Patrick Neary

"I know you can't use HMI's thats rather elementary Watson. " I'm dying to know what the reasoning behind this is.... ;)

Hi- I don't know if you've compared numbers already, but it seems like renting a cheap 35 MOS camera would be a lot less expensive, and give you better quality, than blowing up super-16, either optically or through a DI. Although, if the whole film is going DI, then maybe it's not as much of a cost issue.

I was really disappointed that Freddie Young didn't go into the lighting of that gigantic set in "You Only Live Twice" in his autobiography. The movie had some nice stuff in it, as you would expect, but some real stinker shots as well- I'm thinking specifically of a shot of Bond walking down a hallway and it looks terrible, like a big arc or 10k just blasting from off-side the camera during a backwards dolly. I'd like to think it was a second unit botch, and not Freddie's work!

I think early in every budding filmmaker's career, he or she thinks "hey, I can break into local commercials, they're so BAD, I bet I can do better for half the cost!" then you find out that the local cable system produces them for free, and some poor sod is running around shooting half a dozen of them solo every day. And even better, the clients don't seem to know any better, or care about the abysmal quality- just get a shot with their kid waving at the camera in front of the store and everyone is happy! "Gah" is right!!!

Agreed (with Mr. Frisch) This sounds like a perfect situation to find the best time of day for natural light and go with it, maybe bringing in a little fill or even negative fill to clean things up. Also, a 400w joker can be a wonderful thing if there's room to squirrel it away somewhere. Unless it's a matter of trying to maintain consistency over 3 days of 16-hour shoots, in which case.....good luck!

Hi- Forde works with Flying Spot (also Seattle) for great telecine. We did a small S-8/200t music video earlier this summer using Forde/Flying spot and the results were very nice. Too nice, really, the director had to dirty it all down in post!

Speak of the devil- this month's (sept 04) issue of AC has an article about the making of "Code 46" where DP Alwin Kuchler mentions the use of "noisy" gas lamps to light a guestroom scene, and how they give off a "weird green tint". He also says "they put out a lot of light" Maybe these are similar to the tilleys?

He also doesn't need a writer, or director, and look at what has resulted from that!

Hey- I used a string of nikkor 500 mirror lenses when I was a stills shooter (news) and I remember none of them being very sharp, maybe it's inherent in the design.

And didn't the original "Star Wars" (you know, episode 1, no wait, 3 or is it 4, uhh, the circa 1970's one) use nets in the desert scenes? They had a very panty-hose look to them.

...and maybe I'm just making this up, but don't gas lanterns like these burn a little green? I just remember everyone around the lantern looking sickly, but maybe it was the hot dogs and marshmallows....

here's a whole mess-o-charts in pdf from CSC: http://www.cameraservice.com/tech/format.htm have fun- ;)

Hi- Or for those who don't feel like fiddling with snot, I just noticed these at Filmtools: http://store.yahoo.com/cinemasupplies/iring.html

...and your soundman will hate you. :) (recalling the roaring hiss of a coleman lantern!) It seems like they might find some use in a remote, desert-island kind of shoot, or maybe to add little points of light in the BG of a night shoot?

Hi- It may be more of an issue with the flange focal distance- a c-mount lens sits very close to the film plane while a pentax mount lens is much further away. An adaptor would probably look like an inverted cone that would sink into the camera body to get the c-mount lens close enough to the film plane, and may crash into the camera's shutter. The opposite adaptor, which lets you mount pentax screw mt. onto a c-mount body sticks out about 2" from the camera's c-mount. If you do happen to find one, report back!

Don't tell your investors that!!! I can only add that I'm sure many of us here have been involved with indy features that never left the shelf in the producer's coat closet. I've shot features ranging from $0 to $150k that have never been seen outside the telecine or edit room, and I personally know of one $3.5-mil feature, with name talent, that died on the vine. But then you never know 'till you try it, eh?

Hi- A 24mm lens has the depth of field of a 24mm lens, regardless of what format camera it's mounted on.

If you're working with any kind of experienced crew, they will see through this in the first two minutes. If you go in confident that you know what you want, you're crew should respond to that, and a few years here or there won't matter. Concentrate on the job at hand.

...Or shoot dv for the cost benefits and use super-8 or 16 for the slo-mo and time-lapse bits, etc. After all, we live in a multi-media age. Super-8 neg transferred on a good telecine can look pretty decent. I shot a little rough-and-tumble music video using the vision 200 and had it telecined at Flying Spot in Seattle, and the director had to dirty it down in post. He thought it looked too much like 16.

Hi- I had a set of old speed panchros (series-II) that I wish I hadn't sold. They're very good (if you can find them in good shape) and produce a really nice, sharp but smooth quality. They're somewhat low contrast glass, but in a good way.

Hi- Another issue to consider (and this is primarily if you work in LA, and maybe the few other "rental-house-rich" markets) is that rental prices for older cameras like 35-3s and II-Cs have fallen so much that you can rent one for almost nothing. And the flip side is that in owning one, you won't be able to rent it for much either! To make an opposite arguement, though, I remember an interview with a Seattle DP who said basically "If you don't own it, you don't use it." (speaking about working here in the NW, or any small market for that matter.) I also find that to be true working on the rare NW film shoot. But working in LA is just a whole different matter, gear-wise.

Hi- I've also had problems with ramps (with a 435) where a slight exposure fluctuation happens at the initiation of speed change. I don't know how common that is- it's subtle, but it always bothered me because it "announces" the ramp.

It's a completely non-scientific observation :) I've been to a number of DV-shot movies, and usually one or two people will turn around and look at the projection booth early on, because everything looks SO out of focus! Or nearby grumbling... If you read reviews of this film before going to see it, you can't help but run across comments about it's rough technical quality, maybe people go in expecting it in this case. Or maybe they're just so entranced by the story that the sub-par tech doesn't get in the way...

Just saw this as well- It looks like dv-35 filmouts are improving, in that you could actually see some color (besides the usual gray-brown mush of most dv movies) and the picture appeared somewhat "smooth" instead of all jaggy. But pretty much it still looked horrible, and nobody in the theatre seemed to notice or care.

Hi there- another camera with a variable shutter is the Minolta autopak D-10 (and D-12). These are great cameras, lotsa features and good lenses. The sharpest lens I've ever seen on a super-8 is the Nikon Super-Zoom 8x. It's got a tiny viewfinder, but the images were sharper than any other super-8 i've ever used, and i mean by a long shot! ...and the nice thing is that these seem to be "sleeper" cameras, they tend to sell pretty cheap!