Dan Horstman

A daylight spool is a black metal spool that blocks light from exposing the film. The idea is that you can load these in the light without exposing the film. It is better to load in subdued light (ie Not In Broad Daylight) or a Dark Bag or changing tent if you can, because some light will fog the edges of the film and sometimes it will creep into the picture. This is usally only a problem at the head and tails of the film. Not sure on the NPR. But the ACL you can remove the core flanges and use daylight spools. If the film is core wound then it doesn't matter if it is 100 feet 200 feet or 400 feet. The one thing about the 200 foot rolls is don't order the A-Minima 200 foot rolls if you don't have an A-Minima. They are specially designed to work with the A-Minima and have a different kind of daylight spool. Also the film is in the A Wind position and you want B wind for the ACL or NPR...which is the standard wind for camera films.

Nope it doesn't cover super 16. It might cover at longer focal lengths...but it doesn't cover Super 16. I have one for my ACL 2 and haven't got my camera converted because I love this lens so much. The distortion when it is all the way wide looks sooooo good. One thing you can do to cover super 16 on the cheap is to get a C mount to Nikon F Mount adapter (I think they are like $50) and then buy 35mm Nikon F mount lenses. Unfortunately you won't be able to get wide angle lenses with this. But it works.

You can shoot single perf 16mm in both Regular 16 and Super 16 cameras. Some older regular 16 cameras have sprocket wheels that have perfs on both sides so check out your camera first. Most older Angenieux lenses do not cover Super 16. 12-120 and 9.5-57 do not cover Super 16. The 15-150 does cover Super 16. Some lenses will cover Super 16 at longer focal lengths so you can use them but can't use them all the way wide.

The sky is the number one thing that ruins day for night. Everything else can usually be justified. (No those are moon shadows...like from the Cat Stevens song)

1 - Come up with idea. 2 - Write script 3 - find actors, crew, locations, props 4 - shoot - DV, 16mm, Super 8...it doesn't matter at this stage...your movie will probably not be very good no matter what your mom tells you ;) 5 - Edit, add sound effects and music 6 - get your friends and family together and show it (don't believe them when they say you are the next Orson Wells) Repeat until your movies are good. Best of luck!

Colorlab Prices: Leader Prep and Clean - $0.04 per foot One Light Telecine - $0.19 per foot (15 minute minimum charge $102.50) Best Light Telecine - $0.30 per foot (15 minute minimum charge $162.00) Unsupervised Scene to Secen - $350.00 per hour of work (1/2 hour minimum charge) + Tape Stock (Digital Betacam, Betacam SP, DVCAM, DVCPRO, MiniDV)

Did you have the film Transferred at a North American Lab? Is the transfer in PAL? If so it sounds to me like they did the telecine to NTSC and then ran it through a crappy standards converter. How full is your hard drive? A G4 really isn't fast enough to handle a lot of video, so you might need to free up some hard drive space to improve your data rate from the Hard Drive. Also are you using a separate program drive and a separate media drive? If your program and media are on the same drive (especially on an older computer like a G4) then that can affect your data rate and your apparent picture quality. Also are you monitoring your preview only on the computer monitor or do you have an external broadcast monitor that you are watching the output on? Have you output the caputred footage to a minidv and watched it on a TV? With Uncompressed video files I have seen the preview window look horrible, but the actual output look great...again on a slow G4.

The main concern I have is the X Ray Machines at the Airport. You might want to look into what you need to do to get the film through without getting near the X Ray Machine.

You should really get some extension tubes or Macrobellows. I have a set of tubes and a macro bellows set for my K3 that cost about $50.00 on ebay. I use them with my 50mm prime lens and they work great!

Colorlab NY 27 West 20th Street Suite #307 New York, NY 10011 212-633-8172 email info@colorlab.com for an estimate

What kind of editing sysetem are you using. I've had several clients say their transfer had artifacts etc...but it turned out that it wasn't on the tape, but that their computer couldn't properly handle editing video. Dan@Colorlab

It really works best when the sun is directly overhead so you don't get big shadows. If it is slightly overcast that is even better. And you really need to take spot readings on every highlight and midrange area to see how this is going to render on the film since you only have about 1/2 to 1 stop of effective lattitude doing it this way. Don't trust the incident reading. I've played a lot with underexposure and pushing film. (A symptom of buying a camera fresh out of film school and not having enough left over for lights) My favorite is shooting 7250 in dark bars, wide open (for me F 1.6) cross processing and pushing 2...there is almost nothing on the film for the colorist to work with...but damn does it look great for gritty hard rock shows.

We wanted to just barely see skin tones and the highlights on the trees etc. So we underexposed by 3 in order to be just on the edge of what the film could render. We pushed one stop because my director was scared we wouldn't get anything...so I did that to hedge our bets a little...and it worked out so well that now I just do the same every time. It also made the blacks crisper and upped the contrast. We printed the whole movie to one light that we established in tests. On these shots I told the timer what we were going for and that he could play with it a little to give us the best night look in his oppinion. I have the timing report at home somewhere so I'll see if I can find it and I'll post the lights used. But I don't think they were much different than the lights we established in our tests.

I've shot day for night a couple times and the one that looked the best was shooting Kodak 320T underexposed by 3 stops and pushed 1 stop in processing. This was shot in the woods in the late spring before leaves sprouted in the middle of the afternoon. Upon viewing the work prints (where I instructed the timer to keep things cool but not blue and told him it was supposed to be day for night) everybody asked what lights I used to make it look like a full moon? Answer...just the sun. I tried other things before this...but now will only use this method as it is the only thing I've seen that looks close to what night actually looks like. Now I use the 200T Vision 2 instead of the 320T and it looks just as good.

You can get Archival Cans for storing film from Tuscan Corp.

You can also do a Super16 to Reg 16mm blow down as a cheaper alternative to a blow up. A 35mm blow up here at Colorlab (where I work) for a 90 minute film runs about $35,000 (includes Super16 Interpositive, 35mm Blow Up Dupe Neg, 35mm Optical Sound Track and 35mm Composite Answer Print) a Reg 16mm blow down runs about $16,000 (includes Super16 IP, Blow Down 16mm DN, 16mm Optical Track and 16mm Composite Answer Print) this is of course from A&B Rolls.

I built a simple car mount this weekend. It can go on the hood or roof or on the passenger or driverside door. It uses 4 x 110 lb capacity suction cups (dent pullers, glass holders) some hollow metal bar stock with holes every inch, a hi-hat and some plywood. Shooting tests this coming up weekend. (going to test the mount with no camera first) Took me about 2 hours to put together and cost about $60.00.

You need what is called a "Sqwak Box" it is a 16mm Mag head and small speaker. Look on Ebay or check with some film schools in your area. They probably don't need them anymore (or even know what it is for)