to her for reasons)... -There are actual great kids shows on Netflix.. - We have Netflix -Are we watching Netflix? - Nope, we are watching other kids play with toys on yooutube - We also have toys - toys we could be playing with - are we playing with them? ....nah lets watch other kids play with toys... - Daughter also wants a youtube channel... -To unbox toys - and more toys - mainly to video tape herself opening them - playing not so much Parenting is difficult and confusing....youtube is now banned in my house, unless I'm out and/or the child and wife are breaking the rules (they ignore my rules mostly) Those guys in "The Village" had the right idea.

I think the issue is most people are satisfied with "good enough" for domestic video. Cost is a big point, most people want their home movies on a format they can easily show. Do people need every nuance from the original? Sure it would be nice - but not if its really expansive. Then the people using super 8 professionally are tiny niche as well - so no point developing custom high end tools to deal with that either. So at the low end basic is "good enough" and the high end is limited by the tiny format and poor registration in the carts. So as a product it falls between two posts...

I wouldn't use a phone for a film either - just commenting on how far digital has come in the last 15 years is impressive. That said I do use it more and more for photography, its not as good as my DLSR but its so dammed convenient. 5 years ago, I was still mostly using the dlsr - phone was a compromise too far. But the current generation of phones - good enough for a lot of things. Obviously I'm mostly talking about pictures of my Dog and not professional work.

The camera on my S8 is pretty damm spiffy. Scary that is better then then £30,000+ Digi-Beta's I was using 15 years ago. Whatever they are planning Samsung are pretty on it with phone cameras. Even if the marketing makes little sense. You know they must be working very hard on the next Galaxy phone - because thats probably the one that will go head to head with the "RED: Die with your boots on" phone. I'm hoping it will come with a BOMB Viewfinder and an actual Bomb. I would also like to see RED to increase the resolution of the phone numbers. 8 or 9 digits for a number just isn't enough to contain my communication vision. 37 digit phone numbers should do the trick. That way the number would stay future-proofed and it can still be down-converted to conventional numbers while benefiting from oversampling

I have heard of TK houses doing two passes to retain highlights on expensive commercials, to eek out as much detail as they could from the neg - I think they manually composited the elements together in AE or Smoke. This would also be done when the DOP had messed the exposure up, in a effort to rescue as much as they could from the neg Not sure why you'd attempt this in Super 8. The registration issues on a tiny format would make it harder to do. Also the scanner in question compresses the footage to MP4 - so I wonder if layering up multiple passes with different compression artefacts would make them more or less visible. Also isn't super 8's main charm that it looks grungy? So a rough high contrast non HDR scan plays into that look. This idea although intriguing seems like a lot of hard work -the opposite of what super 8 does well. Its punk rock, rough, grainy, a little bit drunk. The scanner your using looks pretty basic and its probably fine for the purposes of backing up home movies - but trying to improve the output sounds like it be a lot of work for minimal gain.

Isn't the hipster trend still raised blacks, banjo on the soundtrack and oddball aspect ratios? 1.66:1 because its more European innit. And if your going the full hipster, it has to be shot on a clockwork standard 16 bolex, with B & W stock developed at home using a mix of red wine and instant coffee. (actually a thing) Sorry I mean you should shoot on Hi-8 and then film that off a CRT monitor using a 16mm camera, which you later telecine the film to Digi-Beta. That way your footage has the perfect Film/Digital/Analogue-VT look baked into it and its perfect.

Unless the dialogue is "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!", in that case slow-mo is fine

The only rule I have with slow-mo, is to try not to use it too much on dialogue

There is a curves tool in resolve, that would do the job in a similar way. On resolve 12 the curves tab is the 6th one along in the colour workspace.

Also maybe practice on digital before you start burning though expensive film stock. Would also give you an idea of what size light you need for your location. Since the answer people are going to give will be along the lines of "how long is a peace of string" Its not just about getting enough light to expose the film, but your probably going to want to create a mood, have a choice about hard or soft light etc...

If the lights are bright enough for 200T stock depends on several factors. The size of the lights and area they are illuminating. Arri lights come in a huge range of sizes (measured in Watts) from 100W to 18,000W if counting HMI's as well. E.g a 150Watt arri light won't be able to light a wide shot in a church on its own and a 10,000 Watt arri will be overkill in a bathroom. What you need is a light meter - this will allow you to measure the actual light level for the size lights your using, for the space your using. You put the shutter speed and film speed into the light meter and it will tell you the correct aperture for correct expose. So its not a calculation that you need, its a measurement. You set up the lights, measure the light and then set the aperture, or adjust the lights and measure again. Can't afford a light meter - A DLSR will serve at a pinch. Set the ISO to 200 and shutter speed to match you film camera. Then take some photos at different apertures - when you hit the correct exposure, do that on the film camera. Its not perfect but its close enough if your careful. In terms of mixing outdoor (daylight) with electronic tungsten light (blue) - yes it won't match in terms of colour. Daylight looks much bluer then tungsten. So either you go with the mixed colour, eliminate the daylight and only use tungsten film lights or put CTB filters on the tungsten lights to match it too daylight. Or put CTO filters over the windows so they match the tungsten. Or use daylight balanced film lights (HMIs, Kinos, LED's etc) Lots of tutorials on youtube on both light meters and colour temperature. Most cinematography text books should be able to get you upto speed as well