Chance Shirley

"Grainy" and "wavy" could mean a lot of things. Could you make an accurate QuickTime video and post it somewhere? Or at least post some grabs of problematic frames from the DVD?

If you're going to do a 35 optical blowup, I think you gotta go with 1.85:1. I assume most places that do 16 - 35 blowups are set up for that aspect ratio, and it's one of the formats that any American theater should be able to project. Actually, the lab is probably going to transfer the entire 1.66:1 Super 16 image to the 35 negative. But it will get cropped to 1.85:1 by most projector/screen setups, so you might as well frame for that. As far as I know, most theater projectors (at least in America) aren't set up to handle 1.66:1, and 1.78:1 is more of a video standard. That said, it wouldn't hurt to protect your entire super 16mm (1.66:1) frame. That way, if you ever want to "open it up" a bit for a 1.78:1 video transfer, it won't be a problem.

After making a few short movies with friends, I financed my first feature with a MasterCard and it ended up playing a couple of times on the Sci Fi channel. I know that's not a huge success, but it is possible to get a movie made and (somewhat) released on your own. Now I'm in the process of making my second feature (also financed by MasterCard). I hope that one day somebody else will foot the bill, but I love making movies too much to stop and wait for money.

Down and dirty method... 1) Record a few seconds of gray card (properly exposed) on your digital tape. 2) Play the tape through the nicest progressive scan monitor you can get your hands on (in a darkened room). 3) Point a spot meter at the screen during the gray card playback to calculate exposure. 4) Use an 8mm or Super 8 camera to record the digital footage playing back through the monitor. I haven't tried this myself, but have read about others using this as a low-budget "tape-to-film" technique.

Most of the flashes look to me like they occur when the camera is either slowing down at the end of a take or getting up to speed at the beginning of a take. As the film is not moving at full speed during these times, the frames are overexposed. This is a common occurrence with film cameras and the reason you should let the camera get up to speed before you call "action."

The DV footage will be interlaced. However, you can use software like Final Cut Pro or After Effects to remove the extraneous "pull down" frames and work with 24p (assuming you're shooting 24 fps) footage on you computer. Using that 24p footage to create a DVD will work better than using the original interlaced (29.97i) footage. Also, no disrespect to Will, but I find Fuji has better 16mm prices than Kodak. My favorite Fuji retailer is www.FilmEmporium.com.

Good-looking stuff. At what f-stop did you have the lens set?

I like Film Emporium: http://www.filmemporium.com

The colorist could have something to do with it if you're having the stuff transferred to tape. Personally, I always think my S16 stuff looks too modern -- I wish it looked more like footage from the 70s!

I have three lenses that are about a year old (16mm, 25mm, 50mm), plus a 9.5mm that's at least 5 years old, and I think they're all great. Plenty sharp, and they all cover Super 16.

Actually, there are a lot of choices. Assuming mount compatibility, any 35mm lens will cover the Super 16mm frame. As for which lenses are best, if money isn't an object... I couldn't even guess. As far as I know, money is always an object. Bang for the buck, I'm fond of the Optar Illumina primes.

Check out The Devil's Rejects. Great-looking, gritty, S16 handheld shooting.

Just based on the numbers in the spec, I assumed they limited the scan to 1998 pixels across because that number, divided by 1080, gives you an even 1.85. For 2.39:1 aspect ratios, the spec uses the whole 2048 pixels across, but fewer pixels top to bottom. So, for Academy/1.85 productions, is the image (resolution size) actually up-rezzed a bit for 1920 x 1080 HD, or do they just leave a little "gap" around the edges? I would think up-rezzing could introduce artifacts in certain situations, but I've never dealt hands-on with a DI film scan.

According to the Digital Cinema System Specification Version 1.1, the resolution of a Digital Cinema Distribution Master for a movie with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio is 1998 x 1080 pixels. I know that 1080i HD broadcast material is 1920 x 1080 pixels. So, for a "2K" scan, exactly how is the material scanned, and how are the DCDM and HD masters created? I'm guessing the HD master is created by cropping a few pixels from the sides of the original 1.85:1 1998 x 1080 scan? Also for "open matte" projects, is the entire 35mm negative scanned (1998 x 1502?) to allow for vertical repositioning of certain scenes (or an alternate 1.33:1 SD version)?

So, RED is for real. I'll admit, I originally thought the whole thing was vaporware. Now that I've been proven wrong, I'd like to try one out at some point. I have a question that doesn't seem to come up much in the film vs. digital discussion -- what do the distributors and television stations think? Last I heard, distributors and television stations had a strong bias toward shot-on-film material, at least as far as feature-length movies were concerned. Anyone know if this is still the case?

I have a feature-length film on disk as a large QuickTime file (BlackMagic 8-bit uncompressed NTSC, 23.976 fps). Can anyone recommend a North American post-production house to take the disk, convert the file to 25 fps PAL, and output it to a PAL DigiBeta tape? I know plenty of post houses that do NTSC, but not really any that can handle PAL.

> Did you transfer at 29.97 ? (Giving "i" but with identical fields ?) Again, I'm not sure. I do know that the transfer is direct-to-disk. Maybe the "hack" is the fact that no tape is involved in the process? CineFilm in Atlanta ( http://www.cinefilmlab.com ) is doing our transfer. I imagine if you call them or write them and ask about their direct-to-disk techniques, they'd gladly fill you in.

Honestly, I'm not sure about the nuts and bolts of the codec. I originally assumed I'd be getting 60i files with 3:2 pulldown, but the files are actually 23.976 progressive frames per second. Actual resolution is 1080 x 1280, and the 1280 is stretched to 1920 for playback.

I'm currently in production on a Super 16mm feature (I'm directing, my pal Jim Roberson is the DP). We're transferring direct-to-disk 1080p/23.98fps QuickTime using the DVCPro HD codec. You can see some grabs on my blog: http://interplanetarymovie.blogspot.com/2007/03/frames.html http://interplanetarymovie.blogspot.com/20...wing-in-hd.html (Click any of the pics on these pages to see the full-size 1920x1080 frame.) We're shooting on an Aaton LTR 54 with Optimar Illumina primes (16mm, 25mm, and 50mm for the most part). As for the 16BL -- I owned one before I got the Aaton. I love the BL, but, be warned, it's a heavy camera, and not as easy to load as an Aaton or Arri SR. The BL probably costs a lot less, though.

Also note that Final Cut usually exports NTSC at 720x480 or 720x486. This is fine for television, which displays non-square pixels. However, for computer viewing, you'll need to resize the grabs to 640x480 (or 640x486). If you happened to get your footage transferred with a 16x9 "squeeze," you'll need to resize to 854x480.

Just because someone works in radio, it doesn't mean they're not entitled to an opinion on digital projection vs. film projection. I understand the digital advantages (cost, durability), but I'll still miss 35mm prints. And I am curious to see how 4K digital projection looks (if digital cinema resolution ever gets that high).

I think the FilmEmporium.com folks are great. I've been buying Fuji Eterna 500T and 250D from them for my current project.

This topic has been covered several times before -- once in the last few days, if I recall. Do a site search -- you should find some information that way. I've decided that I must be the only person in the world who LIKES the weird roll bars from a CRT.

With a 16BL, be sure you get DOUBLE-perf film. The "default" for 16mm is usually single-perf, and, as far as I know, all the 16BL cameras require double-perf 16mm film.

Don't forget about the Optar Illumina lenses: http://www.optarillumina.com/ They're a lot cheaper than Zeiss lenses. I've used the 9.5mm in the past with good results. I'm about to shoot a feature with the 9.5mm, plus a new 16mm, 25mm, and 50mm. I'll try to let you know how it goes. And they all cover S16 on my Aaton LTR-54.