David Mullen ASC

I think the problem will be the infrastructure and support rather than the basic elements of cameras and film stocks. Labs need lab experts, cameras need camera techs, etc. A lot of that brain power has been lost and standards are lowering but people accept it for the nostalgia of shooting film. I've run into negative dust problems lately only to be told "well, it's retro, isn't it?"

Every DP has there own method of metering and exposing so I can't recommend one method as being better than another. Spot meters are necessary for self-illuminating subjects like a TV set, bright window, sunset sky, or the Moon, etc. They are also useful for objects at a distance. But otherwise I use an incident meter so I don't get confused, I don't want every shot in a scene to vary in exposure based on subject reflectivity, I want to light to a certain base level for the scene and then let objects move through the lighting at whatever reflectance value they naturally have. But other DPs swear by spot meters.

He's actually overexposing the stock as a base. But the "correct" exposure for a moonlit scene is below normal "key" or full exposure, so don't think of it as "underexposing for a look" but correctly exposing it for the effect desired. If someone turned off the lights in a room at the end of a scene, plunging it into darkness, you wouldn't necessarily call that underexposing for a look, just that the scene content has a lot of darkness in it.

If your film stock is 500 ASA and you rate it at 250 ASA but process normal -- and then you underexpose your moonlight scene on set by 2-stops, then actually it is only 1-stop underexposed on the developed negative. If I understand Jarin's approach, on top of rating the film at 250 ASA, he was doing a 1/2-stop push but not changing his meter to compensate, so there would be another 1/2-stop of added density as a result.

1.5-stops under what would be used for the key if you want normal brightness.

E6 reversal film has the gamma (contrast) of camera negative printed into a positive projection stock, as you'd expect - it's meant for direct display. So the main problem is that it has little latitude for color-correction compared to color negative film. Given that challenge, the last thing I'd do is any processing that would add even more contrast. Ektachrome 100 much finer-grained than 35mm motion picture negative stocks of the past but again, I wouldn't push it to add any grain.

Getting the field of view of VistaVision doesn't really make sense -- if you want a wider field of view, for example, you just use the appropriate focal length in 16mm to get that. What they mean is keeping the Full-Frame/VistaVision field of view & depth of field without cropping the image projection, which is the same thing that happened in the early 2000s when people wanted to use 35mm lenses and retain that field of view/depth of field on a 2/3" HD camcorder. Those devices involved the camera rephotographing the image off of a groundglass that the lens was projecting onto. The main problem with the idea was that the static texture of the groundglass was also rephotographed, so some devices vibrated or spun the groundglass during the shot. Don't know how this device works but it seems to be the same idea, I just wonder if they are moving the groundglass in any manner.

Part of the issue is how you plan on displaying the final product. If digitally, then you can adjust saturation & contrast in the grade. If you're making a photochemical print off of the negative, then you're talking about the look of Vision-3 negative printed to Vision 2383 print stock. I did this for "The Love Witch" and the prints were fairly saturated and contrasty, helped by me overexposing the negative stock by a stop and printing down. But lighting and art direction have a strong hand in that to. Pushing Vision-3 a stop would bring it more in line with older stocks like EXR, or you can just do that look in the digital color-correction. Here are some frames from the HD dailies of "The Love Witch", shot mostly on 200T Vision-3 stock (overexposed negative but normal development, no pushing).

The only reason to shoot 4-perf today is 2X anamorphic, or VFX reframing capability. Definitely 3-perf is a cost savings since scanning for a digital finish is expected anyway. I just shot a new feature for Anna Biller ("The Love Witch") and we shot 3-perf for a D.I. -- ten years ago we shot "The Love Witch" in 4-perf for a cut negative and photochemical finish. I hate to say it but in the last ten years, lab practices and whatnot have meant that some digital clean-up is often needed. Plus most people will see movies digitally projected or in streaming.

If the floor is smooth enough, a dolly with rubber tires can roll directly on it. Look at this single-shot scene from "Superman", operated by Peter Macdonald on an Elemack:

Come back, “Shane” thread!

A single pair of pantyhose will cover the rear element of many, many, many lenses... You cover all the lenses you want the netting on in advance.

https://www.mole.com/catalogs

You have to think of it from a couple of angles — first is that if you end up with darker highlights (either through underexposure or color-correction or a mix) then your shadows also go darker, which may be fine (moody black shadows) but IF you want or need to see detail in them, you might need some selective fill light in areas. So to your eye the lighting might look flatter but once everything is crunched down, it will look dark but with dim detail. Second is to think of it as if you were actually lighting this at night. First of all, you probably would be at a wide aperture with less depth of field (though don’t write off deep focus if that’s what the story needs). And you probably would use more than one light if the scene is primarily backlit. At night you might have a backlight at key exposure and then a soft side-key that is 1.5-stops or 2-stops under key let’s say. So in a day-for-night situation you would emulate this — “light” the day exterior with selective spots on faces or objects as if this were a night shoot. If your budget is tight sometimes reflector boards can be useful.

4K just refers to horizontal resolution so cropping vertically to 2.40 would still get you 4K. Practically speaking, I don't think most viewers are complaining that modern movies just aren't sharp enough! And besides data requirements (storage, etc.) for the live action footage, a lot of movies use VFX which would also have to be done at higher resolutions if the industry standardized 8K projection for example. I also don't think in the end you can see an overall resolution difference in a 4K theater between something originally captured in 4.6K on an ARRI Alexa versus 6K or 8K on a Sony Venice or Red V-Raptor. Even digital IMAX is 4K projection. Today using old optics and diffusion filters to knock back resolution is very popular (or use film) so clearly a lot of filmmakers are not feeling the need to see more detail on the big screen.