Nathan D. Lee

You are hardly a days shipping from Seattle. Forde Motion Picture Labs does just about everything. They subcontract Telecine to Flying Spot but they do great work. I have some 64t in with them now. www.fordlabs.com Its only $13 (US) a roll there.

You may already be doing this but one thing that makes video appear very harsh is the blowouts in the highlights, particularly when shooting outdoors. It is a good idea to keep an ND filter or two on hand, beyond the cameras built in filters, so as to keep you shot in the lenses f-stop range. The internal electronics will deal much more naturally with the image that way. Also a polarizer can help take away a lot of glare that video does not do so well with. Just some tips on the "harshness" of the image. Nathan

Wow, those look great. I have heard great things about flying spot. They are pricey but the results are stellar. The lens also does make a difference. It is too bad that so many super 8 cameras have such junky lenses glued to them. Side note: I have always thought that Vision2 200t was the best looking vision stock on S8, the the tri & plus X looked good as well.

I say take it one project at a time. If you have a music video S8 might work or might be entirely wrong. For your budgets DV might work great, or possibly DV intercut with s8 or 16. What i am saying is that it all depends on your subject matter and what look and feel you want to achieve and can achieve based on your budget. For general learning purposes i say just call up Kodak and order serveral rolls of s8 negative and start shooting. Make a short story up or just shoot tests. You will learn so much from this few hundred dollars and then you will be better qualified to make a call when a short or music video comes along. There is no one answer, just start shooting, and experimenting you will learn more than can be answered in any forum. 16 is great stuff and again will produce a very different visual reasult, but an entire music video in 16 for under 500 is a little close.

I just saw "Grizzly Man" the new documentary by Werner Herzog about the life of Timothy Treadwell, at the Seattle International Film Festival. It was extreamly interesting and a little long. 90% of it was shot on miniDV but it was the best transfer of dv to 35mm i have ever seen. I was sitting a ways back in the theater but the 35mm print looked fantastic i thought, particularly since it looked like most of it was shot in auto mode (Tim Treadwell not being a cinematographer) Does anyone know where the post work was done for this film, who did the film out and perhaps what workflow went into the finnal release print from the video origional? Thanks, Nathan

Check out the May issue of American Cinematographer, there is a lengthy article on the whole film, locations, lighting, post, stages, etc... www.theasc.com

I have about 500ft of regular 8 film I would like transferred to DV or DVCam and am finding it difficult to do so. I know Pro8 does it, but I just cant afford that, then I come across Debenham Media Group, http://3516.com/index.html They claim to be able to do it for under half the price and on a Rank which would be much better than filmchain as i understand it. I understand that this is only a one light scenario but it also doesn?t seem that bad considering that my only other option would be doing a film chain at Pro Image in Seattle for $85 which I know isn?t to great an option. Does anyone have experience with this place? I really don?t want o break the $150 mark if possible and Flying Spot doesn?t do regular 8. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I just caught the tail end of the NBC "Mork and Mindy Un-authorized biography" and was suprised at how much grain i could see on standard definition. It wasnt destracting and very much fit the period. I was just wondering if anyone know the details of it, format, films, workflow? I am guessing 16mm

Could someone brefly explain the diferecenes between MiniDV and DvCam. Thanks. Nathan

Just off hand, The OC on Fox is shot in S16 witha mix of Vission 200T and Vision2 500T. If you can watch it in hidef.

Here is the article from American Cinematographer on 28 Days Later. http://www.theasc.com/magazine/july03/sub/index.html REading and watching always helps me. Also as far as it looking softer on DVD; it is most likely because the DVD was made from the finnished film not from the digital files. This is an educated guess. It is what they did with the Blair Witch project DVD. The video went to film, then the whole thing was scanned for the dvd, it does soften the image a bit. Anyway hope this helps. Nathan

Right now i dont have the time to explain the ins and outs of Anamorphic. But for many of these questions you might want to pick up a copy of the American Cinematographers Manual. It has the total low down on every format, framing, methods, cropping, peforations etc... If you cant buy one now you might be able to find an older copy around or in a library. it is a great resource to have.

Rank Cintel Turbo II telecine with Digiscan IV, daVinci color corrector . That is a cut and paste off Alpha Cine's web page, which is where i had it done. Note: It doesnt look bad on your old standard def tv, but anything with real resolution it is really noticable.

Here is a frame grab from my most recent short, and my first time shooting on 16mm film. I went the really cheap route because i had never shot on film before. In carefully analyzing the images i captured i have found as i am sure you can see the image to have an overall soft quality to it. Specifically along sharp edges of her clothes and hair. Its not that i think it looks terrible but i have compared it to some MiniDV footage and the DV footage shot with an ol single chip camera has sharper edges and detail, particularly in hair. Here are the full specs on what you are looking at. Stock: Fuji 64D Camera: Eclair ACL II with a 10-150mm Angenieux lens Standard 16mm This frame was somewhere around f8 as i recall. (it was lat Aug) There was one .3 ND filter on the lens 24fps The telecine was done directly to MiniDV This frame has not been color corrected beyond the telecine. I am guessing the culprit of the lack of clarity woudl be either the lens or the fact that i went right to DV, but i know that DV can support the detail so i do not know. If i went to something a little higher like DVCam if that would ahve made much difference. Anyway i would appreciate any thoughts on the subject and ic an post more frame grabs (one of the slate, with lines) later. Let me know. Maybe my focus is just off. But most of it looks about like this.

According to this ebay ad 2200 feet of film is going for about $300. Two years old in a fridge all still sealed. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...3876835284&rd=1 Hmm, i dont know what to think of this but thought i would pass it along to you all. I dont know about how well 2 year old film will hold up, but to be honest i would buy this if i had the cash right now. It would at least be fun to experiment with some little short or something with it. Hope someone gets it.

I just recently finnished my first film and did somewhat of the same situation. I did a clean pass onto MiniDV and then had them do a second pass witht he same color adjustment marks with the key code. It was only 400ft and i was able to keep under my half hour minimum. But just tell the house you are working with that yo are new and ask tons of questions. Bottom line, if you are never going back to film do not worry about it. If you are, talk a lot to the your post house. Good luck!

I recomend getting as close as you can in the transfer. That way the tape will have more range near your desired mark. This is most helpfull in extream color changin cases. So get it close in transfer and finess it on your PC. That is what i did for my last film. And i learned a lot.

Uh, Okay lets just stop that here. The point is you can learn a lot in a lot of places, great suggestions have been made. Give them a shot and dont let negativity play a roll in your progress. Great colorists are needed for, yes, a detail oriented, demanding job. Good luck with it!

I dont know of any schools. But my best recommendation would be to become good freinds with a colorist and tell him you want to learn. I am in Seattle and recently spent the evening with the night colorist at Modern Digital, Bill Lord. They let me come on a light work night and he pretty much taught me for 6 hours. I also got to try my hand at the Davinci and mess around with some S16 stock. It was a wonderfull expirience and i am sure there are many people around the globe that will treat you likewise. Just pop in and let them know! It never hurts to ask.

You should check out Fujifilm's website. You can request a free DVD and info packet on all of their motion picture films. On one DVD there are several stocks tested. Most show the same stock in both 35 and 16 in a variaty of production situations back to back. Also each short and test has a running comentary by the DP and you get a full data sheet on each film and each shot, (i.e. Lens, apature, frame-rate and exposure data all over the screen). It is one of the most helpfull DVDs i have as far as learning and seeing differences. I recomend it for eveyone. I would love if Kodak did the same. http://www.fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/MPDemoReel.jsp

Has anyone here used Pro Image in Seattle for film stransfers. Their prices seem hard to beat but i am wondering about their quality. I generally do all my 16mm at AlphaCine but they do not do Super 8 which i am wanting to try. Let me know.

Film simply has a much wider exposure lattitude. There is far more information on a film neg than on video. Film is simply more plyable. This is why pretty much all theatrically distributed films and even most TV shows are still shot on film. It has a range despite what you want your end look to be.

One thing i think will be most helpfull no matter what you decide to shoot on is to get a Director of Photography on board. Depending where you are at there are many places to look. Odds are that many of the people in this forum might be right around you and can help a great deal with your project. I mention this because you said you are the Director. Do not over burden yourself with the roll of DP as well. Preping is one thing but once you are out on location having to worry about camera and lgihts (film or video) will detract from your job of getting the story told, particularly working with actors. As there are aspiring directors out there, you also find asspiring DPs, so take a look around and i think breaking up the task will ease yor burden and you will get greater quality out of your work. They are two jobs for a reason, and both are demanding. Good luck! and let us all know how we can help more.

This effect was done on the film "The Stonecutter" shot by Neal Fredricks. He talks about it breifly in American Cinematographer September 2003, page 24 to be exact. He used Vision 800T 5289, using a Zeiss Super Speed Prime at T1.3 and shot at 2 frames per second. Though i hevent seen this film it supposedly worked out pretty good. Check out the film it may give you an idea. Hope that helps, good luck!

Right, i was just typing fast and figured everyone knew what i ment. Good call though.