Robert Houllahan

I think one of the factors may be an older Spirit vs a newer machine like a Spirit 2k or 4K or a scanner like a arriscan. We can go and argue about the artistic merits of film grain and whether or not it is relevant, or as Phil believes, just noise but that would take us nowhere fast. I have seen that a oversampled scan with better nyquist characteristics will resolve the grain better and make it finer appearing vs. a hd or undersampled scan which seems to enhance the grain. Atrocious broadcast television compression seems to get worse all the time, sure there is a picture there but as soon as there is alot of movement in frame it's all blocks. Yay! lets squeeze more dollars out of everything. -Rob-

Editorial is one thing dealing with the ridiculous amount of data and conforming it all is something else I had a conversation with one of the post supervisors on that show and I guess a few people had breakdowns because of the large amount of footage shot and the very difficult edit process because of the sheer voulume, imo this did not make it a good movie and I am not even talking about the look of the image.... Furthermore it is very easy to blame the lab for problems anybody who has worked at a lab kows this (" my film s out of focus your film processor was not properly bolted down" or "you messed up my film it's blank (underexposed) I want you to put the pictures back on" ) I would also say having known a few Germans that this production would run into more than a few issues due to the attitudes towards that era. I am sure that Arri has all of the latest, newest processing gear and the fastidious attitude to make sure problems are little to none. Billions and Billions of feet of film get processed around the world in the MP industry every year with very few problems overall.... -Rob- "blame the lab" Houllahan

"Okay.. it was a pretty stupid question....I'll admit that." There are no stupid questions only stupid people and I have been that person :blink: "Ive been working in post-production for five years now... everything that comes B4 post-prod is pretty foreign to me. And yes... I was pretty clueless... I know how to expose film properly." There is alot to it and all film has to be processed that is how the latent image formed by the light sensitive silver halides turns into a not light sensitive usable visible image there are no bits or bytes here just organic chemistry. " But for some reason I confused processing with "making a print"... I thought that what I shot was already the negative... but for some reason it was still light-sensitive and I had to process it.... anyway." There is allot of lab and film terminology that makes more sense when you become more familiar, Films like "Touch of Evil" or "Taxi Driver" for example would have "rushes" made from the processed negative and that is what you would use to edit with, there was no video, really, used back then. Even people like Michael Bay will have these prints made for large action films they help accurately judge the photography and a 35mm contact print is roughly equivalent to a 4K scan and recording but much cheaper and simpler. So in some instances Process and Print go hand in hand but now with all of the techno-devices it has become less common. "If I make a one-light transfer and do my color corretion in Combustion or Shake or whatever... Im guessing that since it's been transfered to an 8bit image sequence, I don't have as much control as I'd have with a telecine , right ?" NO all color corrections systems are at least 16bit internal processing with a 10bit I/O for HD video there is significant loss of ability to grade images done in 8bit space. Often a show will do what is called a "milky" transfer to a format like D5 and then after the show is edited go back to the color corrector and do a final grade. You could do similar with Combustion or Shake or Color you just need a "real" file like a uncompressed 10bit HD quicktime for example and if you are going to use a software package like the above mentioned allot of patience and a realization that a calibrated grading monitor is essential. "Does that mean that a datacine like a Spirit scans the film at a high dynamic range ? Like a cineon file or smtg ? Or is it just an internal mechanism that dims/brightens the light in front of the negative b4 it gets digitized... like the post proudction equivalent of a push/pull ?" The spirit has a basically constant and controlled diffuse light source that I believe can be irised a bit for film setup and then there is a set of controls on the color corrector (I have only used a Pogle with the Spirit but I assume that the DaVinci is similar) which allow you to setup sensitivity of the individual color pickups. There are many versions of the Spirit from the sdc 2001 to the Spirit 4K the results in data mode for an original spirit will be something like 3 f.p.s and the color is half sampled and it cannot capture the full D-min to D-max range of negative but it is primarily a "video" device meant to make top quality broadcast HD video. Devices like the Arriscan or Northlight will capture significantly more dynamic range than a telecine but the newer Spirit 4K or Cintel DSX are close in data mode. It is not like a Push/Pull however the better the scanner the more usable information can be wrung from the original negative. -Rob-

First your film must be processed :blink: Most telecine houses will be setup to go to better formats than dvcprohd, it is considered pretty low end for a super16 transfer, mostly it would be used for keycode dailies and not a "finish" video format. In general either D5 or Hdcam/SR are the preferred tape formats or direct to disk recordings. Most shops which will go to disk will offer either Quicktime uncompressed or DPX scans. Both of these are high bandwidth formats but you could always recompress down to a low end hd format like dvcprohd in FCP or Avid. -Rob-

Doh! I knew that! but their souping is very good none the less.... -Rob-

Labs I would send my ECN super8 to: Cinelab (I work there and co own but we do excellent ecn super8 process and transfer) Spectra in LA (top quality reputation for Process and transfer) Forde in Wa. (Excellent processing I do not know about transfer) Other guys do it, Pro8 and yale come to mind but I think you will get the best results and the most personal attention at the three above, in the US that is. -Rob-

As someone said on cml a bit ago you can tell the pioneers because they are the ones with arrows in their backs :lol: The "market" for D-Cine cameras is still wide open Jim J is about third in the line after Dalsa and Arri he is first to deliver a camera from a small shop and I can only imagine that others (Including Kinetta) will follow him down the trail to a production camera. I know Jeff has delivered multiple scanners. -Rob-

No itis just that they have finally discovered how to eliminate the persian rug from the system, you will see them flying off the shelf from now on. -rob-

I have shot a ton of double perf in my Super-16 aaton ltr never had a problem, the image extends all the way to the right side, minus two sorta square chunks :lol: certainly does not affect registration or steadiness. -Rob-

Both Kodak and Fuji have certain stocks available in double perf i.e. 7231 80iso B+W negative is available in either but 7222 200iso B+W negative is only available in single perf right now. Check the Kodak catalog for which stocks are available, Fuji recently made a number of their 16mm stocks available in either single or double where all of them were single perf just a while ago. -Rob-

Probably between $1200 and $1800 per hour. -Rob-

And it all went through an Arriscan then right? that has also come along quite a bit. -Rob-

Adding sound in post and re dubbing all dialogue will be much easier with a transfer, you can playback the footage in FCP and record on any digital recorder (a computer, CF recorder, DAT, etc.) and then do almost instant sync with picture. when finished you can then build your track and with minimal trouble translate the track made in FCP to a print in the future. I love the workprint route I think cutting on a flatbed is more enjoyable and possibly more relevant artistically but I think you may get in over your head with a project like the one you are describing and then have troubles translating your workprint into a showable film. The computer / video route is safer and will facilitate your over dub much easier than a flatbed edit. -Rob-

Rough calculations with a discount is around 2500 for stock (at 370 min or 33 400' rolls of 7231 or 7222) and figure around 3500 for process with Keycode transfer, you could do a clean tape and a burn-in tape on Dvcam maybe (tape stock is around 300.00) so you could be ready for a neg cut with a burn-in tape and flex files and cut list from FCP and also have a nice clean video copy to show. -Rob-

I have a 9.5 for my LTR and I also have a 5.7 kinoptik the 9.5 is not distorted like the 5.7. I have heard that some Mk1's vignette at the corners of the super16 frame I think that this is more of slight falloff than a hard edge. I have not had problems with mine in this regards. However if you have a 8-64 why do you need the 9.5? unless it's for speed? (t1.3) if you are renting get a Mk2 and there will be no problem, also Zeiss made a set of wide angle adapters for these lenses (I think 2 parts) which at their widest gets you to around 6mm. -Rob-

Dwaines in Parsons Ks (k14movies.com) does runs of old film from time to time and Film Rescue specializes in this kind of work (filmrescue.com) -Rob-

If you want to go hi end Technicolor has a Super8 gate for the Spirit. -Rob-

Rate the stock at 1/3 or 1/4 its normal rating and try to push the image up against the upper curve and throw a bunch of light on it. Expect grain and weird colors especially in the blue the old stuff can look great it you have a whacked use for it and tend towards over exposing it. -Rob-

This is a shameless plug but we do have a drop in NYC at the Standby program (www.standby.org) and have quietly been building a nice super8 deal over here at cinelab. www.cinelab.com -Rob-

Me too but... it's a 15-150 -Rob-

If you ever get it back, he has had a Canon zoom of mine for almost three years now..... -Rob-

The stock guys I have dealt with in the past have wanted "real" HD (F900 or better) or 35mm but sometimes they don't know the difference from 16mm or varicam. Probably depends on the footage i.e. if you have a shot of aliens landing on HDV they will want it, otherwise I would think it's a no sell. -Rob-

Very Nice.... -Rob-

I saw your pics and was wondering about how you made the 1VN Super16? did you remove the second pulldown and reg pins? Nice looking stuff BTW... -Rob-

We have a Solitaire CineII film recorder, it will record up to 4K and had a 65mm head as well as a 35mm. The recorder makes a fine picture it is just very slow at about 25sec per frame. We mostly do short and commercial work on it and i would not consider shooting a full feature through the machine just because it would take a week or two :blink: I plan on replacing ours by next year with a newer machine but only because of speed not image quality. -Rob-