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Tyler Purcell

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Everything posted by Tyler Purcell

  1. I don't know anyone using Vegas professionally. Almost everyone I know uses Avid, Premiere or FCPX. Got a story for ya... So I do A LOT of windows support, pretty much once a week I'm fighting with windows in one way or another. Anyway, I'm at one of my clients facilities who uses windows workstations for 3D work. No internet, these machines are MPAA secure and only talk to a network for storage purposes. Anyway, this hot shot windows workstation guru comes in to setup the new windows machines because I told the client, I wouldn't do it. I talk to the guy for at least an hour as we tag-teamed the hardware build of 6 new workstations. He told me how he'd never in his entire career struggled with windows issues. He then spent the better part of a week trying to make these computers actually work properly. At the end of the week, we reconvened and I asked him WTF right? I mean 4 days to mirror image 6 machines, what's the big deal? He said ohh it's all normal stuff. I was like really? It takes me 25 minutes to image a Mac. He gulped and basically spilled the beans about how many hardware/driver/software conflicts there are in windows these days. He sat down and showed me all the directory fixes he had to make by hand to make the damn things connect to just the network, let alone anything else. It didn't even phase him what so ever, it was like totally normal work for him, so when I told him how "odd" it was, he shrugged and said, hey it's windows. Moral of the story... if all you know is something that doesn't work right, you'll automatically know how to resolve the problems before they even start. It's the same with Mac's, there are a few "got ya's" if all you've used is windows over the years. The difference is that, when you build a mac, you rarely have to deal with drivers of any kind. So you can be rest assured no matter what, the Video card drivers, USB, SATA, Optical drive, Bluetooth, Wireless, audio I/O, will just work when you hit the power button. When you build a new Mac, you simply hold down the option key on boot, select "net boot" and it will actually run off the internet AND install a new operating system on the fly, no disks, no downloads, no websites, no second computer to help you out, none of that. It's pretty amazing and it's been that way for... ohh close to a decade. Well, amazingly enough, Apple did make a standard ol' computer, that's what most industry people use. My machine has standard Intel chip set and processors, totally upgradable (though not to the most recent processors due to the type of socket, this is the same on PC's though). My machine has 4 PCI slots, all standard stuff 1, 16x and 3, 8x. My machine has 8 memory slots and is 128 bit, so you can run 128gb of memory no problem @ 1600MHZ. My machine has 6 internal 6GBps sata connectors (4 for 3.5" raid array and 2 for 2.5" drives) and 2 optical drive slots which are 3GBps sata. It also has 802.11 A, B, G, N wireless with Bluetooth 2.0 built-in. It has 16 bit D/A converters and built-in 1/8" stereo i/o PLUS optical digital i/o for surround decoding. It also has a big power supply that can run all of this, plus two high power graphics cards with fan power. The only thing my machine doesn't have is USB3, which is a real shame. The cards are cheap and work great, but it gobbles up ONE PCI slot that could be used for something else. Don't think of new computers when you think of Apple... think of the year 2012 when they stopped making the best computer they ever made. Sure it's an "old" computer compared to todays standards, but it's still stupid fast. Benchmarks equal or better the best PC's on the market today. I haven't tested it yet, but supposedly my machine CAN benchmark well over 30,000 on multi-core geekbench tests. I will run a test when I have some time. My machine cost me $1500 bux + memory + IO + GPU, so maybe $2200 ish? I got a used GTX980 on ebay and a killer deal on a blackmagic 4k I/O board. I also got a Red Rocket for peanuts. So yea, $2200 bux sounds about right. That's pretty amazing for a 5 year old computer. Mac's have the upper hand for so many reasons... My favorite is the ability to hover over any document/movie/audio file on your computer, hit the spacebar and see it's contents in real time with NO programs installed on the machine. You can literally watch an entire movie in that mode with audio. You can see an entire Microsoft Office spreadsheet in that mode, without having office installed. That is one of two dozen "features" in the Mac OS, that is the reason WHY people keep using it. Apple was so intelligent in their operating system design, they simply built-in support for everything and sure, there are a few new codec's that you need drivers for, Red Code and DNX are the two main ones, but they're no big deal and most people will never touch either one of them. It's not JUST about apple hardware, (they DID make the best laptops until the more recent abomination) it's mostly about the software. A great deal of people run Mac OS on their PC's because they like the OS so much, but they don't want to spend the money on buying apple hardware. Sure, there are some driver conflicts when you do that, but the work arounds are becoming more and more available. I foresee a time in the near future where Apple simply makes drivers for pretty much all PC chipsets and ends the whole driver issue, just to keep professionals happy. I have ZERO quorums about building a mega PC and running Mac OS on it. It's just... my old tower, which I still use for rendering, is from 2008 and it works great. It's a 10 year old computer that can edit in 4k all day long. Please tell me what 10 year old Windows PC can edit 4k STOCK! What you pay for in a Mac is the ability to not need a new computer every 2 - 3 years. I use very old Mac's because it doesn't matter, they all work with the latest operating systems perfectly, they all are upgradable so what's the big deal? In fact, next month I'm going to buy a 5 year old Macbook Pro as my "new" laptop because frankly, the new one's aren't that much faster. Apple is so far ahead of the game, their computers simply last longer then PC's do and that's a fact. Not saying you NEED a mac, just saying these are good reasons to OWN a Mac.
  2. Commercials were mostly 35 actually, unless they were local market for some reason.
  3. Pro Res and DNX for windows are limited and only 32 bit. There are aftermarket plugins that will do 64 bit, but they're hacks and don't work right with quicktime, which messes poop up.
  4. There is absolutely software that only works on windows. Thank god Mac's can run both operating systems at the same time ( so can any PC for that matter) . So if you really need a windows environment, you literally command + Tab over to it. Where it's true Apple is stepping away from the "professional" realm, lucky for us their last generation of Mac Pro towers, are still pretty relevant. With some minor tweaks to hardware and software, you can get them to run just as fast as a heavily built windows PC, no questions asked. Where the mac operating system kicks windows ass is in the 64 bit multi threaded category. Most of windows is still 32 bit and the way it deals with multithreading is, to say the least, not very good. So sure, one single task like a render, its really hard to tell the difference with like-like hardware on a mac vs windows machine. However.. when you're doing every day tasks, there is a sharp difference in how these two operating systems deal with memory, graphics and multithreading. Put it to you another way, windows is a very unstable operating system that even in it's best of times, even with the best hardware, is still a nightmare to deal with when it's not working perfectly. I spent years supporting windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and 8, so I know quite a bit about making it work and honestly, what's the point? Most of the windows clients I had, we simply put iMac's with SSD's where those windows machines use to be and never got another service call again. So yea, windows machines are cheaper... but like everything that's cheap, you get what you pay for at some point in the future.
  5. The real big things with UHD/4k is CPU and GPU power. Most decent computers can handle 1080p in various flavors no problem at all. Now, I use Mac's because frankly, I absolutely despise windows and I need to work with all of the proper codec's since I do post work as a professional. My machine is from 2010, eek!!! But it's a double processor 12 core, 3.46ghz tower with 12Tb internal raid zero, 10,000 RPM boot drive, GTX980 graphics card and Blackmagic 4k I/O card. I can work with pretty much every 4k file in real time, outside of 4k MPEG files like .h264 and XAVC-I. They still don't decode properly in real time no matter how fast of a computer you use. My machine cost me around $3k to build from the ground up, but add a decent color grading monitor and the thing is pretty powerful. I recently graded a narrative feature on it and the final result looks pretty decent. So fast processor and fast graphics card. The GT1080 on windows is probably the way to go. I'm investing in a Titan-X Pascal this year, because DaVinci likes video memory and it does run out with complex tasks on my GTX980 every once in a while. So the 1080 8GB graphics card should do the trick. I'm not sure what i7 processor to get because there is a cut off where the performance vs price kinda makes no difference anymore.
  6. So... don't spend the $1500 bux to buy a used dual proc, 12 core, 3.46ghz intel mac... so you can have a cheaper windows machine? Personally, I'd rather have the mac for built-in Pro Res, for built-in support for everything, for no viruses and malware ever and honestly, all of the best post production software, some of which doesn't exist on windows. I mean, I get it... you got $500 bux to buy a computer that actually works? Ok... build your own computer from the ground up and you deal with those limitations. I get the business that lease workstations using HP's or Dell's and has a full-time in-house IT staff to keep them working. What I don't get is the independent filmmaker who needs all these things, but chooses PC's and Windows. It just complicates a non-complicated situation and forces you to use things like Sony Vegas as an editing tool instead of Final Cut Pro X, which is practically free and works like gangbusters with EVERYTHING. Sure, and Vegas doesn't support Pro Res or DNX natively. In fact, even with the Avid DNX plugin bundle, you're limited to DNX220 as the highest quality output. Again, my system does every flavor of Pro Res from proxy to XQ, and every flavor of DNX from 8 bit standard DNX to 12 bit DNX-HR, without mucking with anything really. But :cough: that's because I use real software packages... not toys like Sony Vegas.
  7. Well, you wouldn't want to use different batches for the same shot. It's not a problem to use different batches for different shots... The variances are pretty minimal today. I've done back to back tests, even with different print stock and you can't tell the difference. As long as the film has been stored properly and hasn't been exposed to heat or any radiation that could alter the image, you're in pretty good shape with short ends. Of course the risk is not knowing those things... I personally haven't had any issues with short ends. Remember, 16mm was a consumer format and Kodak treated it as such for decades. They didn't want it interfering with their money maker; 35mm. From my understanding of history (the dates maybe off on this, so don't stab me) it wasn't until Kodak started releasing their color negative stocks for 16mm in the early 80's, that really made 16mm more professional. Prior to that, the only options filmmakers had for 16mm were grainy reversal films. Even though the Super 16 frame size was developed in the 60's, it wasn't widely used until the 90's, thanks mostly to the newer stock and better optical printing methods. The big breakthrough for 16mm was Kodak Vision film stock using T grain. This opened up the door for 16mm to really be used for professional shooting. This was also around the same time you could buy a NEW super 16 camera. Prior to that, the S16 format was a "modification" rather then something you'd get from the factory new.
  8. Ohh no doubt. Reel Good Film sells 35mm Kodak short ends for between .25 and .35/ft. So you're looking at an average of the same price or slightly lower then 16mm. The problem is, you ain't getting much 5219... you're getting 5203 (50D) or 5207 (250D). Everyone and their mom wants to shoot 19', it's "the stock" for 35mm. So sure you can get great deals on 35mm stock through Reel Good, but you're still gonna have to buy 19' new in most cases. Sometimes Reel Good has a bunch of 19', but it gets gobbled up so quickly, it's very rare to get your foot in the door. Another thing is that 16mm doesn't have the same re-can market because most of the people who use it, buy what they need and no more. So there isn't left overs, like you get on 35mm films where IN MOST CASES (3 perf/4 perf) you're shooting A LOT more film the 16mm for the same amount of time.
  9. poop at least it looks good! Trailer was really well put together.
  10. Thanks for the clarification. Nobody I know has ever used the word quick-change, I've just heard the 16mm magazine's be called "coaxial", so I always thought that was also in reference to quick change, not just a roll of film on each side of the magazine.
  11. Sure, but nobody shows up with a laptop in hollywood, they just don't. You'd be laughed off set.
  12. In the united states, Pro Res in the industry standard for everything outside of broadcast, this is because broadcast is still interlaced 1080i, they generally want a 59.94 iFrame MPEG file. Most of the time we simply deliver interlaced DNX straight out of our edit bay. When you're dealing with delivery for distribution outside of broadcast, you work with a content aggregator. Almost all of the aggregators in the US are here in So Cal and I know their workflows very well. They all require Pro Res deliverables, no matter what. There are no if's and's or but's about it. You can't make Pro Res? You aren't delivering anything to iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc.. Outside of content aggregation and broadcast, most people still want an iframe codec. This is why the non-broadcast industry no matter what, still uses Pro Res and DNX, as not only their working formats, but also for final delivery. There really isn't anything "better" or as robust without going to speciality formats like JPEG2000, which is hard for computers to decode. The great thing about Pro Res is that it has a multi-threaded decoding engine, which allows for the decoding and encoding to be spread across multiple threads, vs simply cores. This means it works very smoothly at pretty much any resolution, on pretty much any computer. This is not the case with MOST formats.
  13. The only MODERN, sync sound 35mm coaxial magazine cameras are the Aaton's. All of the 35mm cameras outside of those, are loaded every time you put a new magazine on the camera. All of the modern 16mm cameras are coaxial. So switching loads on 16mm is WAY easier.
  14. .54/ft vs .32/ft I understand the power of 35mm short ends and that getting 16mm short ends is tricky. However, even if you made the stock price identical, you're still shooting more film for the same amount of time on screen. When discussing color negative and a bulk discount rate, you can generally get the same numbers for 16mm and 35mm per foot, if scanned at the same resolution. However, for 2 perf 35mm, you are working with MORE FEET! So the pricing goes up exponentially. I love 2 perf... however, it's NEARLY 2 times the cost of 16mm when you add up all of the elements from camera rental to post production. I do budgets for productions all the time, I'm constantly pushing customers to get deals at labs directly. I've taken the numbers they've worked hard to get and I've done the math on everything, which is how I derived the film production spreadsheet which is on my website. For a 90 minute Super 16 movie: $26,880 @ 10:1 ratio for all of the "film" related aspects. (2.5k finish) $17,550 @ 3 weeks for all of the camera related aspects. = $45,000 (rounded up) For a 90 minute super 35mm 2 perf movie: $43,600 @ 10:1 ratio for all of the "film" related aspects. (4k finish) $29,700 @ 3 weeks for all of the camera related aspects. = $65,000 (rounded up) These budgets assume new bulk stock purchasing. However, even if you use short ends, even if you do the 2 perf finish in 2k, you'd still not have equal numbers. No matter what, 2 perf is more money then S16mm, there is no way to make them the same pricing, unless you physically owned the equipment and even then, the cost is so much greater then owning 16mm equipment, the benefit goes right out the window.
  15. Vegas isn't really a professional piece of software because it's very limiting in terms of it's codec's and computers it can run on. As I've said many times, the industry runs on Pro Res and DNX. If you can't do those two codec's, the software is worthless as a professional tool. Nobody takes MPEG files as master deliverables. Furthermore, most cameras today shoot quite a bit of "raw" codec's. So being able to support those, is very critical. This is why Avid, Premiere and DaVinci are the three top tools used today.
  16. DaVinci needs a good graphics card to work tho, so that's one downside.
  17. No, no, super 16 cameras are a dime a dozen. You could buy cameras on ebay for less money then it would cost to rent them for a 30+ day shoot. The reason people don't shoot super 16 is because a lot of distributors are scared of the quality. Plus, the cost difference for a big show between S16 and 3 perf 35mm (the standard today) is negligible on a multi-million dollar movie. So any movie you see in the theater shot on 16, they didn't use it to save money, they used it as an aesthetic choice. What I mentioned earlier was 2 perf 35mm cameras being rare. Kenny says 100, I say there are only two dozen available world wide for rental. I know of 6 modern Arri's that are 2 perf in the US.
  18. I'm not a fan of smoking at all. I grew up with smokers in my life (grandparents) and I absolutely can't stand it as an adult. On set, it drives me nuts because nobody wants it around, smokers walk very far away to not bother anyone, so you're constantly looking for your crew. Smoking pot is an entirely new level of disrespect though.
  19. Well for many reasons. The biggest one is that a film loader could also be an AC. So when they aren't loading film, they can be handy in other ways. On my shows, my film loader takes care of base camp and runs camera related gear to set when needed. A DIT won't do that. Also, DIT's generally charge a lot of money for their "rig" where a loader charges for themselves only. Ya sure do! If you're a laptop DIT, you aren't a DIT in my book. No laptop is fast enough to do the work necessary on a set unless you don't mind working at home as well. You've gotta show up with a decent grading monitor and a whole kit, including hardware fast enough to transcode and grade raw files in quicker then realtime, so you can spit out dailies super fast. Storage is actually the easy part, have the production pay for it. Every DIT I've worked with has $10k+ into their rigs.
  20. Here in Hollywood, Panavision really helps filmmakers who want to shoot 35mm. I've budgeted a few short films with them and they literally gave us a 3 perf body for free, only charging for the accessories and lenses. It's the best deal in Hollywood for shooting 35mm. Of course, the problem is that Gold II packages weigh a lot, they aren't very portable and it takes a long time to rethread, far more then any modern Arri or Aaton. So if you're shooting 400ft loads (which is pretty common for short ends), you're changing film quite a lot and your cast and crew will be sitting around whilst this happens. 35mm short ends save a lot of money, around half the price of retail stock or less. Still though, you'd be paying close to 16mm prices, but using twice the stock... so the savings in the stock, doesn't cancel out shooting twice as much. I get stock for peanuts and even 3 perf 35mm is too expensive for me to shoot any appreciable project with. This is why I shoot 16mm almost exclusively, the cost is SO much less. There is absolutely a 16mm aesthetic, most of that is field of view though in my opinion. If you use longer lenses and shoot wide open, you can help compensate for the depth of field issues. It's for sure a flatter feel no matter what you do. No doubt 2 perf looks awesome and the larger negative is a huge benefit!
  21. With new stock, the cost difference between Super 16 and 2 perf 35mm is double. You are shooting double the amount of film for the same amount of time AND the stock costs double per foot. So stock, processing and transfer is double. Plus transfer houses charge more per foot for 35mm then 16mm straight off the bat. There are also two other issues with 2 perf. One... it has a hard matte top and bottom. So if there is any dirt collection, it will be noticed on the edges of the frame. Most 2 perf movies have edge cleanup in at least one roll of film. Two... there are only a dozen or so 2 perf cameras in the world. So companies who own them, aren't renting them for cheap. For instance, if you go to Panavision to rent a 35mm camera, they will give you a 3 perf or 4 perf body for practically free, if you rent spherical lenses. They won't do that deal with 2 perf bodies. So now all of a sudden you're paying for a camera body you normally wouldn't be paying much for. Plus... MOST 35mm cameras you have to thread the camera. So your down time on 35mm is 3 times that on 16mm, which is a coaxial based magazine system. This is why so many people like the Aaton 35mm cameras because they're coaxial, but they're hard to find rental wise and people charge a lot for them. So 35mm no matter what, is substantially more costly to shoot then 16mm, not just technically, but also in down time. Personally, I think for 1.75:1 (HD) aspect ratio productions, Super 16 does a very good job. I think a lot of cinematographers try to push 16mm into places it shouldn't go (cropped 1.85;1 and 2.35:1 with underlit 500ISO stock), which is why you see so many noisy/grainy movies. Honestly a well-lit, dense, 200 or 250 iso S16mm negative @ 1.75:1 aspect ratio (or even 1.67:1 native), looks fantastic. Plus, S16mm cameras are A LOT lighter, smaller, loads last longer (less down time) and the cost to shoot is rock bottom for professional level film. Kodak will help anyone get the pricing that fits their budget AND labs will generally do the same thing. So S16 does have A LOT of strong points and considering there have been quite a few S16 movies released recently, people appear to be very accepting of the added grain. I thought Jackie looked outstanding, very low-noise. One final note... the beautiful 4 perf 35mm field of view that people like, is the defining difference between 16mm and 35mm in my opinion. With 2 perf 35mm, that field of view is totally different, it's no longer the huge benefit it once was. Sure, it's better then S16, but it's nowhere near that of 4 perf which is what people are USE to seeing, as most 2.40:1 35mm movies are anamorphic 4 perf.
  22. Suffragette was also Alexa, so it's not exactly 100% film.
  23. Outside of The Walking Dead, no there isn't anyone else using 16mm on Television. Super 16 has made a comeback in the last few years, starting with Moonrise Kingdom.
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