Tyler Purcell

Is it solid state or does it have tubes? I have an old B&H projector that's tubes and I had to jiggle them to get the lamp to come on, it took a while as well.

Yes, yes it is. :) Don't forget Kodak's new business model which will include processing/scanning as one price.

I didn't know the scanstation was so reasonably priced. $55k is a bargain for that machine, I thought they were in the 100k range. So yea, I mean for $30k you get something good for dailies with the BMD product and for $50 - $60k you get something worthy of making a "final" image. It's a no brainer. :) Ohh and out here, dailies are still $250 - $350/hr, crazy money. I'll still be sending work your way Robert. :)

I actually like the Blackmagic scanner for dailies. It's a real-time device that plugs into any PC or Mac without any special hardware. It runs the standard ol' DaVinci software and because it's real-time, you can be grading as you go along, like an old-school telecine. It will have a keycode reader eventually and allow for relatively inexpensive scanning of 16 and 35. Now, it's not really an archival product in it's current configuration because it's a fixed lens, imager and sprocket drive. They would need to allow for lens swapping in order to make it a good/workable product for archival. I'd also say, they should have made a special imager instead of using one off their cameras, that was a mistake in my view. It will work fine for dailies, but it won't work for your final scan. This is ok though, if you're one of those people who works with film a lot, there is a lot of potential to have your own machine and not pay the $250 - $350/hr for dailies/telecine work. Most labs will only do 2 400ft rolls of 16mm an hour. So that's $5k - $7k, just for a quick low-quality telecine of ONE movie! If you're shooting a lot and work on 35mm, might as well put that money into a machine and scan everything yourself. Standard ol' telecine machines don't scan RAW and they absolutely don't allow for the same accuracy of correction on the fly as the BMD scanner. The only other solutions are slower or a lot more money. For archival, who cares about speed. You can buy an older/slower scanner and let it run 24/7. However, when you want dailies as you shoot, you need the flexibility of having a fast machine, without breaking the bank. I have several hours of "seat time" on the prototype's and final production models. They work great for new film, which is why in my eyes it's really a replacement for the ol' telecine machine.

I just got back from watching at the Cinerama dome, which is the only theater on this coast currently playing the movie. It's a pre-release special deal they made just for this particular theater. Ang Lee was present at the screening and had a quick Q&A afterwards about the production. I've been wanting to check out the new laser projectors at the dome, so this gave me a great opportunity. I was VERY impressed with them, I think Arclight made the right decision. They were super bright and had excellent resolution over-all. The only failure they had was the curved screen, which is always a problem at that theater. I was hoping it was better then the last horrible digital projector they had and I was pleasantly impressed. I'd say the Dome is officially the 2nd best place to watch digitally projected movies, right next to the Chinese IMAX, which is by far the best. In terms of the 4k 120fps experience, it didn't help the poor acting and worthless script. I actually didn't even really care about the 90's soap opera look to the movie, my attention was drawn to how poorly things were colored, framed, lit and the acting/script. Ang Lee explained that the "realistic" look was their intention and I applaud him for trying, but it's still a movie and LIFE has more contrast and depth then what I saw in this movie. My roommate who went with me, (whose spent almost his entire adult life in post production) complained about the motion of the camera. I didn't notice it, but he's right, real life has some motion blur, but this film has zero. It's so hyper crisp and hyper real, it feels fake, it feels like a computer game. As someone who spends most of their life editing and coloring, I took offense to some of the editorial decisions which just didn't work. They would have an actor looking right past the camera and cut away to the other actor, then when they cut back, the new angle was in a slightly different place. I even saw cuts that you could call "jump" cuts, right smack dab in the middle of dialog scenes. Very strange, as if they were running two cameras and were using the other angle for cut-to coverage? Strange! Color wise, faces were almost pinkish warm and very flat. There was little to no dynamics in the image, but most of that was through lighting decisions on set. I was frustrated because if you're making a movie that's suppose to be "real", why not do it realistically? Where are those dark moments without an HMI or LED panel making sure faces were perfectly lit? It seemed like the studio had a mandate that said; "If we give you the extra money for technology, it has to look like XYZ" because it's truly uninteresting to watch. Also, they did a good job casting no-names as the leads, but they FILLED the movie with B+, A- and A+ actors in bit roles. So all of a sudden you turn and see a famous actor, who is playing someone else. This is "suppose" to be realistic, so why didn't they just use no-names all the way around? I felt that was a huge mistake and honestly, those actors feel like they were forced onto the movie for whatever reason. Now... the very brief war material, looked pretty good. I was impressed with the good camera work during that scene as well, IT worked! When they cut back to the half time show, which was 80% of the movie, it was just bland and uninteresting. It's almost like there were two camera units, one shooting the war and one shooting everything else. That's just my observation, but it's strange how drawn into the action you are with the high frame rate and 3D, it just worked. I see a lot of potential for war movie shot this way, I was very impressed with the war stuff. Though I will admit, I'm just not impressed with the F65. It does something really weird with the highlights on exteriors. It's like not over exposing, but it's clipping the imager on the whites. Detail is lost on desert shots from this very strange issue. Other movies have covered it up with clever coloring like 'Oblivion' which looked good, but was HEAVILY colored. Maybe it's a reality thing they were going after, but I see it more of a technical issue then anything else because I've seen it on other F65 movies. Over-all, the movie isn't very good. It's an overly complex case study about what it's like to not fit in as a civilian, but do the right thing as a soldier. It's also about how Americans use and abuse soldiers for their own benefits. These two themes are very important and are the only reason to watch this movie. Yet, I couldn't help but saying, I've seen it before. The gimmick of 120fps 3D 4k, will only be seen by a few people as the vast majority of theaters will get a 48fps or 60fps 2k 3D release. People get excited by new and interesting, but they will leave disappointed, which is a real shame. Like so many movies that prop themselves up on the shoulders of technology, this one fails to do itself the justice it deserves.

Whoops, yes 11k scans and 8k laser out, my bad. I was referring to the 5/70 prints of interstellar, not the 1:1 15/70 material. But that's besides the point, my point is 8k scan and laser out, doesn't really effect the quality of 5/70, so it's possible to do an 8k finish and strike prints, since there aren't any 8k digital cinemas.

I'm totally cool with 8k DI treatment of 65mm, but anything less then that is a travesty. I believe 'Interstellar' used a 11k laser out to 70mm, which is an unnoticeable process. The IMAX prints were made that way, they were 100% digital scan out.

Yea, it's very exciting to see two more 5/65 productions being shot next year. What kills me is that nobody is talking about printing. I just hope they understand that 65mm camera negative needs to be printed to 70mm film for theatrical release. That's truly the only way to see it.

Hey Adam, FotoKem here in Los Angeles, doesn't throw anything away or damage anything. The film comes back with a piece of paper that tells you how far off it is and most importantly, if one or more of the channels is different then the others. You can see what each layer is suppose to be and there is a little chart that tells you based on a certain percentage, how much over-exposing you'll need to do in order to get past the fog level. I personally feel it's an important step because if you're shooing something critical, you NEED to know if one of the channels is way off for some reason AND exactly how much to over-expose for. It's worth the money because sometimes, the film will be totally toast and way beyond the ability of correcting. I just did a fog test on some Fuji stock that was from the 90's and it was barely acceptable. It came out great, though it was VERY noisy, even with over exposing.

Hmm, that's not good! My guess is the shaft that runs the mirror and/or the screw that holds the mirror in place have come loose. This caused the mirror to shift positions. Even if the shift is slight, there would be a problem with back focus on the lens, making it seem out of focus.

Just came back from watching 'Arrival" Denis Villeneuve's new movie and boy am I excited. 'Arrival' is the story of two scientists trying to communicate with a new alien species. It's based on a short story, written by a prolific SciFi writer Ted Chiang. He spent 5 years researching different dialects and figuring out how perhaps an alien species could communicate. Yet, it's far more intricate then simple communication. The production was based in Canada and it mostly takes place on sets and a single exterior location, which made it easier for production and most likely a lot cheaper. Almost all of the sets are practical, which is nice to see. Villeneuve is not scared to use every tool at his disposal, which allows him a lot of creative freedom. He's been shooting exclusively digital and his last film 'Sicario' was quite amazing and shot by Deakins on the Alexa. For 'Arrival' Bradford Young has continued where Deakins left off, working with the Arri Alexa and more of a natural lighting feel. Bradford did a fantastic job using single practical light sources and allowing for under exposure, pushing up the mid's to compensate when necessary. The film is very flat looking contrast wise, with a more blue/green color pallet and not much warmth during the "alien" portion. This of course was all intentional and very well executed. The film's style of an always moving camera, really played well. Some shots were crane/dolly, some shots were steadicam and others were simply hand held. The masterfulness of matching all of that with a cohesive as the story unfolded, reminded me of Chivo and 'The Revenant'. In fact, much of 'Visit' reminded me of Chivo's work. Perhaps it's just the way people color films today and of course, what the Alexa looks like underexposed slightly. Films like this really come down to story and art design. What do the aliens look like, what does the space ship look like, why are they here in the first place? These are things that are WELL ANSWERED in this movie and even though they don't show you every detail, what you need to see is on screen. Maybe it's Villeneuve himself who wants to be as minimalist as possible, but I truly feel a lot of it was in the script and art direction. Some decisions they made -especially in post- were extraordinary and unexpected. There is a side story that's critical to filling in the puzzle pieces and that secondary story is shown in bits and pieces, lots of out of focus stuff and quick moments. Things like subtle sound design and clever art direction, really help to make those moments work concisely, moving the story along without dwelling. Some of the tricks the editor used early on to get into the story were really spot on. Not very many people would pickup on them, but I felt the decisions they made were very creative solutions to very clearly, cut down something that was too long. For instance, when an actor took too much time to deliver their dialog, they'd put those lines in the middle of a cut and have the actor whose saying those lines on camera, but not moving their mouth. Normally, this would be taboo, but Villeneuve get away with it because your so engrossed it doesn't matter. I bet if he put a jump cut or two in there, nobody would even care. Clever tricks of a master filmmaker and great story teller. He and his editor get some mad prop's for some of the decisions they made, most directors would never have taken that many risks. Over-all, I absolutely loved this film. Not only was it masterfully directed, but the cinematography was outstanding, the actors were convincing and conveyed emotion convincingly. All of the technical aspects from the art design to the visual effects, were top notch and very clever. It's VERY RARE I go to the movies and flat-out love something, but this movie I just love. It checks every single box for me and as the audience, once you get the twist, you can't help but feel some emotion which is what movies are all about in the first place, right? I give it a 9/10, which is basically the highest score I'd ever give. Yes, it's THAT good.

I recently saw an "almost" all original IIC at a camera sale. It had the original Arri hand grip motor tripod adaptor and everything. Very sick kit, I would have snatched it if the seller didn't think it had some value. He was using it for decoration at his house so it was just a body and magazine, but he wanted $7500 bux for it because someone told him it shot MOS shots from The Godfather. It was the closest thing to "original" I've ever seen. Pretty neat piece.

Yea, I mean you don't need custom firmware anymore supposedly. I haven't tried, I like Apple hardware and have never needed "the best" computer. My laptop is from 2011 and my tower is from 2009, both were around $1000 bux total.

You can plug a mini PCIE chassis into a Thunderbolt port and put any card you want in it. I run a 100% PC graphics card in my Mac Pro tower. It just doesn't give you a boot screen, but once the finder opens, it works fine because the cards ARE supported by drivers.

I just happen to have a Red Epic on my desk right now. I also happen to have a decibel meter. :cough: Now this is one of the "loud" RED's, but it's 62db from 1 foot away when on stand-by and it's around 52db when recording. The Arri 435 is around 56 - 60db and it's considered an "MOS" camera. So yea, this thing is friggen' loud and I've always said it was. The Dragon is a bit quieter, but that's because it runs dual fans at the top instead of a single fan in the bottom front. The double fans help pull air, but still sounds like an airplane taking off when you go from record to stand-by. In a room quiet enough to record critical dialog, it will be heard when recording. The Alexa's are pretty darn quiet, they use a very efficient system of thermal transfer. The Sony FS7 and F5/55 fan is kinda of annoying on "auto" mode, because it will go up and down on it's own, but it's silent whilst recording. The Canon C series is the same way, it doesn't make a lick of noise when recording, but comes on when on stand by. Not sure what the deal is with the URSA, but I haven't ever heard it make noise. I'm gonna get my hands on one in a few weeks (again) and I'll pay more attention to noise and stuff. But anyway, I think the RED's are the worst at this because they're in such a compact little case and the heat sync simply isn't efficient enough when you add all the other ancillary electronics.

I always ask the same questions when people are spending potentially ten's of thousands on camera equipment... Do you have a way to make the money back in your first two years of ownership? Why do you need the best of the best? Why not settle for something a lot cheaper? The camera body and RED accessories are only a very small portion of the over-all cost. Tripod (support), follow focus, mattebox, media, monitoring and lenses are very expensive. Buying a high-end camera body and accessories, doesn't mean you can magically make great images. It also doesn't magically give you a job as EVERYONE has a 4k cinema camera somewhere. So you don't magically have an upper hand when bidding on potential jobs, you're just "another" RED owner. For your own personal stuff, doesn't a $20,000 camera package and $40,000 worth of accessories and lenses, sound like quite a bit of money? I spent $3k for a kit that doesn't "look" much worse when streaming online, which is what everyone does now a days anyway. If you aren't a professional cameraman traveling the world, shooting for other people, there really is no point to owning such high-end equipment in my opinion. There are so many incredible low-cost cameras on the market today and frankly, RED cine is the last place I'd head to with the kind of competition available. So think about these things before making a decision. It's of course your own financial decision, but I've seen people get burnt on high-stake loans for equipment, it can get very expensive for no reason. Fun toy yes, but worth it? Up to you.

A good portion of the labs that process 16 will print 16. You've just gotta call around. I'd recommend Cine Lab too of course, but they're not exactly around the corner from your location.

I use ethernet, firewire, USB 3, HDMI/DVI and Thunderbolt constantly. Plus, people have tripped over my power cable literally hundreds of times working on sets and my laptop has never been damaged. Now without a magsafe adaptor, we're back to the stone age with that whole issue. Maybe Apple will think of a clever solution built-in to their actual adaptors cable, but I haven't seen anything. Thunderbolt has allowed you to do this since it's invention. It's a direct PCI bus device.

Yea, but desktops really suck for portable situations. Most people need laptops to download cards and do some basic color correction on set to insure things look good. At home, I think most of us use high-power desktops, I know I do. It's also about integration, mac's are still better at working with video. Now that mac's are just intel computers, it's very easy to build up a very nice PC and run Mac OS on it, most of my friends do that and have the best of both worlds. An operating system that actually works without any tinkering and super powerful, low cost hardware. I use a 8 year old mac pro tower and it's no slower then any new fancy PC I've used.

Yea exactly, it's kinda confusing. Thanks for posting that thou, good to know.

Supposedly there is a plugin for windows to deal with HFS+, but mac's are switching formatting yet again, so don't hold your breath. The new style of formatting is pretty clever and has a lot of potential for SSD's, but it's a non-starter for windows. There was a recent test of the new Macbook's vs current PC models of higher spec and similar price. The Macbook blew the PC's out of the water on identical tests. This is the kind of thing that makes you think for a second about windows media integration vs mac's. Apple has done a great job with it and Windows has fell behind substantially. Then you think the entire industry is quicktime based and windows is no longer supported. Right there, it's the nail in the coffin for windows and Apple knows it. They want to separate themselves and they're doing a good job at that unfortunately. I actually prefer windows to have the same tools as mac so people use the best tools on the market. Now its looking more like the great divide where each system is going to offer entirely different solutions to the same problem, which sucks.

Where it's true, the actual magnetic data on the platters doesn't change. The mechanics of the drive do fail and fail often. I've been in the computer industry for a very long time and the amount of "archive" drives which have crossed my desk, would make you never want to use a hard drive. I've seen entire raid arrays go bad AT THE SAME TIME because the drives were made around the same time and they all went bad at the same time. Drives in a raid array, running 24/7 generally run 3 - 5 years without an issue. You can actually BANK on more then 3 years, but much after and they start to fail. The first thing that happen is very basic data corruption of the directory block, which makes the drive slowly stop working. A bad directory block drive will go bad very quickly, usually a few months and it will be toast. Yes you can send the drive for data recovery, but sometimes it's very expensive. I use to specialize in data recovery and it's very time consuming. Files come off corrupt and need substantial code variations to work again. I actually co-designed a program back in the Mac OS 9 days, which fixed these issues, but that was in the 90's. Drives that sit on shelves, fail because the motor bearings cease and the motor can't spin. This blows up the main board on the drive and that's it, drive is toast. Outside of customers brining in drives with this very problem (we call it stiction), I've personally seen this happen on drives over 7 years of age. This is a much harder thing to deal with because without mechanics that spin the disks and without a main circuit board that works, you're kinda screwed. Even the top data recovery places, struggle to get data off drives like that, though most of the time, it's doable for a hefty fee. Today drives are made cheaper and cheaper, entirely by machines and the test cycles are generally only 24hrs. They map bad blocks and ship them. Also, since data density has increased, a single platter can now contain 2TB, which is quite amazing. This will lead to more serious tracking issues up the road and those higher density drives will most likely last a shorter MTBF. Everything is also switching over to SSD, which is a non-starter for the data recovery business. Unlike spinning disks, SSD's are small raid arrays with a bunch of memory which is raided together as raid 0. If one of those memory chips has a small hiccup, you permanently loose all data. SSD's have huge problems with rapid read and write processes like swap files which are used by the system as memory. SSD's can't erase the old files fast enough, as hard drives simply "forget" the location of data, writing over the same spot with new data, SSD's have to actually write zero's over old data before they can write new data. So sure, SSD's are fast, but when they get full, they get super slow and if you fill them to capacity, they will stop working entirely. Now everyone has different experiences and not every drive is considered the same. I have drives that are 15 years old that still work fine, made in a time period where platter density was around 10gb and testing/block mapping took place over weeks, not hours. I personally go through a set of raid drives every 3 - 5 years. Once one fails, the others fail soon after and luckily I have everything backed up, but how many drives does one need? I shoot HD 1080p Pro Res 220 personally, so I don't need a lot of storage. I have 5, 2TB 2.5" portable USB drives in my safe and that's my backup of raw material. Finals are spread across three other drives, one back in Boston that bring with me every year and store in my parents safe. Yet, any one of those drives could go bad at any minute and I'd be out the data. The only solution is to backup on multiple drives, store them in different sealed locations and run them on a regular basis to insure the platters don't stick. Then it's down to luck... which is a huge problem. Film? Well... I run an archive that's from the 70's and it's been stored on the top shelf of a garage, in the SO Cal sun since it was originally shot and all of it's good. Colors are perfect, no warping or sticking either. So roughly 40 years sitting in the baking So Cal sun and it's fine. Yes, it's mostly Kodak color reversal of one kind or another, which from my experience, seems to retain colors over a longer period of time then negative. Still at the rate technology is moving forward, we will not be able to use storage mediums from today 40 years from now. None of what we have today, computers, telephones, hard drives, SSD's, none of it will be workable 40 years from now. Yet, all of the film you have will be just as relevant in 40 years as it is today. If dooms day happens and almost the entire population is wiped off this earth. There will be some underground storage facility full of film and you can still watch it by holding it up to some light and sliding it through your fingers. After our civilization is long gone, it will survive as a permanent record, not some in-between technology like modern computers use.

Have you measured the socket with a multimeter? On some projectors, the exciter lamp is turned on when the volume knob is turned up. Bell and Howell is infamous for that issue.

Yep super nice doc, paid for by the big phone companies, so they can afford to give it away. They don't really need to make their money back like most filmmakers. It's nice to see a lot of natural light and single light sources. Two camera shooting, one lens close off axis, one lens wider on axis. If you have a stopwatch, you will notice the B-Roll material had 3 - 5 second cuts, though they dwelled on the interviews a bit longer then I would have. Looking at the type of B-roll material they had and the simplicity of the story, I bet they just didn't have much to cut to. I think it would be hard for a youth audience to get into this piece and watch the entire thing, but I personally think the pacing was good all the way around, mostly because the mood is so somber. It's a great example of a scripted, multi-cam documentary. "Scripted" because it was clearly researched very well and if you pay close attention to the interviews, they were done in a short period of time, as the sun/shadows never change. This is because the filmmakers walked in, knowing exactly what they needed to get. The b-roll choices also show a great understanding of the story. Everything was heavily pre-planned, from the police officers interviews at the scene of the accident, to acquiring the pictures of the accident itself. These show how well thought out the process was and again, a great example of scripted documentary.

You'll have to explain the reasoning behind the necessity for this conversion. Photoshop does it during import if you need it done, but it doesn't do anything outside of photoshop. It's not like converting the image will allow you to match it to a piece of video or something.