Chris Burke

I second that response. If for the internet, save your money and buy a single chip mini DV camcorder. Friends of mine produce and shoot a web show www.starvinwithlouis.com with a single chip sony. I think the camera cost $500 US. Check out there website and see the quality. I think that it is more than adequate. HD would be overkill. Good luck Chris :rolleyes:

What flavor of HD are you shooting? If HDCAM, then you will need to invest in a rather expensive RAID array. I recommend checking out Macgurus.com for very affordable SATA II raid solutions. If you are shooting and editing in DVCPro HD, then a simpler hard drive solution is for you. Technically, check the Apple website for more info, off the shelf SATA drives are enough for DVCProHD. You would not have to do proxy files, you can edit in the native format. In any case, cutting uncompressed HD at home is for the very brave. Yes the hard drive requirements are getting cheaper and more accessible, but how about the monitoring, color correction? All this adds up and is very expensive. In the end, the simplest way is best. Go with DVCPro HD, it is much easier to use and not a bad offline format for film.

Both have a good deal of exposure latitude. The 7231 is an 80 ASA stock, so will take a good deal more light to get a good exposure indoors. Try reposting on the stock and processing forum for much more feedback.

An uncompressed 10 bit 1920 x 1080 file, running at 23.98 is 478.05 gig per hour. Other than a 2k scan this is as good as it is going to get. I recommend that you get your film transfered at this res and then you can down res it to DVCPRo HD to edit with. The DVCPro HD as you probably well know, doesn't require a RAID to work with. The uncompressed HD will. As stated before, a eight drive RAID of SATA II running in RAID 5 will do it. RAID 0 ,of course will work, but you have no parity in case of drive failure. SATA II has enought speed with an 8 drive RAID to get uncompressed HD on RAID 5. Hope this helps. Good luck

What about firewire 800? or SATA II? SATA II is probably the best choice, ie.. largest drives with good speed and resonable price. But then again, the post house has to have a SATA hook up.

I would lilke to see more Super 8 printing available in the states. I know that digital projection and Super 8 go rather well together. I just think that Super 8 prints could do rather well at festivals, a niche if you would. chris

Do you have access to Soundtrack Pro? If so, give your audio track the once over. It has a rather good, sort of sound soap, that cleans up popping, clicking and otherwise unwanted audio glitches. chris

I loved it, was really sucked in. The only thing I would critique is the audio mix. Spend the money have it done. Clean up the vocal track and lower the vocal volume a bit. At least the audio mix coming over the internet on my system has booming vocals and much softer music. Needs some tidying up. Otherwise a great piece. Chris

A very good, seasoned and working DP just told me that you could expect to pay about $1,000.00 per minute for a descent Super 16 - 2k - 35mm DI. I heard it said right here on these boards about a year or two ago that a feature should expect to pay 200K to 150K. That was two years ago. So 90K for today's prices sounds about right. DIs are becoming quite common place, even for the indie short. The price difference is getting smaller all the time. Shop around, you may be able to find a good price for a HD-D5 DI. Even a HD-SR DI. It won't add any grain like an optical can.

I live in Boston, close to where Cinelab is, and have used them a good deal. Yes the direct to drive option does sound too good to be true, but it isn't. they really do have to update their website with all of this information. For Super 16 projects, they offer, 400' of any Fuji stock, processing, prep and I think a best light, direct to drive option applies, $200 or I think even $198. I have had Super 16 and Super 8 best lighted to hard drive, and it look great, best light is 14¢ per and scene to scene is 18¢ per foot. In my opinion, they offer a great service for the price. The tk is fine for editing and having a screener to show to investors who will pay for the Shadow or Spirit sesssion. You end up with a better than Digibeta quality file at a fraction of the cost. I have always made a window burn tape back up, incase the drive goes south. For a camera test, I sent three 100' spools of 7274 to them along with 3 DVD-Rs and had them put the data files on the DVDs, one spools per. This saved me on shipping a drive around. If you are having say one hours worth of footage transfered, it is still only about 81.31 GB, so you don't need a huge drive. For short films, Super 8 et al, I think this is the way to go. :D

I would recommend the Nizo 6080. They are extremely quiet. Do have it serviced, Duall does a good job. Loads of great features (200 ft. mags, can be made sync, Macro lens, adjustable shutter angle, many fram rates, great low light capabilities). Mine had the gate punched out to about 1.58:1. Really good and reliable camera. Chris

For what you want, I recommend Cinelab. They have competetive pricing and very good service. I have used them quite a deal and will be for a short I am directing this month. chris :D

Do you mean, telecine from a film negative? If you do and it is going to a 4:4:4 file, say unocmpressed as most do, then No, there is no more compression.

screw mount. I have used the standard meteor and a 50mm 1.4 Takumar. Got great results with both.

I have owned several K-3's and the only real drawback is the lack of wide lenses. Yes there is the Peleng 8mm, but I here mixed results from this. I do here that there is a way to put a Nikon mount on the camera. Whether this is worth while, I don't know. But there are a lot of Nikon lenses out there. Chris

How big are the drawings? Can they fit on a scanner? I would think that scanning them would give you the best results for a film out. Hell, if it is really good stuff, just kidding, I know it is, then scan for 35mm res. You can always down size it later. A scanner would be the quickest was to having really evenly lit images. With a camera, you will need a copy stand. Not a hassle, but more work. You can resize the images to fit any format you want in Photoshop or the like. Sure you know that. HIgher res is always better, especially with stills. It gives you more options and is very easy to deal with. Chris

Perhaps I was asking too much and have decided to lower the price to $500 or best offer. Chris Pictures here!

I have a DVD copy of this film and the DVD mastering wasn't the greatest, but yes, it is a good film. The photography does keep you in the story. Kept me engaged any way. What about Ed Wood. I thought it looked great. chris

yes, I agree. Bono does a flat grade for the straight to hard drive HD transfer. I think they will only do a best light or flat. However the image shown above is clearly softer that the other. Something is amiss. Chris

David, Do you feel the older F-500 has more "snap", sharper perhaps, than the Eterna 500? We are just about to buy film for a short. I don't mind the grain that the F-500 may bring. I do want my film, however, to be sharp. We are shooting Super 16 for an uncompressed HD finish. Thanks Chris

Ozzball, Please PM me if you are interested in selling the 7251 you have. Chris

My comments are about the actors. I think that they did the very best they could, bravo. Just curious if you cast union or not? I thought they looked a bit contrived, poser like. I wouldn't have cast the girl. Although she did a good job Her face was too modern day college girl like. She is the sort I would see at a local college town bar on a Saturday night or shopping at the Gap, not a Greek maiden trapped in the underworld. No offense to her, just not perfect for the role. He was an all out poser, which with a non dialoge piece, works sometimes, but he didn't for me. I could see him "acting" not reacting. I saw no inner life. I didn't identify or feel for him at all. Even though this is greek tragedy, the medium is film and he was a bit theatrey. I don't know why he is angry with her. Isn't he in love with her? This pulled me out of the story. I didn't see what each character needed from each other like air. What kept them there? You have some great conflict and tension built in to the story. I would have liked to have seen more of that. She is trapped in hell and wants to leave, but loves her capture. He is lord of the underworld and resorts to kidknapping to get the girl. Why? What does she love about him? I wish the actors found more nuance in their characters. The story is very layered, I wish they were as well. Just my two cents.

Take a look at the DVX-100 or XL2, both are true progressive scan cameras and give a very pleasing film like look. I started out with the same thought, own my own camera, learn from doing. I bought a XL1 and liked it a lot. I did, however, outgrow digital and have moved on from it. The miniDV format is great for learning and experimentation on the cheap. I would not recommend any HDV camera yet, the format is too young and untested. Give it another two years. Good luck. Have fun. :D

Have it transfer to hard drive as an uncompressed SD file. You get 4:2:2 10 bit color. Better than Digibeta. The lab can, I believe, flag the file as anamorphic, so it will play as 16:9. Technically speaking, yes, there is no such thing as native 16:9 SD. The pixel dimension is 720 x 480. But this doesn't stop you from having anamorphic footage, which isn't a hassle at all. I just did this with a camea test. All worked out very well. Check out Cinelab.

Here, here, I second this recommendation for a film camera. If you are going to plunnk down for an HD rig, consider that a really good XTR Prod w/ lenses, mags, matte box, stick, the whole shabang, will run you 30 to 35K. Varicam or Cinealta, 30k won't even get you the body. A film camer IS future proof. Some new flavor of electronic camera will displace the current HD cams probably in less than five years. If all this is too rich for your blood, may I suggest that you buy a $300 mini DV cam to previsualize your stuff, do the experimentation with, then when it comes time to shoot it for real, rent the best equipment you can afford. Do not invest in HDV, it is a consumer format that is not tried and true yet and will probably be old hat in less than five years.