Aapo Lettinen

I'm just wondering why a 3-lens set deposit costs more than 3 deposits for single lenses bought separately 17995 vs 14985 :lol: maybe they should correct that the 65 costs 4995 and the other lenses are more expensive for a single lens purchase

I personally only have a self-blimped highly modified Soviet copy of the Mitchell bncr, very different camera than the original but some things like the movement and aperture plate are approximately similar

try the "Motion Picture Technology" Facebook group, there is lots of people there who have Mitchell knowledge :)

I would change some of shots which have cinematography issues (or if not possible, reframe them) , add more closeups and maybe drop some airplane shots. I would've loved to see more alien shots. I know it's a concept trailer but it might sell better this way :)

I don't think you can manage with any digital camera body for 6 or 8 years nowadays, at least if you want it to be even the #10 package the friends and customers would like to have on a shoot. Most current cameras wont even last that long in working condition and the repairs may cost more than updating the body to new one every couple of years. maybe I'm just starting to get over of the whole "starving artist" ideology, I personally don't want to make crappy shoestring personal projects anymore or contribute to projects where there is not even budget to rent sandbags or starve myself to death to get the latest next camera or lens model :blink: suffering indefinitely for art is not worth it in the long run, it makes the life worse but does not get the art to any higher lever, just makes it more hasty and desperate. maybe I'm finally shifting to the more ideal zone of having the project to choose the gear, not the other way around. i'm not even going to update my GH4 when the GH5 comes around. I'm perfectly happy shooting personal projects with a 70 years old Cameflex. maybe would buy a Ursa Mini Pro or similar for a project if someone else would pay for it, I don't know ^_^ going to spool down some Vivid now for Konvas, just floating around ^_^

if you are a filmmaker doing both the writing+directing and also the DoP's work, then it might work if you directly write down the camera directions without writing the script first. otherwise, I'd recommend just doing a standard script first and then translating it to images and camera movement. the main benefit is that it is much easier for others to understand the story you are trying to tell and also it is much easier for both you and them to see if there is any story/motivation related problems in the script which need to be corrected. if starting directly from the camera movements you will forget the story for most part and the film may turn out havin OK looking single shots but it will most likely have incoherent story and lots of problems with character development and motivating their actions. it is also very difficult for others to follow what you are planning and if there is any better approach for things if you confuse the script with camera and lighting instructions etc (which will change anyway when the film is actually being made so are also kind of irrelevant to plant at the early stage)

maybe the lens would be a better investment then, it will pay itself back much slower but there is also less risk because it lasts much longer than a camera body would do. I tend to charge a low fixed rate for my gear when working on projects (most often a set of Nikon AI-S lenses, the steadicam, onboard monitor, tripod and some misc stuff like filters) , you can try similar approach with your customers if you have problems getting enough compensation and you already have most of the gear paid off. you could charge for example X amount of dollars per day for your gear and if the project needs something extra it can be rented at customer's expense. when getting more gear you will raise the daily rate depending on which type of gear is in question and how expensive it was to purchase. the projects I do have normally budget for renting lighting gear, camera bodies, etc. but cine lenses may be too expensive for the customers so I can use my own lenses and the needed additional gear I have for X euros fixed rate to help them out with the budget. that usually works very well but does not create enough revenue that I could buy any expensive lenses at those rates. it allows, however, me to keep a collection of special nice looking stills lenses and other gear which is virtually impossible to get from rental houses so that I can create special looks for projects easily. if I would own for example a set of Master Primes the customers would not pay much extra for using them in the production I shoot (and they might think it being a bit dishonest if I would try to force them to take the expensive lenses if I would be both the rental house and the DP on the same project) but for lower priced gear it has worked very well

they still pay you a reasonable compensation for the equipment I hope? then it would make sense to own a zoom or two, some stabilizers+gimbal and stuff like that. a low day rate may not matter because lenses don't go obsolete quickly like cameras do

for me the difference is that I can charge next to nothing for a camera body if I own it by myself but if I need to rent a camera for a project, the customer will pay 100% of the rental fees. so for me it is much cheaper to rent because of that, I only own cameras and lenses which cannot be rented at all in my area or are so cheap to purchase that a 2 or 3 day rental would be same than the purchase price. like with camera stabilizers, I purchased a used steadicam for 600 euros and daily rental cost for similar type of equipment would be about 300-400 euros a day, plus it would have been impossible to learn to operate it if not owning the rig. owning a expensive camera has the pitfall that you have to shoot all your projects with the same camera to make it affordable, that may be OK for most projects but it really sucks when you know you would do much better with a different type of equipment but cannot afford to rent it because all the money was invested to the one system you own :o "married with the camera" for the 2 or 3 years or so. if you are doing lots of different style of projects it may not be practical at all to own a expensive camera system... maybe something handy for b unit or c camera stuff but nothing overly expensive. same thing with lenses of course

a perfectly usable mid level semi pro camera like FS7 or Ursa Mini 4.6k or Red One MX can cost here something like 200 - 300 euros a day + vat including media and batteries, you can surely find something similar in States

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.