Patrick Cooper

Just wondering if anyone knew a way to advance a film frame by frame in an Elmo ST-180 projector? And if so, would the shutter blades move accordingly, just like when it's running at 18 / 24fps? For example, when a frame lands in the gate, after advancing the film frame by frame, would the shutter be completely out of the way? Yes, I know that if the original globe was still in place, the film would be burnt. I'm thinking of replacing the lamp with an extremely low wattage light source.

The lens adapter has nothing to do with the crop factor. When mounting a lens designed for a larger format to a camera that utilises a smaller format, there will always be a crop factor. The crop factor will be more extreme if you mount a lens that was intended for 35mm format. Nevertheless, the angle of view will be the same if you mount lenses with the same focal length, regardless of what format those lenses were designed for. For example, a 50mm lens for super 8, a 50mm lens for 16mm format and a 50mm lens for 35mm format will all have pretty much the same angle of view when mounted on the Nalcom. Of course I doubt that a 50mm super 8 prime lens ever existed - that previous sentence was just for illustrative purposes. However, if you mounted a super 8 zoom lens to the Nalcom (if such an adapter exists) and set the zoom ring to the 50mm setting, then once again you would get more or less the same angle of view as 50mm lenses that were designed for larger formats. By the way, I once picked up a Nalcom camera at a camera fair once but haven't seen it in years - no idea what happened to it. I believe there was an underwater lens that was designed for it. That's right - the camera body stays dry above the surface while the physically long water proof lens protrudes into the water. What a neat idea.

Thanks!

Okay the trailer is up. This is the first time that Ive made a film trailer so I hope I did okay.

I realise now that I misinterpreted the stats. I thought all those loads and views were for one particular video but apparently, there for all of my videos. I'm finding the stats for individual videos on Vimeo really limiting. For example, whereas I can see the nationalities of people who have loaded and / or viewed my videos hollistically, I cannot find the same specific stats on individual videos.....not much more than the number of views. I would like to know which country has viewed which video.

Congrats Richard on getting a theatrical release for this movie. I think all that African scenery and wildlife deserve to be seen on the big screen. I wish I could see it on the big screen too but I'll have to settle for the dvd instead.

It's always challenging manually focusing with wide angle lenses (especially super wide ones like fisheyes) due to them having so much depth of field. Yea as you've noticed, there's not going to be much of a visible difference in the viewfinder when you rotate the focus ring. I find focusing aids really handy in these situations. For example, on my old manual 35mm still SLRs, I'd use the split image microprism in the viewfinder. And with my digital M4/3 camera, i can digitally zoom in to the picture for more accurate focusing. Of course with the K3, you don't really have either of these options. The only thing you can do is rely on those distance markings on the focus ring like Jonathan suggested. By the way, Ive owned both the K3 and the Peleng 8mm but I never had the chance to use them together. That would indeed be a fun combination!

Thankyou Brian. That's a good tip about the rental value. To work out the rental value, I guess it would be something like 15 - 20% of the purchase price?

Ive just completed a short film and giving a dollar figure to the equipment budget is not really straight forward. During the production phase, I used a lot of equipment that I already had in my possession. For example some of the things I had bought several years ago and other things I bought decades ago - for example some of the lenses used in the film. Should they be included in the budget? Or only things that were bought specifically for shooting material for the film? Basically, I want to give a more or less honest answer to the question: "What was your film's budget?"

Ah cool. So you can keep the same url? I'll have to give that a try. There's another copy of the film (with a different link) that Ive submitted to two other film festivals - one in the UK and one in Canada. Though I'm finding the stats on Vimeo a bit puzzling. Supposedly, there have been three views of my film in the UK (which might be a good sign) but 0 loads. Strange how a video can be played without loading the video playback page and to do that three times as well. It's also indicating a number of loads in the US instead of Canada but 0 plays. I note that there were 9 loads in the US in a single day and one load the day after. Seems strange that someone (or alternatively a group of people) would load the video playback page 9 times in the same day but not play the actual video. Or perhaps they just had technical problems. Nevertheless, it's early days anyway. It hasn't been online for very long.

Btw, there was certainly some very surreal and striking imagery later in the film after the Japanese surrender that really stuck with me. For example the parachutes containing supplies falling from the sky. And that place that almost seemed like a graveyard for assorted goods and furniture. And I immediately recognised the car there (from earlier in the film) when a close up of the bird decoration on the bonnet was shown. The night scene at that same location was very well executed - very atmospheric.

Watching Empire Of The Sun at the cinema back in the 80s was a great experience. A few times since Ive seen it on tv and although still a good watch, it loses so much impact. I think it's one of those movies that really needs to be seen on the big screen to fully appreciate it. Oh another thing I should add about my own experiences with this film which some people might find amusing. One day (in the 80s), I was planning on going to see a movie and I was trying to decide which one to watch. I was flicking through the newspaper to see what films were currently showing. I came across the session times for Empire Of The Sun and this was a movie that I had never heard of before. And thus I knew absolutely nothing about it. Seeing that it was directed by Steven Spielberg, who is well known for sci-fi (and also the fact that the title sort of sounds sci-fi - at least to me) I assumed that it was going to be a science fiction film. And I like science fictions in general and I really admire Spielberg's work so it was a deal breaker for me. I chose this film. So I rocked up at the cinema, expecting to watch a science fiction film but I was not disappointed in the least. It turned out to be a very moving historical movie (albeit with fictional characters and plot) and beautiful and memorable imagery.

By the way, do you recommend buying insurance / protection with FilmFreeway just in case? I see that it only costs a few dollars.

Thankyou both of you. Michael, wow that's quite an eye opener. Yea I could see how some festivals would be like that - only interested in the submission fees to keep the festival running. By the way, only after Ive uploaded and submitted my film through FilmFreeway (with Vimeo links) did I discover a fault. There's a little bit of shakiness in a time lapse shot likely due to using a cheap light weight tripod. Strangely, Ive never noticed it before while watching the film and Ive viewed it heaps of times. I would like to fix the issue and reupload the film. Replacing the link in the main form on FilmFreeway seems quite straight forward. However, the link has also been added to a cover letter within FilmFreeway and I don't know how I can get access to that and edit that. Ive contacted FF - asking how to do this. Hopefully they'll get back to me soon.

Somewhere I do have a photo (likely in a magazine stashed some place) of a stormtrooper sitting on a giant green lizard (complete with saddle) from the original 1977 SW film. In this photo, the lizard wasn't rearing up or anything - it was just standing there. It was a full body shot (tightly framed) and you could see a lot of detail in the lizard. And to be honest, it looked pretty damn impressive. Certainly realistic. However, as has been noted here, I'm betting that it's movements may not have been all that good. Oh well it looked great in stills. By the way, Ive thought of another example of a misleading trailer. However, on this occasion, it's not a case of footage not appearing in the finished film. It's about manipulating a shot so that it appears differently to what you see in the film. The movie is one of those alien Predator films (one of the relatively recent ones.) As people who have seen these films will know, the Predators use some kind of laser sights to aim precisely at the targets they're hunting. In the trailer, there is a shot where a small group of humans are greeted with a huge number of laser sights sweeping all over them, suggesting a large number of Predators are aiming their weapons at them. I admit that I haven't seen the movie but people who have seen it say that this same shot has less than a few laser sights trained on the people (perhaps only one or two beams of light.) And consequently, the level of threat is decreased. Very deceptive trailer indeed.

That's what I figured - at least with big productions. I also have a query regarding say an independent filmmaker supplying a film and it's trailer to a film festival. Suppose there was just one very brief shot featured in the trailer that did not appear in the film (and it is not misleading) - would festivals generally be forgivable of that?

I have great memories of Tom Baker and his super long scarf. Definitely one of the best Doctors. And the stories that he was in (during that particular time period) were so well written and imaginative. Very atmospheric too. Though you have to laugh at the cheap props at times lol.

It's not overly common but once in a while there are film trailers that may include a bit of footage that is not seen in the film itself. There may or may not be legitimate reasons why this is done. And obviously, the reasons would vary on a case by case basis. Has anyone here done such a thing with good, legitimate reasons? Or do you think it's deceptive?

Thanks for the good words! It's about time I mentioned the name of the film - Island Odyssey. It was all shot on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. I admit it seems odd making a trailer for an 8 minute film but those are the rules set by some of the festivals that I'll be submitting to. Basically they require a trailer, regardless of the length of the film.

These are two frame grabs from the film. I mostly used still photography lenses for the shooting - a mix of modern AF lenses and old manual Canon FD lenses - fitted to Panasonic Micro 4/3 camera bodies. Also a modern but fully manual Samyang 12mm f2 which came in handy for the starry night imagery posted above. I'm just starting to work on a trailer and I hope to have that up before too long.

I had the VHS tape of Dante's Peak which had some very interesting bonus content that was shown after the main feature - basically a bts doco. Ive also got a TB snowboarding tape which has a little surfing film that plays after the main film finishes.

I'm noticing that a lot of film festivals allow people to submit their films via something called FilmFreeway. How does it actually work? I assume it's some sort of online delivery system. Ive tried looking online and there's not a lot of information on how it works. Even FilmFreeway's own website is quite vague when it comes to explanations. I have heard that it can be used in conjunction with Vimeo links. How is this done exactly?

A great thing about negative film is that it generally has very good exposure latitude - particularly in regards to overexposure. This might seem a little off topic but a few years ago, I was shooting a group of people at night on negative stills film with a 35mm manual SLR. The people were illuminated by an artificial light source and I was doing tripod-mounted time exposures. When I got the prints back, it looked like my exposures were too long. My subjects looked extremely overexposed. Most of their limbs were burnt out to pure white (clipped highlights.) There was very little colour, very little detail - they were mostly just white. I took the film to another lab, showed them one of the prints and asked if they could get more detail out of the image. I was amazed at what they were able to recover. No more blown out / overexposed subjects. All the colour and detail had been restored. In other words, I saw colour where I had not seen colour before. The resulting image looked perfect. However, to be honest, I'm not sure if that was a recovery job or simply the fact that my exposures were fine and that the first lab stuffed up the printing. I can't even remember what the negatives looked like.

Ah nice find. I should really get a graduated ND filter myself one day for landscape work. Hope the taping worked out. I was just about to use the tape method but then the adapter ring finally arrived. Certainly makes things nice and simple.

Ah....what would be some other options for making the file available online? Ive tried Dropbox just once (to upload a video) and the upload failed. I tried multiple times with the same result. Would Google Drive be viable? I'm yet to try that one.