Aapo Lettinen

most shops selling stage lighting gear should have the coated safety cables too. BHphoto seems to have them for example.

Well, the real issue here is that there is lots of talented and somewhat experienced people around who DON'T HAVE ANY WORK ETHICS . that is really destroying the whole industry for everybody. They are willing to work for lower pay and in unsafe working conditions and to cut corners whenever asked whether it being wise or not. Then you have to compete with productions who use this kind of people who are willing to do double the work hours for the same pay and don't care about safety at all unless the producer specifically asks them to. I get it that for some people it is life and death to get the single movie done and they are willing to risk anything to get the merit out of it and not to be labelled "the cowards who had to go home after 20 hours when the others still had to continue on the top of the skyscraper without any safety harnesses and 40mph wind" . But for most persons it is just work. Myself included. I could just as well drive a cab or something and it would be just as fun as working in the film industry. Would probably get even more money out of it with less hours... but that is an issue for sure. People are either unethical daredevils risking everything all the time OR they are so used to the film business that they could not care less about a single project and are mostly interested about when they get to eat and sleep and where the nearest bathroom is

the issue is, loyalty towards companies or employers is not rewarded in the long run in most cases. they just squeeze you dry when you still think that they are on your side and then get a non-paid intern to do your work (or a low paid newbie if free interns are not available) . no matter what the end result looks like or if the newbies get someone killed as long as it cost as little as possible to hire them ? One solution for this issue has been here that the production companies make their own "training programs" to quickly train unemployed workforce from other industries to do basic film work. The issue here is that they need to train new ones for every production because the previous ones are asking union rates after working for low pay or for free in one production (first thinking that "it is cool making movies no matter the cost" but now they know what it is and want to do it for work which requires them getting enough money from it to pay the bills) What a wonderful world it is for a capitalist ?

they are compensating overtime just like that when using the "periodic work" model: you do one hour of overtime, you get one hour off. If you still have some overtime hours left at the end of the month (when the period ends) THEN they have to actually pay for it. Otherwise it is just "free extra work". They have adopted this model from other industries and it does not work that well for film/tv-series shoots but it is cheaper for the production companies so they just use it anyway. Previously they had to pay 50% more for the first overtime hours over the 8hrs day. Then 100% more for the next hours. And 200% for the last ones until one could not legally add any more overtime hours to a single day and you had to wrap. With this old model the director often got a talking to if the day went over 11 or 12 hours because it was so expensive for the prod company. Then things improved in the following days to prevent the budget going over. So it was a self regulating system but did not work on high budget shoots where there WAS money to pay for the ridiculous overtime expenses... or for the shoots where overtime was not paid for at all like the music videos and some commercials. It is more of that one does not want to abandon one's friends in the middle of the shoot just for the working hours going over to a limit. Then your friend would be even more screwed and would take even longer for them to get home. So it is more of helping out your friends when the production screwed something up or there was just "bad luck" for the day going over the planned hours.

oh, and travel hours to work and back are in almost all cases your own time here. Not paid, not taken into account when calculating if you have time to sleep or not. Driving to the set and back takes always at least 1.5 hours or 2 hours per day, every day. I still like our local model more than the Mexican one where it seems you'll start to wrap only when you run out of money for that shooting day and after that you might actually go to the bar instead of going to your room to sleep because you will be so tired anyway that the sleep would not help much anyway at that point . Well, we do most music videos and commercials here with the similar attitude so it is not a "Mexican thing" , more of a case where no one wants to admit that the day has been too long and now we really really need to wrap... no more extra shots even when the director still has 200 extra shots on his list! Didn't most the Hollywood films get made like this just recently before the Unions kicked in? the producers clearly miss those old days where no one went home until the budget was done for the day

here it is common to do 10 hour shooting days (8 hours + 2hours overtime per day. the prod companies can't afford paying more overtime in most productions) and most tv-series have transferred to 8-hour days but with a "periodic work hours" model where overtime is not compensated but instead the next shooting day might be a bit shorter or at the end of the month you get more days off to compensate the extra hours. This "periodic model" is because the production companies don't want to pay for overtime but want to have the possibility to get people work a half hours or a hour extra every day if needed. They risk the whole crew getting angry (they generally will every time the shooting day goes over 8 hours) but no one has left their job yet because of this free overtime work so the production companies are happy. The length of the shooting day does not necessarily reflect the real work hours of all the individual workers. In one production the shooting days were about 12 hours generally but my real work hours were about 21 to 23 hours a day, 6 days a week and at the 7th day I had to do some maintenance work which was "only" an 8 hours day so no days off at all. I got paid for only the 12 hours which were on the callsheet and got a lot of nasty health problems because of that shoot

Here people of course say that "it is not good to drive if you are sleepy" but they often don't do anything to prevent the conditions which result in these situations in the first place. The worst I have had to do so far was not getting more than a total of couple of hours of sleep in two days and then had to drive 800km back to home which was a 9 hour drive. It is scary when you have to literally use your fingers to keep your eyes open so that you don't fall to sleep and are still having those one or two second micro naps which can still lead to disaster. From that I learned not to drive if I have slept less than 3 hours... -------- I see it like the behaviour of a wounded animal when it does whatever it can to get back to its nest to die in the safest place it knows. People just feel ill and they are doing whatever they can to get home even if it may cost their life

with video taps one has a beamsplitter prism (most cameras) or a pellicle (for example Aatons) which directs some of the viewfinder light to the video tap. Removing the tap itself and plugging the hole does not affect the beamsplitter so it does not make the viewfinder brighter. With some cameras, one can move the beamsplitter out of the way (for example the Aatons) to get full brightness to the optical finder. With most other cameras this is not possible and one would need to change the viewfinder optics to remove the beamsplitter out of the light path if wanting to get more light to the finder

exactly similar than this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/353632866991?hash=item52562952af:g:pvsAAOSwhu5hHrJ5

I would just keep the Sekonic if it is accurate. There is not much more one really needs from a light meter unless needing spot metering for drama/controlled lighting situations. but if shooting docu style and exposing for the ambience, then one could just use that Seconic incident meter and nothing else

I am still using my Sixtomat Digital which I got with my first Bolex in 2000. It has been very reliable and handy low cost meter for my use and accurate though there is lots of alternatives as well. I actually like to use some very old light meters more and more nowadays, especially a very old Ikophot meter from the 50's. They work surprisingly well when you just calibrate them by checking them against a modern meter which is known to be accurate. These old meters work without any batteries and are very low cost, I think mine cost something like 5 euros and is still good for documentary shooting as long as you know how much to compensate for the meter's age (I think the Ikophot was close to one stop too sensitive so I set it to higher iso to compensate. so when shooting 100 iso film I set it 200 iso to compensate)

it would be ideal that you can determine a common t-stop for the whole scene and would not need to compensate during the shoot unless the ambience level changes (the sun goes behind a cloud etc) . Then you can divide the scene to the area where the common exposure works fine (for example T4 all the time) and then the area where you need to raise the exposure by for example one stop when shooting subject on that area. If you have lights with you, it may be possible to raise the levels on this low light area so that you can manage with the same "common stop" for the whole scene independent on where the subjects are within the scene. Then you can just take incident measurements of the ambience levels in the room to know if the ambience lowers suddenly (the sun goes behind a cloud etc) and would raise the exposure by the same amount the ambience change was. This way you don't need to individually measure anything during the ceremony, just keep an eye on the ambience light levels and adjust the exposure by the same amount the ambience changes

if you CAN control the lighting, you need to first determine if you need to do something for the harsh daylight coming from the windows by knocking it down and raising ambience levels inside. You may need to raise the ambience level of the whole scene by bouncing big lights around (for example one or multiple HMI's of 1.2 to 4k range) and knock down the sunlight by using diffusion/scrim/nd on the windows at the same time. Knocking down the sunlight will lower the ambience levels inside even more which is non-ideal because you need to raise the ambience more and more. Basically you need to determine if the ratio between the sunlit areas compared to the large background areas behind the subjects is correct for you. The subjects you may be able to light separately with smaller lights but raising the ambience may NOT be a simple task. If you DON'T need to raise the ambience levels or do anything to the direct sunlight, then you just need to take care that the subjects are getting enough light especially on the camera side. You may want to add some small fill light to raise the levels on the subjects (for example a small led panel may be just the right tool for this task. Or a lantern or a small-ish 150 or 300w led with a softbox. Something which does not disturb the ceremony and is quick and easy to set up. If you want to shoot the party too, you'll need to be able to wrap the church/ceremony place quick. I would personally just focus on getting enough fill on the subjects with some non-disturbing and small fixture and then raising the ambience with one single larger fixture if absolutely necessary. You can choose to add some beautiful backlighting for the subjects but that may be too time consuming to setup and wrap and it disturbs the audience so I would just keep it simple and limit it to two lights which are fast to setup and wrap and which don't disturb anybody

you will want to meter the church/ceremony hall beforehand to know what kind of light levels you have on the areas of main interest. So you know that if you are shooting on that direction and the bride+groom are standing on that area you will need approximately this f-stop (t-stop). Then you just remember to adjust the stop when they move around depending on where they are standing and from which direction you shoot with the camera. Personally I like to use only incident meter on documentary shoots because it is very fast compared to the "nitpicking" spot meter mess which will take minutes to complete just a simple task which by my opinion can be decided more easily. I measure the ambient level and the key with the incident meter and then decide how much under the ambient I will set the exposure depending on how high the key level is. In most situations I can manage by just judging the contrast situation by eye, then measuring the ambient level on the spot where the subject is standing and setting the exposure from 1.5 to 2 stops under the ambient incident level depending on the scene/shot content, light direction and the albedo of the subject I'm shooting. This approach of mine is based on the conclusion that if you can't change the contrast ratio anyway, with film you generally need to be more careful about your shadows and dark tones than your highlights so if you can't control how high your highlights will be anyway, you need to take care of the shadows so that you will see all the details you want to see which generally are from mid gray to -3 stops (the reliable range of exposure for them on most films). So I decide which mid gray detail is the darkest I need to see in the shadows (which are lit by the ambience/fill) and will set the exposure so that this detail is not exposed lower than -3 stops. This is why I only need the ambient reading on the spot the subject is standing on and not the spot readings of the whole scene. this approach only works best when you are doing DI and will individually fine tune the shots afterwards in the grade. If wanting to do photochemical finish you will still want the spot readings and then you need to be able to actually tune the contrast of the scene with real lights too to be able to adjust things when needed. If doing fully documentary non-lit stuff I recommend my "ambient metering only / shadow centric exposure" approach which is very very quick and reliable enough for documentary style use. By my opinion, if you can't change the lighting you need to concentrate on the shadow areas when shooting on film. Forget the highlights, they will be fine ?

I think the most used aspect ratios in the film world are 1.37 , 1.66, 1.85, and 2.39 . sometimes one can have 2.35 too though it is relatively rare and most of the shows marked as "2.35" are 2.39 in the real world. This is because the normal cinema screens are 2.39 aspect ratio and it does not make much sense to intentionally shoot pillar boxed 2.35 material for cinema screen when you can just use the whole 2.39 screen area instead. in the film projection times the normal prints were anamorphic intended for 2.39 screens and you would project them with the 2x anamorphic adapter on the projector and the image would be from the full film frame area without cropping. this way you would get maximum image quality out of the print and projector. If you would use any other aspect ratio (1.37, 1.66 , 1.85, 2.35) you would project it spherical and use a gate mask on the projector to crop the correct aspect ratio from the film frame (some prints were letterboxed in the lab, others not. If it was not letterboxed you had to figure out the correct mask to use. Once I projected the Lost in translation movie with incorrect mask due to wrong info on the print and there was mic boom visible in almost every shot ? ) I think some film cameras do have closer to 1.33 gates but the normal aspect ratio for film closest to the 4:3 is 1.37 and NOT the 1.33

1 year of one's time costs about 30 000 to 50 000 euros here. People have hobbies of course where one does not count free work hours but with these projects it is good to have some comparison about the actual costs to see if it is worth the effort or not ?

the friction coupling is on the motor axle between the motor and the angle gear to prevent damaging the motor and the gears when the add-on camera motor is started and stopped by the mechanical switch inside the actual camera body (the "run" button connects the pads together and releases the mechanical lock at the same time. so without the friction system one would damage the motor at both the start and stop of filming each take. the problem with the friction system is that it slips uncontrollably during normal operation and thus one can't fit the encoder on the motor axle which would be the only easy place to mount it (the plastic gears are ng and inside the camera very difficult. without reliable encoder position there is no any kind of sync sound possibility) The diy crystal sync controllers have been discussed on this forum multiple times and here is lots of information about them as well. the thing is, it is EXTREMELY time consuming to learn to make them (for me it took about 1.5 years of my life working almost full time on them) and there is no good readily made parts or usable instructions you can use so you need to make everything out of scratch and develop them from ground up if wanting to fit them inside the camera or them working even remotely well with the camera. It is a nice 2 year project for an electronics enthusiast but it is incredibly frustrating for a person who prefers shooting with the camera instead of designing and building and testing circuit boards and writing thousands of versions of diy custom made firmware

this is like with any new tech: best to wait until the design is actually finished before paying them anything. Even if the seller would be reputable, it can take forever to finish camera modification designs and it makes them look very bad if they take someone's money and not delivering promptly ?

sad, they seem to be pretty rare nowadays. just out of curiosity, how much one would be willing to pay for one of those Tobin motors nowadays? because it is theoretically possible to make new similar style motors out of scratch if getting enough orders to make it viable. You could also ask AZ Spectrum if they have any solution to modify your original Arri motors to crystal sync. if I would own a Arri SB and lenses, I would make a crystal sync motor for it by myself and could then sell them too but because not having any of those cameras it makes no sense for me to design any motor mods for them at the moment... a external box solution could be possible but integrated crystal electronics would be too much work

have you asked Visual Products? they have one listed for sale though I don't know if they have it actually in their inventory anymore. would be worth a try anyway http://www.visualproducts.com/storeProductDetail02.asp?productID=973&Cat=3&Cat2=41

I have couple of those UE models and one U model because I intended making a crystal sync update for these cameras last year and collected some spares for it. The build quality is not as high as with Krasnogorsk cameras and the mirror and viewfinder optics are worse quality. some of my cameras have slight imbalance on the mirror which generates very disturbing flicker/image jumping up and down in viewfinder when the camera is rolling. the lenses are not as easy to service but the optics seem to be the same than on the Krasnogorsk primes, only the mechanics are more primitive. It is pretty easy to convert the UE to 12v but digital speed control for this camera is not super easy to make because of the construction of the motor (friction coupling between the motor and the drive gears and lower quality plastic gears used) . Additionally it is pretty easy to do simple speed control electronics but making real crystal sync controllers is NOT easy at all. Just want to mention that because people tend to underestimate the task by the magnitude of 20 or 30x and practically all of them quit after about half a year of work. I don't know if you have previous experience making crystal sync systems but just want to mention that because you will be very disappointed if wanting to learn making them on the fly. Personally I think that these cameras are mostly suited for simple and cheap filming using the original spring motor. They are not bad if used that way though I find the Krasnogorsks much better let alone the Bolexes or Kinors or other more expensive cameras. The Kievs are very affordable however and pretty easy to service (they are at the same level of serviceability than Krasnorogsk I think so pretty easy to open them up completely and CLA them by yourself) so they are perfect as a low cost crash cameras or for arts projects and for situations where there is a high risk of damaging the camera (filming in risky areas where there is dust, water or a high risk of having the camera stolen from you)

yes the 10ft sounds very limiting. something like 16ft or 17ft would be more useful I think

Regular 8 and super8 have very different perforation size and shape so we can tell immediately which one it is by looking at a picture which shows the full perforations. About the slitting. If the film is very precious, it should be possible to scan it without slitting to reduce the risk of mechanical damage and to be able to scan two streams at the same time to save costs. Depends on the scanner how it would work. As Dom said the projector has more complicated film path than a simple viewer so if the goal is to protect the film at any cost then it would be wise to limit the handling of it to a minimum before scanning and to avoid projecting it

sounds confusing. Do you mean that you have ds8 film which is developed but has not been slit yet and it has the two 8mm films together? There is no projector for such a film but if you need to slit a developed film to separate the two 8 films there is a Lomo slitting tool available which can do that. Test first with scrap film to ensure that the tool is working correctly. I think it would be useful if you can post a picture of the actual film here so that we can see what is going on

you can also cheap on the width if you make large windows or doors on both sides of the room so that you can have the side lights outside and open/close/blackout the windows or doors needed to make it work for the shoot. So this way you could have the set using almost the entire width of the room if needed and thus the room could be much smaller, maybe something like about 16 - 19ft wide