Aapo Lettinen

the main problem with cameras is that you need to update them at least every 3 years or so (even 1.5 or 2 years depending on the model and what you use it for) but you may use the same lenses even for your whole professional career and good lenses may be updated every 10 or 20 years or so. it is thus much easier to waste money on cameras than on lenses, you'll probably change the camera body at least 4 or 5 times before changing your lens set if you like those lenses and use them often. however if you are doing certain type of low or mid budget work or lots of indie stuff or live far away from rental houses or need to have a specific camera model which is expensive or difficult to rent compared to the purchase price, then it may be wise to purchase a camera body... even if you have to sell it and buy a new one after 2 years you may get the purchase price 5 or 10 or 20 times back during that time depending on what type of work you do with it. cameras need to work like mad continuously, then be thrown away and replaced. lenses need to be taken care for and serviced and maintained for decades. that is the main difference I think

if you need cine mechanics then it might be more valuable to get a good lens IF your current camera body is good enough. remember that you may not be able to update your camera any time soon if you use all the money for lenses. 8000 is not much for a cine zoom though and if you can manage with modified stills primes I would maybe choose a 5000 or 6000usd camera and 5000 or 4000 usd for lenses or even less. with glass it's more of a matter of mechanics and look, not the optical performance. you could manage perfectly well with modified still lenses even for 4k theatrical release if you can make the mechanics and possible chromatic aberrations and different bokeh and flaring work

here is what I normally want to have when transferring to prores: a somewhat flat scan with shadows or highlights corrected when needed (if they would clip and the look requires saving either them) but color cast etc. easily correctable stuff can pass on uncorrected during transfer if I can easily correct it afterwards in grading. this is only how I normally do transfers, for different project with different stock and film amounts and shooting ratio another way might be much better

yes, that is correct :) edl is for Edit Decision List (a software readable text file containing info of the edit points) and dpx is a standard file format for film scans. dpx scanning is normally quite expensive which is why only the material needed for the final movie is scanned in best quality to dpx. after developing the raw materials just get the most affordable basic telecine transfer so that the edit can be done affordably and when absolutely sure which frames are needed, then finally scanned in best available quality. if you are shooting very small amount of material (like under 1km or so of 35mm 4-perf) it may be more practical to just transfer it all in reasonable quality to prores444 or proresxq or uncompressed quicktime and do your edit versions and final versions directly from that transfer (the transfer quality needs to be good of course and material needs to allow grading) . I tend to do "technical grade" transfers instead of full Best Light because I will grade everything properly later anyway and it is much more expensive to actually grade material in telecine rather than just correcting the too dark/too bright/ clipping/crushing shots in film transfer and leaving the other variances there to be corrected in final grading. it may necessitate for you being in the transfer session with the operator to guide which shots need more highlight correction and which need more detail to shadows etc. so that the operator can make quick adjustments to settings on the fly. it is not live grading though so you need to know which shots you can grade to the desired look afterwards without adjusting scanner/telecine settings for that specific shot and which need to be corrected in film transfer so that you don't miss the critical parts of detail from the negative

it depends a lot of your shooting ratio which option is more practical: to do a best light (or technical grade) scan/telecine right away of all the material OR to first do a "preview quality offline scan" of all the material and then scan selects according to EDL after the edit is locked. I personally shoot with low shooting ratios so it is more practical for me to do "technical grade" scan of all of the material to prores444 and edit directly from that. I am working with shooting ratios of about 2.5:1 to 5:1, if you're shooting lots of dialogue scenes with for example 10:1 it is probably much cheaper to do the 1k onelight and scan selects to dpx after editing. the Stockholm lab is very high quality and you can ask quotes if processing more material at a time. Another great European lab is DeJonghe in Belgium, I have used them a lot recently. they have similar approach with scanning, onelight or lightly graded editorials with telecine and dpx scanning for the finished edit according to edl. I used DeJonghe for developing last year and transferred the films (35mm and some 16mm) to prores444 technical grade here in Finland in ReelOne Oy with Millennium2 scanner. as said I use very low shooting ratios and the current arrangement is the most practical for me but if you are shooting with high ratio it would probably be much cheaper to just edit the onelight transfer and then scan selects to dpx with proper scanner

here is some grease filtration halation screenshots from the Art film we made (the full movie is on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/212097418 )

oh now I found couple. they seem to appear and disappear every now and then, last time I checked was some time ago and there was only fullmoviescams visible. as said the only way it would be acceptable to upload these would be if it's impossible to watch the movie any other way, like for example some old Soviet films which are not distributed anymore in any form. maybe it would be wise to develop a rental option in youtube so that the distributors would get some return from these illegal uploads if it seems to be impossible to completely avoid them. another option would be to insert lots of ads to it just like they are doing with the uploaded music. this would work for the older films which are not actively distributed anyway except for VOD. for new films the best approach would still be to just remove them as quickly as possible to avoid financial losses :o

I have never seen a hollywood or other western made movie really uploaded to youtube, those are all Full Movie Scams by either the distributor's marketing department or by some instance trying to spread malware or other harmful material. Some mosfilm stuff I have seen there which is a good thing if the movie is one of the old ones which are not legally distributed anywhere in any form.. As for the ad content, most of the youtube (and tv) ads are so insanely stupid that they are able to cause permanent brain damage so it is only a good thing if they can reduce the advertising even a little bit. Also taking into account that the persons ripping off copyrighted material and making versions and compilations of it will also get their share of the ad profits which is very wrong in all regards :O

we just finished this silent 28min Art film (will vfx remove couple of modern things from the background later but otherwise finished :) ) , I used lots of very slight Vaseline and Nose Grease filters on this one in certain scenes combined with Black Promists. for example the scenes starting at 16:16 (the following night scene) and 11:23 (inside the blacksmith's shop). this is what I meant by using "very slight" vaseline filtration to mostly alter the highlights without extensive distortion Vaseline filtration usually creates. https://vimeo.com/212097418 (the story is loosely based on Finnish mythology and I shot about half of it with Sony Fs7 and almost half with Eclair Cameflex on 35mm film. most of the Vaseline scenes are with Fs7. additional unit shot some drone shots with DJI Phantom3. some imperfections here and there but most of the scenes have great visuals I think, especially for the budget and the very challenging shooting conditions :lol: )

thats exactly what I do, but sometimes the upper flange may jam the film just a little bit so that it lands on the wrong track or just becomes angled so that the upper corner touches the other layer. in addition with the fingernail trick I also shake the finished spiral carefully in the darkroom to make sure that that any possible misaligned layers land to the spiral and I may also hear if there is anything wrong with it (sounds different if the film is misaligned) . the fingernail trick does not work for the first meters of the spiral (the flange is in the way) , I may check every now and then from the side that the outermost film layer is perfectly round and if there is anything wrong with it I will know there is a problem somewhere in the innermost layers

I have never had any air bubble problems with home developing, they are easy to get out of the spiral. I have had however problems with the loading of the Lomo tanks every now and then, sometimes some of the film layers may go to "wrong track" if you are not careful (the loading has to be done in total darkness of course) so that the part of the emulsion layer which touches the other film layer's backing does not develop correctly or at all. one can lose maybe 4 to 30 adjacent frames this way or more depending on the severity of the loading error. but it has not happened in years for me because I load the spirals very carefully and triple check that the layers are aligned correctly. Another thing is drying the developed film. you will develop at least 15 meters at a time with any film format other than Dual8 so there is a great risk of messing the wet and fragile emulsion layer when you are handling the film after developing and hanging it for drying. It would not mess anything as much that you would not see the image at all, it just gets scratches and fingerprints on it and there may be hair and dust sticking to the emulsion etc. imperfections. the greatest risk for the material, I think, would be to mess up with a developer formula, or use a very wrong developer or temperature for a film type so that the emulsion even partially disintegrates, or use aged and/or oxidised developer which is not in good condition anymore. that way you could render the film almost unusable or even completely blank :ph34r: the other things are just imperfections happening to some parts of the material but if the chemistry is wrong you could lose it all. for a beginner the most challenging thing though would be to load the film to the spiral reliably without any errors, should be practiced in light for some time before trying with real material in a darkroom ;) chemistry part is easy as long as you follow the instructions and use protective gear to avoid fumes and chemical splashes ;) (the Lomo tank parts are fragile btw and they may shatter if dropped accidentally. one of the risks is to mess up in the darkroom and drop and break tank parts so that you need to buy another tank -_- )

yep the SR1 and 2 are 12v and the SR3 is 24v. as Tyler said the fuse is the first thing to check if these cameras don't run. though do the polarity check first if it's a diy cable

You are shooting with something like the Agfa Family super8 camera or similar? That model was my first camera ever when I was about 10 or 11 :) Fun to shoot with but not a great learning tool if you want to advance towards more serious filmmaking. you really need manual controls for that and the dslr would be the cheapest way to get them I think. Filmmaking is very expensive in general I'm afraid so you need some funds for your learning period. it will cost you much more than the most affordable dslr price but the short films don't need to be high budget, couple of hundred bucks per film would be fine. For the "BIG" short film, however, you will probably need lots of funds, especially if making lots of dialog scenes and shooting 35mm film. If most of the crew works for free and you can get some film, developing and gear deals, then something like 1000 -1500 dollars per minute of finished movie could be a rough ballpark depending on your shooting ratio etc. I don't want to be discouraging in any way, I just have done lots of similar sounding projects before and they have always been very expensive to make, especially if they contain lots of short dialog scenes in different locations which necessitates lots of company moves per day and lots of time wasted to setting up and wrapping gear. I don't know what exact type of movie you are planning though, how long it would be and how you would manage the logistics, rentals and other aspects of the production. as a side note, I spent close to 8000 euros last year for my own film tests alone, that was for 35mm 4perf and 16mm material. the cameras were not expensive but especially the post processing is, even with Super8 if you need to get the best out of the format :unsure: I'm meaning that you really need to calculate what you can afford and which projects you are able to finish with the available resources. And if you know ANY experienced indie filmmakers who can help you and who you can learn from, make sure to use those contacts to get you further

there is btw the "Students and First Time Filmmakers" section which would be better for this type of topics and questions :) you can either "edit in camera" or use tape splicer for cutting the film. if using the negative stock you can maybe have it printed in the States so that you can practice simple negative cutting and editing in film. I don't know if it is valuable as a filmmaking learning experience compared to, say, having the negative transferred to video and then edited digitally so that you can try lots more different styles and approached with the editing.. the editing in film aspect may disturb the filmmaking learning a lot so if you want to experiment with the Super8 I recommend to have the first rolls transferred to video for easy editing and then when you have familiarized yourself with the process, you can try entirely photochemical finishing with the Super8 film. for slow motion and time lapse you will shoot higher framerate or lower framerate compared to the normal speed (generally 18 or 24fps with super8) , and because you are shooting full frames the scene is already "slowed down" or "sped up" when playing it back at the projector's speed. optical printer is not needed

vision3, 50D is about the best you can get in Super8 format. it won't look anywhere near like 16mm or 35mm optically or grain wise but if your camera is good you can get nice images out of it. the emulsion is the same in super8, 16mm, 35mm so the colors and contrast are somewhat the same if not taking the poorer optics or smaller negative's effect into account. "Huge" and "Complex" are no good starting points for a beginning filmmaker... given enough time, you can learn and gain lots of experience to make it happen but you need to make lots of simpler projects first where you can practice your skills and try different techniques. the filmmaking and directing experience/skills are more important for you I think because you said you will hire a experienced cinematographer for the production and you can let him/her to solve the cinematography and lighting related issues. but the storytelling part is what falls on you entirely and it is actually much more important for the film's success than pretty and polished images or great production values. you could get a video capable dslr for couple of hundred bucks and use your existing still lenses, it would be much cheaper in the long run than using Super8 camera as a learning tool. As said, it is very important to make multiple smaller projects before trying the huge and complex project and you will also need some producing experience if you are planning to do that part also by yourself. You can gain very valuable experience by contributing to other filmmaker's projects. if you know some indie guys, you can ask if you can come to their sets to help with anything and then observing their problem solving as closely as you can. photography and filmmaking differ hugely in many aspects and you need to start almost from zero when advancing to filmmaking from photography field. maybe something between 3 and 4 years for the process would be a good starting point. you can speed up the process if you make lots of projects with experienced people (learning from them) and hire a experienced crew for your higher budget movie so that you can focus on the storytelling part and let the crew to handle the technical part of the production.

You're welcome ^_^ if you need tips and tricks for photochemical finishing for specified look, there is very knowledgeable people here who can help. you can try the "Film Stocks and Processing" section. I personally finish all the film originated material digitally but others can help with how to create or mimic a certain look entirely on film. if you edit on video, it is easiest to get the sound made according to the video and then let the lab make the optical soundtrack out of the audio file. remember to edit at 24.00fps to maintain audio sync ;) it also helps a lot if you get the telecine in intra codec (like prores hq) format and edit directly from that and also send the reference video to the negative cutter in intra codec so that the video reference is frame accurate. otherwise you may run into audio sync problems when making the prints and have to recut the audio to correct for differences in the negative cut VS video reference :ph34r: so it is wise to use intra codec for that, NOT h264 or anything which does not have accurate frames. the aspect ratio comes into play when you want to make taller aspect ratio than the film format allows. if not using academy width 4-perf aspect ratios you need to optically print it anyway so there is not much extra work from the aspect ratio difference compared to using the "native" aspect ratio of the 2perf or 3perf format. (though the printing itself may drive the costs upwards so much that it would be cheaper to shoot on 4-perf instead of, say, 3-perf or 2-perf if your shooting ratio is low. that's why you need to calculate the costs carefully for each option: for digital finishing the 2-perf is practically always much cheaper to use than 4-perf but for photochemical finishing it kinda depends. it is much easier to obtain a affordable 4-perf camera (renting, purchasing) than a 2-perf camera and the printing costs may be more than the price difference between 4perf and 2perf if your shooting ratio is 1:3 for example) It is fully possible, for example, to make 1.37 aspect ratio movie with 2-perf camera but then you need to mask the sides and enlarge the image a lot to fit it to 1.37 4-perf release print. if shooting, however, for 2.35 aspect ratio, you can use the full (academy) width of the 2-perf negative and approximately the full height. then when it's printed for release print it does not need to be enlarged optically and the graininess will be the same than when shooting academy width 2.35 aspect ratio with a 4-perf camera. with 2perf you will have gate hair more often at they always affect the final image though, when shooting for example 2.35 with a 4perf camera you will probably never see any hair in the picture area even if the gate is full of them B)

you really want to work with a professional film lab when shooting motion picture film. it is both more economical (when shooting color film) and saves you a lot of work. if you want to develop 35mm cine film you would basically need at least a 400ft developing tank (may need to be custom made) OR continuous processor similar to a small film lab (very challenging to do and you don't have much time to shoot the actual film when building and fine tuning the film processor all the time :wacko: for editing, you would have a preview video of the negative made with Keycode number showing, then edit that preview and when finished, let a negative cutter to cut the movie together from the original negatives using the reference video and keykode numbers. you would send the exposed negative to the lab and ask for telecine with keykode info burned to the video and then edit the video preview with any available video editor, like the Premiere Pro you suggested. if you DON'T want old time style graininess you could as well use 35mm. depending on your camera and film suppliers and lab deals it may be practical to use either 2-perf camera or 4-perf camera, you need to negotiate this with all the three of them to make sure you get the best cost effectiveness. are you shooting 2.39 or 2.35 ratio or taller? if taller than 2.35 it might be most practical to just use 4-perf camera to get a good camera deal and save on lab costs (easier and cheaper to print than 2-perf) if the film stock is affordable enough per roll

DI is for Digital Intermediate. I was assuming that you will be doing DCP deliverables for film festivals for not being limited to the ones which can show 35mm prints. I think it can be a bit counter productive to aim for the best techical quality and at the same time try to emulate a old movie style where part of the look is some amount of imperfection, like in total sharpness, grain, color reproduction... the problem with current negative stocks is that it may be very difficult to get enough grain out of them because they are specifically manufactured for low grain and great technical performance. That's why I asked if you would like to use super16mm because it is much easier to get the graininess you want that way. A 65mm original would look pretty much grainless in 35 prints so that might not be the best choice for this project. with 16mm negative you need to blow it up to 35mm for prints and need to use fresh stock instead of short ends: this may cost more in total than using 2-perf 35mm. but if grain is what you want the I would say the S16 format could be better for this project. if you don't have any experience with film it would be best to edit the movie in digital I think and then cut the negative according to video and make 35mm prints out of that. I recommend getting a great cinematographer for the project who has lots of film experience, especially with photochemical finishing

the current film stocks don't have the look of the 70's at all, they have been updated every 4 or 5 years or so and now that Fuji is no longer manufacturing stock, you are pretty much limited to Kodak I'm afraid unless wanting to experiment with certain reversal stocks which are still available. The Vision stocks have a very "modern" look but maybe you could get something interesting by shooting and processing them to maximum graininess and then making a timed and special processed print and scanning the print. that way you would have much more control over the final look without needing to use DI for other than small tuning. the look would be easier to archive with DI though but with the printing step it's quite possible I guess even when you are limited to only one or two negative stocks you could use... Are you shooting in 35mm or 16mm?

though using over/under with heavy cables. the over/over is a bit faster to use I think but it creates twist to the cable when you lay it down which is why the over/under is said to be better. (if using over/over the cable is untwisted when on coil but twisted when laying on the ground and will be untwisted again when coiled again using over/over and rolled to similar diameter than before. it requires though that the cable can be twisted easily in the first place which is why it is not used at all with heavy cables)

I was taught pinch/twist method. if using small diameter cable I may twist it with fingers actually if easier

if the ambience colour is OK for it, you can reflect the window ambience back towards the actors with very large bounces and /or shiny boards depending on the situation. matte silver surface is generally good for this. then you can add the rest with hmi and kino light and use them to correct for the high color temperature of the ambience. a bounce /reflector is not generally enough without additional fixtures in most situations though and the colour temperature is very high... one approach would be to hang kinos or other wide fixtures behind the actors over the frameline in a row maybe about 3m wide so that they extend the natural light coming from the window and wrap around actor's faces a bit so that you can do the rest of the lighting from the sides and maybe add some fill from the camera side if needed. I tend to use lots of shiny boards and kapa reflectors to direct and fine tune light to compensate for minor changes in lighting. I personally would maybe cross light with hmi's from the window side as David suggested, adding diffusion and possibly scrimming the part of the beam going directly towards actors but leaving the top of the beam unaltered to use it for fill purposes if needed, maybe do the kino backlight thing if needed, and use only shiny boards /kapa reflectors on the camera side for fill and creating accents (using either the diffused+scrimmed part of the hmi light OR the raw top part of it depending on how much light is needed.

you can always shoot some segments of the movie in 16mm even if the rest is digital, you just have to find a way to motivate the changes and how the format changes suit the storytelling. I am personally not a fan of the "low end" digital stuff like gh4 or Pocket Camera type gear for any short/indie/etc work. they are great as a second unit or C camera but you will be much happier with a bit higher quality semi pro camera, like the Ursa Mini Pro or FS7 or similar price range. something like 10 - 14k for the camera body + power + onboard monitors + viewfinders etc. and a basic lens and filter set for maybe 5k at least (plain or modified still lenses probably, zooms or primes. something which will cover the mid range and medium wide well enough) .tripod etc extra stuff can be bought used. I strongly recommend renting though if it is possible in any way, you will probably get better gear for main shooting days and can then cheap on with the additional days if you need lots of extra time for mini unit stuff. the real "problems" with film come into play when the nearest lab is far away and you want to get dailies in reasonable time, and when you have to worry about shipping and storing the film in bad conditions, especially if the climate is very warm and humid. shooting film is not automatically expensive or difficult or problematic in any way, it is that only if you would not know how to handle it and wouldn't have planned the project beforehand (which would also ruin a digital project very similarly ;) ) Maybe shooting main days in digital and all the additional stuff like b-unit on film? you could probably get a rental deal on a good 16mm camera for a longer time for additional shots and then use a good quality digital camera for main shooting, ideally a light sensitive one so that you can manage with smaller lights which are easier and faster to handle and help to save money for other aspects of the production ^_^

Vaseline filters! Try adding as little as possible to get more of a highlight effect and then soften the light streaks with promist. Combine with a tilt shift if needed :)

with a 10/day rate you should really make the producer to rent you better stands :blink: if they don't pay you anything you really should let them pay all the expenses at least and not invest your own money so that they can use the gear for free :huh: