Phil Connolly

The low pass filter is usually built into the Analogue to Digital converter. The aliasing distortion would be audible on high frequency sounds otherwise. You could probably get away without a low pass filter on a 96Khz audio system as few mics can record audio frequencies above 25-30khz they would act as natural low pass filters

I'm fortunate to have my short film, mostly in the can. But might have to resort to stock footage for a couple of B'roll shots I haven't been able to go out and shoot. The lockdown is giving me time to work on the edit, which is good because I'm slow. It's been a long time since I've edited a drama, the last few projects I worked with an editor. I've been working with my sound designer to set up a remote Pro Tools session to complete the audio, it looks like it's going to be pretty straightforward. I'm hoping I can set up something similar for the grade, but it won't be as nice as sitting in a plush post house. I still want to work with a good colourist as I have a habit of overcooking when DIY'ing colour correction. I really hope film festivals will start to happen again later in the year, so I have a chance of screening it on a big screen.

Increasing the number of cameras can potentially increase the amount and speed of covering a scene. The risk is with more cameras its harder to keep them out of each others shot, potentially diminishing the visual quality - as it may not be possible for a particular camera to be in the "best" position. I just did some booming swinging (helping out a friend) on a feature shoot that used 3 cameras. It absolutely made both lighting and boom swinging difficult. At times the coverage looked a bit locked down and shots often felt a bit off the eye line. I'm not even convince it saved that much time as each set up with 3 cameras took longer to rig in the first place. The actors quiet liked the fewer takes. Personally I prefer the rhythm of single camera and the ability to focus on one shot at a time - nearly always looks better.

I don't know shows like "The Wire", "Twin Peaks", "(BBC)Pride and Prejudice", "The Sopranos", "Edge of Darkness", "State of Play" are on my re-watch list. The are very few movies that are remotely as good as "The Wire"

There is some good information on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/anamorphicshooters/ And people do seem to be able to get some nice images out of projection lens set ups... Lots of good advice there - but for me the rigs look a bit precarious, not sure I'd want to take that route on a narrative shoot. I guess I have to keep saving up to be able to hire in some cine anamorphics.

I'll have a look at see if I still have anything tonight. A 35mm lens is a little on the tight side. At the time I was shooting on the 4K, my widest lens was a 24mm and sometimes I still struggled in smaller locations with it. Personally I'd find 35mm as my widest lens a little bit limiting

The old 4K BM isn't great - it's not good in low light and fixed pattern noise can be an issue. Also it's quiet hard to get a nice image out of it, it doesn't have great latitude and the colours look a bit off, its difficult to grade. I shot this on it and it was hard work to grade to neutral: The older black magic 2.5K produced much nicer images and it probably about the same price on the second hand market. If you can afford it the Pocket 4K is orders of magnitude better - its an incredible camera for the money and worth saving for. I work at a Uni and we have both in our kit room, the Pocket 4K's are always booked out and no-one touches the old 4K's these days. The difference in sensor size between super35 and M4/3 is pretty minimal and not something that would affect the images shot. I find on the Pocket 4K if you have a lens in the 14-16mm range thats wide enough for most things. I can't imagine there is a shot you can achieve on super 35 that can't be done on M4/3. The old 2.5k or 1080p pocket BM's are a bit more tricky on sensor size/lensing - but M4/3 is not a challenge and its easier to get adapters for cheap lenses in the format

It's a great series, I really liked Sue Gibson BSc's work on the series. They apparently used the Aaton Minima at lot on the early series. First seasons would have been post produced in SD. But PAL SD can look pretty good. HD was very rare on UK Drama productions in the early 2000's. The flagship Doctor Who didn't go HD till 2009

Matt Lucas? Looks great

I was assisting a film last week with actor Sophia Myles, her Dad died of corona virus this weekend. It brings it scarily close and personal fall out is horrible - I've seen it first hand. My thoughts are with her and her family. We all know people at risk - I really hope people start taking it seriously and try their best to not spread it

Depressing point, but the thing is everyone in lock down right now is consuming media. There is plenty of demand for entertainment, it's not as important as food, shelter, medicine etc.. but art in its various forms is important for a lot of peoples sanity. Expensive movies are a problem - there will be less Marvel $200million efforts. But hopefully some interesting films will still get made...

Probably a few places would still have a 1" machine in the UK Stanley productions do a lot of that kind of work. 1" C dubs require a bit of set up and the machine needs to be supervised for headclogs etc.. so it's probably at least a couple 100 per hour to any format. Better to get a prores file - as the DVD compression doesn't do well with typical composite video noise

I'll hold out for the American remake, with Nicholas Cage in the Probyn role and Andy Serkis in mo-cap as the FX9

When are you going to publish your OTT Fx9 unboxing video?

Stay safe and try not to start a podcast

The South Park video worked because it wasn't a proof of concept - it wasn't a pitch for TV series it was a self contained short film that worked on its own. And good enough to get people interested in the idea of a TV series - but I'm not sure it was on Matt and Trey's radar when they made it or it would have been more commercial

I made teaser trailer for a movie pitch some years ago - it was a ton of work and although we got some meetings the film sat in development hell for ages and never happened. I don't think I'd do it again because a lot of effort when into a trailer that I could only show to a few people and it only "sells" that script, rather then my ability as a director - since its not a satisfying watch because it doesn't really tell a story, just cool shots. I think the effort and time would have been better spend on a short film - that potentially could go into festivals, win things (maybe) or just be viewed by the public - showing my directing (skillz) in a better way because people can see a complete story with a beginning middle and end. These days you need to have an indie feature under your belt to be taken seriously by the bigger film funders. So I think its better to scrape the money together and make a micro budget feature to prove you can make a feature. A trailer proves nothing - I found this to my cost - people liked my trailer and they liked the script (I didn't write it) so because I had no feature track record, there was a strong push by any interested parties to hire a more experienced director. If your not a writer/director you have less leverage to stay on the project. The closet it got to being made was when I left the project and the writer continued to pitch it alone (I was a liability) Better to just make stand alone work that stands up on its own as a complete film, that proves you can make an actual film and then a good script will be your best asset. Unless your crowd funding, having a trailer for that is a good asset it helps those sort of investors see what your planning. Some of the successful crowd funds: Blue Ruin, Little Miss Sumo, Kung Fury, Slice of Life etc... worked because they had compelling visuals. I'm now focusing on the micro budget indie feature approach, rather then waisting years pitching a script to UK financiers that are only realistically going to commission Phoebe Waller Bridge or Danny Boyle. I am hoping I don't have to resort to crowd funding next time round. But If it came to a Hail Mary kickstarter as the only way to financed it the the script, I'd look at filming a sequence that could work as a stand alone film and a trailer. So if the feature never gets made, I have a short film that can go out to festivals, list on IMDB etc... can't do that with a more conventional trailer. But its something I'm hoping to avoid. I have a short in post at the moment thats I'm hoping is good enough to at least help the financing of the feature idea. I think at least it would work better then a trailer. I've also found on low budgets its easier to get high calibre cast for a low budget short then it is for a feature trailer. I was lucky with my casting, because they responded to the script. I doubt they would have signed up for a feature trailer without some commitment to be eventually cast in the feature which would be problematic from a finance POV.

Same here, I had a nice shoot for Friday get cancelled and I have a few days assisting on a indie feature that's hoping to complete before any potential lockdowns - the insurance on these things looks dicey. Looks like it could be a lean few months

The worry I have is family members on strong immunosuppressant drugs to treat other health complaints. For some people it's more of a risk than others. If your already ill, corona virus is more of a problem. I'm hoping the media has blown it out of proportion and the reality isn't as bad as the worst case scenario. But due to my personal circumstances -I'm being careful and i'd hope others also do their bit to try and minimise the spread. It's not healthy to panic but taking basic precautions is sensible.

The thing is 1.66:1 isn't supported in the standard DCP spec and most cinemas won't be set up for it, normally they would just have 2.39:1, 1.85:1 and maybe 16:9 for alt content. The imager in most cinema projectors is 1.89:1, so if you made your file 2048 wide it would be cropped top and bottom, the projector chip isn't high enough for a 2048 wide 1.66:1 frame. It's only 1080 high in 2K The usual approach is to pillarbox the 1.66:1 image within the standard Flat format of 1998 × 1080. So your 1.66:1 frame would need to be 1792 x 1080 (if my maths is correct). Which is close to your estimation. You'd still need to make a 1998 x 1080 DCP with black bars down the side to maintain the 1.66:1 AR For broadcast your 1.66:1 image would need to be in a 16:9 HD container - again 1792 x 1080 fits with black bars on the side to pad out to 1920 by 1080

I would also say TV is often made by multiple teams/directors - for instance on a season with 12 shows might have 6 directors doing 2 episodes each. It's not always possible for the same director/dop to do every episode, because they shoot back to back. Because each episode then needs to look like they are from the same series - the directors and DOP's have to match their work across episodes - which could reign in some more edgy choices. In a movie it's the vision (usually) of a single director/dop and that allows for a stronger look/choices. If Tim Burton for instance was directing an episode of Gilmore Girls (for instance) they probably wouldn't change the production design to gothic black and white and replace Lauren Graham with Helena Bonham Carter (although that would be great) Some shorter TV series do have single directors (Spaced - Edgar Wright, Twin Peaks the Return - David Lynch) which are more recognizable in the specific directors style.

35mm has been the standard "sensor-size" for over 100 years. Other film formats have been introduced, but the bulk of movie production has been on 35mm film stock. So when transitioning over to digital from film, 35mm becomes a logical choice because its a size people are used to and there already exist hundreds of thousands of lenses designed to cover the format. The main desire at the induction of digital was to "match" 35mm, matching sensor size is one way to do this. We are seeing a movement to larger sensors (RED Monstro, Alexa 65, LF, Venice, FX9 et al) these sensors do provide better images then super 35, but require large format lenses (and right now there is less choice/availability). Also LF needed faster sensors to allow for DOPs to stop down a bit more - T1.3 on a full frame sensor is less practical to shoot compared to a S35. It seems that greater quality/resolution gains occur when you make the sensor bigger vs cramming more pixels into a S35 sensor - so I think full frame sensors are going to become pretty standard at the high end over the next few years.

If its student project you should check if the film school's own policy covers hired in equipment. I can't think of any reason why a film school wouldn't have insurance to cover all eventualities of student activities If its a personal/external project film schools can sometimes still extend the cover if the project meets a work placement or learning outcome.

Looks like miss-timed shutter - e.g the shutter is open when the film is still being pulled down into position. If the fault is intermittent (pun not intended) maybe a lubrication issue?