Paul Bruening

Weren't the cam and projector mechanically linked back in the H-wood hey days? Did that ever change to electronic sync or are all those old process set-ups still mechanical?

...plastic poker chips, too.

Also, Stevie, consider the psychological experience of differing formats (I mean on the big screen, here). Wider presentations use more of our peripheral vision. That makes a richer experience over the opposite format of 4:3. As well, wider formats require more eye tracking to keep up with screen content. These two aspects of wide screen make the movie more involving simply by requiring the brain to invest more effort. In a 4:3 image, rarely is there enough content variation vertically to justify the better vertical field of view. Even in 4:3 most information (subjects) will vary side-to-side. Since that's the case, widescreen gets more out of the normal composition and staging inherent to movies.

...groan. Good one!

I just checked Ebay. There are still loads of Pentax K1000's for sale. Why, back in my day, the K1000 was the student camera of choice. Cheap, reliable, all manual and quality far exceeding price.

The best thing about Bruce's camera is that it's quiet and ready to work. Paul Scaglione at Visual Products is working on a 2-perf movement for Arri BLs. I'd go with a quieter BL over an Arri III. The price on BLs is coming down in sales I've seen on Fleabay.

It kinda' sounds like a bum connector or wire. Or is your connecting wire hanging over something that could add that noise? Sometimes it's a little thing.

Anything that you can get lenses for. Nikon's a good way to go. Ebay has plenty of bodies and lenses. An F3 would serve you the rest of your life. I love my FM2.

Congratulations, Tom. Look forward to seeing it.

We've entertained the idea of 1-perf pulldown in an anamorphic thread, here, before. It would yield a framing of 1:4.78 in flat. The framing in On a Tuesday looked fine. I assume since it was composed for that, it seemed natural to view it that way. It makes you wonder why more conventions like that aren't broken given that the internet doesn't care what you frame in.

I had it converted from 4-perf to 2-perf by Bruce "G'day" McNaughton at Aranda Film Group (http://www.arandafilm.com.au/) in Australia. No one in the USA would touch it. It may be the only 2-perf Mitchell GC on the planet. I got it because it had the Fries Engineering mirror reflex conversion. I didn't know how hard it was to convert until I had already bought it. You are correct about the weight factor. Everything Mitchell is over-engineered and heavy. I just looked up the 2709 on www.cinematographers.nl. I didn't know B&H made that camera until 1957. Nor did I know that 1,240 or more were made. If there were so many, why don't we see more of them on the market?

Techniscope's cheaper than 16mm. It's cheaper than Super 8. S16 cost per frame= $0.01325 2-perf, 35mm cost per frame= $0.00625 Techniscope is half the cost of S16 and has much more real estate.

This is weird. My own post just gave me an idea. If you had that kind of framing, you'd have to cut between a subject's mouth and eyes to keep up with their presentations. In effect, their own eyes would be the cut-away from their mouth and spoken words. That opens up a whole new pattern for editing: The self-cut-away. I believe that I can still use that technique in the Techniscope framing in God Bites Man.

WhackoScope: Compose that!

Have you tried a clipboard filter in post? A buzz is a pretty clear and distinct noise that won't take out too much signal on a filtering. If it makes an inverse buzz after filtering (buzz frequency holes in the signal) you can double (offset) the audio slightly to fill in the holes enough. ...turd polisher's trick.

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Cool dream. My first film teacher, Bob Osterling, would ask us often, "What kind of day is it?" What he was asking was what f-stop was the light outside? His standard was Plus-X. He figured if we could judge that, we could adjust for anything and get by without meters in daylight... and we did.

I like that you have a B&H 2709. A piece of history still making history. This will explain it, Rioux: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=41851

I had a couple of problems to solve. All I had was old Mitchell FF, matte box and rods systems. Well, Mitchell stuff was made to screw onto the front of the camera and not move from there. All Mitchell lenses had focus gears in the same distance from the lens mount. My Nikon lenses had their focus gears all distances from the flange. Plus, longer Nikon lenses are pretty long and definitely heavy. Too heavy for the Nikon's lens mount, therefore, requiring support. This is my solution: It's made of steel to handle significant lens and gear weights. It mounts firmly to the existing 35R3 mount points. It uses Mitchell FF, matte box and rods system. It has an outrigger for mounting the LCD monitor. It has long lens support. It has telescopic adjustment to place the FF drive gears at any Nikon lens length and barrel (gear) width. Makes variances in FF and matte box distances doable. #9 and 10 are pics of Frankenmitchell all decked out with long lens, lens control equipment, wireless playback receiver, XL2 tap and LCD monitor. This is pretty much the rig I'm shooting God Bites Man with (not just this lens, of course).

Oh, I see. I thought you meant camcorder, not a recorder. I breezed through your post too quickly. Could you record straight to your computer's hard drive since the telecine unit has the camera already?

It has big, 8" pneumatic casters so I can jump curbs and go over rough terrains without rattling everything out of adjustment. The uprights are drop-down, lock-down stabilizers. It's in its extended setting for best stability (bigger footprint). It has a compressed setting for getting through doorways. Most importantly, it is made of steel and can handle the kind of weights involved with gear heads, blimps and Mitchells. Recently, I've really enjoyed using those hammered paint finish spray paints. This one's in hammered black.

"But everyone knows green aliens are a myth. Real aliens are gray. Or 3-foot tall walking teddy-bears." Joking aside, I am putting a couple of CGI Grays in this production as brief cut-aways.

Jeez, guys. Someone, at least, recognize my bad joke.

I'm assuming you've checked with Clive Tobin on this. But, on the off chance you haven't: http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/ It's not just the camera that's the issue. I suspect it will boil more down to the lensing.