Chris Burke

Cinelab offers skip bleach and cross process for Super 8. Better get your oder in before Rob raises his prices. Chris

A) Get the Xtera! 800' loads. More running time means fewer loads, means a more productive day with such a small crew. Much easier to use. If you can afford to rent one, then get the Xtera'. B) The simplest way to record audio the way you plan to shoot your film would be to have a flashed based audio recorder. there are many out there, one Cantar made by Aaton none the less. You probably won't go that route, but if you are doing it run and gun or really really bare bones, then some sort of flashed based recorder. C) The output is exactly the same, both are super 16, both can take the exact same lenses. No difference, other than the fact that the A-Minima isn't really a sound camera, unless it is blimped. D) To get the Sideways look..... I suppose you can do a little research on the internet to find an article or two about the cinematic process. Look at old issues of AC.

try www.cinelab.com they have great packages of super 8 straight to hard drive. Better prices than Pro8mm.

For best results, shoot a grey card for each lighting set up and a framing chart at the very beginning of your roll. The reason for this is it will give the colorist the information she needs to give you the best results. The grey card will give a standard by which they can balance color temps and exposure. The framing chart may be a bit of overkill for super 8, but it never hurts, it will tell her how you framed your shot and how it should be transfered, ie.....if you want the transfer matted for widescreen or not. In terms of exposure; if you have an external meter and your camera has a manually adjustable ? stop, then by all means go manual. I am rather surprised that none of the previous posts recommended this. You will get the correct exposure and not have to worry about if the camera can handle it or not. Meter for both highlights and shadows and take an average of that. It is always a good idea to overexpose the shots by 1/3 to 2/3 (depending upon preference). This will help manage the grain that will be evident in the low light shots. If you do nothing else, do a test. This will let you know how and why the film looks the way it does. Super 8 is one of my favorite formats. I wish you the best of luck. chris

Cool thing is the 3200 comes in 120 size roll film. If you like slower, finer grained films, check out the Fuji Neopan Acros. It is a 100 speed bw and IMHO gorgeous. Agfa made some great stock as well, buy it up if you can find it.

Finish uses a Ursa Diamond. I would take it back to them if you are not pleased. If they can not make it happen consider going over to National. They have a Shadow which is much better. chris

I like the first season for exactly the same reasons. I know that they were going for a larger audience, thus the more action centric plots of the 2nd season. Too bad it failed. I feel the first season was a bit more thoughtful, introspective, which I like. I dug the some of the location stuff of the 2nd season, I just feel the first season's look was more intune with the Alphan's situation. Thanks for all the info

Yes it is worth getting. It is cheesey at times, but I really dig the overall asthetic, especially the first season. The special effects are really quite good. Occasionally some shots don't look that real, but all in all, very impressive. the transfer or whatever they did for the DVD release is fantastic, very sharp, great color. I know that Messege From Moonbase Alpha touched on it, but wouldn't it be great to revisit the series? Perhaps just as a mini series or feature. Now that I think of it, UFO would really fly today as well.

What stock was used for the first season of Space 1999. I grew up on this show and now have some of the DVDs. Excellent transfer for the DVD, I wonder if they went back to the original elelment or not. Anyway, I love the look of the first season and was wondering what stock and other techniques were used to achieve this. I realize that loads of this show was composite work for FX, I am refering to the interiors of Moonbase Alpha or any other interior. Chris

Matt, What are your impressions with the Flashscan? What kind of output did you use for this project? I like uncompressed SD, 10 bit if available, for Super 8. The stills look great! Bravo! Chris

Do they shoot all the play off games or just a few. I was wondering this as I watched (from a couch) my beloved Patriots march all over the Jets Sunday Chris

I have a similar issue where we shot on Fuji Eterna 250T. My bestlight for offline was very fine grained, I couldn't really see the grain. Then when we went into the post house for a rescan of selects(uncompressed HD 10bit to hard drive) it looked amazing on their monitor. I am guessing that their monitor is going to be more accurate as to how the negative really looks. Then when I get home and take a look at some clips on my monitor at home, tons of grain. Way more than I expected or really want. It wasn't there in the offline or at the post house. What gives? Could it be the stock? I scanned to hard drive via a Shadow. I am going back in this afternoon to have a chat an look with the colorist. I will report back here with my findings. Chris

shop around for film and processing. The figures given above are really high, more in the 35mm range. I got a great deal from Cinelab, $180 for 400' of brand new Fuji stock, processing and a best light transfer. I am sure many other lab will work a deal for you. Yes film can be expensive, especially if you just up and pay the book rate for it. Shop around, bargain are out there. Chris

Does the s800 have manual control over the ?-stop? If so, then use an external meter and all your worries will end. I prefer to use a Minolta Auto IV F. If you can not use a meter due to some uncontrollable factor, don't worry. The latitude of that stock is such that you will get a useable image if using the built in meter. But you really should go for the external meter. chris

I ran into a slight set back today while at a post house. They were scanning selects for me to a hard drive as uncompressed 10bit HD for a later film out. They told me I would need about 200 gigs for a 22 minute film. I gave them a 250 to be safe. I also asked to have them scan the cuts with handles. The colorist/tk operator, put five second handles on the head and tails of all 393 edits. The resulting files added up to 540 gigs. I said, "what the ....!" Those little handles added up to on 65 and a half extra minutes of material, which in turn made the file size huge. So, I thought I would share my experience with all of yees, just in case you might be doing the same. Even for a short film, you should walk in the door with a 500 gig firewire "800" drive. Eight hundred, because you will be there all day, if you try it with a Firewire 400. Chris

Robert Wahlberg, brother to Mark and Donnie. I cast him in a short that we are going to do. He may be the best of the bunch. Relatively unkknown, but a great actor. Hit his marks everytime, extremely consistant with action; very easy to edit. I know there is much more to a good performance than all that, but he has the chops. chris

I looked every where for a sample from some shots I did for a test, but can not find it. I bought a Super 16 K3, shot two rolls of 7274 that I had in the fridge and the results were stellar. I highly recommend the camera. Keep in mind what it is, a MOS, hand wound camera. If you get one, have it overhauled and converted to S16 by Duall. Good luck. chris

Well said, although the RAID that Bono is offering is a SATA II which will handle uncompressed HD. When working with hard drive stuff, it is always a good idea to have a back up. RAID 5 scenario is probably best for both speed and parity. However, you will need a larger RAID for this, probably one with 8 drives.

Is there an app out there that will convert non drop frame to drop frame or vice versa? I have a rather urgent issue. I am about to go into an online session and I am finding out only now the day before, that the timeline I was editing in is drop frame. The old VX1000 that I used to bring the footage in, could not read non drop, which is what my window burn is, so it brought it in as drop frame. I am trying to generate an accurate EDL for the post house, only now I notice that the timecodes do not match. Any advice would help. Thanks a million. Chris

check out www.cinelab.com, they do uncompressed 10 bit SD to hard drive in either NTSC or PAL. They do not charge extra, do great work and tk straight to a disk array then transfer to your hard drive. I have used them many times and will continue to do so. chris

If you do not need to go back to the negative, ie.....your project will live on video, then have you footage telecined directo hard drive as an uncompressed file, 10 bit if you can. www.cinelab.com does a good job of it, for no extra charge over their regular telecine rates. Many other transfer houses also do this. With this production path, you have the quality of digibeta, but don't have to rent a deck. You do, however, need a very fast system to edit the uncompressed material. Don't fret, you can still do an offline of the material. Just copy the uncompressed files into a DV timeline with a window burn, output that, edit, then conform with the uncompressed. Not all that hard, much cheaper than digibeta and better quality. do search on the boards here, this topic is often talked about. Chris

"A Mighty Wind" is S16. Guest does prefer S16 over 35. His budgets aren't the biggest and he does some camera operating himself.

What about Super 16 for the whole project or at least in the car. If you are sticking with HD I would choose the HVX 200 or the HDX 900. The later records to tape and seems to lie somewhere in between the HVX and the Varicam, in terms of quality. Good luck.

I am just doing my DI on a short that we shot with the 8653 on super 16. I was very pleased with the results. I imagine that if you had a great camera with an even better lens and the transfer was top notch, you would get stellar results. Here is an example of what we shot, it is a one light for edited, but I have seen some of my footage onlined and it was incredible. www.chrisburke.net then click on the link labled "Gates clips 2".

thanks for the info. I was referring to the scanner, a relatively new product. What do you know of that? chris