Aapo Lettinen

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:

I think no monitor can be used for ANY color work without calibrating it first with a probe. calibrating with eye is not accurate enough because the eye cheats color and contrast and has "auto exposure" and edge enhancement etc. If you can't afford even a very basic calibrating tool, then just borrow one from a friend. one can grade even with a reasonably priced computer monitor (I have done lots of indie grading with iMac displays for example and they are totally fine if properly calibrated but totally useless if not calibrated properly like any other monitor out there) . I think the gamma and brightness is more of a problem with uncalibrated monitors... the colors you can get somewhat right with gut feeling if having enough time but the gamma , contrast is very difficult to nail without tools

nothing computer based can be trusted, let's be honest and say that they are all bad designs one way or another :lol: by my experience, mac based systems CAN be a bit more reliable if you only use couple of extremely well made programs and never have to update anything or connect it to LAN or internet. otherwise, it is just the same old driver/hardware/software nightmare than with Windows or Linux or any other operating system. Some tasks may be a bit easier with Mac, like connecting to a network, but they are absolutely not machines which you can blindly trust on. I mainly use Mac systems at work because everyone else is using hfs+ based drives for raw material and deliveries and I need fcpx and fcp7 every now and then and almost all the material goes in and out in Prores. copying 10 or 20 or 100TB of material through something like hfs+explorer is absolutely insane and totally unpractical so the best solution is to just have a mac or two on hand, even if some tasks are made on windows computers

I haven't used more recent Vegas versions but the previous ones had serious problems with memory leaks during playback which limited realtime capabilities. maybe they have fixed that in current versions. It was really nice to be able to add video effects to VIDEO TRACKS in addition with the clip based effecting and it handled multi-resolution material easily. was a bit unstable at times but was quite usable for small projects. I'm a fan of Premiere CC and FCP7, sometimes use Resolve for very small editing but it is really not that good for other than very simple projects or when you need to have good color grading capabilities integrated in the edit program. as others said the Resolve is all about GPU processing. its sound capabilities lack quite a bit so it would be wise to do the audio finishing with separate programs

Maybe you misunderstood my post, I was directly comparing the loader and dit positions so that the dit would not be required to do more on set than a film loader would normally do. Tyler's comparison would mean that the film loader would have a Alpha Lab or other mobile film lab on set all the time to be able to do direct graded dailies on set from film negative which is not the reality in most productions. My example was using onset offloading and backups and the dailies were finished during the night so that they would compare to working with a separate film lab. It is true that removing a 1000' film roll from the mag and reloading the mag takes less time than offloading and backing up a 256gb memory card (assuming a comparison between 35mm film and arriraw shoot) but depending on the production the amount of work may be about the same. In some productions the offloading is done by the 2nd ac and no separate dit is used... Here it is normal to use the laptop based pelicase dit kits on smaller jobs and heavier kits are mainly used when multiple cameras and onset grading is needed. The laptop kits are actually totally fine for dailies if shooting prores with 1 camera and applying the lut without extensive grading needed. The laptop systems limit render speeds (especially if using mac based systems with obsolete graphics cards) but don't affect transfer speeds that much depending on which kind of verification is used for the data

I don't see how a film loader would cost much less than a DIT on set, especially when one does not need super expensive gear nowadays for the dit if you don't need on set fully graded dailies, live grading and multi camera arriraw transfer capacity (like hundreds of terabytes of very very fast raid storage etc depending on how much one shoots per day and how it is stored for post). You would not get these with film either so a fair comparison would be a laptop, two of about 10tb raids, necessary amount of sata drives for storage and a silverstack license + ups's . can be couple of thousand bucks depending on what you buy but nothing fancy really...

just look at that press photo for example. recording the sound straight to the camera in a "high end shoot" :blink: never ever seen that done on a pro set, one of the most unpractical things I have seen in those photos so far :lol: and no one would do the lighting like that on a commercial shoot I think, maybe they should consult someone experienced before making these ads though they may be great for attracting indie shooters :lol:

I don't think BMD has ever even targeted the higher end professional field. every aspect of their cameras tells me that they are more interested in low budget and prosume customers and maybe selling a camera or two to high end productions for C unit or D camera or crash cam use. the whole point of their cameras is to have low enough price for indie filmmakers and prosume/low end professional customers who can balance their quirks and live with them if the price point is right. If one has more money to purchase or rent then there is not many reasons to choose a BMD camera instead of, say, Alexa Mini. I haven't seen the Samyang "cine" lenses in professional use either, pro cinematographers tend to use higher end glass because they have the possibility to choose. I personally haven't bought a Ursa Mini because of the missing OLPF and other reasons. the "pro" update does not change this though it is very nice to be able to change lens mounts without changing the whole sensor package with it (who had that idea in the first place huh, way to sell more sensors maybe :wacko: )

here in Finland the exception are situations where the information has came from a source who is a public servant making a transgression by giving out the information. in case of drug dealers etc. normal persons they can protect their sources. with the current US situation+development I would not be surprised even if the journalistic freedom would be suppressed there in the future to make some kind of Erdogan-style state (really hope not :o ) , freedom of speech as long as you have the same opinions with us... and a big wall preventing people from getting out ;)

* I am using a 300mm/180mm lathe with 600w motor, the unimat style micro lathe stuff does not work for any real stuff

I think one can get much higher quality parts faster by machining with manual lathe and milling machine than by using cheap ass 3d printing. Of course if low quality and relatively weak parts are good enough then the 3d printing will probably do. I myself prefer just using a chinese entry level mini lathe for making camera parts, much quicker and I can make them out of metal and most plastics with much tighter tolerances. I don't have proper milling machine yet but will purchase one later. Making lens caps with 3d printing sounds quite uneconomic unless something very special is needed, the chinese stuff is so cheap that it is much easier to just buy better product from ebay. Or if higher quality is needed, machine one out of higher quality materials