Zachary Vex

You and me against the world. 8^)

It's awful. Sorry to be so blunt.

You could ship everything to one of your friends.

It loads very slowly from that site so I'm sure some people won't have the patience to watch it all. Wow, the material is so heavy that it's hard to watch without getting a pretty big lump in my throat. The guy is a good actor. It's well-done. What kind of lighting did you use, and what stock? What kind of camera?

What about 2-perf pulldown? I recently acquired a Techniscope camera and would like to use it in the most efficient, least-expensive way. I found an inexpensive 35mm projector designed for telecine and I'm having it adapted to do 2-perf pulldown as well (it uses a servo-motor sprocket pulldown instead of Geneva pull-down, allowing complete control over the number of perfs per pull) so I can do my own 2-perf transfers for editing in Final Cut, and then submit the film for scanning after it's been cut down to the select portions. Pixel Farm has told me that if I provide them with negative that's been cut down within 4 frames (either side of the splice) of the edit points they can run it through their Arri scanner and give me 2-perf scans. Is there an approach to editing/scanning that's been proven to deliver the lowest budget when shooting 2-perf 35mm? Keep in mind that the most likely final medium for the early projects I expect to deliver will be DVD, in some sort of HD format, but I'd like to make sure they can be put out on 35mm for release if the need arises.

Wow, very interesting article. Mathieson shot some scenes using a 5x4 Sinar plate camera, which he would place in front of the Arri without its plate. Where the plate would normally go, he positioned a piece of tracing paper. "The image would be soft, sort of blurred," he attests, and this effect not only framed the subject like a still camera would, but made images that approximated the blurriness of many of Bacon?s paintings. Another technique involved removing the shutter from the Arri 435. "We disconnected the shutter, keeping it open," Mathieson discloses. "Then we?d use a domestic drill with a handmade shutter in front of the camera. It would run asynchronously, and we?d rev it at different speeds to make the image flutter. If you moved it away from the camera, you?d get these great flash-frames that would stretch and tear from top to bottom, creating images that jumped at you." Mathieson continues, "We did our own fogging in the camera as well, using the Arri VariCon, which enables one to fog the film using different colors. We also tried putting red gel on the side of the camera, then opening up while we were shooting to make a more ?brutal? fogging effect." According to Mathieson, the technique was popular in the Seventies, but has pretty much been abandoned since then.

Wow, the trailer for Astronaut Farmer looks great to me too. What a great idea for a movie!

I lost the loop a few times in my old Kodak Model K, and the result (moving film while the shutter was open) must look a little like how it would look to shoot with the shutter removed. I think I read in this forum somewhere about that being done in a feature... anyone remember?

I'm trying to find 35mm cameras that can operate at highish frame rates and don't cost an arm and a leg. Do such cameras exist?

There are inexpensive transfer houses as well. One that I've used is Film and Video Services at 612-789-8622.

Excellent point. I love my Scoopic for the human-eye-like response of the auto-iris and the easy (and immediate) operation, but the viewfinder is so dim as a result of the prism that I rarely use it anymore. I'm in my mid-forties and I need to be able to see at a reasonable brightness in order to focus (I work that way) so my Scoopic is getting more and more lonely, while my Aaton has become my absolute favorite.

Eclair Cameflex CM3, which goes from 200 to 35 degrees.

Thanks so much for the link to the manual. After contacting the previous owner it seems that he was unaware of the existence of that screw and adjusted the shutter angle without moving it. Sigh. After translating this, it seems it must be damaged and that's why I can't tighten the shutter down anymore. English: Latch-tightening screw of the adjustable obturator (TO BE LOOSENED IMPERATIVELY BEFORE REGLAGE Of the ANGLE Of OBTURATION). Vis de blocage de l'obturateur réglable ( A DESSERRER IMPERATIVEMENT AVANT REGLAGE DE L'ANGLE D'OBTURATION).

The Professional Cameraman's Handbook doesn't show the screw in a picture, and I'm having trouble getting the shutter locked in place on this camera. BTW, it's adjustable from 35 to 200 degrees! Amazing! If I'm unable to tighten it down, will the shutter eventually slip? it seems pretty darned snug (very hard to move with the shutter adjust knob, but possible).

A composite input on the projector? No, unfortunately only a video sync (bnc connector). My camera does have an SD output (simple yellow RCA with stereo audio) along with composite HD. Does it do that by changing the flashing rate of the shutter so that 2 frames of film image 1 are illuminated, then 3 frames of film image 2, and that's repeated 12 times in one second for a total of 60 frames? Sounds good. I'll have to investigate inexpensive genlock-input broadcast sync generators.

There is also the old trick of wearing dark sunglasses all the time unless looking through the finder. 8^)

I'm getting a projector that was specially designed for TV stations to broadcast movies using real-time telecine. It has the ability to instant-start, instant-stop, and advance single frames... there are special servo circuits and sensors that keep the frame perfectly registered using measurements taken from the edges of two perf holes. There's no pull-down... there's a sprocketed wheel driven by a powerful servomotor that advances the film so fast it's completely invisible to the eye. My question is this: After I've diffused the light source and obtained a very long lens to flatten out the image for my HD camera to capture directly off the projector, what can I do to synchronize the frames so there are no partial frames in the video? The projector provides 3:2 pulldown for telecine and syncs to the 60Hz mains unless provided with a video sync pulse, but I'm using a consumer (Sony) HD camcorder to capture and I don't believe there's any way to sync. I'm afraid I'm going to see overlapping frames as a result of the lack of sync... what to do?

Over the years I've collected up a few super 8mm projectors from Film and Video Services in Minneapolis. 8mm projectors tend to have all sorts of little quirks and problems... it's such a fragile little format. The auto-feeding Bell and Howell machines seem to have lots of weird feeding problems, and with all of that extra plastic guide stuff in the way they're hard to manually load. Film and Video Services has relatively inexpensive transfers they can do for you that are pretty reasonable quality, using (as I recall) Elmo transfer machines.

Sad, that. Thanks for the info. I went to the Cinesound "garage sale" and picked up a B&H Cinemascope lens and some other loose items. I didn't see the projectors there at that time, but it could be that I didn't know what I was looking at.

I haven't shot anything with the Eyemo yet. I just purchased it a couple of weeks ago. Three of my Eyemo lenses are out for repair, and only one out of 6 has coated lenses... a nice Miltar 6". I am under the assumption from another post that the Miltar is a much newer lens than the others I have, with the best glass ever made for Eyemos. I guess I'll find out the differences when I shoot my first test roll, after the other lenses come back!

1] He's clearly stated on this forum that it is the name that appears on his California driver's license. 2] You said that. Look, you don't have any proof that it's not his real name. You are apparently prejudiced against people with non-normal-sounding names. Can you imagine how insulting your accusation sounds if it really is his legal name and you're flat-out wrong? My point is, give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He's been confronted about this so many times and has had to defend himself enough that I really think it's time to let this go. He doesn't seem to be disrupting the forum... but I feel that these unfounded accusations are doing just that. I have no further comment on this matter. It's becoming distracting. Someone should make a movie. 8^)

Update: So far I've contacted Clive at tobincinemasystems.com and AZSpectrum and I'm awaiting replies... but does anyone know of any other possible sources or solutions?

I need suggestions for places to search for a sync version of the Perfectone motor used in Cameflex CM3 cameras. Even an AC sychro motor would make me happy (if such a thing exists)... it's so easy to generate 60Hz 110VAC now using modern inverters. Or perhaps there's someone who converts older Perfectone motors to sync? I have both variable-speed and "constant-speed" motors for my CM-3. Thanks in advance!

1] A quick review of the "Forum Guidlines" by clicking the button near the top of the page will reveal this: Members on this forum are required to use their full real names for their Display Name. The format to use is your first name followed by a space followed by your last/family/surname. Please capitalize the first letter of each. Accounts that do not comply will be removed and cannot be reactivated. Display names can be edited in My Controls / Change Display Name once you?re logged in. There is no mention of whether anyone "knows" the person who is posting. 2] Film Runner claims that's his real name, just as the rest of us claim that our names are our real names. Nobody else is required to produce a driver's license... what's his crime? "Posting while weirdly-named"? That smacks of thoughtless prejudice... like "Driving while Black" or "Flying while Muslim." The only thing I see wrong with the name "Film Runner" is the difficulty in using a search engine to see what work he is doing (or does in the future).

I wish someone did a mod to only one position of a spider turret. That way I could use the other two for my Eyemo-mount lenses, and share Nikons between my Aaton (which has an adaptor) and the Eyemo.