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when I switched to making less projects per year I started to get more money and experience from them so stopped counting at that point :) what counts as a "video" anyway

I have only seen that Hawk in use on some stuff posted here... most of the anamorphic stuff is shot on 35mm sensors or film anyway and the 16mm option is very uncommon . You should ask the local rental houses about the available options and if it seems to be too complicated you can decide whether wanting to go without the optical finder or updating to larger film format

you can setup custom framelines in either IVS or the onboard monitor or both, it is not an issue at all :) as said if not needing the optical desqueeze in the viewfinder there is even multiple options for a camera body because most modern onboard monitors have built in desqueeze options to view the monitor image in the correct aspect ratio. operating anamorphic with a non desqueeze viewfinder may be pretty annoying though so I would go with the proper viewfinder if in any way possible, helps the operating a lot

I remember the SR3 having a N16 gate available so that was pretty modern. The 416 is much newer, I think it is something like 2004 or so? as said the gate size does not matter at all when shooting for digital release. At most it may make things more difficult to have the standard16 gate (more possibility for gate reflections when having light sources near the frame edges)

apart from the lens centering and the need for correct gg markings there is no practical difference between using a S16 gate camera or N16 gate camera for the work you describe. If wanting to shoot anamorphic I would definitely go with the most modern S16 camera I could get, especially because the anamorphic viewfinders for 16mm cameras are very rare and only few have them... and if not having one you would need to use the video tap and desqueeze in the monitor to see the actual framing which necessitates better quality video tap. So, for N16 1.33 (1.37) shooting any camera would do if it only has the proper ground glass markings for 1.37. the N16 lens centering thing is important only if you are shooting for photochemical release. for scanning the S16 centering is actually easier because the scanners are already setup for it. But for anamorphic there is very limited options if wanting to be able to shoot effortlessly with it. Basically the Arri 416 is the only option I know of where you can get both the optical desqueeze viewfinder and a good quality video tap. it is also the most modern camera available (not a coincident because 16mm anamorphic shooting for cine release is a relatively new thing which probably only happened after the film stocks became good enough for it in the 2000's )

I am still not particularly impressed by this camera but that was nicely shot reel and amazing locations!

of course but if you are doing the skylight with an hmi and you key "sunlight" is tungsten you may want to leave the tungstens to 3200K so that you don't need to gel the HMI down so much. if wanting that 120mired difference you would want to aim the hmi to around 5195K . getting familiar with Mireds helps a lot, it is 1 000 000 divided by the kelvins. If you would think that a real sky ambience would be around 10 000K and the direct sunlight would be around 4500K (sounds about right for a direct sunlight, it tends to be around 4500 to 5000K, a good approximate would be something like 4700K or so) then the difference between the 10 000K and 4500K would be again that around 120 mireds which I suggested as a starting point for your tests for daytime studio look. it is a matter of taste how much you would want to tweak the colour temp difference and it also depends on what time of day and lighting conditions (clouds, dusty air, etc) there is. being a noon scene or dusk scene etc. The ambience is always there though unless it is a night scene so you will want some type of ambience to begin with to sell it as a daytime scene. You may want to do some tests with a digital camera first preferably with a colour temperature meter on hand to get a better grasp on the colour temp differences you would like to have on the final scene

Color temperature difference is the key for the look, not the actual colour temperature. You may want to try something around 120 mired difference for starters and test how you like it. If using tungsten stock that could be roughly made for example by gelling the sky ambience to around 4200K and the key "direct sunlight" to around 2800K which would be pretty usable gelling transmission wise if using only tungsten units (only losing around one stop of light when gelling up and losing maybe 1/3 stop or something like that when gelling down) and the look would be approximately right out of the box for slightly warm sunlight appearance (sunlight around 45 mired on the warm side compared to the base colour balance of the stock which would be pretty ok look for my taste I think). the next issue is how you would get the 4200K sky ambience light big enough so that it wraps the whole set nicely. that can be done in about million different ways and one needs to know how big a set you are actually using and what kind of light levels needed and what type of units are available (if they have the required output in the first place and how much they can be diffused before losing the needed output)

the thing is, the sky ambience needs large surface area soft and wrapping lights and can't really be done effectively with small hard sources without diffusing and clustering them. It is possible to rig lots of smaller units, for example 4x4' Kino Flos in a row side by side to create a large surface area cold light that way but that is relatively expensive and may not be practical compared to using large bounces or a diffusion frames rigged above and then doing the direct sunlight with smaller units. the same works outdoors btw if you need to shoot the last shots of the day for daylight look and the sun already set an hour ago. you just need to fake the sky ambience and the direct sunlight and it sells the daylight illusion perfectly. If you take the sky ambience away then the audience thinks it is supposed to be a night scene. Simple as that.

you need to mimic the sky ambience with a large cold soft source and then make a believable sunlight to light the subjects and background. I believe that star trek shot is lit at least partially with spacelights but you can use lots of different techniques to get approximately the same end result. I have for example done sky ambience in a small studio by rigging the largest overhead frame I can over the subjects and then filling the frame with cold light sources like hmi or gelled tungsten etc. Then making the "sunlight" with diffused or raw tungsten fresnels or hmi par depending on what is needed. It is also possible to bounce the "sky ambience" instead of lighting through a diffusion frame if bouncing is easier or cheaper etc. For example using white molton or cheap white paper etc. for making a very large surface for bouncing cold light. How large a set you'll want to light for daylight look and what units etc. are available for you? You will want to observe a little how the real outdoor daylight behaves to be able to mimic it better in studio. Though the soft cold ambience + harder warmer brighter direct light is usually a good starting point and you just need to fiddle the ratios and colour temperature differences to sell it to the audience 🙂

I would think it'd be creepy to purchase and collect unknown persons random home movies but there is lots of weirder hobbies existing so what would I know 😅 maybe if they have some known historical context they would be somewhat interesting 😙

You may want to test old fully manual Nikon AI-S lenses, they are good quality and very affordable and have good enough resolving power. For stop motion it might be better to use the F2.8 versions because of the better contrast when stopped down compared to f2 and 1.4 / 1.2 versions. The ai-s are very good if stopped down at least from 1 to 1.5 stops depending on the lens. You can test the ai-s 35/2.8 first and have couple of extension tubes (the cheap ones, no electronics needed) to use if necessary. most of the ai-s lenses can be declicked relatively easily if needed though one needs to make some diy friction adjustments to the iris ring after declicking

The approximates for ruined start and end of the roll when loading in daylight was for film with a remjet layer like colour negative films. Calculate a little more for b/w films without the remjet

Camera film does not have any leaders, it is same stock the roll through. So you just load it and the it starts to expose the frames from that position onwards all the way to the roll end. When the whole roll is shot through and wound up to the takeup spool you will remove the roll and send it to the lab. Then use the empty feed roll as the next takeup spool. Bolex uses daylight spools and you can really load them in normal light levels as long as direct hard sunlight does not get on the feed roll. You will typically expose and lose the first maybe 2 or 3 feets of film if loading in daylight whereas when loading in darkness you will save those feets and will start to expose from the same frame you leave to the gate when loading. It is also possible to remove the shot roll in daylight. You will lose the visible outer layer and typically about half a turn or so if unloading very carefully so that it does not unwind at all. I recommend exposing something nnormally lit to the start of the roll so that the lab knows where the first usable frame is when they are stitching rolls together

I was referring to the general quality the stuff seems to be on for example iTunes doc trailers and what is generally needed in a story driven talking head style documentary. There is higher end stuff as well but also surprisingly large amount of technically low-end and very indie looking stuff... generally image quality is NOT that important in documentaries which tell stories about human life. the story itself is important and is normally told via audio track so one needs to decide where to invest those limited resources to get the best overall result. Most likely it is not the absolute image quality which gets updated first because people can get away shooting with a potato if the story is otherwise well told and the audio quality is not annoyingly bad... personally I mostly do post related work on docs where image quality is very important (they are done mainly for cinema release so the viewer can really see the difference) and audio is done afterwards so it is pretty much the other end of the spectrum where pixel peeping is extremely important but the camera may not even have a microphone attached if it complicates shooting. for example nature related material with wide landscape drone shots in low light and similar stuff.