Aapo Lettinen

for example, one can lower the highlight saturation smoothly by a curve in grading and smooth the highest part of gamma curve as well so that the clipping is not that hard looking and the highlights run lower and lower in saturation before they actually clip. this alters the "highlight rolloff" and makes the image "more filmic looking". or "more Alexa looking" if you will. One of the trick of the colorists here is to diffuse or blur the hard clipping highlights just a tiny bit so that they seem VISUALLY to be clipping softer and smoother, works very well most of the time. so it is kind of subjective and can be altered in post as well

I think people normally mean the visual highlight gamma curve behaviour and saturation rolloff by the "highlight rolloff" term... the way the highlights clip rather than how many stops there is total. basically how the last 1 or 2 highest stops behave visually. this can usually be tweaked in grading as well so it is somewhat subjective. So yes the 14 stops camera can have "worse highlight rolloff" than a camera with 10 if the person thinks that the highlight clipping is not "smooth and nice looking" by his/her terms....people talk about "filmic video cameras" or "filmic digital cinema cameras" which usually means that the highlight rolloff is somewhat smooth looking and has a pleasant saturation transition as well (not like in for example pana af100 where one could have coloured clipping in highlights)

I'm sure they had fun time grading the footage afterwards, power-windowing everything and testing every of the million raw debayer settings separately on each shot and trying to mimic the lighting effects which they forgot to add on set :lol:

did you at least ask them if their camera surely had all the latest updates and sensor technology to "obsolescence obsolete"? because cameras HAVE TO BE updated every couple of months, otherwise they would be rubbish and not competent and would need to be thrown away :lol:

our Finns have relatively short history of written (Finnish) language so we are not that accustomed to difficult pronunciation rules and such, we just pronounce the names and other stuff as they are written unless one really knows how to say it correctly in the original language and wants to point it out :lol: it may become hilarious at times when one has million different pronunciations of the same name and changes it every time when being unsure which one to use :lol: Arri would be either Arri or some type of Ärrö or anything :lol: (very easy language in general... though we have the practice of adding standard suffixes to the words to add more meaning to the base word so that one could theoretically compress even whole sentences to one or two words by adding suffixes and conjugating the base word. for example, maanmittari (land survey technician) as a base word, maanmittarittaretta (without female land survey technician lady) or maanmittarittarettaankaan (even without their female land survey technician lady) or could for example be like "Pärjäisivätköhän maanmittarittarettaankohankaan?" ( "I highly suspect" would they even manage without their female land survey technician lady being around helping them) . to the point where it takes too much time to figure out what the person is talking about and they don't want to add any more suffixes so that it would not take the whole day to figure out what they mean :ph34r: lots of practical and easy to understand words, like "treadmill" is "juoksumatto" in Finnish which is basically "running carpet" literally translated. Escalator, "rullaportaat" or "liukuportaat" is just "rolling stairs" or "sliding stairs". you can deduce the meaning from the word without knowing it beforehand, very easy :lol: )

here it is common to have a short separate photo session after certain key scenes and the stills photographer may also take photos when the actors are rehearsing the scene. I have never seen a sound blimp used here when shooting on-set photos but mirrorless cameras with electronic shutters are much more common than few years ago. one of the problems with taking the stills during the actual shooting is that the best angles may be reserved for the movie camera and one only gets some mediocre off-axis photos from the side which is not very productive compared to having a possibility to separately shoot photos after the scene with possibility to direct the actors for the stills only

I still have the AKS lens. using it for some macro tests, maybe modifying the mount later at some point. do you have one of those rare AKS4 cameras you would use it with? :) there seems to be at least one on eBay which is similar to my lens though with black housing

For developing I recommend Dejonghe Postproduction. Shipping would be easy because it's located close to you. Their prices are also good even for small projects. Then you could ship the developed film to whichever place you like for scanning, if you for example want to do the scanning in the US. No need to arrange difficult and expensive shipping toavoid xray damage when shipping only developed stuff

you could probably get a good 4-5 day deal even from a rental house as a student. from private owner, if you know one, they could for example ask the 400 for the whole shooting period including the lenses. should not be more than 1000 in any circumstances, probably around 400-800 I think (without knowing the rental options and owner operators in your area...) any 16mm camera manufactured can do standard16 and most of the under 60 years old models use the normal "sound film" with 1R perforations. newer cameras have more speed options and better viewfinders and may have video tap etc. useful but the main benefit are the lens mounts (PL) which are modern so that you can rent or borrow or purchase even the most current lenses and use them with the camera. with a Arri-B or Eclair or Arri-S or Kinor16 mount camera you are limited to purchasing the 40-50 years old lens models, you can't usually rent or borrow extra lenses easily because nobody uses those old mount lenses anymore or they have been rehoused to PL long time ago

another thing is, servicing of film cameras by a proper technician is relatively expensive for a 500-700 pound camera body. by renting you would get a camera set which would already be in proper working order and no need to spend additional cash for maintenance and service. it would maybe be possible to get an stardard16 Aaton LTR or Arri SR1 with a basic zoom lens like Zeiss 10-100 on the 1000 pound budget but they would not be CLA:d and would need additional cash to get to a working order... something which popped up on eBay on quick search: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Aaton-LTR-Regular-16mm-camera-package-with-Zeiss-10-100/202308301015?hash=item2f1a83b0d7:g:LRwAAOSwPDda8ju2 for Eclair NPR your lenses would probably be the Angenieux 12-120 and maybe one or two c-mount primes if possible. or a c-mount wide angle prime and trying to use slr lenses (nikon ai-s etc) for longer focal lenghts

how many shooting days you'll have, would it be possible to rent the camera and lenses from a private owner so that you could use much better gear and would still manage under the 1000 camera budget? would make much sense to me especially because you want sync sound. you could maybe be able to rent an super16 Arri SR or Aaton LTR or XTR and couple of lenses for the whole shoot instead of buying an very old basic N16 sync sound camera with the cheapest lens you can get.

sometimes the art department could hide the end of a dolly track with removable branches/leafs/grass etc if the set and camera move and continuity allows it...for a push in they would remove them from the track as soon as the camera is close enough they are not showing in the frame anymore. similar approach than instructing the extras on a group scene to move over the tracks at correct timing to hide the track and its gap when camera pulls back in very long continuous shot. VFX or boom might be easier though or just tilting the image up when shooting or in edit when the track is showing at the start of the move

if needing to add more haze to some shots you can either add more hazer output to the tube and/or lessen the amount vented outside through the secondary tube if using any... or use separate additional hazer to add more temporary haze over the base haze you are spreading via the tube. I recommend at least trying to use the layflat tube method, it saves hours of manual work and is quite easy to work with if you just have someone who can move the tube out of the shot when needed. and you need to have about 1hr time to test it and get the perforations right before camera rolling on the first day on the set

if using layflat tube you might want to use a relatively small hazer and do the perforations with a needle first so that the haze spreads to the air closer to the tube without making "haze fountains outside the image" or anything. assistants can spread it further with flags but it may work without any assistance if the blower air output + hazer output + tube lenght + hole sizes are in good balance. if you can't get low enough output from the hazer you can set another unperforated tube to the same blower which you can use to vent some part of the smoke outside to lower the amount ending in the room. Layflat tubes may easily catch mold after used for this purpose, you may want to throw them away after the shoot

if you want really consistent look you can either: A: put the hazer to the air inlet of the office space and set it to the lowest output possible, then let the ventilation to spread it evenly to the space. After waiting for it to spread 10 or 15mins or so you can add more haze output if you need more atmosphere. When you find the correct setting, just leave the hazer there for the rest of the shoot to continuously input the correct amount of haze B: use a blower and perforated layflat tube or similar plastic tube to spread the hazer output to the space. this works if you can hide the tube somewhere and your blower is silent enough. you can use for example 20 or 50 or 100 meters of tube per blower if needed. Again, set the hazer to the lowest setting and wait at least 10 minutes to see how the effect works, then add more output if needed. I have used the B type setting for couple of short films and you can get continuous fully stable and controlled haze atmosphere for even 12 hour days with it without needing to manually add haze after every take or monitor anything... even outdoors if the wind direction and speed does not change. (for example this indoor set from 11.35 onwards. layflat tube is near the roof of the small building going half circle around the room, and the blower and hazer are located outside. We shot two 10hour days there with the same hazer settings (26% haze output and always the same fluid in 5l canisters) and never needed to worry about the haze continuity when we got the hazer setting right at the start of the first day https://vimeo.com/212097418 just setup, adjust the first time and shoot as long as you want :lol: )

but will still be nice c-cam for example, or for any use where one would mostly use the video tap for framing anyway. Steadicam, crane, etc.

Producers actually like cameras which look good on making off 's , or at least expensive if they are otherwise ugly looking things. It does not help at all with technical aspects of the movie but it may help the marketing a bit, especially for indie short films where the camera system is part of the whole point of making the movie ("we can do a nice 10min short with an Alexa in no time, now give us money for a full lengh feature")

the build quality of that 65 one screams cheap-o prosume :blink: maybe they would change it for the production run. but I am sure the people who actually can afford shooting 65mm would like for example that weird obstructing battery mount or the cheap-o smallrig rods mount. Would be a great c-cam for 65mm productions for sure :lol: or for steadicam stuff or similar use. the 2-perf 35mm model would sell in much higher quantities and every indie person would want one if it would be affordable :) there is huge lack of quiet sound 2perf cameras as well, converting the old 4perf models is pretty difficult and expensive and there is not enough suitable camera bodies available :unsure: I hope the production run would have better paint etc than that prototype model, it looks like the Soviet temp35 high speed camera mated with Kinor35 with some Krasnogorsk3 parts added and painted with the original cheap Soviet black paint from the 70's :P

roller modification is normally done on all super16 modifications to avoid scratches on the sound track area where the s16 modification extends the image

I highly recommend having a BOOTABLE FULL COPY of the operating system drive with all the programs installed made on a external drive so that if the mac has problems booting up or for example autoupdates something and refuses to work correctly after that, you can always boot up from the external drive and continue working and resolve the problems (for example a broken internal hard drive of the mac) later when you really have time for it. And if your mac goes to repair center you can usually boot another mac from that same external osx copy and continue working without much problems other than maybe incompatible gpu drivers. the mac does not normally need to even be the same model for the external to work. then when your original mac comes back repaired (and probably the internal hdd wiped and osx reinstalled because that is the way all the computer repair services seem to work) you can just copy your external osx copy back to the replaced internal drive and you will thus avoid reinstalling the programs and may save even couple of days of work :lol:

You could use for example the following workflow for the material which leaves you one copy of the raw and one or two copies of the 422: 1. Copy the raw material to one normal hdd, preferably using checksum verification. This will be your only final raw backup copy. 2. Make a temporary copy of the raw material to a ssd drive or fast raid. 3.if both copies are ok, format and reuse the camera card. 4.when you have time, do the raw conversion and necessary grading with the temporary ssd/raid copy and then render to 10bit to the edit drive which can also be used as a backup. Visually inspect the output. 5. If the 10bit is ok, you can remove the temporary ssd/raid copy and reuse the drive for other material. 6.it is best to have the 422 version backed up to the raw bu drive also. Then you will have one copy of the raw and two copies of the 10bit rends which should be enough for smaller projects. You are also able to circulate the cards much faster because you don't need to visually inspect the material in the middle of the shoot, you can do that later when you really have time for it

probably you would not lose ALL your data, that is very rare unless the card is very seriously physically damaged or one intentionally wipes it by overwriting the files multiple times. Little file system / partition table damage can be repaired with a recovery program most of the time, you might lose SOME data but not ALL of it and you may recover all of it in best case

encoding directly from the camera card would not be that bad if there is no heating/card reader/etc issues. there is slightly bigger risk of file system damage but if one absolutely does not want to back up the original raws to anywhere then there is no other options I think ;)

the main problem would be that you would need to watch all the clips through every time , visually inspecting them from start to end, to ensure there is no encoding problems, before you can delete the original raw files from the cards. That is just way too time consuming if you need to shoot anything serious where you need to circulate cards even daily and shoot more than very tiny amounts of material. Encoding time would be another issue of course but the real issue would be the amount of manual QC work every time you want to shoot something with the 10bit workflow.

something like a stereo microphone bar could also work :) and it has the needed 3/8" screws already installed