Troy Warr

There wouldn't be any reason to do that... the amount of detail present in an average Super-8 frame is barely enough to saturate an NTSC/PAL frame. Past that you're not getting anything out of the higher resolution scan. 16mm has more detail, but not a ton - probably OK up to 720p or maybe 1080i/1080p. Keep in mind that even major motion pictures shot in 35mm are often scanned at "only" 2K (just a tad higher resolution than 1080p) for DI or visual effects, and that looks great - generally not too much detail lost, if any.

Hieronymus Bosch?

When I saw the topic I immediately thought "Repo Man" - funny that it's what spurred the thread. That's definitely one of my favorite weird movies. I'm too young to have seen it when it first came out, but I was fortunate enough to see it for the first time on the big screen in college. I bought the special edition DVD (the one that comes in the license plate tin) and watch it at least 2-3 times a year. As for the glowing car, according to the DVD commentary they did only use luminescent paint, no special effects. I'm not sure if I believe that entirely, but that was straight from Alex Cox's mouth. He also talked about how the John Wayne story from Miller was taken nearly word-for-word from a friend of his (Cox), who claims to have actually installed two-way mirrors at his home in Brentwood, and saw him come the door in a dress.

7.2x actually - still pretty severe unless you're looking for that kind of extreme telephoto.

I couldn't find a website anywhere (almost looks like they don't have one anymore), but it looks like their official name is "Norms Studio Equipment" and their phone number is (818) 766-6676. You might just give them a call and I'm sure they could tell you the website if there still is one - and while you've got them on the phone, you might want to recommend some SEO. ;)

I believe that it was on the blog for the movie Spoon, shot with a prototype Silicon Imaging SI-2K (can't remember the name of the blog) that they put a camera operator on a furniture dolly (the upright kind that looks like a tall letter "L" with large wheels at the bottom back), leaned him back and wheeled him around. It seemed to be a pretty agile setup, but I would think that you'd need someone relatively strong to do the maneuvering, both the keep the operator steady and to prevent accidentally dropping him, which could be painful. Those are usually well under $50 at Home Depot, or you can rent them from U-haul for about $7-8/day.

While that's true to some degree, I'm not sure that it's entirely applicable if you're going to be shooting exclusively B&W. A 3-CCD camcorder will give you considerably more accurate chroma information because each pixel is sampled for red, green, and blue separately, rather than being interpolated using a Bayer pattern, for example. However, in converting to B&W, you're essentially throwing most of that information out. In that sense, a 1-CCD camcorder should record sufficient luminance information for your purposes. I suppose that two largest considerations you should make are: Will you be shooting any color footage ever? If so, a 3-CCD camcorder will give you maximum benefit there. How will you convert to grayscale - through a simple desaturation, or will you be using a channel mixer or equivalent tool to adjust color channels independently during the conversion? If you're planning on shooting B&W only and using a simple desaturation process (i.e. discarding all chroma information), I'd venture to say that a 3-CCD camcorder will give you only marginal additional benefits, all other things being equal (but keep in mind that 3-CCD camcorders often offer additional pro-oriented features that 1-CCD camcorders do not, albeit at a higher price). In other words, a 3-CCD camera will give you a more accurate picture, even after removing all chroma information, because each pixel was more accurately sampled for that chroma and will therefore retain appropriate luminance information after desaturation. But if you're not planning on taking advantage of that extra luminance accuracy, I don't think it's worth the extra money for a 3-CCD camcorder.

28 Days Later was shot on a Canon XL-1S and printed on 35mm film. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/technical Just to clarify, silent and MOS mean the same thing. I'd assume Chuck meant to ask "sound or MOS." In your price range I'd recommend against film, with the exception of Super-8. You might want to look at something like a used Canon GL-1 (similar look to the XL-1S, still a moderately professional feel without the cost and added complexity of the XL-1S). If you do some searching on eBay, Craig's List, etc., you should be able to find someone selling an old GL-1 with extras (wide- and/or tele-conversion lenses, sound equipment, extra batteries, etc.) within your price range. You might try to limit yourself to $1750-2000 for the camera kit so that you'll have a bit of extra money for lighting equipment, tapes, and other expenses. This question comes up very often so you might also search this forum for other threads with a similar budget. Also don't forget that the camera is just a small part of the package; you'll need editing equipment (a PC with editing software in this case), something to record decent sound (the on-camera mic won't cut it in most situations), lights, tripod, filters, cast, crew, food, transportation, etc.

If you're shooting in a studio, you might consider buying/renting a couple of HDV cameras with HDMI-out, and plugging in to a central PC with a pair of Blackmagic Intensity cards. Using the included On-Air software: http://blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/on-air/ you'll be able to bypass the in-camera MPEG-2 compression to record direct-to-disk with the codec of your choice. That would be a nice bump up in quality, very affordable ($500 for the pair of PCI cards), and would also give you some software for live mixing.

Hi Ernie, As you probably know, <$300 won't get you very far toward anything but a Super-8 camera. In the 16mm world, you might try hunting for a deal on a Krasnogorsk K-3 or a non-reflex Bolex. The former is a Russian camera that you can actually find brand new for about that price (at least I did several years ago) - albeit with some inherent problems, even straight from the factory. They tend to scratch film and can have some other mechanical maladies. Several companies and individuals used to (and likely still do) offer overhauls, but after parts & labor, those often come out to more than you paid for the camera. You might either try finding a used overhauled one (or at least a well-maintained, problem-free one from a trusted seller), or, if you're feeling lucky, buy a new one and hope it doesn't scratch your film. I bought a non-reflex Bolex model a while back for around $200, and while it was kludgy to shoot with (parallax error, aging parts, some odd design elements), it did a decent job. If it had broken down at some point, I would have been out of luck, but fortunately those things are built like tanks. I would recommend finding one that comes with a lens(es) so that you don't have to hunt those down separately. As with all used cameras, be sure that the owner has run a roll through it *recently* to confirm that it's working properly. Best of luck!

Hi Robert, The best ways to achieve a shallow DOF look with the equipment that you have are: - Shoot at a wide aperture - f/1.8, f/2.0, etc. - Back up and zoom in on your subject(s). This will reduce the apparent DOF - more about that here. However, as you probably have experienced, that will only get you so far on a small-CCD video camera. When you talk about attaching lenses, I think you're probably referring to DOF adapters. These work by focusing the image of a 35mm SLR lens onto a (usually spinning) ground glass, then filming that image with your video camera. You lose a stop or two of light, but you get the benefits of 35mm depth of field properties. Most of these adapters run at least $700-800, not including SLR lens(es), so a manufactured solution might be a bit out of your price range (although I'm not sure what the Australian dollar conversion rate is); however, numerous DIY solutions exist and are documented online. Do some searching for something like "DIY DOF adapter" or "homemade depth of field adapter" and you should get some results. I've seen some write-ups where people have made them for as little as $50 in parts. As for lenses, you can find a lot of cheap, used, high-quality 35mm SLR lenses from places like KEH.com and eBay.com. Look for Pentax screw-mount (m42) or K-mount, Canon FD, or Nikon AI or AI-S lenses, as these will generally have an aperture ring that will allow you to manually adjust the aperture. Best of luck!

Nizos make good travel cameras because they're robust (most, if not all, have a metal body), and many of them have folding handles that help to keep them very compact. I had a Nizo 116 that I was very happy with, and I didn't hesitate to pack it in a suitcase or travel bag, as it always held up very well. Most have great German-designed glass, and the 116 at least is about as compact as you can make a Super-8 camera with a useful zoom lens.

Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter have to be my two favorite examples; Christopher Walken getting choked up in the military hospital when the nurse asks about his parents, and De Niro finally reuniting with Christopher Walken before the final Russian roulette scene - not to mention everyone's performances in the POW scenes. Also, Jim Caviezel in The Thin Red Line - and apparently he wasn't even intended to be a major character in the film, but was edited as such in post.

I agree - that was the only critique that came to my mind. The cinematography is beautiful, the music is interesting and matches perfectly, and the length feels right. I love the "peel-back" to reveal the credits at the end, too. My only suggestion would be make the video larger (maybe 2-4x its current size), possible offering a small and large version for dial-up vs. broadband. Great work!

Jim, not that my opinion should matter all that much to you - I'll probably never be a customer simply due to lack of funds - but I have to agree with David on this one. I think he's summed it up well, as he so often does. I've followed the Red project for months now out of interest in the project and its implications for the motion picture industry. I love the fact that glimpses of the camera's development have been doled out bit by bit, sustaining a high level of interest for quite some time. I think that reservation holders must feel privileged to see their cameras designed and built from scratch in front of their eyes, especially when they offered feedback and suggestions that were actually incorporated. So, maybe I'm missing something, maybe I haven't read all of the right threads, maybe I'm late to the party, or maybe it's just me - but the overwhelming feeling that I get from Red as a company at this point is not that pleasant. It could just be a result of your team vigorously defending your project at every turn due to overwhelming skepticism - that seems to lend itself to a very unapproachable, tense quality surrounding the project, despite the boundaries that you're breaking and the trends that you'll probably set. I can't help but to think it would be so much more effective to bite your tongue and present the "I told you so" in the form of a finished camera that meets or beats everyone's expectations. Threads like this one certainly don't help my impression. I guess I just find it disconcerting that a self-made billionaire feels the need to provoke a conflict like this in an Internet forum. Like David said, most of the "anti-Red" arguments have been petty, and I feel they don't even deserve a response on your part. I find it admirable that you're so open and accessible in your professional pursuits - but conversely, I find it disturbing that you've been so quick to engage your random detractors on a personal, almost childish level.

A more precise question would be if it works with Final Cut Pro (assuming that's the editing software you end up with). The HVR-V1U embeds its 24p into a 60i video stream to record to tape, so there's a little bit of trickery there as far as recording format goes. I'd be surprised if it's not already (or at least soon) supported - you might check the Final Cut Pro website for info on that. The HVR-V1U looks pretty nice to me, too - I'm actually mulling over the idea of using it in conjunction with a Blackmagic Intensity card to bypass the in-camera HDV compression stage. Still, as others have mentioned, the Canon HX-A1 and the Panasonic AG-DVX100B (for SD) would be great options in that price range, as well. One important consideration is: what's your preferred output format? If it's not HDTV or film, you might want to step down a notch from HDV cameras and look around for an SD camera.

What's your budget and output format? What kind of project(s) are you planning to shoot?

That's for regular telecine - reverse telecine is quite a different animal and a *lot* more expensive. Here are some sample prices from DVFilm: http://www.dvfilm.com/specials.htm

I just saw on TV last night that Clooney has been under suspicion of leaking that video, and that he's offering $1 million to anyone who can prove it: http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index....27-9c991b2983a7

Hi Galen - My film career hasn't quite materialized - I'm sort of taking the scenic route. ;) After I left UT, I worked at Precision Camera for a few years, first in rentals & repairs, then buying/selling used equipment and eventually moved into retail sales. Then I moved even farther from film, moving to Redmond, WA to work on Xbox games for a couple of years. I've been back in Austin for the last year or two working as a freelance web developer and trying my best to kickstart a film career of some sort. Honestly, I sincerely hope that you're able to convince the RTF department to keep film production on track there at UT, and I wish you the best of luck. I'd like to think that at least my experience represented a low point in the school's history, and that students since then have had a better time. Who do you plan to submit your letter/petition to? My 2 cents, at least, would be to research the programs of some competing film schools to see what they're offering in film production. Douglas mentioned that USC is moving to digital, but I'd bet that plenty of renowned school are still using film, and hopefully that fact would help to pressure UT to stay inline with current trends. I think that just a show of solidarity alone should say something - after all, students are the University's customers, and if they're unanimous in their support for a particular area of study, I would hope that would motivate the department to do what they need to do to keep film alive. I was just there at entirely the wrong time, and after 2 years of getting my general credits out of the way and getting prepared for the much-hyped Intensive Production Sequence, I was admitted (along with only ~20 total students), but my hopes began to evaporate pretty quickly. For example, the producing class that I took was taught by a Hollywood hack who used to insult the class daily because we wanted to learn to produce interesting stuff, and didn't care to hear the teacher's constant stories about spoiled actors, blockbuster budgets and complaints about our "ivory tower" attitudes. I did really enjoy Bob Foshko's studio/TV production class - it was a lot of hard work but that was where the bulk of the value of my time there came from. PJ's a great guy and was one of the handful of people while I was at UT that really seemed to care, and have a passion for the art. He was never reluctant to offer advice, assistance, or instruction when he could. Thanks for saying hello for me - I'm glad to hear he's still doing a great job. CP-16s are fine cameras for learning, as far as I know. I never had the chance to use one (a Bolex Rex-5 w/sync motor was the best I ever got my hands on) but I believe they're still widely in use. I guess that may say something about the mentality of the department - i.e. that they're really stuck on digital - if they weren't interested in picking some up. I hope you do well after graduation - I can't speak from the perspective of a graduate, but I can say that I've learned the "golden rule" the hard way - just start shooting. If you can find a job related to the field, that's awesome - but if not, try to get a day job that doesn't sap all of your energy, and use your free time to work on your own films, volunteer on others' projects, and practice your craft. I firmly believe that a film school diploma is worthless unless you've really learned something and have a reel to back it up. Even then, networking is key to find the projects that are worth working on, and to get the crew that's worth working with.

If their undergraduate film program is still anything like it was around 2000, let it rot. I dropped out of UT Film School for exactly that reason. They didn't have any equipment for us to work with, the instructors were half-ass, and the hoops you had to jump through were ridiculous. I remember walking to Walgreens on the drag one Sunday afternoon to buy light bulbs for the "film editing room" that had burned out due to neglect. I also picked up some razor blades because all the ones they had supplied were bent, broken or rusted. I had to hurry back because my few-hour allotment for a 40's-vintage 16mm viewer (also completely busted, but with some practice you could get a little light out of it to slightly see what you were doing) was almost out, and then I couldn't use the edit room for a few days because the two working editing stations were booked solid. Tape-to-tape VHS linear editing was a lot of fun (and educational!), as was the time when a friend of mine in the business school offered to check out a decked-out XL-1 kit for me if I needed it. He just needed to show an ID at the check-out counter and it was his for two weeks. I usually had to wait two weeks to pick up a crappy Bolex non-reflex for a day or two. Best film program in the country! It was back then, too. Just ask Robert Rodriguez. Hey, tell PJ I said hello. He was one good TA, at least, and a nice guy.

Very cool, Cesar, that's promising information and good to know. The F-210c would certainly be ideal, but I think it might be a little out of my price range considering the other items and accessories that I'm planning to get with my budget. I'd love to be able to shoot 1080p24, but I'm realizing that it might make more sense to stick with 720p until I have proof of concept, and then maybe think of stepping things up a notch. Hopefully, by that point (maybe a couple of years) these cameras will be cheaper and/or more capable, and 1080p HDTV sets will be more common. I think I follow you on the bit depth math - so essentially, anything above 8-bit (i.e. 10-16) would double the data rate? So, I assume that there's not much reason to shoot 10, 12, or 14-bit, considering you're getting less dynamic range in the same amount of data.

It is about making artistic images and visual storytelling, but the less that your tools inhibit you (or conversely, the more freedom that they grant you), the better. Whether for you that means shooting film or digital is a personal preference, but I think that for the vast majority of people, the advantages of digital (instant feedback and results, cheaper footage, ease of post, etc.) would easily win out if (hypothetically) digital and film were eventually of equal quality.

Excellent! I'm very excited to see the 24fps footage, too. By the way - I was rooting around for more info on the F-145c, and I happened to come across this on an AVT data page: That chart seems to reflect the lesser scenario for max FPS calculations, actually being even a bit worse than what that engineer had suggested to you. I worked up a little chart of my own (below) that lists the specified max FPS as listed on the chart above, and what we would have calculated using our formula (considering full horizontal resolution of 1388, multiplied by vertical resolution, then divided into the 30 fps given by maximum resolution): Still, even with those reduced figures, it looks like it would be good news (at least for me - I don't know what your expectations or hopes are) in that I could shoot 2.35 ratio footage up to almost exactly 48fps for half-speed slow motion. If I need to go further I'd bet I could get good results from Twixtor, given that high quality, high frame rate footage to begin with (maybe up to 96fps?). On a different note, would the bit depth affect the frame rates that can be achieved, or does that not matter? I'm not too familiar with modern codecs - don't know what would be able to preserve the full 14bpp of the footage; let me know if you aren't able to track that down and maybe we can post the question in another thread. Thanks, Cesar!

Hi Cesar, Awesome - that sounds great! Thanks for letting me know. I'm very eager to see some stills and footage. I'll keep an eye on your forum tomorrow night. It may be a little early to ask - and you probably already know what I want to ask, anyway - but at some point (no rush at all) do you think you can make a short clip taken at the maximum frame rate for 1280x720px (I'm guessing it would be 8 bit?) at a "cinematic" shutter speed like 1/48? I would love to see that, to see how it handles motion, what the maximum slow-motion effect looks like, etc. I think that we're probably both interested in the same kind of applications/uses for the camera, and I'm eager to see maximum-quality footage to get a feel for the limits that the camera is capable of. If it's a large file and you're not able to host it, let me know and I can probably host it. Thanks so much, Cesar!