Gautam Valluri

Hi Stephen, I reckon Richard Tuohy at Nano Lab in Daylesford will be able to help you find one. You can find his contact details here: https://www.nanolab.com.au/contact.php Good luck!

This looks fantastic, good work! Always a pleasure to see useful new developments for old tech.

Double-X in 16mm has a very specific look. It's sharp and grainy, and when you shoot a blank white wall you get the trademark "ants" type grain. But this look is associated with some beloved indie and experimental films in cinema history, so choosing this means (atleast for me), a very deliberate choice of a look. Tri-X is a reversal stock. After development, you won't get a negative image but a positive one. I personally love the look of Tri-X, the grain is tight and the details are excellent but you have to nail the exposure to a high degree of accuracy. Reversal film is not as forgiving as negative film with over and under exposure. Depending upon how much film you're shooting, you should speak to your closest lab and establish that they can develop the quantity you require. Since you're from Munich, I can recommend Andec Cinegrell in Berlin, as I'm certain they develop Tri-X in any quantity. Or even the 500T, if you want even more room for exposure. A lot of film productions go this route as shooting on a vision3 colour negative stock is the safest way to go about things currently. Personally though, once a colour negative scan is graded to B&W in post, it just looks like desaturated colour negative to me. The whole "look" of the black and white film image comes from its lack of lattitude, its crushed blacks and more visible grain. I recommend you check out the finnish film The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki. The entire film was shot on Tri-X and looks gorgeous. In interviews the cinematographer of the film said that they even used some 500T in some low-light situations but he push-processed the negative and bleach bypassed it in development to get a contrastier, granier image that when graded to B&W in post looks closer to the Tri-X image.

Here is the official press release for the ARRI ALEXA 265: https://www.arri.com/en/company/press/press-releases-2024/arri-announces-the-small-and-lightweight-alexa-265-camera-revolutionizing-65-mm-cinematography

Thanks Tyler. I also managed to turn down the back light of the screen to 0 as I was unsure if it was backlit by LED or other lights. I couldn't find any posts on the forum about what sort of an effect LED screens have when filmed on 16mm. Do they strobe like CRTs?

Hello all, I will be filming some digitally shot footage off of an LCD TV screen onto 16mm 7207 250D stock. The LCD screen in an old Samsung TV screen with HDMI. I will be screening an 24 fps MOV file on it from a macbook via HDMI. The reason I chose an LCD screen is to avoid strobing. My questions: Do I need to adjust any settings on the screen to avoid strobing or pulsing artefacts? Considering its a European TV screen (HD display), will it play the 24fps MOV file at 25 fps? And in that case do I have to adjust my camera speed to 25 fps? Thanks in advance for your insights,

A lot of films used to use VistaVision for effects shots until CGI and film scanning became high quality. The idea was to counter the generational loss of optical printing by using a bigger negative. A lot of effects shots were also done on 65mm for the same reason.

There was also Astrovision, which was a 10-perf/70mm horizontal format, used in some science museums in Asia in the 1990s. I suppose the cost of shooting 8/70 or 10/70 wouldn't be far off from 15/70, so why not go all out?

The only colour intermediate film Kodak offers is the 5242 and can be developed to a negative or a postive. I think it has an ISO/ASA of 1. So you just casually drop "this 70mm camera" and not tell us more?

If you don't want to create a positive projection copy from a negative, and want options other than shooting reversal, the only way remaining is to shoot digitally and print direct to 35mm projection print (like Cinevator).

I've "kinescoped" the titles for one of my films onto 16mm Orwo DN21 stock from an LCD screen. It was purely experimental and came out very underexposted in the end. I had to adjust the printer lights accordingly during the final print. For our DIY setup at L'Abominable, we use 1440 x 1080 (4:3) MOV ProRes files to record to 16mm frame-by-frame off of a calibrated LCD screen. It gets the job done for us experimental filmmakers. As far as I know, there is no Arrilaser system for 16mm. If you really want a laser-out, you'd have to laser-out to 35mm IN, then contact print an IP from it and do a reduction IN to 16mm. This is naturally very inefficient and expensive. A good CRT recorder that can do a fine filmout to 35mm will certainly give you a great image on 16mm. Also 7252 is old Ektachrome colour reversal stock. Did you mean 7266 Tri-x or 7222 Double-X perhaps ?

I remember when they shot the second season of Euphoria on cross processed 35mm Ektachrome, they said the resulting image had a strong green tint on it. Also, does the cross processed ektachrome "negative" have the orange mask on it?

Thank you @Robino Jones for sharing this with us! Fascinating to see how much the 16mm extraction looks like actual 16mm. The french filmmaker Mia Hansen-Love frequently shoots on 2-perf/35mm and extracts a 1.85 image from it. Her films have that "not quite Super16" and "not quite 35mm" quality to them which for me is now clear thanks to your tests.

Some examples of 16mm Ektachrome/ Reversal shot films that were widely projected were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Indian film Duvidha. In both cases, the edited colour reversal film element was blown up to 35mm internegative for release prints. @Christian Flemmhas told me he managed to make Ektachrome-to-Ektachrome dupes. He might be able to advise on this technique. This is very interesting. Is it possible to see some results of this process? I would optically print the reversal image onto a 35mm internegative and make contact prints from that. Maybe flash the interneg to reduce contrast. EDIT: Just remembered that I used this method for a sequence in one of my short films. I had shot a sequence of stills on several rolls of 5294 that I spliced together and loaded into an optical printer on the projection side. Then I refilmed them frame-by-frame onto 5213 stock. It turned out rather well actually. Didn't even have to flash the negative.

Cinematic colour palette preferences change according to the trends of the time. Having previously worked in film restoration, one of the key things we used to always look out for was notes on how the creators of the film wanted the film to look and honour that as much as possible. Like many people, I watched Eyes Wide Shut on DVD for the first time back in the early 2000s. Then I had the rare opportunity of watching it on a 35mm print in 2021. Needless to say, the image was completely different. The print's image was more dreamlike whereas the DVD's image was like any standard 90s American drama.

Looks brilliant! Thanks for sharing.

Not yet. I am currently collecting price quotes to pass on to the organisation providing the funding. I only have a minute or so to print to film. So far, these are the only two labs that said they can do it on 16mm. Most other labs said they only do Digital to 35mm to Digital.

Andec (Cinegrell) does it in Berlin. Dirk Dejonghe's lab also does it.

Happy to help Graham! And I just remembered we have a list on the filmlabs website: https://www.filmlabs.org/technical-section/editing/negcut/ It's probably not up to date but worth a look.

The NFI Film Lab in Hungary offer negative cutting services: https://nfi.hu/en/nfi-filmlab/services/analogue-post-production/negative-processing-and-cutting.html

I think Matthew's reply pretty much answers your question. I just wanted to add that this was such an important camera back in the mid-2000s when you absolutely had to print out your film to 35mm for projection. It was one of the only cameras that did 24p in its budget range and the DVCPRO HD was just brilliant. It had a great lens too. A really great step up from the earlier DVX100 that defined most of the early "mumblecore" films in the US. I saw a 35mm scan of the Duplass brothers' Baghead a while back, which was shot on the HVX200 and it looked like old grainy fast film from the 70s.

This is precisely why I'm perplexed. With the costs involved in shooting 8/35mm, I'd might as well shoot 5/65mm. And reportedly for The Brutalist they did a 1.66 crop of their VV image so atleast they wasted less real-estate. Image real-estate and costs aside, I'd still be impressed if they just chose VV for the look only! This makes sense, as the entire developing and scanning process is no different to regular 35mm workflow. Finally, in the case of Paul Thomas Anderson's film, I'd love to see how the VV 1.85 cropped image holds up when blown up optically to 15/70mm. I know most of Nolan's 35mm footage up until Interstellar went through the DMR-process for their IMAX prints. I wonder if PTA's film will take that route or if he will insist on an optical blow up as he has done for his recent films.

News from the recently-concluded Venice Film Festival is that Brady Corbet's 215-minute period film The Brutalist starring Adrien Brody was shot in VistaVision and will have a 70mm release via DI. The film has a reported 1.66 : 1 aspect ratio. Paul Thomas Anderson's next film The Battle of Baktan Cross starring Leonardo Dicaprio is also being partly filmed in VV and is expected to have an IMAX 15/70mm release. Knowing Paul's track record, I'm assuming this will be an optical blow up. The film's aspect ratio is reported to be 1.85 : 1. It's good to see VV back as a main camera and not just for special effects shots but I wonder why the sudden interest in the format, especially since 65mm would probably be within the same budget range for these films, especially for Paul, who's already used it in The Master. Anyone on the inside know what's up?

This might be relevant for your question:

Do you mean Pull-process the negative + print normal vs Normally processed negative + printing down etc ? You didn't mention if the pull-processed negative was exposed normally or over by a few stops. If it were exposed normally, in theory it should give you a low-contrast image which I reckon would look quite similar to the normally processed negative printed down. I would highly recommend doing test rolls if possible in a lab and seeing the results yourself. Perhaps through your university's help or through an artist-run collective film lab? There's zebralab in Geneva for example: http://zebralab.info/