Phil Rhodes

In Parry Sound, Ontario, visiting the set of Wickensburg, on which I did some writing work. I currently sit here:

No, there isn't. This is what mattes and fingers and dots and things are for, to keep things from shining in the lens. If the light source is in shot there's not so much you can do, as you'd naturally see whatever's flagging it, unless you can figure out a way to flag it with a piece of set dressing so it looks reasonable. Lights that are out of frame can still flare the lens, which is where mattes (hence mattebox) come in. But no, you're absolutely right, there's no perfect solution. This is why people spend so much time designing lens coatings.

There you go, Imran - Ed's the guy to ask about this stuff. What were you proposing to do, exactly?

Hello again! What've you been up to recently? Anything fun to look at?

VERA! But you needed a soldering iron.

I tend to agree.

Hmm. I suspect you're right, but it instinctively feels like 40 kilos on the end of that arm is an awful lot (that's a sturdy child!). Your best answer will come from the manufacturer, or maybe the distributor. Send an email about it, I'd say. Or call a gaffer who has some.

I think you could probably cut a basic HD proxy timeline on that machine, but I'm not sure what the performance or workflow would be like.

The other thing about this is to consider what lens you might use. Even quite wide lenses may look tremendously juddery with a hard mount, depending heavily what you're driving on. Perhaps evaluate gimbal options, which can take the curse off handheld in a situation like this.

And you've tried just throwing your 5K R3Ds on a timeline and cutting them, with the resolution wound down?

That's a fairly basic machine, particularly since it doesn't have a real GPU, but if you have proven you can throw a basic timeline together in Resolve then you can probably do what you need to do. Render time may not matter much as it can happen while you sleep! Really the way to do this is to work backward from what you want to end up with, exactly like you would if you had to deliver a big TV show to Netflix. If you need to deliver an HD result, convert your r3ds to some sort of intermediate format at HD resolution (prores springs to mind) ideally with a log encoding, then edit and grade that. What are you aiming to end up with here?

Where'd that clip come from? Is that something you scanned?

This is true to an extent. The likes of Netflix use sufficiently high data rates that at least some noise does tend to make it through, at least from what I've seen, although I'd generally counsel against it as a general choice for exactly the reason given here. P

A buddy of mine in LA is an enthusiast of this sort of thing and I think he still has an old tube camera, very much detuned for maximum smeary tube fun and frolics. I believe he records it to a miniDV deck but the look would be earlier, more historic than the Hi8 period. Are you looking for a camera as a prop or something to produce old-looking pictures? There are many, many kinds of Hi8 camera. Certainly dozens, from little handycams to dockable recorders for broadcast cameras. If you do get something like Hi8 then I'd encourage you to check it produces recordings that other devices will replay. Hi8 in particular is a little notorious for drifting, and the youngest of them will be pushing 25 years old now. They may play back their own recordings, but there are sometimes issues playing a tape made by one camera on another VCR. P

Not sure. Possibly have some choice there.