Chris Burke

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.

Several questions back to you: How long is the finished film going to be? Give me a ball park length. Are you renting or buying your sound equipment? If renting, rent a digital recorder, compact flash, hard drive or what ever. You can import that audio very easily into your computer. With the use of a slate (be sure to do head and tail slates at each take) you can very easily sync up your audio. It will take some time and is a big headache. But don't loose heart. If you are buying a recorder, what is your budget? You can spend a grand on the Tascam HD-P2, this is a good price compared to DAT. It records to compact flash and has timecode, XLR in and out, digital in and out, basically, the best of all worlds. If you can't afford that, go for the Sony Hi MD, I guess they sound pretty good and can upload to a computer very easily as well, so no generational loss. With the sony you want to use a Beach Box so you can connect XLR inputs to a mini jack. Now back to my first question about length. this is the most important part. How long are your pieces of dialogue? If really short and infrequent, you can very easily get away with out a sync camera. If on the other hand your film is dialogue driven or even has a normal amount of dialogue like most films, then with a non sync camera, you are going to have such a laborious time syncing everything up in post that you may loose your mind. What kind of camera are you shooting with? Most better Super 8 cameras ie; Beaulieu, Nizo , Canon etc.. can be made into a sync camera for about $500 US. Sticker shock just hit you, huh? Welcome to filmmaking, a very expensive art form. In the grand scheme of filmmaking, 500 isn't that much, believe it or not. Now given the fact that it can very well take you weeks of work, loads of screaming at the monitor and a massive helping of chaos and misery when you try to sync an entire film form wild sound, $500 spent on getting the camera made sync, doesn't sound that bad. This step, if there is any way you can do it, will save you and your film in the end. I have tried the wild sound sync method, and although it can be done, it is not worth all the work and frustration. Spend the money, or rent a camera that is sync! I can't stress this enough. Another bit of advice is, get your camera overhauled. It can be done at the same time they are making the crystal mod, this is money well spent as well. If you want to make other sync super 8 films in the future, you already have the equipment and have done it before and will be a lot easier the second time around. With a sync camera, you can also rent it out, if you are into that, or be hired by other up and coming Super 8ers, cause you have a sync camera! I recommend you shoot a test roll, one, and see how that works for you. Simpley multiply the amount of work you did for that one test roll by the total number or carts you end up with and you will have a pretty good idea of what you will be getting into. Good luck! :D Why not? This is a forum for first time "film makers". Why paint with oil or acrylic? Why sculpt with ice, or wood? Who knows? Why suggest that someone not bother with a particular medium. Many, many people, like myself, shoot Super 8 for it's asthetic, is there a better reason? Film making is not cheap, no matter how you slice it. Why NOT choose a medium that peaks your interest? Look around this website and many others and you will see that Super 8 is enjoying quite a modest renaisance.

Isn't Super 16 slightly higher res than HD? And with say a 2K or 4K downsampled to 2k DI, you are already in a better color space and resolution than HD. So I don't agree that S16 is a bit a a stretch mastering to 1080p. Check out the action short Prey Alone. Shot entirely on green screen, much the same way Sky Captain was, and it was shot on Super 16. The filmmakers said they chose Super 16 A.) because they couldn't afford 35 and B.) they needed to maintain all the color resolution possible. Vera Drake also comes to mind, where they shot the entire film on 7218 and did a 2k DI. Admittedly, not a green screen heavy movie, probably no green screen, but the S16 held up very well. I could have thought it was 35 if I didn't already know it wasn't going into the theatre. The original post said that the F950 route was budgetting out too high and he was looking for alternatives for ending up with 10 bit 4:4:4 files. I still think S16 is a viable alternative, especially if other routes are proving too expensive.

forgot to list a contact email of zaefod@verizon.net

For sale I have a K3 that has been converted to Super 16. It has been overhauled by Reel Trading and works perfectly. It is the complete K3 kit and case. I have just shot a test roll with it and the camera passed with flying colors. No frame jitter, no scratching. Sharp lens with good contrast. Everything works 100%, camera is sold as is. I can send DVD of my test for you to check out. I am asking $800 or best offer. I will ship world wide. Buyer pays for shipping and insurance. Camera is located in Boston, MA USA :rolleyes:

I have shot both single and double perf, color and black and white. All with great results. Make sure the camera is threaded properly. You will know once you hit the trigger if it is or not, the K3s are a little tricky at first. I have shot all negative film, 7274, 7279, 7222 and 7231. Again all with great results. I think that the K3 is a great little MOS camera, easy to use and very rugged. THe standard lens that comes with them is quite sharp and has nice contrast for a under $200 camera. I have also used a Pentax Takumar 50 ?1.4 lens that gave great results, really shallow depth of field when wide open and great contrast. Have fun and good luck. Chris

What will the final product live on? Film, video? If video, consider Super 16. With the quality of lenses these days and a stock like 7217 or 7212, you can get excellent results. The cost of shooting on S16 will also help to offset the cost of a DI. Chris