LeeFordParker

The first film project I ever sold, back in 1982, was a "THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT" of 3D. The film was called THE 3D MOVIE. Besides being the creator, I was Associate Producer (HA! Yes, I fell for that one) and the Technical Director. I was in charge of the technical aspects of converting scenes from 76 feature films and shorts, shot in 17 different 3D formats, correcting the 3D technical errors of each, into a single 3D format. Additionally, I helped to create a process for a motion control down shooter(animation stand) that could shoot a 3D slit-scan sequence, like that known as the STAR GATE sequence of 2001 (which technic was not created by either Doug Trumbal or Stanely Kubrick, but by the avante guard filmmaker, John Whitney, Sr.) We used the algorithm to make flat art into 3D and shoot historical 3D photographs to tell the history of 3D. Sean Phillips used the animation stand and our algorithm for creating slit-scan 3D in the title sequence for JAWS 3D. Unfortunately, THE 3D MOVIE was never released. Our 3D slitscan tunnel sequence was only ever seen by a handful of people. C'est la vie. But everyone who ever saw it, pretty much reacted the same way - Wow! I had spent 6 month searching for a rumored stereo pair of Abraham Lincoln, taken with a Carte de Viste (photographic business card) that made it into the movie. I also found out that Hitler was a nut for 3D, and had commissioned Lennie Riefenstahl to photograph some of the 36 Olympics in 3D. Every American who saw Abe Lincoln said the same thing - "Wow! I never thought about it, but when you see Abe in 3D, it was like he was really human." "I've never thought about it, but the only time I have ever seen him, he's flat, one dimensional." The same was true for Hitler. Seeing him in 3D sent chills down everyone's spines. Giving Hitler dimension suddenly made him real, real in a way he's never been for most of us. I mention all this, so you can appreciate why I think I know a bit about 3D, in the hope that what I say next will have a bit more weight to it. Motion pictures themselves are optical illusions. No matter what process you want to speak of, they are a sequence of still images, presented so fast that the brain operates under the illusion its looking out of a window. 3D is a triple optical illusion. Not only are there two streams of still images, creating the illusion of motion, but the effect inside the brain converts these two image streams into a single three dimensional image. This process is called "Cyclopean Perception", after the Greek monster Cyclops who had only a single eye in the middle of his forehead. 8-10% of the human beings do not have Cyclopean Perception for one reason or another. For anyone interested, there's a fantastic book on the subject of why we see one 3D image with two eyes, and it includes tests for 3D perception, just like color blindness tests. The book was shown to me by the aforementioned John Whitney, Sr, who was one of my Professor at UCLA. This book was the inspiration for the film that became THE 3D MOVIE. The book is called THE FOUNDATIONS OF CYCLOPEAN PERCEPTION by Bela Julesz. You may think it a bit dry, but to anyone interested in how and why we perceive the world, which really should be the goal of every Cinematographer, the book is a marvel. A movie, ie a feature film, is a sequence of still images that are combined to tell a story. As these still images are perceived as motion inside the brain, the story, the interaction of the characters in motions, "living" the story, also takes place in the brain. And the part of the brain that combines these otherwise physically irrational events, is the same part of the brain where dreams are processed. This is why we don't see the cuts, the close ups, the long shots etc. The great director Frank Capra noticed this in tests he did up in Santa Barbara. He also noticed that in the "dream state" of watching a motion picture, the perception of time speeds up, so the action slows down. To compensate for this effect, he had the actors talk faster, deliver their lines faster. You can read about this in the best book ever written about being a motion picture director called NAME ABOVE THE TITLE. The ideal objective of any filmmaker is to put, and keep, the audience in this "dream state". This is the place where the theater fades away and we are no longer "watching" a movie, some how, however irrational, we are IN it. Many great directors and DOPs talk about looking into the viewfinder, and seeing the image the audience sees as if it was in a movie theater. It isn't an image on a ground glass or an HD monitor, its a movie on a movie screen in a dark theater. Ok, what's all this got to do with your questions? ANYTHING that draws you out of the "dream state", draws attention away from the illusion of the story has created in your mind is BAD. Every time you to withdraw from the "dream state" and re-enter the world of the theater, your over all experience is diminished. It's like your Mom waking you up in the middle of an awesome dream. Split stereo surrounds are one of these things. You hear a helicopter behind you in the theater - wow, cool, but there's the T word, the theater. 3D is one of these things. Too many times filmmaker's use 3D for 3D's sake, ie "Ok, now lets have the character throw a ball at the camera" If this action has nothing to do with the illusion of the story, even a child will return to the theater to laugh about the ball in his face. You can take the same idea an apply it to any aspect of the film you might be making. If you want to be a great filmmaker, you want to care all about maintaining the illusion of the dream state. Nothing else matters. Even Shakespeare understood this 400 years ago, when he stated "The Play is the thing." This doesn't mean forget 3D? Or forget computer simulated actors? Or forget computer generated backgrounds? Not at all. It means, as we should all well know, these things must be slaves to the story, not the Master of the scenes. Andre de Toth was the Director of the famous 3D movie, Warner Bros, HOUSE OF WAX. He only had one eye, but at the end of his experience shooting HOUSE OF WAX in 3D, he said it best: "Next time I'm going to make a movie in 4D - 3D with a story" Will simulated actors ever work? Yes. With 3D ever work? For 90% of movie goers. Will Holograms replace HD projectors, as they are now replacing film? Yes. Will psychological motivation of our brains to seek out stories change? No, not so long a we remain humans with conscience. Why conscience? At Expo 67 someone created the first "interactive" movie (talk about disrupting the dream-state!) in which the movie would stop and the audience would choose what the character should do. As one example, (and I'm paraphasing because I didn't see the movie) the character comes to a stop in his car. He sees a beautiful woman in a sexy dress standing in the door. We see by his hand on the steering wheel that the character is married. Well, just because you're on a diet doesn't mean you can't enjoy the menu, so he's checking her out as any healthy male might. Then the beautiful woman beckons him with her finger and she backs into the doorway. At this point the movie stops, and the audience votes as to whether or not the character should follow the woman inside or stay outside and remain faithful. What do you think the audience voted? Even with women comprising 48% of the audience, 99.9% of the entire run of the film at Expo 67, the audience voted for the character to follow the woman inside the room! The "interactive" movie wasn't interactive at all. Why? Because in a movie, or a novel, or a comic book, or a video game, you can explore the moral dilemmas of our lives without REAL consequences. We can see what going with the woman would be like because 99.9% of us would NOT follow the woman if this same thing happened in reality - married or not. Conscience is the overall term of all those things that comprise our moral existence - lying, cheating, cowardice, fear, lust, hate, war. If we make a movie so "real" its real life - we'd hate it. We already have a real life, and none of us are too happy about it, no matter who we are. The real consequences of our actions can be painful. Our loved ones die. Real life is a tragedy because we all die in the end. As human beings with conscience, our minds seek out "perspectives on our moral dilemma in order to understand the choices we make in our lives. It's the same reason our brains "dream" every night we go to sleep. Any kind of storyteller, be it filmmaker, novelist, playwright, poet, photographer, who loses sight of this simple truth, who allows himself to be seduced by flashy, but empty, technology is doomed to fail. The first 3D device know as the STEREOSCOPE was introduced with photography, as far back as 1853. It was the famous stereophotographer Eadweard Muybridge who notice that the sticky shutters on his stereo camera captures a still image sequence in time. This lead him to the idea of modifying a multi-lens Carte de Viste camera to capture a multi-image sequence in time. In this sense, the very existence of our business and the existence of this forum owes itself not just to the creation of photography, but the creation of 3D photography. So why has 3D taken so long to become a standard of entertainment? I believe its because movies transcended it own ability to mimick reality, advancing as a medium like written novels, in which we can explore WHO WE ARE. 3D, simulated actors, complete computer graphics have not yet made this transcendence. I remember the talk about how word processors would create more Shakespeares by making it easier to write. This was 30 years ago. Where are ANY new Shakespeares? If anything, the invention of word processing has coincided with the worse drop in literacy in a century. The average person today has a vocabulary 2/3rds of the same person 50 years ago. Word Processing doesn't make it easier to write, it makes it easier to type. The RED makes it faster to capture images, but it does not make them better. Non-linear editing makes it easier to edit, but harder to be a good editor. Anyone who has wandered through the miasma of YouTube has seen that it is not the moving images themselves but the meaning of the images to us as human beings contained therein that makes the difference between diamonds and sand. Technology does not equal art. And it never will. Our lives are short, we will only spend our time for diamonds.

You're talking about 1980 or so? What picture where your tests for? I really don't remember the gents name, but Ernie Day sounds the most familiar. He was very nice, and very experienced with lots of great stories. I can only vaguely remember stories about shootin the storm sequence of RYAN'S DAUGHTER. About how he stayed 6 months in Dingle, drinking with the locals, waiting for the right kind of storm waves. I'd say he was in his late 50's in 1990. It's totally possible he said his was the operator, but he was the DP of the tests and I just assumed he was the DOP of the RYAN'S DAUGHTER storm sequence. We were shooting composition tests for NOSTROMO. I was there for 10 days, as the "consultant", but I just wanted to do anything for the chance to hang out with David Lean and watch him at work, even if we all didn't do much but tell stories. As you know NOSTROMO was never made, and Todd wouldn't have rented cameras for the show anyway, as we didn't have a camera for shooting sound. Well, we did... but that's a story I wish I could forget. You can get my contact info from my website http://www.MocoMan.com, send me a regular email with your contact info, and Iwill definitely give you a call next time I'm there. Lee

Yes, I agree totally. Deeply curved screens suck. OMNIMAX sucks for what it does to black. And how the contrast problem is "solved" is by painting the screen GRAY! Something like 2 stops down! Not only do you loose the blacks, but your white is gray. And I didn't like what the D150 screen did to the CINESPACE 70 DEMO. We always used Todd-AO STAGE A to screen it. I remember Dick saying the TODD-AO 35 anamorphic lenses (THE GETAWAY) were made in Japan, but I don't remember who did them. I don't think it was Nikon, but we had a good relationship with NAC(now Westrex). It could have been them. But, from what everyone has said over the years, they were the sharpest anamorphics ever made. I think Ed DeGuillio snapped up the Todd-AO 35's when Todd sold them off. And I remember a big rental house in Italy had bought a set from Ed. And made the fortune renting them that Todd never did. I also remember this huge piece of glass, a rectangle, about 18" across. It must have weighed 30 lbs. It was some kind of "wide angle" adapter. Supposedly, Kubrick used it in front of the Zeiss 0.7 lens to get wide angle. And it was used for some effects shot in LOGAN'S RUN. But once in a while we'd get a call for "The Vetter Lens", and this is what they were referring to. I don't know what happened to it. I gave one of the Bug Eye lenses to Steve Spielberg along with the only remaining original Todd-AO camera barney. I sold one to Rorbert Harris, who sold it to Marty of the WIDE SCREEN Museum. The 3rd was given to the ASC museum, but don't know if it is still there. I bought the 4th. I also bought one of the two lenses made for AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. The other I sold to Mehran Salamati of now of HOT GEARS, a fellow DOP. The Bug Eye lens is about 50 lbs with lens mount. You mount the camera (35 lbs) to the lens. Amazing, there is a handheld skiing shot in MIRACLE OF TODD-AO. A miracle alright. I don't know how these things work, but it seem as though I'm way off the topic of BARAKA equipment list. ;-) BTW, Marty's WIDESCREEN MUSEUM is the best source for the history of large format I've ever come across. He really covers the stories from every angle and sorts through all the BS and sales hype to get at what really happened when. If anyone is interested in all this, and hasn't been there yet, I highly recommend it. Long live 70mm!

I looked Denys up. Its says he died in 1981, so it couldn't have been him. For some reason, the name Ernie Day is familiar, he's listed as a Camera Operator. This was 1989. I shot an 870 feature about the Lake District, called LOST KINGDOM for RHEGHED CENTER, south and west of the round about of the M6 and the A66, near Penrith. Unfortunately, its the only theater in the world where it can be seen. Not a huge career booster! But I fell in love with England and hope to be back soon. I came to London several times during the production of LOST KINGDOM, to check out if our 870 camera would work on the Libra mount and to try to find out how to get the CAA to allow an 870 into the air over the Lakes. I finally succeeded with the aerials, helicopter, camera mount and weather came at the last minute for an amazing two week aerial shoot. I ended up with the re-made Tyler Scorpion on one of Fred North's helicopters flown up from Paris. The CAA wouldn't allow the camera on any British helicopters/mounts. The pilot was only the ferry pilot, but the weather was good NOW and we couldn't wait the week Fred wanted us to. He couldn't speak English very well. My french was better so I had to give direction in French. An American DOP flying in a French helicopter making a movie about England in bad french. "Lentement! Lentement!" The Cumbrian accent was so bad, the French pilot couldn't understand what Air Traffic Control was saying, and they couldn't understand him. I had to laugh because I had to translate between the two. "I don't know what it means, but he just said 'Runway 24 Left' " The pilot had a wicked sense of humor. He'd fly really close to towers and wires (his speciality turned out to be landing on oil derricks off Madagascar, and he wanted to stay in practice) If anyone in the helicopter screamed upon skimming a wire or tower, he go even closer the next time! I warned the Director of this, but he forgot. He only went up with us that once. But he never touched a drop of any kind of alcohol. A Frenchman who doesn't drink wine? He was the MAN! We skimmed the surface of Wasswater - one the lakes they used to practice bombing runs for the mission upon which the old movie THE DAM BUSTERS is based. The real footage was taken by my very dear friend, DOP Barry Gordon (and the first OMNIMAX DOP) during the actual raid in WWII. I rolled the camera and felt his hand push away the clouds and covers the lens, giving us the light, keeping the shot crisp and clean. We used it for the title sequence. Well, you seem to know a bit about 70mm to know about the 8mm. That was surprising. If you ever get up north, go check it out. It's still playing after 10 years. It's kinda slow, but pretty to look at, especially in 70mm. Hope to meet up with you in London soon. Lee

Yes. Always interested in a good challenge. I once shot grapes growing during two seasons, a period 1.5 years, in 3D. I worked with Richard Hardy, an expert in timelapse shooting of plants. We built a studio over two grapevines at Mondavi's in Rutherford, in Napa Valley. We grew the grapes indoors - a first. Since the vines were Robert Mondavi's Private Reserve Cabernet vines, we had to insure each plant for $1,000,000. The longest single shot was 3.5 months, two 400' rolls of 35mm 5247 in 100 + F heat, with one frame every 1/2 hour. The shot came out perfect! We had to put voltage stablizers on the lights or we'd see the power grid fluctuations. The 2nd year we grew the plants 24 hours a day, so we wouldn't see the plant's dark period aspiration. I put together a device that turned an NTSC video image into a fax signal, so we could look through the video tap via the phone line in Los Angeles - a first for 1990! The film was for a client of Iwerks. It played in England at the Denbie Wine Estate in Dorking for nearly 8 years. I still have the 70mm 3D camera plates if anyone's interested in shooting 3D. A few years ago, I was involved in the design of project intending to film the building of the FREEDOM TOWER, the 1776 story building said to replace the World Trade Center. I was engineering several pan/tilt heads, one of which was going to shoot a 7 year motion control tilt up! 1 frame per two weeks! All managed via the internet, including exposure control and real time through the lens viewing. The film was going to be shot with a combination of 15perf 70mm and DSLRs cameras. The Production company was English, the Director a Scot living in France. Still waiting for money, but not holding my breath ;-) Anything to push the edges of the envelope. Lee

David, I know you are a very well respected DOP and I've seen you contribute to a lot of sites like this. I will only explain about camera lenses to clarify what I said. What I meant is that there was nothing intrinsically different about most of the "D150" camera lenses in the set - that I was aware of. Any lenses sharp enough and with an image circle large enough to cover the aperature could have been used. The back focus of the lenses needed to create a sharp focus across the entire negative area - that same as an medium format camera lens. This is not the same as a process like, for example, CINEMASCOPE. CINEMASCOPE used lenses with an anamorphic squeeze that needed to be unsqueezed by the projection lens according to the exact same ratio. D150 used 65mm negative in the Academy standard aperature of 2.21:1. All lenses were "flat" lenses, ie, they did not incorporate any type of anamorphic squeeze. I worked as the Manager of the Todd-AO camera department for 7 years. Much of this time was dedicated to trying to get the Industry to shoot features in 65mm again. I succeeded to the extent that I got BARAKA to shoot with our cameras, I helped get both SHOWSCAN and IWERKS started. I directed and shot the CINESPACE 70 DEMO film at 30fps, which I'm sure you have seen. We premiered the film at the ASC when it was finished. We arranged special screenings for Ron Howard who was considering FAR AND AWAY as a 70mm project and for Alan Daviau and Steve Spielberg, who were considering EMPIRE OF THE SUN. We arranged to shoot test for David Lean's last film NOSTROMO. I handled all of the equipment in the Todd-AO inventory at one time or another. I must say honestly, that, while the lenses may have been specially made for D150, I do not recall there being anything special about them with respect to their relationship to a 150 degree deeply curved screen. However, I am perfectly willing to admit I could be wrong. Most of the lenses I worked with on the Cinespace 70 Demo, SHOWSCAN, IWERKS et al, were modern medium format lenses, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Pentax, and some 35mm still camera lenses with back image areas large enough to cover the 65mm aperature. And we were calling them Cinespace 70 lenses. The 8mm lens, or whatever focal length it was, mentioned in my post to John Holland, was the so-called 150 degree lens - as it was 180 degrees corner to corner diagonally, making it approximately 150 deg horizontally. It was not the Kowa lens used by CINEMA 180(almost all of the effect sequences of BRAIN STORM) and it was not a Zeiss 30mm lens. I do not know the maker of this lens nor do I know its origin. It was the only lens I saw while at Todd-AO capable of 150 degrees horizontally on the 5perf frame. I do know that it was a Fisheye lens with the same characteristics of the Ziess 30mm lens used for OMNIMAX. Technically, it fullfilled the design parameter of 150 degrees horizontally. This was similar to the first Todd-AO lens created for OKLAHOMA, the so-called BUG EYE lens, which I recall was 120 deg, and the 2nd, smaller lens, created for AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, which I recall was 135 deg. Because these all lenses had fisheye distortion, they weren't used a lot in the final productions of any of the films mentioned. The major difference between the Todd-AO that Mike Todd started and D150 process finished by Dr. Richard Vetter, was the theater projection lens and the theater screen. Although I haven't been there in a while, the old Egyptian Theater used to have a D150 screen. To my recollection, it was as deeply curved as the screen down the street at the CINERAMA DOME. The D150 projection lens made it possible to focus the flat release print image onto a wide and deeply curved surface. I believe the Egyptian still uses the D150 lenses. As you probably know, one of the major downfalls of many of the great new image processes was the lack of lens choice. CINERAMA and OMNIMAX are spectacular experiences, but, for a Director and DOP used to the idea of telling a story using different focal length lenses, a single lens process can be intimidating. I was a consultant on a simulator ride at Paul Allan EXPERIENCE MUSIC PROJECT in Seattle. The simulator ride sat in front of a dome screen on to which an 5perf 70mm image was projected. The DOP shot the tests with a Panavision, and when they saw the distortion created by the dome screen, I was called in to look at what could be done. I explained that a fisheye would induce distortions that would be corrected by the dome - thus making it LOOK normal - just like OMNIMAX. I bought a test shot with the Mamiya 24mm fisheye for IWERKS to show them. After looking at the test, the Director said, "But this means I can only use one lens. How can I make a film with just one lens?" What to say in answer? Make the screen flat, keep the dome use and use one lens or live with the distortion. These are the only choices. I believe that it was Dr. Vetter's genius to utilize standard production lenses (read standard production practices) and create the D150 effect as a stand alone theater experience. I believe this to be the success of D150.

It's a good reel. I had seen it and forwarded it to Grant after he'd put some stuff on Vimeo for the first time. I saw the other too. It must be high altitude to get such a multitude of stars. And no moon! But why are you drawing 7A! Were you running a heater? MocoMan with PAN TILT DOLLY FOCUS dragging an IMAX camera draws 2A average(@ 24v)!

Yes, there was something like an 8mm. I don't remember the exact focal length, but I remember shooting some shots with if for the CINESPACE 70 demo film. It a fairly small lens as I remember, but it was 180 deg corner to corner on the 70mm frame. It wasn't a Nikkor 8mm, it was something else. Yes, the Cooke zoom lens was made for D150, for PATTON. But, I believe its important to point out that D150 was a projection process, not a photographic process. To the best of my recollection, D150 was what Todd-AO was alway SUPPOSED to be: single strip cinerama on a deeply curved, 150 degree screen. The D150 projection lens made the focusing and distortion correction possible. D150 did not use any custom made lenses any more than IMAX, IWERKS 870, Arri 765 or most Panavision lenses. It is so expensive to develop a good camera lenses that its just isn't possible without a large market for the lenses. I believe that the so called Panavision "Primo" lens is made by Lietz and had a different anti-reflection coat from the Lietz still camera lenses - other than that they are the same. While I believe it is true that PATTON made have been advertised as "photographed in D150", there wasn't anything special above the camera lenses. Most of them were the same BNC mount Cooke lenses used on HELLO DOLLY and may have dated back to SOUTH PACIFIC or AROUND THE WORLD. John, your name is familiar to me. And certainly you know a bit about both Todd-AO and the AP65. I did some tests for David Lean with the AP65 way back when at Pinewood in London. The DP for the tests was the 2nd unit DP on RYAN'S DAUGHTER. Did I work with you on that? Or did you used to work at FILM EFFECTS OF HOLLYWOOD? Lee

Thanks for your compliment, by the way. Also, I happened to know that someone suggested I had something to do with the design of the BARAKA motion control system. I did not. I know how to use it, but I did not design it. I don't remember who did. Someone not normally associated with motion control, ie, it was not Kuper. Yes, I am designing a new head, a mini-Pirouette, as I think I said above. I hope it to weigh in at 5 lbs and be small enough to leave the camera attached to it, making shot setups easier and faster. I am making it powerful enough that it will work for RED, which is much heavier than a DSLR. At the moment, I'm trying to figure an easy way to add ROLL to the head without adding a lot of weight. But the honest truth is that I am and want to remain, a cinematographer, not a motion control system builder. I've been motivated to build this tool because nothing like it existed when I started. I have always loved the power of silent film. I've always been interested in photographing the night sky. I was inspired by KOYANISQUATSI. So, when Mark and Ron came to ask about getting a 65mm camera(s), I made it possible for them to have a camera. Ron's BARAKA motion control system was close, but no motion control system ever worked in the outdoors without great effort and problems. Ever used a laptop in full heat of the desert sun? I have. It sucks. So I made that one of my design parameters. And there was nothing like it until Mumford's system came along. I spent two years writing the software to add features to MocoMan like key framing, 8 axis, goto frame, goto beginning, goto end, shoot same move at any frame rate, totally programmable eases in/out for each axis, saving moves so you can morph one move into another, move expansion, move reduction, etc. Most importantly, MocoMan will preview your move in real time. My system will also RAMP, so you can do varispeed in timelapse, and with my camera motor, RAMP from 1 frame per two weeks to 120fps. In short, a real motion control system in a handheld computer designed specifically for working in harsh environments - cold, heat, wind, rain. MocoMan is not even in the same country as a Mumford. Yet, all the people now into digital timelapse sort of hope for this level of pricing. A two axis Mumford head would weight 12 lbs and, until he adds his node sync feature, you cannot synchronize the action of the two axis easily. You have a 3A motor drive capability and I think 4 or 5 deg per second top speed. As you may know, the Mumford head is heavy, slow and somewhat complicated to get EXACTLY what you want. For most DSLR timelapse shooting its totally workable and very, very affordable. The head I'm building will go to 10A continuous. It turn 120 deg per second and weigh only 5 lbs. To achieve this, the parts alone will cost more than twice what a two axis Mumford head would cost. Just the parts, not my time for design, building or programming. My system will have to cost at least 4x a Mumford system, or approximately $8,000 per head. There isn't much money in it unless I do the volume of sales like the RED, and I don't think much of a line will form made up of DSLR timelapsers. But if you want to help me out by helping to finance the development, by buying the first one, I'm willing. This how I financed the development of MocoMan. There's only one other like it in the world, a cinematographer who shoots stock for IMAGE BANK. His system is PAN TILT DOLLY BOOM SWING IRIS FOCUS ZOOM. Who knows, if I can get a few people lined up, I could afford to do it. IMHO, PAN and TILT are nowhere near as important as dolly. Lots of timelapsers now add PAN TILTS ZOOMS with After Effects. Dolly, Boom, Swing and pulling focus or any extreme moves, such as 360 deg pans, etc, are the only things you can't achieve if you use DSLR to produce 1080p stock footage. If your shooting the next BARAKA, you want all the image size you can get, so PAN TILT ZOOM should be done in camera, not in post. After Effects and similar programs have drastically reduced the demand for motion control. This is one of the reasons I am struggling to survive with MocoMan. The other reason is that 70mm production has also be drastically reduced, at least for those interested in producing movies like BARAKA et al. And, how many features like BARAKA have been made since 1992? SACRED PLANET was the closest. Financed by DISNEY, it did so poorly against HARRY POTTER, I don't think it even got a theatrical release in Europe. Not very inspiring results for a major distributor who were all hoping for returns like EVEREST in 1998. But that was only popular because someone called his wife by radio before he died. If you are still interested after all the downside, maybe you're someone I can work with. I would also recommend you consider both a dolly system and a lens control system, which I am also working on downsizing. BOOM and SWING is possible, but not good in the wind. I've shot in winds about 35mph with my system without problem (the temperature of the wind was 125 F, and I drank 3 gallons of water). Why don't you post a link to your work?

You all may be interested to know, that, as we speak, Mark and Ron are back at it, shooting BARAKA II, aka SAMSARA in 65mm. It will post in all digital. Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson used two cameras on BARAKA. A mirror reflexed Todd-AO AP 65 and a specially made single frame camera. I think the AP65 was #8 - its been a while! The AP camera had been mirror reflexed for Doug Trumball to start his company, SHOWSCAN. He went with the AP65 because the Panavision handheld 65mm's were pelical reflexed at that time. The pelicals had a tendency to break on rollercoasters. 5 or 6 of the Panavision handhelds were mirror reflexed for FAR AND AWAY. The motor is a bit undersized to keep the camera fast and light, but if its hot, it can easily over heat. And it seems to vibrate more than the AP65 did. I used it for a featurette for FUTUROSCOPE, and alot of footage was reshot with the Arri 765, but to Panavision's credit, mostly because it was made available by Arri to use at a very reasonable rate, and it saved on shipping. The other camera used on BARAKA was a multi-format 65mm camera built by Mark's company MOLDEX, it was designed by Ron Fricke and it was his 2nd 65mm camera, the first being the CHRONOS camera, which was 15perf 65mm only. The so-called "BARAKA" camera could shot 5, 8, 10 and 15perf 65mm. It's top speed was about 1fps. The camera movements were controlled by stepper motors and it was integral to the motion control system. The motion control system was PAN, TILT, DOLLY and SHUTTER. It was custom software running on an EPSON 286 laptop. The viewing was done with a drop in mirror, and a shot could not be viewed while a shot is running. The dolly and dolly track were specially made by Moldex and designed by Ron Fricke The AP65 had a top speed of 72fps. It was also equipped with a special stepper motor and a Norris motor for timelapse, both of which I own. The AP65 was made of cast magnesium. It was made for the movie PATTON. It was built by Mitchell Camera Corp and co-designed by Richard Vetter of Todd-AO, Ed DeGuillio and Doug Fries, both then working for Mitchell. It used a 330ft mag. It weighed a little more than 30 lbs with 330 ft of negative (1lb per 100ft). Mark and Ron had Kodak make 100,000+ ft of 5247 in 333 ft loads. Three AP65's, #6, #7 and #8 were mirror reflexed by Fries Engineering. While they were beautiful little cameras I loved using, they were not without problems. Since BARAKA, Ron built two new multi-format cameras. One of which is now being used on BARAKA II, aka SAMSARA. Like the first BARAKA camera, it is integral to the motion control system. I don't know much about either of these cameras. I have been trying to get Mark to rent my moco system to run the PANAVISION camera, which it could do easily, but so far, there's not the $ in the budget to ship it, even if I donated its use. But never say never. The lenses used on BARAKA were mostly Zeiss Hasselblad lens. My recollection is that they may have had one Cooke 90-360 4:1 zoom (zooms for 65mm are very hard to find) . There was a Mamiya 24mm and a 35, a Nikkor PC 28 and 35, and a Zuiko 24mm(which I loved). I don't remember exactly which of these wide, wide lenses were in their kit. Mark and Ron also had a PENTAX 800mm f8. I used the BARAKA camera to shoot the comet HALE-BOPP for IMAX in 1998. I used a PENTAX 800 f5.6 rented from Samy's Camera. It weighed 41 lbs! I mounted the lens, then I mounted the camera to a telescope at Mt. Laguna Observatory and used the telescope as the motion control system. I got a great shot, but it looks like a still photo until it turns orange, like the setting sun and drops into the ocean. While I was waiting, I also got a shot of the "Dark Side" of the moon, which was a narrow crescent at the time. I exposed for the dark, about 15 sec per frame, and I was surprise at how much detail I got. Ron used a 6.6 x 6.6 Arri matte box and 6.6 filters. Ron, like me, doesn't like to use split grads such as sunset, but they come in handy for clouds, as long as you can hide the split, so soft grad were likely the only ones used. Polarizing and ND filters, to improve sharpness and contrast, of course. Everything you shoot 65mm needs to be heavy to fight vibration, especially IMAX. The rest of the production equipment was more-or-less standard. Our 1570 camera is different. It incorporated a counter-balance movement and all parts are tuned by a turbo-charger built. Our goal was to make 65mm accessible to standard film production methods. Then came RED. All we have now is a working movement, a pretty, but large paperweight. I don't know what I will do with it. It should be in a museum. And on the DEATH OF FILM NEGATIVE, never say never. Even those who love and want to embrace digital imagining like I do, can't forget the economy of film for the historical safety and economy of STORAGE. Seriously, think about it. A Production company is going to spend $100,000,000 to make a movie with a RED? What will they have to show at the end of the $100,000,000? A pile of harddrives and DLT tapes, media that can evaporate with heat or electro-magnetic pulse? Otherwise, nothing that he can see and hold in his hands to represent where the $100,000,000 went. Digital is great. I love the RED, but I would never recommend shooting any feature over $1,000,000 with it. Even the digital images were are now getting with our still camera sits at undue risk to annilation. The savings of telecine and negative handling sometimes aren't worth it. Even the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS will not accept for archive any medium you cannot see. I don't think an insurance company would insure a production much more than that. I'd be curious to know what they think of the new DIGITAL WAVE. Anyway, I love looking through a viewfinder and seeing the movie on a theater screen with my minds eye, not a TV set. I noted several comments herein about S16 and S8 cameras being built for under $20,000, especially since GC's can be picked up for $3,000. A $20,000 camera is totally possible, and I will be willing to put forth my motor control software to anyone who wants to attempt this. My company has a CNC machine and my partner and I are both versed in CAD/CAM. The only thing we don't have is money. Maybe we can form a group to import a camera stripped of electronics, and making it RIGHT. I am happy to say that Mark Magidson and Ron Fricke are diehards, maybe last of a breed. I'd like to point out that I am afraid that BARAKA II, aka SAMSARA, will be the last feature film ever shot in 65(70)mm. I passionately hope not. Lee

I'm Lee Parker, designer and builder of the MocoMan motion control system. I'm quite flattered someone has actually heard of MocoMan. Thanks to Tom for noting it. I have several credits on BARAKA, but wasn't really involved with the production. I was working for Todd-AO and helped to make it possible for them to have a mirror reflexed AP65 for a year. They also used a special computer program I created for editing 70mm with video. This was 1992 and no such thing as an AVID. I just wrote a computer program that translates any timecode number sequence into any film keycode list. Baraka used it to be able to edit with an off-line linear video editing system, then cut the 70mm work print to conform to the video soundtrack. According to Dave Barrett, the 70mm post supervisor, the program was only off 1 frame in the whole feature - an that was due to a bad telecine. The MocoMan motion control system, the Pirouette head, dolly and track were designed to handle 100lb IMAX cameras in real time. The dolly - even with the friction drive - will move 500lbs (camera, head, tripod, batteries and operator) in real time. The first - and only - IMAX feature it was used on was SACRED PLANET. SACRED opened for 2 weeks and was shut down by HARRY POTTER, which didn't even get a whiff of an IMAX camera Fedx'd to them. Since IMAX production dropped dramatically, except for 3D. And despite the artistic success of CHRONOS in IMAX, no one has ever put the money to do something like it. Even SACRED PLANET is a pseudo-documentary cop out. I've been doing digital timelapse since 2002 and it works great. The Nikon Coolpix has a beautiful lens set that goes from full frame fisheye to @250mm. I also have a Canon set up to use the Nikon lens set from my Mitchell GC, and my partner in England has two Nikons and two Canon D1s. A lot of people are using Mumford's single axis system. A lot more people are simulating the pans and tilts in AFTER EFFECTS by shooting wide and cropping the full frame still image to 1080 resolution. But my motion control system is the real deal. It handles 8 channels of moving motors, 1 channel of a camera motor. Yes, I was also trying to build a 35 lb 1570 camera (http://www.iXL1570.com) - until the RED was announced. It uses a special carbon fiber pull down claw so it will be capable of 60fps, and have all the motor/electronic functions of an Arri 535 (fixed mirror/shutter, sorry) - it will do ramps. So will the motion contro system. The whole system uses interchangable servo motor drivers(so that if you have a failure in the field you can swap drivers with a less used axis until a new driver can be fedx'd to you). The drivers are intelligent, so the computer that drives them is a handhelp palmtop computer. With a bit of work, I could get an iPod to run the system. With interchangable motor drivers, the old notion of a moco system consisting of PAN TILT DOLLY etc goes out the window - the motors can drive any servo motor up to 10A x 24v continous. You could put a motor on a car wheel geared down to move it super slow, a motor on the steering wheel an you could turn a car or ATV into a moco system for a WOW car commercial. The motor drivers interface seemlessly with the PRESTON CINEMA lens control system for IRIS FOCUS ZOOM control. Yes, most of the time I drive the dolly with a friction wheel - even though I have a toothed belt drive system as well. I chose this because the MocoMan system was designed to be operated by a single person. I have designed the system so that I can set up an entire dolly shot in 5 minutes by myself. The track is specially made to support a 500lb load with only 1mm of deflection in the center of a 2M span. Yes I'm working on a PAN/TILT for RED and down that will weight no more than 6 lbs - and like all my stuff - it will run 5x real time, for repeating moves in any time scale. The principal market will eventually be RED or S16 remote head for Jimmy Jibs and the like. I'm working on the PAN/TILT handle electronics at the moment Why? Because no IMAX movie ever has the proper budget to have a proper crew. All the shots I did for SACRED PLANET were done with a 3 person crew in US and 7 person crew in Thailand (where a driver makes $50 a day). CHRONOS, BARAKA, KOYANSQUATSI are all labors of love. You have to be a bit mad like me to put your life work into a labor of love. Maybe there'll be money in it some day. But it isn't what drives me. What drives me is what one of the guys above said - the beauty of being in the moment capturing time. I've been in Death Valley when it was so hot in the sun it melted solder connection and shorted my drive motor. In Thailand at sat on a hill in the moon shadow of a buddha with two soldiers armed with AK-47s standing guard. In Monument Valley I watched the Moon pass through a sandstone formation called Eye of The Wind. I sat on the hood of my car in the dark and listened to Neal Young as the Comet HALE-BOPP passed before the lens of Ron Fricke's 1st self-made IMAX camera. Everyone has stories like these, I'm sure. I don't think you can be a real cinematographer without the passion for the experience as much as the image. But timelapse motion control is a lonely calling, and one only a few can make a living in. So, my hats off to all you filmmakers struggling to find your movies. Let me know if I can help. Here's what I doing currently: http://www.PMWcreative.org

Beware the term "70mm" for there is 70mm type 1 and 70mm type 2. Modern features, including IMAX shoot 65mm negative, what has the same perfs at 35mm negative. The 65mm negative is printed to 70mm type 2 print stock. 70mm type 2 has the same perfs as 35mm and the same distance in the image area between the perfs as 65mm. The extra 5mm is added as 2.5mm on each side of the print stock on the outside of the perfs. Originally, this was to allow room for the 6 track magnetic coating that carried the soundtrack for so many great movies, like LAWERENCE OF ARABIA. The military uses 70mm type 1 negative and print. Mitchell Camera Corp. built many 70mm type 1 cameras, including highspeed 10perf that where for recording events during the development of the space program etc It may be possible to obtain type 1 negative, but I doubt it. Besides, the only place its processed, and this was many years ago, was Huntsville, Alabama. I have many parts for Mitchell 65mm highspeed cameras, including one camera body with a working movement, which I obtained from the Boss Films Camera parts department, which I bought at their going out of business auction. I have one of the lenses used to shoot OKLAHOMA, a lens so heavy the camera is mounted to it(now the equivalent of the Ziess 30mm T*Star, which weighs 4.5 lbs). I have it's sister lens used to photograph AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. But there are few on eBay who would appreciate what I have, even if I wanted to sell the stuff. The mechanic inside every DOP can appreciate the machinery of 70mm is beautiful stuff to behold. Ever using it as tool is but a dream. I applaud the efforts of Bill Bennett and Arri for pushing on toward the ultimate goal of true precision imagery. I applaud the efforts of IMAX Directors like John Weilly who are steadfastly resisting the use of pretender IMAX know as DMR, which is the death of 70mm. IMAX is killing their own process. Don't that know that David Lean shot DR. ZHIVAGO in anamorphic 35mm and blew it up, thus creating the first film "Presented in 70mm"? Within 7 years of its release, the last feature was shot in 65mm (1975) until BARAKA (1991). I was lucky to work a few days with Sir David and he told me how much he regretted being talked into shooting ZHIVAGO in 35mm, and, like a true 70mm addict like me, swore he'd never use anything else. His last feature NOSTROMO was to be shot with the Arri 765. However, I hope for 70mm, and the artists I know who love it, that it will always be around somewhere for someone to appreciate, as it has been since the Lumiere Brother first demo'ed it at the Paris Exposition in 1901. But with the tidal wave of "digital" upon us, without the stubborn determination of artists like Christopher Nolan and Wally Pfister, whose appreciate the beauty of "analog", 70mm will soon be just another interest curio in the lobby of the ASC club house. The King is dead, long live the King.

I am a DOP, part of a group of artists in Europe who specialize in producing beautiful imagery for commericals and music video. We shoot all over the world. We can work as a team, which includes direction, special effects, image manipulation, or as individuals for a special purpose. Prior clients include MADONNA, Black Dog/RSA, Infinity etc Our demo is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNE9LVYsC0

There are several good reasons to shoot in IMAX. First, if you factor in the cost of DMR, which is the standard for rezzing up to IMAX, shooting some scenes in IMAX could save both time and money. Second, the buzz factor. We're talking about the movie and generating interest in seeing it. Doing something unique is a way to set it apart. Third, its surprising to know that a small number of theaters can be responsible for generating a significant portion of a theatrical revenue. SOUND OF MUSIC was shot in 65mm, and it only played in 70mm in about 100 theaters, yet it remains today, one of the highest grossing films of all time. Big screen theaters hold more people per show. Some theaters showing SOUND OF MUSIC sold out every show for two years! In the US, typically about 1,000 theaters are responsible for more than 60% of a films total gross. These theaters are all the big, quality screens we like, the Chinese, the Ziegfeld, the Village, and now these theaters include the IMAX theaters, which charge a premium ticket - at least for a short time. 65mm does cost more in film, but the negative and processing are not the major costs. Lighting and the time required to set up lighting, is the number one cost of a movie. 35mm Ziess speeds are f1.2. The fastest IMAX lens is a f2.0 for a 35mm equivalent of about a 28mm. The 24mm equivalent is f2.8, but the 17mm equivalent is f4.0! Almost all the same lenses are used for IMAX as for standard 65mm (5perf x 65mm). Even Arriflex, when they made the 765, could afford the cost of Ziess primes for 65mm. The lighting requirement of 1 f stop is two times the light. Going from f2.0 standard light level to a f4.0 required nearly three times the light. It means more lights, more electricity, more grips, more electricians, all of which means more time, more food, more hotels, more transporation. Lighting a set at f4.0 is a lot harder for DOP with lighting experience. Showscan, at 2.5 times normal shutter speed would have required an onset lighting average of f6.3! Nearly all the sequences from BRAINSTORM were shot with a Todd-AO AP65 running at 24fps. The Distributors, in this case Warner Bros, HATE 65mm, and not for the additional cost of production. An IMAX print of BATMAN will cost $50,000 and it will be handled by low wage employees 4 to 8 times per day. One mistake threading the projector or moving the 400 pounds of film will destroy the $50,000 print. Scratches in IMAX look 10x as bad. It's even worse in the 35mm theaters. Prints are only $3,500 but the experience handling them is less. It's no wonder the distributors are excited about the advent of digital projection. However, as a cinematographer, once you've shot on 65mm, everything else is just junk. To the eye, its like the difference between a Nikon and a Linhof 4x5. Everything is so sharp and crisp. Your shots just look beautiful, like life. There's just no comparing the feeling of the images in quality. A few years ago, I shot some 2nd unit timelapse establishing shots in LAUREL CANYON for Wally Pfister, Nolan's DOP. I shot them with my motion control camera system, a pin registered GC with collimated Nikkor lenses. I shoot some lens tests for Wally and we looked at them at Fotokem. I had been shooting 65mm exclusively for many years, including some films in Doug Turmball's SHOWSCAN process. When I saw the images, I was shocked. The image looked like soft, mushy. I thought something was wrong with the camera but Wally said the tests looked great. I looked at the test several times before I realized that 35mm "super 35" just doesn't have the negative area to support the lens resolution. The problem with the DMR process is that the lens choices Directors and DOP's make in 35mm does not translate to the IMAX Theater. IMAX cinematrographers learn earily on to be careful with "close ups". It has to with the relationship between the viewer and the size of the screen. Any DOP worth his salt knows that the effect of any given lens changes with respect to where in the theater the shot is viewed. Wide angle shots at seen at the back of the theater look like long shots in the front row. Almost all IMAX seats are equivalent to the front row of a standard theatrical experience. Anyone who saw a close up of Tom Hanks in the DMR blowup of APOLLO 13 knows what I'm talking about. Subconsciously, the size of the face violates our "personal space". Ever talked to someone at a party who stood too close to you? and you found yourself backing up? That what DMR does. I hope that Nolan and Wally Pfister are sensitive to this fact and are committed to paying the extra cost to get the image size of character close ups into the proper proportion. Starting about 1984, I spent 7 years trying to get the Industry to shoot a feature in 65mm. I used to be the Assistant Director of R&D for United Artists Theaters, which owned Todd-AO, who developed 65mm in 1955, as single camera Cinerama. Todd-AO used to have more 65mm cameras than Panavision, who "borrowed" the camera design from Todd-AO in the late 50's. Producer's used to ask me if their films would make more money in 65mm. Of course, because of the roadshow theater venue, they could. 65mm, IMAX, Showscan, Todd-AO, 6 track mag, 5.1 surround - these are just tools. However, the reality is that people just want to be "entertained", they don't care about what tools you use or why. If you want to make money with a movie, just make it good, by putting your heart into it. Example: THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY, which was shot MOS with a 16mm Bolex and it made $100,000,000 worldwide. Use what tools as required by your heart. My congratulations to Wally on his Batman Oscar. It's great to see these tools I love, in the hands of such capable artists. I don't care why Nolan is shooting IMAX, I'm just glad to see he is. Lee Ford Parker, DOP http://www.MocoMan.com