Aapo Lettinen

pro labs are very fast indeed, 3 days including shipping can be easily arranged even from another country although fast shipping is a bit more expensive. if you need dailies on video the labs can usually arrange FTP download so that you can get the dailies back before the films

there was color timing and timed dailies in film era too. and the telecine operator affects considerably to the end result and look of the video dailies so there is still other artists involved. with film you are dealing with at least the lab technician and color timer/telecine operator so technically there's MORE people involved in the creative process. it helps learning pre planning and developing communication skills so it's not a bad thing at all though

the main problem is that to make it economical you need to process in large volume as Tyler said. That was maybe one of the reasons why that 'semi-pro' lab closed: one needs to develop other people's films as well to make developing oneself's own colour negs economical, and that leads to making a business out of it which leads to full time running films so it takes all the time and is not a hobby anymore, nor allows shooting much oneself's own films anymore because of the time constraints. The prices were very reasonable and the quality was good, but running a film lab as a full time job with very reasonable prices is, hm, a bit uneconomical and may bite back after a while. on the other hand, if you raise the prices the customers turn to pro labs so there is little you can do, other than running in even larger volume. May not be practical if someone really wants to SHOOT on film and NOT to only run a film lab :ph34r:

They are not so tricky but you have to be very careful with them and know them thoroughly (like all the Soviet filmmaking equipment. this is true whether talking about Konvas, Krasnogorsk, Kinor etc. cameras, processing tanks, accessories, lenses... they work OK but they are NOT as foolproof as the Western counterparts and you have to know their weaknesses and adjust them every now and then. It's like the Soviet motorcycle, Dnepr, we had a while ago, it worked great but every 30 or 40 miles you had to adjust the spark gap and maybe fine tune the valve clearance. Russian gear works JUST like that B) ) You can split the 16mm to 50ft load before shooting. that way you don't ruin anything important by splitting the film ;)

home processing may be practical with black and white negative if you have to get the results asap (camera tests etc) or you want to experiment and learn the craft on deeper level. Black and white processing in a professional lab is here in Europe close to double the price per meter compared to colour negative and the developing chemicals are very inexpensive. Only when very constant and high quality results are needed the home processing for b/w becomes unpractical and uneconomic. For colour negative, it may not be practical at all because the chemicals are much more expensive unless bought in very large amounts and the process is much more complex and sensitive and needs more quality control than b/w processes. Lomo tanks are relatively easy to load (as long as you don't drop any parts in the darkroom. they are very fragile plastic and will shatter to thousands little pieces if you drop them) but you have to create a system to check that the film is correctly seated on the spiral. I usually check that the outer film layer is absolutely round and then run my fingers over the film edges on the side to find out if there is any double layers which would be ruined in processing (hearing/feeling the individual layers). I also gently shake the spiral to seat the film more evenly and to hear if there is anything wrong with it. All this has to be, of course, made in absolute darkness, you can't use a safety light to check if there is something wrong with it and if you drop anything you'll absolutely screwed. One needs to learn basics about chemical safety/handling before starting to play with developing chemicals and make sure the ventilation is good etc. A good safety principle with chemicals is that if you are not absolutely sure what you're doing, don't do anything... mixing wrong chemicals together may accidentally create carcinogenic substances, poison gases etc. Some developers may already contain carcinogenics in the formula btw, for example formaldehyde as a hardener, so it's better to have a gas mask on hand if you need to handle that kind of stuff at home :ph34r: One thing to consider is that even when the b/w home processing is inexpensive, the b/w negative has to be purchased new VS using recans/short ends/clearance color negative film and processing that in lab. Depending on stock you don't necessarily save anything compared to color negative even if using more expensive lab. Home processing S8 has the big disadvantage that the dust and scratches show much more clearly than with larger formats. that's why I don't use S8 at all for home processing, only 35mm and occasionally 16mm

Peltier elements are already used in some modern digital cinema cameras to assist cooling the sensor. If I remember correctly at least blackmagic and arri are using it. Btw nowadays when we live again the anamorphic/large sensor part of the periodical 3D image format cycle, people most likely take bigger single sensor camera over the 3chip one when the optics is concerned. With bigger sensor you also need more ffd and possibly special lenses but you get more "wow factor" with todays audiences compared to a 3ccd great color response camera. Most of the asudience wants the films specs to look good on paper too, not only on screen

they shot the doc for three years, I had plenty of time to transcode :lol:

actually it is 80TB times THREE (two copies on hdd:s and one on LTO. insurance reasons y know B) ) and also the 30TB edit files have to be archived (one copy is enough for the offlines) so it is about 350TB total :lol:

yep, in the last nature documentary we did it was closer to 80TB or material and it wasn't even all shot in RAW, maybe about half of it when comparing footage length wise. there was lots of 50fps and 100fps material in 4k sony raw so it adds a bit to the lengths. we transcoded to fullhd proresLT for editing. transcoding and thus adding more complexity is actually easier than trying to work with that much of material in original format and is also cheaper because you don't need as huge amount of raid storage and insanely powerful computer for editing, well worth the extra work involved. you still need to correct manually the xml errors when doing online even if editing in RAW so it not that much more work to do the extra step. normal sata drives and LTO are cheap for material storage but very fast raid storage, not so much so it's best to edit as lightly as possible. we still needed about 30TB of raid storage for editing but that's much easier than 80TB especially when it does not need to be that fast because using only proreslt versions for editing :lol:

interestingly enough, almost all RAW footage I work with is shot for documentary projects, NOT fiction (drama, fantasy) movies. that makes lots of sense actually because in drama you need lots of takes and faster workflow but you usually have possibility to have much bigger lighting+grip budget and crew so you don't necessarily need that extra 5% the RAW can offer you. exception are the underwater and aerial shots, those are almost exclusively RAW always in all projects and in aerial stuff usually also hdr if available. in documentaries (and small budget indie stuff btw!!) you meet extreme lighting conditions more regularly and have much smaller lighting package so it makes much sense to shoot raw even if you need more hdd space. depends on the budget of course, we are making stuff almost exclusively for cinema release so if making a small budget tv stuff one does not necessarily need that much control over the image. raw is also more expensive to online and color correct but the difference is not that huge

it's like with film, the silver halide chrystals can only 'see' in black and white and you need color filters to differentiate the colors from each other

the probable reason why beam splitters are not used more is because they limit the optics which you can use with the camera and no one wants a camera to limit the lens choices to only a few custom made options when making a movie. even when the electronics pricing is going down and down, the optics pricing is staying more or less stable or may even go up every now and then, especially for special optics made for 3mos camera with larger format than 2/3". So I'd say the reason is the lenses, not the 3-imager camera technology itself. it is also much cheaper to make a Bayer sensor camera vs. 3cmos camera but that is less important in cine use I think

as others mentioned it is also possible to shoot 500T tungsten balanced film in daylight without the 85 or 85B filter, rating it at about 320 ISO (thus exposing the red layer normally and overexposing the blue layer by about 2/3 of a stop) and then bringing the blue channel down in telecine about 2/3 of a stop. depending on the film there may be some blue contamination in the greens which can't be fully corrected afterwards and of course you have 2/3 stops of less headroom in the blue. One thing to take into account is that if you shoot this way and UNDEREXPOSE the image you can't fully correct the shadows because there is no details left anymore in the reds. otherwise it is generally not big of a deal to correct it afterwards as long as you expose it correctly in the first place (expose it like you had the cc filter in place even if it isn't )

1 000 000 :3400K = 294.1176 mired 1 000 000 :3200K = 312.5 mired 312.5 mired - 294.1176 = 18.3824 mired color temperature difference. ---------------------------------------------- 1 000 000 : 5600K = 178.571429 mired 1 000 000 : 4800K = 208.3333 mired 208.3333 mired - 178.571429 mired = 29.761871 mired (color temp difference between general direct sunlight and idealized daylight ct balance) ----------------------------------------- 312.5 mired - 178.571429 = 133.928571 mired (color temperature difference between 3200K daylight balance and 5600K daylight balance) ----------------------------------------------- 1 000 000 : 5400K = 185.185185 mired 185.185185 mired - 178.571429 mired (5600K)= 6.61376 mired As you can see, a 200K difference is smaller and much less noticeable when compared between higher color temperatures. thus the Mired degree is preferred in color temperature comparisons because then you can see how much actual visible difference there is in color temperature ( 18.3824 versus 6.61376 mired )

the client provided the child actors or did you make the commercial for the actor class? if they provided the actors they are obligated to making contracts with them (they surely have done that) . it sounds quite unfair that you had to paid the crew costs by yourself but if you had agreed to that policy then it is ok I guess. However the "product" means in this case the finished commercial, not the raw material (if not specifically agreed beforehand) so you should not have any obligation to give away the raw material if you don't want to and the crew (if working for free without contracts) does not have to give away those rights either. You should try to get them to pay you and the crew SOMETHING and let them handle the contracts to transfer the rights. do you know if they already made a written contract with the school, that is normally the way to do it? edit: like Satsuki said, if the client has not done the clearances already DON'T hand over anything or involve in any way in that mess or try to resolve it on behalf of them, it will be hell of a job and take enormous amount of your time and lead to liabilities and possibly lawsuits and whatnot :ph34r:

I just want to emphasise this more: If there were other people involved in the production, NEVER hand over ANY material unless you are absolutely sure that you have all the rights and permissions to do that. Same thing for the shooting locations, your permissions may not allow to use the material in other projects than originally agreed. otherwise they may blame you and maybe sue you in more severe cases :wacko: actors are very strict about this when it's a commercial project, they don't want their face to pop up in random commercials without specifically agreeing for it and been paid for it case by case <_<

you paid all the costs and they got a free commercial and now want also the raw material for free so they can save even more money when making the next one? they should pay all the costs + at least a lowered day rate if they want the originals. they should have paid all the costs for making of the commercial anyway even if it's a no-pay student project. What your school said about the situation? Did you make a contract for the original deal and did it have anything mentioned about the rights of the final product + raw materials? also you have to take into account the actors/actresses 's contracts if there was any, you may not be allowed to transfer the rights of using the material in other projects or it may not even be possible. I mean, you may not be the only one who has immaterial rights to the material so it may not be as simple to give the materials away :mellow:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/8mm-F3-8-Fish-eye-CCTV-Lens-For-Micro-Four-Thirds-Mount-Camera-/401129690896?hash=item5d65315710:g:x7wAAOSwI-BWF4V1 not from the same seller but similar to that one in C-mount. It is mostly plastic but still better than Samyang I think :lol:

I use a modified 4mm F1.4 lens with the non-reflex H16, it is a Canon 1" cctv lens I think. not possible to rotate the turret when the lens is attached because the rear element gets so close to the film plane. I just bought a Chinese cctv 8mm F3.8 c-mount lens which is made for M4/3 use, it works very well with my H16RX though it's a fisheye so it works as a wide angle with huge barrel distortion. But it is surprisingly good lens for the price, cost something like 70$ or so :lol: I actually prefer it over the Samyang 8mm vdslr most of the time, it is better lens I think and much smaller and lighter :blink:

they surely remembered that lesson for a while :wacko: glass thickness can also factor with the heat/temperature gradient resistance, especially with round shapes. if looking lab glass, the high temperature stuff is usually much thinner (some boiling flasks etc. can be literally paper thin) and the high vacuum stuff has much thicker walls to withstand mechanical stress but does not necessary handle open flame or other extreme situations as well ) If free heat expansion is allowed, glass (even normal glass) can stand hundreds of degrees °C but the general temperature difference/gradient resistance depends on glass type and shape +installation. Quartz glass (fused silica) which is used for example in tungsten and HMI bulbs can withstand well over 1000°C and rapid temperature changes because of the very low thermal expansion coefficient. Borosilicate is much cheaper and easier to use and still very well suited for for example Fresnel lenses, lab glass, incandescent bulbs, kitchenware, etc. Soda lime glass is very cheap and even easier to work with but it has much much larger thermal expansion coefficient than borosilicate or quartz and therefore can't stand large temperature differences. And as mentioned, it can easily crack even if there is no temperature gradient if the window frame etc. outer factor limits its thermal expansion and therefore creates mechanical stress to the glass even if it could otherwise handle it. because of the low gradient resistance it also has to be warmed up / cooled much slower than the better glass types so that the temperature change is as even as possible

soda lime glass can only stand something like 20°C temperature difference, may vary depending on the shape and size of the glass object and may be even lower if the window frame does not allow much heat expansion. if the heat expansion is restricted you have to also wary the absolute temperature of the glass, not just temperature gradients. for comparison, borosilicate glass can stand about 150°C temperature difference which is why most laboratory glassware is made of it (you can put a beaker to ice bath and pour boiling water into it and it should not break apart. that is absolutely not possible with normal glassware) I would absolutely had expected the window to broke if the 5K was only 5-10cm from it, something like 1 - 2 meters could have been safer I think

do you have possibility to borrow good cameras from your school? if that's possible and you are not intending to do lots of professional gigs with you own camera, I would maybe invest on film shooting (not only for buying film equipment but choosing a basic film camera and investing to actually shoot film a lot so you get used to it and will learn a lot from the experience. it will help you learn lighting, composition, pre-production, post-production, communication, etc. much more efficiently than digital cameras and by shooting film you will actually understand better how the digital cameras work and how to handle them more efficiently in different situations.) It may be difficult in your country because of the labs but otherwise it is highly recommended even if you don't shoot professional projects on it in the future

that's a good advice :lol: I also recommend that the 'real job' is somehow related to film/media industry so you can make good contacts at the same time. though it has the disadvantage that people may learn to know you only as an AC or Editor or Best Boy etc. without knowing that you can actually also DP and it may be difficult to change that later

never used the HATO paint, here they normally use either Rosco or if on budget or making temporary painting they can use cheaper household paints and mix them to get the right color. that works actually quite well if you have time to experiment with it, if you are making student films it is good to have the option to repaint the surfaces if needed without breaking the budget and you can also make temporary stuff from kapaboard or cardboard etc. , like boxes and planes, to assist shooting

the expensive version includes the cardboard box of course. if you don't need it you can as well use the cheaper option :lol: http://www.thomann.de/gb/rosco_cinefoil_mattschwarz_61x762_cm.htm?ref=search_rslt_cinefoil_147420_0