Douglas Hunter

perhaps I miss-read you but I took you to be lamenting the fact that one can't do a quantitative comparison, whereas I reject the very idea of such a comparison. Not at all, its my opinion that if a Mag is going to do such a thing they should be totally above board with it and tell the labs whats going on. As I understand it they only have one colorist, and as you know Spectra only has one colorist, same goes for Yale and just about all the Super 8 labs, so that's a moot point. Again, since it's a subjective test let all the labs treat the film in the way they consider "best", what ever that means for them.

Just going off of TC alone its not really possible. Now, you say he has no burn in but did he make flex files at the telecine? If so, assuming that your friend has an accurate Cinema Tools database (admittedly a big assumption) then yes he could use that to create a list that a telecine op can use to scan selects. The problem is that there is just no easy way to check the accuracy of the cut list against picture as there would be if he had both time code and key code burn in. Both are essential when working in CT /FCP and going back into the bay. It sounds like you and he may be uncertain about the work flow. Really the most cost effective work flow for small amounts of film going for a tape finish looks like this. 1- Telecine all footage to D-beta with first pass color correction. make DVCAM simos with a TC window burn. The D-Betas are the show masters and the DVCAMs are used for editing. 2- Digitize the DVCAMs. 3- Edit in FCP in a 29.97 timeline (assuming that you are not protecting for a neg cut) 4- Export and EDL 5- Do a D-beta on-line to create your VAM. 6- Tape to Tape D-beta final color correction to create CTM. 7- Lay back audio to your CTM and make dubs from that. Another option, that may be less expensive: 1- Telecine all footage direct to a hard drive as uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 (basically the codec equiv. of D-beta) (1.5 or telecine to D-beta and have the lab digitize the tapes to 10bit.) 2- Backup all files on at least 1 other drive. 3- render out low res version of 10bit files (if editing on an slower system) 4- edit project in high or low res depending on your system. 5- If editing in low res, when picture is locked, blow away the low res media and re-link the project to the 10bit media. This is an "in the box" on-line. 5- color correction in Color or some other program. 6- Do your titles and VFX @ 10bit res. and add them to your FCP time line. 7- edit / Mix audio in Protools then and add it to your FCP time line. 8- Output 10bit 4:2:2 29.97 quicktime master file. 9- Take the quicktime to your post house and have them out put it to D-beta so you now have a broadcast quality tape master. One potential shortfall with this system is that in FCP unless you check your edits on an NTSC monitor you may have some edits that fall on the second field of a frame and this will throw off the output. All your in points for edits need to be on the first field of each frame. There are other ways to do it but those are two that work. Also sometimes its not actually cost effective to just do selects. if the material is on a number of different lab rolls and if there is any confusion on the selects list you end up burning money sorting out what is what in the bay. Really with a small batch of film it can be best to do a hi-res telecine of all the footage with first pass color correction right off the bat and never go back into the telecine bay.

What I am getting at is the idea that there is no such thing as 100% conclusive comparison between labs. It is, and should be, a subjective evaluation. Too often people in the super 8 world get caught up in the technical details to the point that they stray from the real world. Rather than trying to come up with a quantitative evaluation of something that can't be quantitatively measured super 8 film makers should go to different labs for supervised session and share their experiences. Telecine is a creative process and you can't quantify that, all we can do is measure the difference between what we hoped to achieve and what we actually achieve. If a magazine editor were to send some film in I hope they would NOT do so anonymously. I would hope they would tell the labs what they were up to in a "show us what you can do" spirit. and let each lab create a variety of looks for the same scene. One of the things that mags such as Small Format and Super 8 Today seem to be into is educating less experienced filmmakers. Showing the variety of looks that can be achieved on a single piece of film and an interview with the colorists on how and why they did what they did would be good for the labs and educational to readers. It could help the readers learn what can be done and the proper language to use to describe different elements of timing. Back to the point about the colorist being the most important element. For those less experienced in telecine here are some important things to consider: 1- Communication with colorist- did they listen and understand what you wanted? Also were they pleasant, and if they didn't understand what you wanted did they ask helpful questions? Did the colorist ever try to "sell" you on something that you didn't like? 2- Colorist's speed- how quickly did they achieve the right look, could they quickly set up and manipulate power windows when necessary? Was the room set-up and ready to go when you arrived for your session? 3- Problem solving- Did the colorist have good solutions for shots you felt needed changing such as areas of the frame being to bright and leading the eye away from the action, or colors in a shot not turning out as you had wanted and needing to be altered? 4- Colorists attention to details- did the colorist keep checking back to make sure the shots in a scene will all cut together smoothly. Was the colorist able to spot problems that you didn't see at first? Naturally, all these are predicated you the filmmaker going into a session knowing what they want and being able to communicate that in terms that a colorists will understand.

Which is only fair. Several of the Super 8 labs advertise their gates, it seems to be a thing in the super 8 world. I admit to being a little clueless in that regard. I don't know how big a difference a gate can make in terms of the overall quality of a job. I see the gate as a bit of equipment that is working properly when you don't know its there.

I disagree, its not flawed at all. Honestly in the film and television industry experience, price, quality of the staff are the things that we look at when choosing a lab, its not like someone at the production looks at a chart or technical specs from the telecine! We look at the colorists at each lab and the work they have done before, when we find a colorist we like we stick with 'em. Its a big mistake to think that the choice of lab is or should be based more on technical / engineering aspects. Yes is part of the formula, but its the colorist that has a much greater impact on the look of the show.

Alessandro you are a riot! Even when i agree with you, you can't help but accuse me of something. While I'm sure the budgets I was dealing with were greater than that of the OP they were still TINY and the clubs in question were not paid. like it or not our ability to alter the club's lighting was arrived at through dialogue with the club managers.

Alessandro you are a riot! Even when i agree with you, you can't help but accuse me of something. While I'm sure the budgets I was dealing with were greater than that of the OP they were still TINY and the clubs in question were not paid. like it or not our ability to alter the club's lighting was arrived at through dialogue with the club managers.

Another point. I can't help but notice that many of the comments against using reversal stock in this discussion seem to be from folks who may have been burned in the past using reversal and maybe relying on an in camera meter. Two thoughts. First, its always best to use a hand held light meter anyway. If for no other reason than the OP seems new and learning about exposures is all about evaluating light. Second, my observation is that I always get the exposure I want from reversal when I decided exactly where I want black to fall. Its my experience that the Velvia and the 100D have barely any toe but do have a better curve on the shoulder. So by spending more time evaluating shadows and where black should be I get the look I am striving for. To play devil's advocate against myself though, I'm sure other folks would say that my method will sometimes lead to blown out highlights. Which it does but personally I find that my eye responds more to where black is than just about any other element. Of course in the context set up by the OP shooting neg. most likely the best bet. I just wanted to give props to reversal in that if you know what you are doing it's great stuff with a great look!

The OP should not be discouraged by the above comment. More often than not how easy a location is to deal with has to do with communication skills and personality. Granted Alessandro is right, there are some people who will not let you do what you need or want to do and that's all there is to it. But being a good communicator, honest, and considerate works wonders. In the OP's case he's probably just talking about doing something very simple (maybe changing out some gells and redirecting a few units) that's pretty minor and easy for the club in question to deal with as long as the OP can quickly restore the club's original lighting scheme afterwards. I've shot in clubs on a number of occasions and they were always very good to me and my crew, and, yes we did change the lighting. good luck.

I think you are going about it the wrong way. First off, your post work flow should not determine what you do in production, its the other way around. Second you need to consider your aesthetic goals and the pragmatics of your shooting situation. The reversal films available in super 8 are pretty slow compared to the neg. stocks but they have finer grain, more contrast and greater color saturation. In some situations these are advantages, in others they are not. You should know that 500t super 8 has a very specific look that you may or may not like. All the 500T I've seen is like watching a film through a snow storm of grain. That's a good choice for some projects and a terrible choice for others. Go to your club weeks before you shoot and take some light readings, see what the lighting in the club can do. Also its YOUR film, you should not go into an indoor shooting situation in which you can not control the lighting. The club probably has a bunch of burnt up worthless gels over their stage lights. Party gels add color and cut a lot of light. Do you like what they have? What's missing? How will it look on super 8? As the director of the shoot what color palette do you want to use for this film? Talk to the club and get the stage lit the way you want it for your shoot. Which really means get them to allow you to do the stage lighting that night. Its not worth the time, money and effort to make a film if you are not really putting your best foot forward and taking aesthetic control of your production. Also talk to the band, what are they going to be wearing? Find wardrobe that provides the color and tonal values that fit your aesthetic vision and will help the viewer see them on stage (unless you don't want them to be seen, which is also a choice....) Super 8 is not a very good format for shooting in a club unless you are well prepared, have an strong aesthetic idea of what you want to achieve and you can light the stage to meet your needs.

Have you shot the vision 2 before? If you are all about aesthetics then I assume that the relative color representation of the film, its grain, and its contrast are important to you. 7217 is similar to 7246 which I really like in 16mm in that it is low contrast and has somewhat punchy colors for a neg. stock. For what its worth the 7217 is fairly grainy and I have never liked the results when shooting in low light on 7217 as a super 8 stock. For aesthetics I think the Spectra 100D and the the Velvia 50D are the best super 8 stocks out there. They are more contrasty, have wonderful color and tight grain. Naturally to use them well you need to be really good a controlling your exposures. I also would not worry at all about intercutting different film stocks. Few if any of your viewers will ever be aware of the difference. With changes from scene to scene you naturally have dramatic changes in lighting and contrast etc. Such changes are far more dramatic than the differences between film stocks. Its quite reasonable to expect that a subway INT. scene will look radically different than a morning EXT. scene. So its makes perfect sense to shoot your subway scene on 7217 and a morning EXT. on Spectra 100D. The only time when intercutting stocks might be a problem is if you use two or more stocks for a single scene that is set in one location with consistent lighting etc. Then the different stocks will show. Of course contrasting stocks so that the difference is noticeable with in a scene is an aesthetic choice that may suit some scenes. In the end there are no general rules. The decision of what stocks to use depends upon how you want to manipulate the the visual elements of the film and your personal aesthetic goals for the different scenes and how they fit into the whole.

This is a time of transition for many labs, they are used to television work flows which always go to tape but now more and more clients are requesting direct to hard drive transfers and even some TV productions are experimenting with going tapeless for aspects of their work flows. So it should not surprise you that many labs are still doing a traditional telecine to tape and then ingesting that tape via a Kona, Black Magic or CineWave card. The most important issue in any telecine is the quality of your colorist. It sounds like you are looking for an unsupervised session in which case you REALLY need to know about that colorist and what they do. $1000 to telecine 45 minutes of footage and get it on a hard drive is not an outlandish price but, no doubt you can do better. Doing better usually involves having a nice discussion with your sales rep. at the lab. Also what are you going to do on the other side, when you are done editing? How do you plan to get you QT file on tape for viewing and distribution? Good Luck.

Does Yale no longer offer supervised sessions? I did not know that, too bad. A few years back I used Cinepost in Atlanta, for an unsupervised session. They were great, easy to work with and good communicators. They are unique in that they have a wet gate. Currently I am using Spectra for all my supervised super 8: Less expensive than Pro8mm by a lot, but the telecine equipment is about the same, both offer 10 4:2:2 uncompressed direct to hard drive telecine on USRA Diamonds. I have not used Pro8mm enough to compare their colorist to Doug at Spectra. If you are in LA give Spectra a try.

For my money I would not want to upres DVC pro 50 to HD. there are better codecs for that purpose. But any upres is going to be iffy.

I am not sure what you mean exactly, its pretty simple: As is to be expected their Diamond / Da vinci system outputs an SD SDI 29.97 video signal which they route directly to their Mac Pro with a Black Magic card. The Black Magic ingests the SDI signal making it possible to create 10 bit 4:2:2 video files (quicktimes) which they will then transfer to a client's fire wire hard drive. (Is that what you mean by more precise? sorry if I'm missing your meaning.) After that take the hard drive home, do a back up and get to work. Working with the 10 bit 4:2:2 files might be a bit cumbersome so it may be necessary to work in low quality play back mode OR render a different version of the files with a DV codec or something like that, then do an "in the box" on line when picture is locked by blowing out the low res media and re-linking to the 10 bit media to create the on line master file. What I'm not sure of is how they want to handle the back end, that is going from file to tape for broadcast or festivals etc. We talked about it a bit, clearly they can do it, but I don't know how they want to price or it fit that sort of operation into their daily schedule. Anyway that's not for me to say. I'm just glad they are going in this direction and I'm looking forward to my next telecine there.

Am I sure about that? Now you throw me into a philosophical crisis of Platonic proportions. After all did they really show me the new equipment in their bay on Tuesday? How can I know that my vision accurately represents reality? What of the words we spoke to each other in conversation? In the context I assumed that Black Magic was a proper noun but maybe it was actually a description of the metaphysical practice they enjoy after work. :-) They may be slow updating their website, and also to be fair I think they might still be doing final testing on the direct to hard drive end of things. Nonetheless, this is where they are going and I am planning on doing a direct to hard drive telecine there in about two weeks, so they better be ready, darn it! You should call them and say "Hey some jerk named Douglas Hunter is saying you guys are continually upgrading and offering newer and better services at reasonable prices. What the heck is up with that?!?!" O.K. I've had my fun. Thanks for having patience with me.

Hey everyone, I looked around and I don't think this has been posted previously so I wanted to mention that Doug and Jerry have upgraded their telecine capabilities. They are now using a URSA Diamond and offer direct to hard drive telecine. Its an SD SDI work flow using a Mac Pro with a Black Magic card working in real time. I have yet to see the results, but I will be doing telecine there in two weeks so maybe I'll post some comments at that time. anyway I just wanted to get the word out.

Here in LA what lab do you use to spool down larger loads for the Aminima. I know of several labs that do it, but who have you used and have the results been good? thanks.

Yea, if nothing else it can be a good learning experience. Good luck with it.

In The one test I did on my 814 I had a little more than 1% drift over a 1.5 min take. I got similar results with my 5008s and old Chinon. The good news was that the drift was constant, in that the camera didn't both speed up and slow down. It seemed to run slightly faster than 24fps the entire time. I did have one experience with my 5008 when the camera did speed up and slow down during a 2.5 min take. That was challenging to deal with, but with effort I was able to sync it up. It's really about how you want to spend you time and money. If you don't want to spend the time in post dealing with potentially difficult syncing issues, then it makes sense to spend the money on a sync unit. If you do have the time and skill then the money may not be worth it. There is one thing though, you never know what problems may come up during a shoot so better equipment is something of an insurance policy. The $2000 figure was for a down payment on an Arri. These days it seems like you can get an SR I or II for between 5,000 and 9,000. But you can find CP16s and Eclairs for closer to $2000.

Maybe its just a typo on your part, but that is not a sync motor, its a sync generator that works with your camera's existing motor. There is a difference. A few things, first have you looked at TFG's list of things to check on your camera regarding its soundness for conversion? Second, have you had your camera services, tuned and lubed? third, have you tested your 1014 to see how well it holds sync on it own? I too have thought about getting TFG's sync box but when it comes down to it, I ended up not doing it for several reasons. 1- My 814 and 5008s both do pretty well holding sync on their own. They both have limited and fairly constant drift so syncing the footage in post does not take that much added work. (although shooting on weak batteries will change that.) 2- Both cameras are honestly too loud for indoor sync work. Outdoors is less of a problem. But when I shoot indoors I don't want the camera to be creating a problem. 3- Looking at the money it didn't quite add up for me. As I see it there are 3 things that are mandatory for making a super 8 camera a sync camera. 1- A really good cleaning and service job which will cost $200 - $500 as an estimate. 2- The conversion itself which as you know is about $525 3- having a barney made for the camera which is about $200 - $300 So the high end of doing a conversion the right way is about $1325 + taxes and shipping. Now if you include the purchase cost of the camera say $425 then the total set up cost for sync shooting wold be about $1750. I don't think that's a terrible price to pay to be able to shoot sync sound film, its impressive really. But for me by the time I get close to the $2000 mark I can't help but noticing how quickly the prices on Arri SR packages are dropping, and that $2000 is a great down payment on one of them. All this is to say that the cost of creating a super 8 sync camera has not been worth it for me, and I have been able to shoot sync super 8 without it.

The best film school depends upon your personal goals. Film schools are not one size fits all. If you want to make experimental films then SFAI and Boulder are good bets. If you want to make personal documentaries then apply to Harvard. Animation, perhaps Cal Arts. Most film schools place emphasis on the usual industry stuff. If your goal is to make a living in Hollywood, you have a few obvious choices such as USC and UCLA that have a lot of grads working in town. Oddly enough in the past year I've also come across a number of Emerson grads in a variety of positions. There appears to be a small Emerson mafia developing. Define what you want to learn, and some long term goals if you can, then decide. Also film school is expensive, and a huge investment of time and energy. Don't do it unless you have the tenacity and drive to follow through. Many people graduate from film school only to do something else when they are done. Also note that many film programs are very competitive so apply to a large number of schools. The chances of any one individual being accepted into USC or UCLA are slim to none.

John, thanks for the input and the specifics about your cameras. As for the end of the roll problem. I use slates and camera reports (most of the time) these show missing shots from various positions in the rolls.

Should you be afraid? I don't know, seeing how many people respond to this thread may help answer that question. I don't think the problem is that wide spread but if a few people reply we may be able to see a pattern. For all I know 4008s do not have this trouble. But even if they do, its still worth using these stocks, because they are really, really beautiful. Personally, I think they are head and shoulders above everything else out there. That's one of my motivations for asking, if there are cameras that handle the stocks better than others I would like to get one!

You REALLY need to read more carefully before you reply: 1) The point of my first post was NOT to debate anything! And a debate is not implied at all in my post. My post was a REQUEST FOR INFORMATION about other peoples experiences with specific products, that's all. 2) I did not use the term "kodak color film stocks" yet it appears that your are attributing said phrase to me. 3) I did use the phrase "newer stocks" but since I also identified them I doubt many folks see the same ambiguity that you do. AGAIN as I stated in the OP, the point of this thread is NOT to discuss the causes of the problem. What part of "my question is not about the cause of the problem" don't you understand? If you do not know what I am talking about you do not need to reply, or you could ask a question, but your self appointed thread police stance is not helpful or welcome. There was nothing unprofessional about my post. If you would like a thread about the causes of the problem, feel free to start a new one on that topic where you can "please precise the troubles" and "take the time to elaborate on problems as exact and precise" all you want . You do not need to thread jack this one. GETTING BACK ON TRACK: John, thanks for the comment, what cameras were you using? When you say "treatment" do you me the lubrication of the carts? I know that Spectra put time and effort into really getting that right. To answer your question I have shot 1 roll of 64T, 1 roll of Tri-x, 12 rolls of 200t, through these cameras with no film advancing problems. I should also say that I was warned about the potential for transport problem before purchasing the Velvia and 100D so there is no sense of being misled or anything like that on my part. I love these stocks and will continue to use them, Its just a bit unnerving to be loosing takes.