John-Erling Holmenes Fredriksen

I did a lot of research on this about half a year ago when I bought my own film scanner. I was in the same price-range as you, and my conclusion was that there were basically two options:

1. Nikon Coolscan V

2. Epson Perfection 4990

If you only do 35mm, go for the Coolscan. If you want/need the ability to scan bigger negatives, go for the Epson. The dedicated CCD of the Coolscan will always produce better results on your 35mm, while the Epson will produce more than acceptable results on a wider range of formats.

Personally I went for the Coolscan, and I've been very satisfied. Here are some photos I have scanned with it and mildly retouched (I guess you can't really judge quality from these resized web versions, but they were already up there).

Hope this helps :)

As several people have pointed out, looking for image quality is probably the wrong end to start. Look at light loss, features, and maybe most important of all, usability. I've worked with the Redrock, and compared to P+S, it's a nightmare. It's big and clunky, you need an extra monitor you can turn upside down, the entire box will sometimes slowly slide out of position (and out of focus)... You can get some truly great images out of the HVX with the Redrock, but it's a lot of work. Then again, the price difference might just make it worthwhile for you. A friend of mine has ordered the Letus35, I am very eagerly awaiting his verdict. Otherwise I would always go for the P+S if the production can afford it.

Hmm, so what is your point exactly? I don't see how this footage shows a camera that there's no use putting an adapter on. It looks rather zoomed in, so I'd say the minor defocus effect on the background would be achieved with mostly any videocamera. I'd agree with you that a lot of cheap adapters can create unwanted effects, like soft images, or perhaps a milky look, but there are more expensive options that handle this better. Anyway, if you still have something to prove, bring more test footage, varied footage and some wide shots.

Really? Is it the motion that bothers you cuz that's just the test film. I shot the feature 24PA (1080i) so it should be true 24 fps.

Yep, it's the motion. I guess you shot the test interlaced? Anyway, video should always be de-interlaced for screen viewing.

Did you try Google Video?

So tough to judge w/ the low web resolution; I wonder if we're doing ourselves a disservice by throwing our footage on myspace and youtube w/ such abandon.

MySpace is especially crappy when it comes to quality. YouTube and others are at least slightly better. But anyway, there could be some demand for a video service that offered higher quality (maybe Stage6 could be the one?).

I'm pretty sure you can. Been a little while now since I shot anything on one, but I seem to remember that I had two zebras set up, 70% and 95%. It should be quite obvious from the menu as well. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I mostly had good experiences with it, except for the fact that the last one I used turned out to give our pictures a nasty shade of magenta. Was an error with the camera that gave us hell in post :P

Well this is the problem with my situation at the moment:

 

I own no equipment apart from a stills camera, and I don't feel that any of the work I've done so far is good enough to get me onto any positions with a budget that will allow for camera and lighting rental. So, I'm forced to start small with the no-budget productions (on shootingpeople.org)

 

The problem is, those productions are so bloody awefull that they won't look any good on my reel anyway. The camera will be whatever they or I own and, lighting? Since when did shootingpeople.org productions involve any form of 'lighting'.

 

The way I'm seeing things at the moment is that to get anywhere I'm going to have to do everything myself, and pay for everything myself. But that just seems like a crude way of doing things.

 

But I also need practice in this field. I don't feel all that happy about renting out thousands of pounds worth of equipment and hoping that my theory knowledge will guide me through it. I need practical experience. And the only way to get a good practice is to buy the equipment so I can play around with it and experiment any time I like.

 

In a nutshell, I feel confident that I can do well in the film industry. The problem is, I don't have any muscle.

 

My best idea so far is to get a job as a programmer as I originally intended on and then spending the high wages on film equipment. And do what I love in my spare time. And hope it will take off that way.

Well, my two cents for what it matters. I feel like I've quite recently been where you're at, so I guess this has relevancy. Currently I am working full time photography and some editing for film and TV, and even though I consider myself a student of sorts in the fine art of cinematography, I do get paid for DP'ing shorts and the likes. I have to emphasize that these are all experiences I have from the industry in Norway, I don't know if it applies to other countries.

At one point I felt just like you about the difficulty of getting somewhere. What I did, and what worked very well for me, was first of all (as some suggested) to take up assistant positions at other film productions. As an assistant in the camera crew, I got a lot of hands-on experience with shooting and lighting, and learned a lot of neat tricks that aren't written in any books. I also met a lot of people, became friends with young and talented directors, and showcased my abilities to some producers.

To make money for the rent, I did some TV, and started shooting commercials. Doing photography for TV isn't necessarily that glorious, but you'll get paid well, and you'll have equipment available to play around with on your own. Major opportunity for improving your skills as a photographer. Commercials can be quite fun if you manage to land the right projects. It's like shooting a short film, only you're paid. On the best projects, you'll be working with a director and actors, and you'll have a crew, not to mention a budget to rent the equipment you need. You might have to start out in the lower range of commercial productions, but if you can make one or two clients happy with a good film or two, you'll soon have others throwing money at you. If you're lucky anyway ;) In the end, you might be starting to build yourself a nice little showreel.

After doing a few commercials and proving myself as a photographer, my talented director-buddies from assisting film productions started noticing me, and that was it for me. I started getting DP-jobs on their shorts (unpaid of course at first), and the ball was essensially rolling. I still do a lot of commercials to get paid and enhance my skills as a photographer, as well as music videos and even some TV, but I am also landing more and more shorts with gradually increasing budgets. I'll never stop doing shorts for no pay though ;)

Basically, this approach has worked very well for me so far. I am still learning and trying to get somewhere in the world of film, but it's a start. Maybe some of this can help you, I don't know. I hope so though. You should really do some assisting on larger productions to meet people and get a good network within the industry. I can't tell you enough how important my industry connections have been to me. Oh, and good luck :)

Oh, and I own very little equipment of my own. I have a few stills cameras and some basic grip stuff. I did recently invest in a few C-stands with flags, but that's about it. I would not recommend investing money in a camera, because it will outdate very soon unless it's a film camera :P Lights seem like an allright investment, you'll always need lights.

The quality of the On2 codec Flash uses meets or exceeds anything QuickTime has to offer. I've tested it myself. The problem you describe is due to the fact that we aren't able to specify the compression settings ourselves on the sites you mention. When uploading to Youtube or Google Video, you at their mercy -- they will choose both the codec and the bitrate. You don't have any say in the matter.

 

As Phil pointed out, you most certainly have the option of encoding videos yourself with higher bitrates. The download time is acceptable for people on DSL or Cable. Youtube's videos are very small, optimized for quick playback and not designed to "look beautiful" as the movie trailers do on Apple's site. Flash can do the same thing, it's just that not many sites are actually doing it.

Ah, well I guess there is a niche market for video publishing sites with advanced features then ;) Like I said, I don't doubt that Flash will be a big contender, and with the ability to achieve good quality in place already, I'd seriously consider using it on my own sites. I'm gonna have to dig more into this :)

Flash certainly has a long way to go when it comes to quality. I have published stuff on both Google Video, Youtube and MySpace, and none of them come even close to the quality of the Quicktime-videos I have online. And the Quicktime doesn't seem to take any longer to play. Especially MySpace-video looks horrible.

I agree that Flash is a big contender in the battle for online video, especially with it's widespread availability, but it's pretty far away from being good enough for anything other than funny home videos in terms of quality. That's my opinion anyway.

You should definitely have a look at your material in your NLE with a reference monitor and a scope, and make adjustments as needed to get your pictures where they should be. I always do uncompressed out of Final Cut, and then use Compressor to make files for the web. This workflow works very well for me, and creates high quality video compared to filesize. I would also recommend using custom frame controls in your Compressor-profile, and set all the settings to max.

Just remember that your pictures will always look different on different computers, and across operating systems. Not much you can do about that.

I can't back this up with facts or actual knowledge, but I think iMovie somehow doesn't encode your files very well. I don't have much experience with it, but what I've seen doesn't look good :P I would use FCP to be safe.

These are the guidelines for entry

Basically films from all over the world, in the Northern hemisphere. The festival is very good too, one of the largest in Norway. Maybe I'll see one of your films next year? ;)

Actually, it was "Flower Beloved" ;)

http://www.tiff.no/?go=film&id=115

(On a sidenote, I shot the film called "Tommy" on the same page)

I think I saw a short film at Tromsø International Film Festival last week that David Grehn shot. Does it sound plausible? I thought the cinematography was quite good anyway. If I am correct, he was also first assistant camera on another short in the same festival. Small world :) I liked the look on that clip.

Lots of good looking stuff here. I've started researching a bit for a short film shoot in March and I'm considering the HVX 200 with a lens adapter. Could we possibly be allowed to see some of these screengrabs in full resolution? Smaller resolution images can be quite deceiving when it comes to the actual quality of the image :)

3-perf 35mm is used almost exclusively for TV work that shoots in 35mm, for that very reason (and to save money.) It hasn't caught on as much for features (yet) because it would require a conversion step (optical printer or D.I.) to convert to 4-perf 35mm if you needed to make theatrical prints. But there have been some 3-perf features -- I shot one last year.

One of the largest Norwegian feature productions last year (The Kautokeino Rebellion) was actually shot on 3 perf, but they were also shooting lots of extra scenes for later release as a TV-series, so I guess they had to make the most of their huge (in Norwegian standards) budget.

"The Illusionist" definitely merits a mention. I thought the cinematography was very effective at evoking the look of a past period in time, reminiscent of turn-of-the-century stills in motion.

I also liked The Illusionist, not only for it's good cinematography, but also for just being a good film. I tend to enjoy a lot of the stuff with Edward Norton in it ;)

One of the "problems" with short films is the lack of audiences for it, so I guess you'll fill a gap of some sort if you succeed. Of course there are festivals, but a broader audience (that might even make short films some revenue) isn't really there, which is too bad considering that a short film at it's best really is an art form that deserves some more credit.

Just keep in mind that online video seems to be the new big thing for all the large players, and you might face some tough competition, not only from YouTube, but from newer services with better technical quality and larger audiences. I guess quality (as in quality of content) could be a big selling point for you. Anyway, I wish you good luck with your project. I think there's a demand for these kinds of services, but you have a long way to go ;)

BTW, another Norwegian film coming up that is worth watching is "Reprise" by Joachim Trier. It will be the Norwegian contender for the next Oscars.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0827517/

Yep, well worth seeing. Anyone heard the rumours that an American studio is trying to be the rights to do an American remake of this film? I remember Norwegian newspapers speculated that Brad Pitt would play the main character about the same time it was screened at Cannes ;)

Sorry for barging in like this, but is the above-mentioned "test footage" available somewhere online?

I guess an easy way to get practice using your lightmeter would be to take a film still camera and use your light meter to determine exposure. I shoot a lot of slides myself, and use my light meter with some of my old "manual" lenses.

As for using light meter with video, there are ways to determine the parameters you need to do it. I can't say if it's practical or accurate or at all recommendable, but take a look.

Guitar here. I also played the violin as a kid :P

My friend and only colleague in our company also play the guitar, in addition to being an excellent furniture-drummer (if you know what I mean).

I also know a lot of other filmworkers with a talent for music. I guess a lot of filmworkers are people who like to express themselves in some way.

Trying to stay alive, with a promise to start working on my activity ;)