Jaxon Bridge

You just get to know it after awhile. You can eyeball strengths of CTO, just like you can eyeball 1/2 stop or 1 stop difference.

This is a remarkable thing to hear. I didn't know the human eye could register color temperature. You're saying that as a light dims, you can also see the warming of its tone towards orange, even though you are using no gels? I'd think the vast majority of people only notice the obvious, that the light output was diminishing.

I guess if I had more lighting experience, I'd perhaps see this was a silly question. But I am truly astonished.

Are you one of those guys on that show, Heroes? :huh:

I'll use full CTO when not dimming, or a slight grade of CTO when the highest output on the flicker gag looks too white. I just do it by eye.

This might be a really silly questions but how do you eyeball color temperature?

I was working on a project with a very similar situation. the gaffer tried something I've never seen before: taking a flex fill, (you may need more than one depending) and bouncing whatever you use to source the fire in the silver or gold side, and shuffle and shake it around.

You can also use sheets of regular household aluminum foil, if you don't have a flexfill, or if your flex is too large for the space you have to work with. I agree it looks much more natural than dimmers and flicker effects. I've done two interior fire scenes, and for both I used an ungelled tungsten fill light, one light pointed away from the subject, gelled with Roscolux #19 Fire (http://rosco.com/us/filters/roscolux.asp#colors), and a second light gelled with CTS, bounced into a sheet (or sheets) of foil and wiggled around at whatever speed suits your vision. Add a little fog. Looks great.

 

You'll have to fiddle with placement, or use a lower wattage lamp like a tweenie for the #19, else the red will be too heavy.

These are all great ideas; i'm very happy with the responses, thank you!

Dimming aside, I've never felt the need to go any stronger than full CTO on tungsten to create a realistic fire color. Again, don't overdo it. Too strong or too red just looks fake and theatrical.

Michael - do you use the CTO when dimming, or only when you are not dimming (ie using a shadowmaker box, for example)?

When you dim a light you get a warmer color temperature, hence I believe Michael's point about not really needing much in the way of gels. As to why this occurs you'd better ask someone else I don't really know the specifics

 

Good Luck

In other words, the Kelvin temperature decreases? Warmer, in terms of temperature, usually means an increase (ie "the temperature outside is warmer today than yesterday"), but perhaps when discussing color temperature, it means a move to a warmer appearance, but actually a decrease in CT, right?

This has been discussed here many times, so try doing a search.

 

Magic Gadgets makes a 3-channel flicker box called a Shadowmaker, that allows for 3 units at up to 2K per channel. I just used it again on the feature I just wrapped, and with 3 2K mighties plugged into it I got plenty of light and didn't have to gel the lights. It has different effects pre-programmed into it, and allows you to set the high and low levels on each channel, and the speed of the effect. By keeping the high level below 100%, you get a completely natural fluctuation in color temperature for flames.

 

Without a flicker box though, you'll still get a more convincing effect with two or more different lights. You can diffuse these lights slightly and have grips subtly wave their fingers in irregular patterns between the light and the diffusion. It takes some practice, and less is more. Don't be inclined to overdo it. The more extreme the effect, the more fake it tends to look.

 

Dimming aside, I've never felt the need to go any stronger than full CTO on tungsten to create a realistic fire color. Again, don't overdo it. Too strong or too red just looks fake and theatrical.

Shadowmaker looks great; and just a plain old dimmer too when you need one without the flicker, I see.

Question about dimming and color temperature: is the CTO still necessary with a flicker box? When light is dimmed, how does this effect color temperature?

I was working on a project with a very similar situation. the gaffer tried something I've never seen before: taking a flex fill, (you may need more than one depending) and bouncing whatever you use to source the fire in the silver or gold side, and shuffle and shake it around. Of all the fire techniques I've see this seems to be the best by far. flicker boxes are good but I've only had good experience with them when you've got multiple boxes on multiple lights at different rates and even then they're not the most natural.

 

i recently tried the flex fill trick on something and it worked great. its the kind of thing that is easy, cheap and looks natural.

great idea! i wonder what color gel i should get or if it would be necessary to mix colors on different lights. i'm thinking two sources each bounced into their own flex-fill. maybe two different shades of orange? i wish i could light a fire to analyze!

I am planning a scene in a burning apartment. We don't actually see the fire (because I don't have the money), but I plan to simulate it by showing orange flickering light on the walls.

I am thinking about the best way to do this. My initial guess is to use orange gel over the lights, and have people wave things in front of the lights.

Also a smoke machine, I'm thinking.

I would think this might be difficult to pull off. Anyone tried this or have some more specific advice how to accomplish it?

-jaxon

Early hand crank cameras generally exposed eight frames per turn of the crank. I have an Ensign Cinematograph (1895 - 1910) that does. They didn't have tachometers, governors, or flywheels. Some cinematographers would hum a tune to try to regulate their pace.

-- J.S.

and how long was a typical crank? i'd imagine it varied depending on slow motion, etc intentions.

Films in the mid silent era used a range of speeds, and typically were projected a little faster than they were shot. In the mid 1920s SMPTE considered setting a standard for camera speed of 60 feet per minute, and a projection speed of 80 feet per minute. (That is 16fps and around 22fps).

 

But there was no standard. In fact cameramen used to undercrank for comedy effect quite a lot. Maybe the stuff you've seen was like that - if it was only 12fps or so it would look quite jerky.

 

It also depends on what TCM had done to the footage for their compilation. If you speed-correct 16fps footage up to 24 to match modern footage, you get every alternate frame twice in a sort of 4:2 pulldown. If you convert it to 30fps, I've no idea what you do.

they have the stuff playing on large widescreen LCDs, so clearly in video format, i.e. ~30fps.

i just thought it looked cool, and would be fun to experiment with alternate shooting rates. however, i was not looking at comedies. almost looked more like documentary footage, not even narrative.

Anywhere from 16 fps to 24 fps usually. I've seen some mid 1920's movies that should be projected at 24 fps to look correct.

I wonder if some of the stuff I saw was less than this. I should go back and look at the films' titles and look it up. Some looked quite choppy, but it was an interesting aesthetic when placed against the NYC settings of 100 years ago. It looked more removed from 24 fps than I would think 16 fps looks.

I just chanced upon the inspiring and excellent Turner Classic Movies display in Grand Central Station here in NYC, where they are chronicling the history of NYC cinematography, both on-location and in recreated sets, and it features numerous backdrops and photos taken from productions, and also has several simultaneous screenings of NYC footage dating back 100 years. Very interesting, and free!

My question is that the very old footage looks choppy from a frame rate standpoint (actually I like it), and I'm wondering what kind of frame rates people were shooting at back in the early days. I know there was wide variation but I'm wondering how low the rates got.

yes its all down to common sense , looking at the subject you are shooting ,thinking about your limits regarding the stock you are using and setting the correct stop .easy .

i certainly wouldn't say "easy" when talking about reversal stocks. in other thread Mr. Mullen pointed out that even he has difficulty exposing Tri-X sometimes. not to single anyone out. but "easy" is a word i'd be more inclined to use for negative stocks.

i shot on reversal stocks about 10 years ago at film school in new york. half the students in my class of 25 or so consistently had exposure problems on plus-x and tri-x, even after a few months of experience. it's not really that easy.

Any stock that old has changed a couple of times over its history. B&W reversal went through a major update just a few years ago. See:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products....4.10&lc=en

I wonder if the new Tri-X is as grainy as the old one, or if it has come to resemble Plus-X more. Or god forbid that Plus-X has come to resemble Tri-X. I hope that when it become twice as sensitive (ASA-wise), it didn't sacrifice the beautiful grain structure.

Is it safe to say that Plus-X is still the ultra-sharp fine grained stock it once was? The Kodak site also says that Tri-X has "increased sharpness" but I doubt it's anything like Plus-X.

Plus-X reversal dates back to 1955:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products....26.4&lc=en

 

1955

* KODAK PLUS-X Reversal film, 7276. Daylight, EI 50, Tungsten, EI 40 B&W.

* KODAK TRI-X Reversal film, 7278. Daylight, EI 200, Tungsten, EI 160 B&W.

but the stock has evolved since then, right? i know just a couple years ago, maybe 2004 or so, its chemistry changed as did its ASA rating. perhaps it has changed more than once in its history?

i have read on here that Tri-X is one of hte most challenging stocks to expose properly and consistently.

i am wondering how "easy" it is to expose Plus-X. i understand neither of these is as easy as negative film, but with Plus-X you get one of the sharpest grains of any stock ever made. the compromise is you lose one stop of sensitivity, but is it near as hard to expose as Tri-X?

also - i thought read once that these stocks would be made available for the Aaton A Minima, but i do not see them listed on Kodak's site. anyone know about this?

It's extremely unusual to use 2X anamorphic lenses for 1.85 -- afterall, despite the fact that you use the full negative height, you now have to crop the sides a lot to get 2.39 back to 1.85, negating any grain benefits. This guy has no idea what he's talking about.

That's what I thought. Thanks for clearing it up!

I had a fellow tell me recently:

It is not an unusual practice to shoot an 1:1.85 film with anamorphic lenses to get a better image resolution: it's a gain of about 50% more vertical resolution.

This really surprised me. While I recently noticed that the 1.85:1 movie Babel had anamorphic scenes due to a multi-format production, I can't imagine there are actually too many movies shooting Scope for 1.85:1 distribution. Can anyone name a few?

This guy is in Berlin, and I know European formats do differ somewhat.

Jaxon

Which answers the question "How'd ya do on your SATs"

 

It's in The United States of America, Jaxon, as in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

ah very nice. land of the free.

i meant for super 8 film

I know; i'm sorry, i was being tongue-in-cheek.

Four 100 foot rolls is about 10 minutes worth of footage, so basically an 8-10 minute short film.

Does this imply you are shooting at 1:1 ratio? Is that even possible? I'd expect to shoot nearly an hour of footage for a 10 minute short, or at least 4:1. More power to you if you can do it in less.

I always get my film back within 1 hour at Wal-Mart. In fact, it is what they advertise and usually they keep to it.

One time, though, it took two and a half hours. It was okay, because I had a lot of extra shopping to do that day anyway, and it is convenient because the rest of the Wal-Mart merchandise is in the same building, so I didn't get that upset.

It actually might have been closer to three hours, but I wasn't counting. I wish I had, though, so I could give a more accurate account of the experience right here. But it was somewhere between two and a half and three hours wait time that day. But most times, it is within 1 hour.

Hope this helps.

I would recommend looking into getting it transferred straight to hard-drive and then you can export it out at a higher quality later...uncompressed, or HD...

 

Just my unknowledgable two-cents...

 

John

Is this is standard service? What is the resolution and format of the video stored on the hard drive? Is this pretty expensive?

-Jaxon

I feel sad that I will never be allowed to shoot a film with that purity & passion.

Glad you saw it.

Never say never my friend.

I'm not an expert on post-production processes which I believe are the issue at stake with your question, but I can offer some basics. Just because you shoot on 35mm doesn't mean it's going to look good after a transfer. There are a huge variety of processes to get a high-resolution video product out of a film negative. As an extreme example, suppose you took a 35mm movie but first transferred it to a low-resolution digital file for web viewing. Then you decided to make a DVD from the web version. It would look awful. Likewise, a low-budget production may not be able to afford the costs of creating a high-res master from which to dupe videos or compress the MPG for DVD. Resolution aside, there are also lots of coloring and other issues (which I'm mostly ignorant of) that affect how clean a video product looks. Compare a professional TV show shot on 16mm to a student film also shot on 16mm and then transferred to DVD. You might get a similar discrepancy.

p.s. -- "Anamorophic".. this forum's rules require that your display name not be a nickname, but a full first and last name. Please change it if you'd like your posts taken seriously.