Tyler Purcell

Interesting stuff, thanks for the write-up David! :)

Let me try to answer with quick sentences... I got 20 minutes. GO! I was always interested in photography as a child and based my entire post high school education on cinematography. Here are my top 3. - Understands how important prep is with the director, to insure on-set things go smoothly. - Good listener, capable of accepting critique and working with the crew to solve problems without an ego. - Always looking for that "great shot" and not scared to bring it up to the director. For personal use, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, no doubt the best sub $1000 camera made. For commercial use, the Arri Alexa. Every time I work with the camera, I'm overly happy with the results. It's the only professional cinema camera I've worked with that doesn't piss me off on set and/or gives me headaches in post. For S16mm, Aaton LTR/XTR for sure. Lightest, quietest super 16 camera made, absolutely my favorite. For S35mm, I'm at a cross roads between the Arri 235 and Aaton Penelope. Both are simply outstanding light-weight cameras, both have their advantages and disadvantages. The 235 is less expensive to own and easier to find used/rental, but it's loud. The Penelope is harder to find, much more expensive to own, but deathly silent. Frankly, if I had the money, I'd own both. Spherical primes it's all about the classic Arri/Zeiss MKII superspeed primes. They have a very nice soft look AND I love the warmth of the coatings. Plus, they're radially available for purchase without breaking the bank. I don't really have a favorite zoom, they all have issues and it's about figuring out what works for your particular production. I love my 12 - 120 MKI Zeiss zoom, but it's really a limited market product today. There is no difference from my understanding. David can probably explain why the industry has two names for the same job. I hate to sound modernist, but Roger Deakins and Darius Khondji were the two guys I idolized as a teenager. Maybe because arguably some of their best work came out whilst I was in school, so it had the most impact on me. If you want to be a "filmmaker" then you need to learn all the jobs. If you want to be a "cinematographer" you need to focus on shooting. They are two completely different professions. If you really want to be a professional cinematographer, you first need to understand that it's a business. So taking some classes on running your own business, is a wise idea. Remembering always that cinematographers don't have full-time jobs and unless your in the union, you won't have any benefits. So understanding the financial/business aspects is critical. I think having a backup skill is also critical. When I've been out of work in the creative field, I've fallen back on my technical/engineering skills to keep money flowing. I suggest NOT doing other creative positions IF your goal is to be a professional cinematographer. Focus is everything, make a game plan for the next 5 years and stick to it. This includes potentially, finding a mentor to help groom you. Maybe buying a small/inexpensive camera package so you can go out and experiment with different things. Also pushing yourself to achieve goals in a certain amount of time, will help you grow because in reality, a good successful cinematographer needs to hustle on and off set. Finally and I can't stress this enough, you need to go where the work is. People may disagree with me on this point, but I can attest from experience how valuable it is to be in the heart of the action. Some may say it's better to be a big fish in a small pond and that's correct. But you can't become a big fish unless you have a lot of experience. To gain that experience, you need to work your way up through the typical channels. You need to work for peanuts, make mistakes and already have 3 more gigs booked. This requires you to be in one of the big cities for media; Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, etc. There are other places that have work as well, but those four are the "big" four in the US currently. You land in one of those places, you can get onto a show as a P.A. almost right away. Start making connections as a P.A., pay your bills with that money and in between P.A. gigs, shoot projects for all the "director" friends you'll make in the P.A. pit. If you have a good camera, you will have plenty of opportunity to work, all be it, probably for free. Those connections will lead you to pay jobs and eventually more consistent work. There are other routes like working in a rental house, but no matter what, who you know, gets you the work. I could go on all day, but my 20 minutes are over!

Yet another dis, you're on a roll. I'll say this much, real masters are the most humble and open people. They understand the validity of other people's ideas and instead of mocking, they embrace and encourage. Varied experiences outside a singular realm of expertise, opens your mind and pushes your abilities to much greater levels. We live in a new and exciting world, where jacks of all trades are talking over from the more professional, single skilled, career-minded individuals. I'm very much happy to be on that boat and constantly challenging myself to new and interesting positions on varying shows.

If you only look at film with the idea of getting a film look, then you're really missing the power of the format. To me archiving/long term preservation and film's ability to be resolution agnostic, are more critical, even if highly "technical" aspects that people forget about. The one thing digital can't do is breathe. Even fancy computer algorithms, muck up the most critical element of film; no two frames are the same. Film breaths, it has a life to it even if there is nothing happening on camera. Film stock is inherently imperfect, the cameras and projection systems also add a bit of imperfection. Even a dirt less, grainless piece 15/70 IMAX, still breathes life into solid images. The best example of this is one of my favorite IMAX films "Rocky Mountain Express". It's one of the last movies shot entirely in 15/70 and finished photochemically. They have non-moving shots of steam engines at rest, not moving at all, yet there is so much life in them thanks to the perfectly registered, yet still moving image. It doesn't matter how many tricks you add in post production, digital is incapable of delivering the same image as film. People have tried, they've experimented and honestly, many are moving back to film production. This year alone, we have seen dozens of movies originated on film, both S16 and 35. Next year alone, we have TWO huge movies being shot and distributed on 70mm. Big hollywood movies, big stars, on the big screen, using a 100+ year old technology to capture their images. Filmmakers have learned their lesson with digital; it's amazing low-light capability, simpler workflow and high resolution without the cost of large format negative. Yet, it still doesn't matter unless our youth are shooting on film, unless THEY see the necessity. This is why I started my educational foundation and why I teach an all-analog filmmaking class that ALL seniors in the filmmaking program MUST take. The lessons they learn with film will hopefully open a doorway to continue shooting in the future as they become professionals. To me, equipment isn't as important because it exists! There are literally thousands of sync sound 16mm cameras around and tens of thousands MOS cameras. Cheap cameras are not a problem, but education is, understanding film and not being intimidated by it, is absolutely the key.

Was it just a Gilbert Taylor look or was there a technical reason for using the filters?

It's true the K3 is old, but so is film. I mean, all you need is a movement and lens mount. ;)

Well, lets face it, you can make anything you want if you've got funding. Most people have to go out and seek funding, which means the final product must recoup at least the initial amount. A cinephile art fanatic, can find meaning in anything. If someone dumped a bucket of paint onto a canvas, that's considered 'art' with meaning. When someone tries to tell a cohesive story, that a general audience will understand, that's NOT considered 'art' because it's too "normal". It's far easier to dump a bucket of paint on a canvas, then it is to learn how to paint, find a great subject and paint a masterpiece that everyone will enjoy. Look at the great works of some of the best painters in the world, they are flat-out amazing pieces that a general audience will recognize and most can appreciate. I'm far more in awe of filmmakers who tell a cohesive story for the masses. It's FAR more difficult to get someone who has zero interest in a particular subject, to enjoy a product they didn't expect to enjoy. In my book, in my opinion, tell a compelling entertaining story first. I was asked for advice on an internet forum, which is a place for people to post their opinions. My opinion is based on 25 years experience, which means it probably has some level of accuracy. Unfortunately, there is a universal formula to making pretty much everything. If you follow the formula, you will get the product most people expect. If you bake a cake and leave out the rising agent, you don't get fluffy cake, you get flat brownies. Both are plenty enjoyable, but its no different with filmmaking. If you skirt around the universal definition of what you're trying to make, then people who go expecting cake, may get brownies. What if you go to make a cake and don't cook it enough, you get some sort of chocolate soup of nastiness. That's where the "artist" may go, lets take some crackers and make this a dip. YEY, that's very creative, but who is going to go through all that fuss, when all they want is cake in the first place? An art fanatic may, but regular people won't. They'll just throw it away and start over again, this time following the instructions perfectly to insure they get what they want. And there lies the issue... universally we expect cake when we go to make cake. Same goes for the cinema, we as the audience, expect to things and when they don't happen, we are disappointed. This leads to bad reviews, this leads to the market not "accepting" of your product and YOU not able to recoup your bottom dollar. Again, you can make anything you want... cake can be brownies in your book, but there is absolutely a universal standard for producing visual content that is acceptable to the masses, whether people want to admit it or not. Potential means nothing if nobody is going to see your finished product.

Robin, I had a long-winded response to your unhelpful post, but I deleted it. I'm a storyteller and filmmaker Robin, and that means I need to spread my abilities across many professions from writing, producing and directing, to camera/cinematography, editing, sound design and coloring. As intimate as you are with your one position as camera operator, I am with each of those. This is why I'm not shooting for Discovery, because I have no interest. I'm turning out finished product practically non-stop, for a variety of different entities on wide-ranging topics, in every comprehensible genre/style imaginable. My advice is based on 25 years of being a filmmaker and learning what works and what doesn't.

Ohh commercial product of course. You can go out and make a movie nobody will ever see, that's fine and dandy. In my opinion, maybe right or wrong, if nobody sees your work, then what's the point of making it? Unfortunately to be a professional -someone who is paid for their talent- you need to follow some pretty "normal" guidelines. Of course, when I do my own personal projects, I throw all of that out the window. I don't like discussing my own artistic method because it's not necessarily what people want to see, nor will it make you money. Risk taking doesn't put food on the table.

The problem is that we already have inexpensive super 16 reflex cameras... The K3 and Bolex models are great examples. You can get a Super 16 K3 off ebay from Russia for $250 bux shipped. I've been in the camera quite a bit, converting it to motor drive wouldn't be too difficult. There is plenty of space inside the spring cavity to do that work. Making it quieter would be more of a challenge, but it's much louder then my EBM bolex. How do you beat a $250 Russian Super 16 camera? You really can't, it's a heck of a deal. The Ikonoskop is a joke and it was made at a time when Super 16 cameras were still very expensive. Today it's not even recognized, I keep forgetting it even exists. Again... how do you beat a $250 Russian Super 16 camera? If you were to make an all-new camera, even if it was a range finder, it would cost 10x that of the K3. It would probably cost more then a NEW Bolex S16 package straight from the factory! These manufacturers have already amortized the cost to develop cameras. Any new camera would be very expensive as to pay for the development cost. Here is the other major problem. These older cameras have been around for decades, some of them 50 years or more. There are many places for parts and support for most of them. If you started a new company with a new camera, why would I want your product when 5 years later there is no more support and it's all one-off, so where do I get parts? This is a HUGE problem and it's a non-starter in a lot of ways. When those people who bought Logmar's, need to buy new electronics 20 years from now, they'll be poop out of luck. Where, an all-mechanical camera like the K3 will be running through the next century no problem at all. So again... how do you beat a $250 Russian super 16 camera? Anyone wanting to build a new camera, should really buy a S16 K3 off ebay and study the crap out of that simple design. It's a miracle the damn thing runs, but it's the simplest little wind up toy you'll see. Puts the overly complex Bolex to shame.

Back when I started doing this in 1992, we use to run 3 cameras for interviews. One camera on the interviewee, one camera on the talent and one camera as a two shot. This way, we could cut together a interview, without b-roll. Over the years, the style changed and today, we rarely show the interviewee on camera. We want that quick cut to the interviewee, to be "creative", not static. So we shoot a more static shot as "backup" and shoot the 2nd camera as a more creative angle. Todays audiences have the attention span of around 3 seconds. If you're on the same shot for more then 3 seconds, you are going to loose them. Since most of my product winds up on the internet, it's critically important to be throwing crap at the audience non-stop. This is just how we work today in the modern world. Just watch anything on History, TLC or Discovery. Quick cuts, multi-camera interviews, move the show along. You misinterpreted what I said above. My point is we no longer show the interviewee much at all. Almost the entirety of the show is b-roll, with quick cuts to the interviewee, mostly from the "creative" angle, rather then the heads on angle. First off, are you a director? Second, documentaries are scripted today. We spend years researching, interviewing people on the phone or skype. We gather the data and build a breakdown of what we want to go where in the story, before making one interview on camera. When we finally sit down with the interviewee's, we know what we need them to say for us. So we will coax them with cleverly written questions, designed to give us the right response, based on the previous conversations we've had. Yes, we'll always get MORE then we need, we always get unexpected answers. It's rare we do interviews off the cuff, especially if they are new to the story and we don't have much data on them. However, on this last doc, we got a bunch of random interviews, but they will be one-liners, quick cutaways. This is how modern documentaries work and it's how you can make doc's more cinematic and marketable to a greater audience. Right now the documentary industry is in big trouble financially. People like myself spend years producing a product that doesn't make any money. So you need to separate yourself from the typical talking heads doc and into a different more creative world, in order to get recognition. After we finished the formal interview, we went back and re-asked/prompted them to give us sound bites with the crane. We shot down over the interviewee's bald head because it was important to the story. We shot beautiful close-up's of his shoulder which was covered in tattoos. We had him give us critical responses with beautiful push-in's without zooming. The stuff looks amazing and we even used an eye direct for almost the entire film, which made it even more intense. It's a very advanced way of cinematic documentary filmmaking. It doesn't feel like a doc, it feels like a narrative. Yep it sure can, for long push-in's and/or brief cut-in moments. We absolutely shoot the more static shots as well, but we don't use them much. In my eyes, if you use the same shot over and over again, you're just showing how weak your budget is. The simplest way to make your modest budget show look more expensive, is to have more angles, to have more cut away's, to spice up the look and have faster pacing. I think you're just confused, and it's ok to be confused. I'm not going to respond to your accusations. You're very welcome to post your ideas, but you have zero right to call my posts a disservice.

So I guess tungsten lighting is too Passé as well? So what, old traditional ways of doing things are COMPLETELY WRONG? I own two cameras and I generally use two cameras, unless it's my own stuff where I don't care as much. Most of the time, an interviewee's on-screen time is a quick cut-in, rather then a prolonged shot. So those creative zooms/moves on either the A or B camera, are used as a point to cut back to the interviewee for a brief moment, in between other coverage. Talking heads with static shots are uninteresting and boring to any audience. Well, if you're a horrible editor and bad filmmaker, incapable of cutting to anything else but the interview together, then yes it would be a bad cut. Luckily for me, the people I work with, understand the necessity for excellent cinematographers who understand documentary. We prep for hours before each interview, going over the questions, the theoretical responses and what the coverage should be. Good directors know exactly what the interviewee is going to say, so they know how to direct their camera operators to achieve the appropriate shot based on the responses. I've lugged every piece of equipment imaginable to achieve really killer cinematic interviews. I've had upwards of 3 Dragon or Alexa's with zoom lenses and two moving cameras for ONE interview! We've used techno cranes to get up and close to an interviewee's face, without zooming/changing the field of view. There are so many awesome/cool tricks you can do to make your documentary look amazing. The plain static shot is boring and really shows lack of creativity in the filmmaker.

It's true that buzz in the industry can help drive things, but a small company making limited production film products in a digital world, may not be able to afford the marketing necessary to be successful. I use the logmar example, they made a "modern" camera and nobody knows it even existed, outside of a few people on forums. The cost to market a new product would be astronomical and almost silly in a way. Super 8 is way easier to market because its retro and cool, people shoot one roll of film at a time and it's pretty inexpensive for that one roll. There are no benefits to super 8 over digital, it's just cool and Kodaks $499 camera and marketing plan has cost them quite a bit. Super 16 is a different product, more expensive and more commercial then super 8. The retro feel doesn't really exist with sync sound super 16 cameras. Then you add the price of such a camera, and the market is way smaller. Again, if logmar couldn't sell 50 super 8 cameras, I doubt a $10,000+ new super 16 camera will sell any more. Also there isn't a market for low end s16 cameras as the Russian K3 segment dominates.

Yep looks like s16.

My comments fit within the framework of something affordable for general consumer consumption. The high-end Chinese market is rarely tapped outside of China because the prices increase dramatically. Nobody discussing China manufacturing would add those speciality markets to the discussion of mass production. This is why they were ignored in my comments. We are not talking about government funded technology projects, with huge multi-billion dollar contracts. Can you imagine going to one of those firms and asking them to build a film camera? They'd laugh and hang up the phone. China's "manufacturing strengths" -the reason you would use them in the first place- is their low-cost labor force, which leads to high yield, low cost production and free trade agreements. When you pay your employees $5,000 a year (on average), there are very few countries who can compete. When the required labor force needs to be highly skilled, things change dramatically. Again, they have zero interest in low yield, highly technical manufacturing. I know this because I've asked dozens of manufacturers personally over the years.

No, I absolutely don't. I also think it's impossible to make a camera anywhere near the price of USED cameras, even the higher-priced 416. A great example of that is the Logmar Super 8 camera, 50 were made and not all 50 were sold. If only 48 people in the entire world could afford a $5,000 Super 8 camera... then even less would pay for a $20,000 super 16 camera because that's about how much it would cost to make a home brew. I do think it would be awesome to have new, all-mechanical Super 16 camera, made with modern technology. But it wouldn't create better images then a 50 year old camera. That's the real trick with film cameras. The technology was perfected long before any of us were born and it's only been refined since. Unlike digital technology which in my opinion is far away from perfected in the same way.

It's the truth. I worked in manufacturing and design for mechanical and electronic devices for years. I was an engineer and dealt with Chinese manufacturers on a daily basis. This is how I made a living and I was very good at it, won many awards including best in show at NAB. So yes my broad generalization is how me and my staff talked internally about China's capacity. We tried outsourcing many products to China, including software programming because we couldn't afford to do it in-house. The results were catastrophic on every level and every time I've had to deal with Chinese vendors with one-off custom products, they have failed to achieve any standard I'd consider acceptable. Our product used lasers, mirrors, photosensors, motors, belts, plastic parts and lots of PCB/IC's. The cost savings of making it in China vs the US was negligible for the low quantities. Vendors were simply uninterested in making 10 or 20 items, they were only interested in high volume. Because what we made was so complicated, we couldn't even get a sample without paying full boat for development. We even helped write the machine code for them because they couldn't figure it out. My dad was also in the manufacturing business for decades, visited China on multiple occasions to help negotiate new agreements. His company designed power supplies for high-end integrated systems for HP and Compaq. They could have moved the entire assembly line to China and saved quite a bit of money, but they choose not to. The results he was seeing from Chinese test samples was poor compared to the US made power supplies using Chinese PCB and integrated circuits. He found, even if you specified a certain component, they would find a way to cheat. Either re-labeling physical components, hiding the fact they were a different model number and/or simply using off the counter PCB's and claiming they couldn't make what was required for the price. They cut corners everywhere and refused to burn-in products for more then a few minutes. I've also been in other manufacturing businesses over the years, including the paintball industry where the cost to manufacture in China was more expensive then the states thanks to the low quality. We tried to get someone on board, but nobody was interested with the low quantity order. Those are my personal experiences with precision product manufacturing in China over the last two decades and I'm not in any way claiming to be an expert. Someone else mentioned making a camera in China a few pages ago and I simply said it was impossible and that's based on MY experience. I'm certain the Kodak Super 8 camera will be made in China, but it's nowhere near as complex and I'm sure it will be 90% plastic and electronic, again what China is "good" at. It's not a "racist" comment, the US is not good at mass production of electronics like China is. You wouldn't hire a US firm to make the iPhone 8 for instance, we simply don't do things like that. We're good at making precision components though, made with good clean (non diluted) stock.

Right, but my point is... a bicycle is a bicycle. All of the dozens of Chinese bicycle makers, make bikes for a wide-range of distributors. This offset's the cost of making a more specialized product in limited numbers. Bicycles to this day are still made by metal specialty companies. They buy tubing in different dimensions, cut them to fit their design and weld them together. They have milling machines to make parts like cranks and sprockets. They have anodizing baths to give the parts color and even an assembly line to put it all together. Sure, carbon fiber layup is another thing, but you can do carbon fiber layup at home, it's not complicated at all because the molds are generally made of wood. It's more labor intensive, but that's why they charge more money for them. Making "custom" carbon fiber bikes is actually pretty easy in the long run. All they do is cut the molds based on the riders data, fold the carbon fiber around them, bake and assemble. So what Chinese manufacturer makes high precision metal components, precision glass components, plastic components and precision electronics/motors under one roof? Nobody does. This is the big problem. You can't pay a Chinese company to make you one single part of a product, it doesn't work. I've tried, it doesn't work. They need to make the ENTIRE product in-house and as I just stated, nobody in China does all of those things in-house. All of the DSLR cameras and stuff, they have multiple factories who specialize in each component. There is zero chance they'd put our one-off product on their assembly line, do all the beta testing and insure it works before delivery. Maybe they'd take our money, spend a year trying to make something that works and deliver complete junk, OR something VERY expensive. Might as well hand make it here in the states.

Yes, it's absolutely true and again, if you re-read my post, you will see it states "small batches". Also, there isn't a single part on a bicycle that comes near the precision of a spinning mirror shutter, pull down assembly, gate/pressure plate, timing/drive system and viewfinder. Bicycle parts are generally not made in small batches. Plus, that same manufacturer making the bicycle part for one distributor, is making a nearly identical part for a different distributor. So they use and re-use the same drawings, castings and/or milling machines to make millions of parts which are very similar. With a film camera, everything would be new to whoever makes it. Chinese manufacturing is really only interested in long-term mass production on a large scale.

Cool! tho I will say, had they used an ebm it would have been a lot easier! wind up cameras don't work so well in the air! lol

What? Hmm, IDK about that. I thought the high end cameras were made in Japan. That's why the consumer pays a premium. Right, but the lens doesn't have external focus and it has a fixed aperture. It also has an imager smaller then a pen cap. So where it's pretty cool and it does work well for some situations, it's still a toy in the grand scheme of things. If your idea is to use plastic for the viewfinder, I think you'd find it to have too many flaws and aberrations when made at the size necessary for a super 16 ground glass. Heck, the whole viewfinder system currently used on film cameras is pretty complex and if one component isn't absolutely flawless, if the surface of the glass isn't at a high polish, there are noticeable issues with the viewing. As the operator, you won't know if the problem is the lens or the viewfinder. This is WHY we use high end optics in the viewfinder and why it's so critical. Unlike digital cameras, the only real way to tell if things are right before shooting is seeing the optical path on a film camera.

Re-read the earlier parts of the thread, where I mentioned straight 16 gates with larger S16 apertures. That's where the discussion came from. My point is that, why would you want a camera that has one side S16, but the other side straight 16? It seems like Arri was just being lazy.

Ohh I wholeheartedly agree some of the DJI stuff is pretty cool. I've used the Chinese follow focus kits and they were garbage compared to the preston. Yes, they were easier to setup, the preston is designed for high-end cameras with external power etc. Still, the accuracy and speed of the Chinese units wasn't nearly up to par of that of the Preston. Also, as I said earlier, electronics are China's specialty. They are not good at high precision mechanical things because they simply don't have the tooling. If they did, all of the Japanese car companies would use them to make engines because it's SO much cheaper then doing it in Japan. China is good at making vacuum formed plastic molds in high volume. They are good at making cast parts in high volume. They are good at making integrated circuits and PCB's. But when it comes time for precision, throw that out the door. Even some Japanese manufacturers have a tough time producing the high tolerance levels of European manufacturers. Now, the big problem comes not from the horrible diluted Chinese metallurgy, but it also comes from precision optics and glasswork. You would need to hire a very high-end lens manufacturing company to make the optical viewfinder path. That would be done in Japan at great cost since there wouldn't be many of these cameras made. Furthermore... I bet if you handed a Chinese manufacturer a 416, they'd hand it back to you and say no way. They have very little interest in making small batches of precision stuff. They only want to make hundreds of thousands of components because thats their strong point. When something goes bad, they simply do a whole-unit swap. That's why you don't see high-end stuff coming from China. They have to be able to produce enough units so the defect rate isn't a problem. It's absolutely possible to make an all-new camera, they're not THAT complicated. However, it would cost a lot of money. The $5000 USD Logmar camera is a perfect example. They knew putting in an optical viewfinder would raise the price too much, so they didn't bother. They only did what they could do in-house with limited outside help, which is why the retail price is so "low" considering it's a one-off design like any new 16 camera would be.

The big question is camera rental. There weren't very many 2 perf movements made, so buying/owning a 2 perf camera is difficult. Renting can also be a challenge, as most rental houses have dumped their 35mm cameras. The best bet for 2 perf is Panavision, but they'd rent you a Gold II package, which is 3x the size of a IIC, though silent. Where 3 perf and 4 perf cameras are everywhere. As David says, 1.3x anamorphic and 3 perf is the best of both worlds. Save on film stock, but also use the full frame to get 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Of course, those Hawks rent for around $5000 a week. YIKES! Ohh and yes, S35 gates are available for the IIC, though I'm not sure if there are any other modifications required to make them work.

Yea, I was gonna say those LED panels are RIGHT THERE! :) Nice write up David. Great insight to what you did as well.