Gautam Valluri

Hi everyone, I have 6x 122m (400 ft) rolls of 8651 Fuji Super F-250T, all factory-sealed and never opened. They had been stored in a freezer in Germany for many years and in the freezer in my home in France since January this year. I did not get a chance to test this batch. I'm asking 120 Euros per roll + shipping costs or 660 Euros for all 6 rolls + shipping costs If interested, please PM me with info on where you'd like to have them shipped and I will be able to enquire at my local post office for shipping costs. Also possible to pick them up in person in Paris / région parisienne. Best, Gautam

Derick I sent you a DM earlier today.

Thank you Dom! I will check with Du-All right away. As far as I know, not many people have the Scoopic in Europe and therefore it is difficult to get it repaired.

Hello All, My beloved Canon Scoopic has an issue in the lens. It's completely out of focus when completely zoomed out and only in focus in the middle-zoom range. I'm guessing some intra-lens elements must've moved due to some shock effect (I had carried it on some travels but always in cabin baggage). Where can I get it repaired? I have the repair manual but I'm afraid I'm not very dexterous with major repairs like this. I'm based in France but am willing to ship the camera if I can get it fixed. @Will Montgomery any tips? Thanks in advance for any help!

To build on Uli's suggestion, if saving money on your filmstock is an absolute necessity, I would do a pre-shoot on a cheap video camera or iPhone and do a rough edit a day or two before the actual shoot. This allows you to not only make composition decisions but also to rehearse with the actors to see what works and what doesn't. This way, on the actual principal photography everyone knows what they have to do and you can get everything you need in 2-3 takes.

Just got the latest price list from my Kodak rep in France. No significant change. She said the prices will be updated later on but for the moment they remain unchanged.

Aren't there precious metals in trace amounts in digital camera circuit boards?

Hi Alan, Is this still available? What’s your asking price? Thanks, Gautam

Hi, I'm going to check out an Arri SR2 in Delhi early next week for a potential purchase but the seller doesn't have batteries to run the camera. Is anyone here based out of Delhi and could lend me a 12v battery for an Arri SR2? Thanks, Gautam

I’m jealous Aapo, all I ever seem to get as gifts are shirts I’d never wear or book I’d never read

I'm very hopeful for film in general. Having worked in the film restoration industry in France, all the state-funded restorations are required to be printed back to film for long term archival purposes. Hiventy, the biggest commercial film lab in France makes a large percentage of their business only with restorations. The CNC (France's national film organisation) estimates to have spent 13.5 billion euros to restore about 15000 films since 1990 (average 90,000 € per film x 15,000 films). This is all tax-payer funded and this is only France- I'm guessing at least Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and most Scandinavian countries have similar restoration policies and budgets. A lot of recent digitally-shot productions are going through an "analog intermediate" to add texture and natural grain to the final image. Dune is the best example. Guava Island is a smaller production example- both look fanstastic. FotoKem has their new SHIFTai service which does this as well (https://shiftai.fotokem.com/) And the fact that filmmakers like Chris Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, PTA, Wes Anderson, Steven Spielberg, David O'Russell, Darren Aronofsky, Pablo Larrain, etc shoot a million feet of film for every project... All of this is Kodak. I think they're ok for now even if they're no longer propped up by the studios. We need companies like Orwo, Ferrania et al to step up for the small guys. It's a wonderful opporunity to grab this part of the market and it surprises me that no one is doing it. Ilford does 100ft bulk rolls already for their B&W stock, why not do the B&H perfs on them and sell 400ft and 1000ft rolls? Especially considering that there are only 7222 Double X and the two Orwos on the 35mm BW motion picture film market.

I see where you're coming from. I do agree with you about Kodak's monopoly and I don't like it either. I'm hoping that Orwo will deliver on their promise of a new colour film stock and going by how their BW stocks are priced, price them low enough so Kodak will have to rethink their prices. If only Sony bought the Fuji stock workflow and brought them back on the markets, they could give Kodak some much needed competition.

Matthew we all want film to be cheaper and more accessible. I'm just finding it hard to understand what you want to say. I went back and read all your posts and it oscillates between "Kodak is killing its business by raising prices" and "not sure people want to shoot on film anymore". Your messages also sound angry, but I'm not sure if you're saying "forget film and shoot digital" or "I'm annoyed that its getting more and more expensive to shoot on film and its not fair" I'm genuinely interested in understanding the point you're trying to make, if you feel like elaborating a bit.

So eloquently put. Indeed there are many of us, we just silently go about our business.

Maybe make the 500T cheaper than the others? As an independent underground filmmaker with no external funding, I feel like the entry-level celluloid filmmaking is getting more and more out of reach. Here in France we have some artist-run labs and most of the young filmmakers here are scraping the bottom of the ebay barrel for expired VNFs, Ektachromes and EXRs. I feel like if Kodak could have the 500T more within the reach of entry-level celluloid filmmakers, especially in 16mm, it would bring a lot of people back to film. Also, Super8 needs to be much cheaper and not almost as expensive as 16.

Another way I can imagine doing it is shooting it with slow shutter speeds to get some painterly motion blur and just shoot at 25 fps. In the edit you could decide a pattern and cut out/ repeat frames as required. For 25 fps, I would probably cut out two frames after every frame and probably double the frame I left in. For example take frames A, B, C, D, E, F, G and perhaps make it something like A, A, D, D, G, G and so on... I've done some step-printing on an optical printer and I did lots of tests of various patterns to get the effect I wanted. It always came down to getting the right cut/repeat pattern of frames. One can also let the "projector" side of an optical printer roll out of sync to create motion "streaks". If nothing else, I suggest that you do lots and lots of tests before hand. Find what works for you, before you shoot your final scene.

I remember reading that Brad Bird and Robert Elswitt had to shoot the sandstorm IMAX sequence of Ghost Protocol in Super35 because the 15-perf footage was not registering the sand particles as they intended... Btw Dune looked amazing in the cinema...I second the score being too insistent, was taking away a bit from my experience. Who's going to tell Hans to cool it a bit in the sound mixes?

It's mostly DI. A lot of films that are partially shot on digital cameras like the Alexa also get printed onto 35mm/70mm for projection prints. These are mostly done on Arrilaser, and it costs a lot of money. These are of course done for very few films that are intended for a cinephile audience. Tarantino has been doing 70mm and 35mm prints from a 4K DI for his past few films and for 'The Hateful Eight' did everything photochemically timed I believe. PTA and Nolan do photochemical 70mm and 35mm prints regularly. As for Super16, the format was originally designed to be blown-up to 35mm or telecined to Beta SP tapes. Most Super16 originated films these days go through a DI towards a 2K DCP and the rare ones that do end up on 35mm. Super16, optically blown up to 35mm can look very good if it was handled by a competent colour timer and lab.

Hello Everyone, I'm going to watch Dune tomorrow (the trailer looks fantastic) and I came upon this article in THR that says that Greg Fraser shot the film on the Alexa LF (Arriraw 4.5K) and then printed it onto 35mm and rescanned it to a 4K DI. Edit: here's the link to the article (forgot to include): https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dune-cinematographer-denis-villeneuve-movie-1235011592/ My impression of Digitally captured images printed onto film and then scanned back has so far been unimpressive and generally seems like an unnecessarily complicated process. I mean why not just shoot on 35mm film directly? Especially with a 165 million dollar budget? Now if someone as highly regarded as Fraser is doing it, there must be good reason. Anyone knows why? Thanks, Gautam

Thanks Frank, I think I got it now

This is excellent stuff Jacob. I'm sorry I didn't understand which Ektachrome print film were you referring to? Did you mean the Ektachrome E100 made for still cameras with KS perforations?

Hello everyone, I was watching this interview with the great Robby Müller on how he shot Jim Jarmusch's "Down by Law" and he mentions using Double-X and Plus-X stocks and then developing them to a "lower" gamma of 0.6 I understand what gamma means and I have some fair experience developing 7222 and some reversal by hand. I'm unable to understand how one develops a film for a lower gamma, like in this case 0.6 I'd appreciate any help. Here is a link to the video for all of you to enjoy: Thanks, Gautam

Do you mean you contact printed Tri-X as a negative onto positive sound stock or Tri-X as reversal onto sound negative stock? And what sound film did you print onto? Thanks, Gautam

Hi @Jarin Blaschke, would it be possible to share the results of these tests? Thanks, Gautam

Yes I've heard this effect being referred to as 'Step-printing' effect. I did this in a 16mm project a couple of years ago. I basically took a 24 fps shot and then printed it 3-4 times while skipping a few frames in an Oxberry optical printer. Not quite as expressive as Wong Kar-Wai but it was fun to do it. Here is a link to vimeo, the effect starts around the 3:04 mark: