Robert Houllahan
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Posts posted by Robert Houllahan
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Are you speaking of the Cine lab in Mass.? Do they do HD tapeless transfers? If so what kind of options do they have as far as codecs go?
We are only doing SD transfers right now but that should change significantly in the next 6 months.
SD can be done to any Blackmagic flavor (Uncomp. 10bit or 8bit or Dv50, etc..)
-Rob-
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I suppose I will only use 400 ft mags. Will a 400 ft. mag work smoothly even with only 200 ft. short end in it?
Thanks,
Jon
Should work with 200' in a 400' mag with no problems.
-Rob-
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Are there any good 16mm cameras that have interchangeable 100' magazines??? While shooting live events it's such a painstaking process to change film. I really don't want to do the 400' magazines it's just too bulky to carry around. I want to travel light.
Think a Eclair ACl with 200' mags or new a A-Minima with 200' mags do you have a loader? 2-4 200' mags and a loader can be continuous shooting...
-Rob-
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The biggest difference is that the end product will be nowhere near as marketable, especially in the future. If it's entertainment to be sold, any kind of SD is a big mistake. (Another consideration -- if they can't afford HD, can they afford to pay you?) If it's something temporary and in-house for an industrial or institutional client, it might make sense to go SD.
-- J.S.
There is a tremendous amount of top dollar spots ($1M or so) that are finished to Digi-Beta and much of the broadcast news world is still using BetaSp or Digi-B for interview or intro stuff with "A" talent like anchors. A terranex can (and do regularly) up-res top end SD to HD and have the result look very good, D-Beta has less compression (1.5 or 2 to 1) and more color space (10BIT 4:2:2) than most compressed hd formats.
I would not assume that a D-beta client is a bottom feeder, if they request it it is probably a good dollar job (of a sort) and talking them into hd may be technically better and more usable in the long term but maybe that client does not care beyond 6 months...
-Rob-
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I would take a model 2 for my LTR..
-Rob-
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I should say my current short list is CineLab, ColorLab, Magno and DuArt. If you have any other place you particularly love, please let me know that too.
Hi Conrad,
Magno is gone I would think that you will get the best deal/attention from either us (cinelab) or colorlab...
-Rob-
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It doesn't get much more contrasty than b&w reversal -- if you don't think those blacks are black enough, I can't imagine what what would satisfy you, short of hi-con title stock.
We get allot of hi-con shot for non-title purposes it's cheap and certainly has great blacks and contrast....
-Rob-
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my understanding is that high speed cameras need the film loaded onto something that looks like a large daylight spool. they are called taylor reels
All Redlake or Visual Instrument Hycam cameras need 400' daylight spools and the film for these cameras is usually 500t 7218 on estar base delivered from Kodak on the daylight reels. A hycam will pull a 400' reel in 1.5 sec so a core is potentially troublesome.
I do not think you need daylight reels with a Photosonics.
-Rob-
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I am hesitant about the suitability of 16mm film for HD work. The result really comes down to whether you consider grain to be detail or not. I don't.
Phil
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-
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It was cut on Final Cut, not Premiere.
Bryant Jansen
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
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"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-
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Hi guys,
I have 6800 feet of super 16 to get transfered.
1. What should I ask for exactly when I get to the studio ? A TGA sequence ? that would take alot of disk space. A seires of DVC-PRO HD quicktimes ?
Benjamin
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-
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Forde is defunct, as I understand it- Alpha Cine "absorbed" them and they are doing Super-8 souping.
Doh! I knew that! but their souping is very good none the less....
-Rob-
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I'm not sure anymore who is processing negative Super-8 film, who co-opts with other labs, etc...
Anyone want to take a stab. Also does turnaround time matter as to who is doing the processing?
The Vision 200T and 500T are really amazing stocks that open Super-8 filmmaking to those who can't afford full on lighting set-ups.
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-
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Hi Jan,
I don't think making money or selling 1,000's of cameras are the big motivators for Jeff. He did not have the bad experiences in life, he learnt from others who had. When chip's are readilly available, we may hear of from him again.
Stephen
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-
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That's been sitting on their sire and in the catalog for years. Of course there was also a photoshop special of a guy floating a Mitchell BNC on a Steadicam, so they are ones for jokes, aren't they?
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-
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Nothing to worry about. Was it a regular 16 SR2 or a Super 16 SR2? If it was a Super 16 SR2 I'd love to see that negative. :rolleyes:
Tim
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-
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Hi-
Does anybody really know what the current state of double perf 16mm is? Is anyone able to still get it from kodak (or anywhere else) without a large special order?
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-
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How much would a Spirit transfer of Super8 cost? :blink:
Probably between $1200 and $1800 per hour.
-Rob-
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Buddy is a remarkable talent... but it helps to have John Dowdell do your DI. >8)
And it all went through an Arriscan then right? that has also come along quite a bit.
-Rob-
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Using a film workprint or telecine, how would I add the sound? I mean, I know how to drag a track into FCP, but would there be a way for me to add sound to the workprint after I have the scenes arranged?
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-
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Should I instead maybe have the film telecined and edit digitally?
Thanks in advance.
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-
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I'm shooting a short in a couple of weeks on the A-Minima, and I'm using the Canon 8/64 zoom. I also want to get one wide prime, and I was going to get the Zeiss 9.5mm. But I heard there might be some distortion around the edges. Is that true?
I want something very wide since I'm doing it all handheld, but I don't want any sort of fisheye look. I have a regular 16mm Scoopic, and 12.5mm doesn't seem wide enough on that, but maybe in Super-16 there is a slight difference?
Any help appreciated. Thanks!
Bo
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-
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there is a lab that still do the eco processing. i think it's ford's or something like that. there is a thread about it somewhere. i tried myself to do so. the results were kind of cool, projected it look like a worm farm with a very faint background (because of the reticulation).
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-
Super 16 to DVC-PRO HD
in Post Production
Posted
National (www.nationalboston.com) has a Shadow and does disk transfers and Finish (www.finishedit.com) has a ArriScan.
-Rob-