Phil Thompson

Hello all, Quick question, friend of mine has just got an Arriflex BL. It has no battery or cable. What is the cheapest way of putting something together? I'm based in London, England. Many thanks Phil

wow ben!! what did you do to make the pictures look so good. Let me be very specific on this shoot, if it's of any interest. The stock I obtained last year very cheap. It was from a motion control special effx house. I got it all for about 100 bucks. Thats 10,000 ft. I can tell of the exact age (am i missing something? codes etc). But I reckon its 2007/8 - That is just a guess mind. We shot the film with an old Mitchell S35mm . From the days of hammer horror. On the day because the operator is old, he didn't want to add on the Matte box. So, we were getting exposures of F11 F8 and sometimes F16. The day was VERY strange. We would have sunshine, then overcast, then rain, sunshine. More Scottish than English. Bizarre. At the start an exposure was fluffed badly, almost white. So we filmed all day, I took the neg to Deluxe Soho, then developed it, then I took it to my friend at a post facility in Soho where they have a Spirit. As I was getting this for a freebie I left it to him and collected it the next day as a series of DPX files on my hard-drive. 800ft around 160 gig. I got home, attempted to open the sequence in 'Color'. It kept crashing, frustrated i found a light DPX viewer called http://djv.sourceforge.net/ - DJV imaging. With literally no experience of handling DPX, i opened and looked and saw the initial images I posted. In my naive innocence I thought that was it and the stock must have been stored under an oven or something and we messed up the exposures completely. Then I got to work, opened it in color and it looked 'fine'. slight magenta to the look but alright. Basically, Im clueless regarding how to use DPX files. Should I get the neg re-scanned, with me sitting in? This will probably cost money. money id rather not spend. Im not very technical minded, but willing to try and learn. Adrian your jump into D-MAX is a bit much for me right now. And something I need to learn the basics of before I can appreciate what you are talking about.

I used this free dpx viewer as color kept crashing. Wonder what i did wrong. These look better!!!

Well initially i tried to open my dpx files from the lab using color but it kept crashing so I used a free dpx viewer. and then it came out all contrasty. I think it must be a linear log issue. These look washed out but at least better. Im gonna look at them in color at work now. could of been that dodgy viewer. Im pretty clueless with all this tbh

hi guys., This may have been my mistake. I spoke to the guy at the mill and he sent me these pics of what he was seeing. Any thoughts?

cheers Phil. Well we can't all shoot magic hour sunsets with 35mm. Some stories call for us to be in all manor of locations and this one a market. Is that hard to get ones head around? I hope not. How did you manage to pull that frame back? Basically I got the scan as a freebie. You think i should approach a different lab and pay to get it scanned again?

they gave me dpx files onto harddrive. Like I said, i get the scanning done almost free as I have a friend who works at the facility. (I have to buy him a computer game) so for a 15 min 35mm sequence it costs 40 bucks. 2K dpx. not a bad deal hay? So i think you maybe right. If you look here this seems to be ok. Do you think the spirit looked at this and used it as a a bench mark?

I think the problem was the constantly shifting weather. One moment it was overcast then full sun, then overcast etc. The guy wasn't on the ball and the telecine kid also stuck it on auto or something too. Will try and get a sit in session next time. ! you live and you learn!! Fresh stock. Yes! It was my idea as i won 10,000ft of 2007 fuji stock. Almost feel like throwing it in the bin. And been very lean with fresh stock. Fuji sell 400ft stock clearance Eterna for 60 bucks which isn't bad for a 400ft load. Less is more with film. Im all about the 1:1 ratio. So annoying though, all that work! The struggle on the day in the dustbin!!! :(

Deluxe Soho do thst. 12p a ft for dev only. a HD scan probably 24p a ft then a 75 quid per blah blah hd transfer. somethign like that. rip off basiclally

If you paid a cameraman to turn up with his camera and shoot for you. And he turned in results like this. What would you do? I spend 300 bucks getting the neg dev'd and lucky for me i got the TK done for the price of a computer game...

YEs we had no filters because the man didnt want to put on the heavy matte box so we were shooting at f11 with that shutter. Why does it look so **(obscenity removed)** poop? I was expecting to be blown away by the 35mm vibes. it looks like **(obscenity removed)** poop.

pic 1 pic 1 pic 1 pic 1 pic 1 pic 1

Hi, last week we shot a day using 35mm fuji 64D one 1,000ft load thats probably 4 or 5 years old and not sure how stored. I got it developed at Delux soho and then scanned at the mill 2k. i attach some screen grabs. Can anyone tell me what happened. did we simply just mess up with exposures? or does anyone imagine something else happened?

hi, i made a holiday short film on my cp-16 - the mag is a bit damaged so get a bit of light leakage every so often. also i forgot my core adaptors so had to empty 2x 100ft metal rols of film and use them as take up spools for 2 of my 400ft loads! http://vimeo.com/23442038 Aspects of Majorca

Hi - it wasn't to light up the forrest,I just thought it would be useful for closeup shots. to get rid of shadows on the face. What do you reckon?

Hello everyone, Need your help. Im shooting a 35mm dream sequence in a forrest in England. Weather should hopefully be sunny. Shooting Fuji 65 35mm stock. Im contemplating hiring a generator and taking a long a 1K arri. Do you think I should? Would you? Please help, i want this to be as slick as possible and i only have a 35mm operator and not so good with light :(

Hi Rob, If I export from color a prores 4444 file from my dpx sequence in LOG space then for some reason the Quicktime comes out pure WHITE. Any idea why this would be??? Thats why i transfered it to LIN.

Hi Rob, I dont want to grade them, just want to edit it, thats why im bring the dpx sequence into color just to export as pro res 4444 to edit in FCP. Is this correct? And why does it make the footage look all contrasty and dark when its in linear space?

Hi there, I shot some 35mm got a dpx sequence on hard-drive, opened color brought the footage in - changed header to Log and now it shows up really dark when I export to prores 4444 Is this normal? Do I just edit the dark pro res and then go back to the light Log space at the end? So confused. Please help

Im not sure anyone can help with this, but here is my problem. I am shooting 35mm tommorow. fuji 250D. The shot in question is on a train which travels up a pier. The shot starts in the station, which has very little artifical light. I got around 1.0 stop during my reading. after 20 seconds of traveling in murky lighting the train emerges into day light where I was getting a reading of 4.0. The train has windows either side and you can see the Sea and clouds etc. My question is, do I set my exposure at 4.0 and settle for the fact the start will be underexposed but when it comes out of the station it will be perfectly exposed. Or, do I start with it fully open at 1.7 ? and quickly change it when we come out? Also, what lens do you reckons the best bet? im recording 2 people who are facing each other. Here are the lenses Ive been promised 14mm/f2.8 Canon/Optex (0.77Kg) 87mm thread / 92.5mm front (06/2007) 18mm/f2.8 Canon K35 (0.71kg) 78mm thread / 83mm rotating front (1997) 20mm/f2.8 Canon / Optex (0.44kg) 72mm thread 25mm/f2.8 Zeiss distagon / Optex (0.57kg) 55mm thread 25mm/f1.4 Tamaha Super Speed (0.64kg) 72mm thread / 75mm front (www.mtfservices.com) 35mm/f1.4 Zeiss distagon (0.76kg) 67mm thread / 70mm front 50mm/f1.2 Nikkor (0.57kg) 72mm thread 85mm/f1.4 Zeiss Planar (0.75kg) 67mm thread / 70mm front 135mm/f2 Zeiss Planar (1.05kg) 72mm thread Phil

Thanks for that. Do you have any advice on shooting in the rain and general bleak conditions. I want to make things look as pretty as possible.. Thoughts??

It's alright the camera has just been tested and it's totally fine. I'm stupid, but not that stupid :-) So, anyway, have you ever shot the Fuji 64D? Lot of people say you should push it a stop. Thoughts? I've always wanted to do a long 4 minute shot with no cuts. i've written the dialog and got the actors ready. Camera is so noisy but I'm going to record it anyway, then get them to do it again in a nice location. Over-dubs are fine!

I'm so excited!! I've finally got it all together. Over the past year I've amassed about 12,000ft of 35mm stock and I've made friends with an old boy with a MITCHELL S35R. Now I'm in London, England and im travelling to the sea side on Sunday. I'm taking some 64D and 250D with me. It's winter in england and fairly bleak, although we've had patchy sunshine. Do you think i should go with the 64 and rate it at 30. The one shot in particular is on a train that go's up the pier. It has windows either side and is very light. What do you reckon?? Phil

Hello, I am shooting a film. Using all cameras, stocks etc I can get my hands on. I realise that I will never go back out to film. (well would be nice but probably not). Anyway, I guess the end result will be blu-ray for the festivals. The question is this. If i have 35mm scanned at 2K, super 16mm at 2K and standard 16mm at 2k .. Will it all work together when i bring it all together at the end?? Phil