Robert Houllahan

Keeping a worldwide inventory of a filmstock is a huge financial and logistical feat. Kodak has to be able to serves productions all over the globe, but cannot keep stock longer than a year or two (I think two) without replacing it. This makes specialty stocks an expensive and risky endeavor, because if people aren't shooting it they cannot just hold onto it indefinitely. Perhaps in the coming decades the growth of nano tech and other bio technologies will allow you to grow filmstock in a small facility and choose from any kodak or fuji recipe from the past or experiment with growing your own variant... may sound nuts but look at the stereolithograpy machines and other rapid prototyping stuff out there for the desktop, stranger things could happen.... I could see us as a lab growing our own stock, offering processing with low environmental impact using solar hot water creation and bio-remediation and nano-bio tech for a fully clean and sustainable film process.... -Rob-

I own a piece of cinelab and I am making several films and own cameras, etc... So I am a bit of a closed loop for my films... :lol: We had been running 16mm B+W reversal at $0.16/foot for the longest time and just upped the price to $0.17/foot because of the issues with silver recovery and bleach, we run constantly every day I cannot remember the last time we did not run B+W reversal.... both 16mm and super8. We had been charging $0.14/ft for 16mm B+W negative which is the same as our 16mm ECN and you are right the Color Negative is a much more controlled process and i guess it's as close as you get to a "commodity" in terms of MP processing, we have 2 machines dedicated to ECN, one for 8mm and 16mm and the other for 35mm. We did up the charge for B+W negative to $0.17/ft recently due to volume issues and chemistry going flat this is mostly to defray some expenses for short runs of B+W negative and we will certainly give a good discount to a customer with 1200' or more. This may all change in the near future as I am trying to put 35mm B+W negative and print in place which may help up the volume a bit for archival projects. I think B+W negative is a important area now and in the future as a 35mm B+W 3 strip separation has a 1000yr or more shelf life and I think it is a very good candidate for data archiving in the future, plus I love the look and feel of real B+W...... -Rob-

Hi Conrad, we spoke the other day, perhaps I can clear this up a bit more... All SD video formats are "throwbacks" to the early days of television the two major standards worldwide are NTSC and PAL one is a 60 field format and the other is a 50 field format (more or less) the use of fields instead of full frames came about for several reasons. 1. the electronics of the day could not handle the high frequencies that are required to display a full progressive frame of video at 25fps or 30fps and 2. interlacing is a form of compression allowing half of the video picture to be time delayed i.e. one field is sent and then the next is sent a fraction of a second after it which requires less frequency spectrum than a full frame at a time. So 80 years later we are still suffering with the original television standards, to further compound things NTSC is actually 29.97 fps or 59.94 fields per second... this has wreaked havoc with people in post houses for years and there are countless stories of EDL's with hundreds of hours of work in them due to 25 to 29.97 or 24 to 29.97 or 30 to 29.97 conversions in them... With the fairly recent advent of digital video came cameras like the Panasonic DVX100 which is able to run in a 24fps mode on minidv. What this camera is doing is a telecine conversion process with a 3:2 pulldown just like you would find on a Rank or Spirit the 3CCD pickup is clocked and run at a 24fps progressive cadence and then it is "telecined" to the 29.97 frame rate of the Minidv tape. The Panasonic codec has facilities to extract the 24fps progressive material from the 29.97 interlaced tape in post (on FCP or Avid, etc. you choose the 3:2:2:3 advanced setup) so you can now play the material in 24fps progressive but if you are going to look at it on a SD television a 3:2 pulldown and interlacing are re-introduced. So there is one example of 24fps SD material, sort of, We use a Blackmagic SDI card on a G5 for our disk captures there is a 24fps codec (Uncompressed 10bit or 8bit) which removes the pulldown and makes the incoming uncompressed SDI signal into 24fps interlaced (it removes the 3:2 pulldown but does not de-interlace) when I play back a file recorded like this the Blackmagic card does the 3:2 pulldown for playout to our 20" SDI grading monitor. I have had some issues with this codec in the past which is why I do not offer it as a option it is basically unsupported from decklink. Post facilities have been doing 3:2 pulldown removal and de-interlacing for years the pulldown removal is fairly easy but de-interlacing can be tricky and requires more cpu power. Programs like Digital Fusion, After Effects, Shake, etc. all have these tools built in. The idea of 24fps progressive SD material is really only in post production because a standard SD monitor would not understand or playback this material and no interface card or deck would play it direct without a interlace and 3;2 pulldown introduction. Enter HD..... When HD was first introduced by NHK it was in a 1035i analog form but that did not last long (I believe that the US required a digital HD broadcast standard) and of course computers were getting faster and faster.. so now we have a whole bunch of HD fromats based on either 1080 or 720 lines and in 24, 25, and 30 fps both progressive and interlaced I think HDCAM and D5 were the first two formats to offer 24p recording to tape. With all of the digital standards and post production manipulations available and the growth of a wide range of HD codecs the lines have blurred considerably. I know that you wanted to make a 24p SD DVD I know that this is supported in newer players (not sure about full backwards compatibility with older players) I would say that even if you could get a 24P SD recording on disk a real time de-interlacing "box" would be less than ideal and even the newest telecine like a Cintel DSX or Spirit 4K (both of which work from SD to HD or 2K or 4K data) would be outputting old interlaced SD when run in Ntsc or Pal...Doing a pulldown removal and then a De-Interlacing in Shake or After Effects will get you the best possible result for a 24p dvd it may just take an overnight render... Hope this helps and I think this long winded post is technically accurate... :rolleyes: -Rob-

I know it is counterintuitive but from a lab perspective it is more difficult to deal with B+W chemistry. Silver reclamation with reversal is much more difficult than with ECN because you have to tank the bleach and add alum to separate the silver for reclamation where ecn the silver recovery system runs directly on the tank. Also for some places with lower volumes of B+W the machines do not run as often etc. etc. Also using environmentally friendly reversal bleach (not chromium based) is more labor intensive due to the tendency of the bleach to go bad... there are other labor issues involved but running b+w properly is costly..... -Rob-

I did this recently with a eiki 16mm projector and about a 20' loop which was just fed out the back of the projector to a rewind with a reel on it, this is a common way to make a loop of varying lengths, I know of a few people who have done this across a room for a longer loop length.... -Rob-

I think that the new stock is probably similar or better than what you would get from a 1 stop push of xx18 I loaded some 35 and I am going to shoot some with my eyemo over the weekend all my glass is slow for that cam (3 - 3.5) so it will be interesting to see what it can dig out in low light..I would say a finer grain stock with 2 more stops of latitude is a bit more than a marketing ploy.... As to bayer sensor color cameras....they will all have their own look but even the Dalsa (with probably the most latitude of any D-cine cam) will probably not be able to match the newer stocks for latitude.. you could also use a bayer camera to it's best properties by controlling contrast if you wanted to. There are going to be more and more bayer cams and they theoretically will get better to some degree... -Rob- -Rob-

Peter Miller is a disturbed madman you should see some of the other stuff he has sent in to the lab from time to time.... I think he is in europe now with his own b+w lab setup in the house... -Rob-

We have some 16mm and 35mm of the new 500t right now for tests, supposedly iti's another stop on each end and a finer grain structure... -Rob-

Just a guess but I know allot of this kind of work is 35mm scanned to 2k on a Arriscan for finishing... then out to HD/SD for delivery. -Rob-

E6 is the only process we do not run at Cinelab, we send all of the 8mm and 16mm E6 we get in to Dwaines in Parsons, KS (www.k14movies.com) they do a superior job and are underpriced for the service (right now :lol: ) and they are the last K40 lab in the world too... -Rob-

A good alternative would be to have a "flat" best light transfer done to D5 (for HD) or Digi-Beta (for SD) and then when you finish your edit bring the master tape back to your colorist for a Tape-to-Tape final color finish. Less cost for your producer and a proper color session for you.... -Rob-

Looks like a loop problem to me, be careful with photoshop-ing as you can go fix every frame and then find the fixes are visible, if you make files of the shots you could contact a post house with a restoration system (like MTI, etc.) could fix this pretty easily and it might not cost much.. -Rob-

I think Dwaines in Parsons Ks, USA may be the only place running Kodachrome anymore, correct me if I am wrong. Nice people good work www.k14movies.com -Rob-

Helps to be in decent shape (if nobody's said it) all film people are part sherpa, right? schlepping heavy gear around is a hazing ritual in this business. It's fun though :lol: -Rob-

I have looked into this pretty extensively as we do allot of disk xfer at cinelab, I have a copy of Scopebox which will take timecode in (LTC through a horita box over 422) but does not act as a deck, I have thought of getting a DPS reality system online as it has deck emulation which is very good but I believe it is only 8bit (SDI) for SD. We currently do "free run" recording to SD 10bit over a decklink card all of these recordings are for video finish. We have allot of customers who either do 16, S16 or 35mm SD dailies with keycode they are all either Dvcam, BetaSP or sometimes D-Beta (sometimes a clean and a burnin tape simul) it is really not worth it to try to make film matchback from SD disk recordings, just go to tape, all of the better solutions are for HD or better files and (like Clipster, Blurfish444, etc.) are priced appropriately or maybe as much or more than the URSA you got. -Rob-

Any "modern" telecine from Cintel or Thompson and maybe Sony (includes Mk3, Ursa, Millenium, DSX, etc. Cintel's with metaspeed or Shadow, Spirit Hd, 2K, 4K, not sure about Vialta) can transfer techniscope to SD or HD for SD transfers with keycode you will need to be using a newer Aaton or Everetz keycode reader which understands 2-perf. -Rob-

I operated on a indie S16 picture based out of LA this summer (in Massachusetts) and the budget was fairly low, there were several actors who were up and coming (I saw the lead actress on a ABC primetime network show last week) I think there are a good deal of working actors that get smaller parts in big budget productions who do indie work to show their talent, and that this crosses over to the Director/DP Producer, etc. and can be a work to see your work and get into bigger jobs. I am shooting a feature (in NY/NJ) which has 4 actors who have had various parts on tv and in studio features this is my first full feature picture as DP (and co producer) I do not expect to make money back on the project but I think it will get seen and maybe go to festivals which will help getting other projects made, or at least that is what I think! The above mentioned both have certain "hooks" with the first being a romantic comedy and the second having an interesting mix of SVN :rolleyes: etc. I think as you go money people will ask what you have done and building a portfolio of quality projects is a way to make a investor comfortable with giving you loot. -Rob-

National (www.nationalboston.com) has a Shadow and does disk transfers and Finish (www.finishedit.com) has a ArriScan. -Rob-

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-

Should work with 200' in a 400' mag with no problems. -Rob-

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-

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-

I would take a model 2 for my LTR.. -Rob-

Hi Conrad, Magno is gone I would think that you will get the best deal/attention from either us (cinelab) or colorlab... -Rob-

We get allot of hi-con shot for non-title purposes it's cheap and certainly has great blacks and contrast.... -Rob-