Tyler Purcell

You do know I'm not talking about the physical creative shooting crew right?

And when you add labor, it's more like 60% more. People get more money to use equipment that takes less talent to operate. It's bullshit. Laze around on a film set sleeping in the cab of a truck all day and make more money then someone who builds the damn truck! Then when someone like myself wants to pay someone a fair rate for their time, the union says I can't. I need to pay 20x more so those drivers can sleep all day long in their truck. Is that fair?

Man I love your ideas!

Really? 120k is not enough for working a few times a year? You make it seem like it's impossible to live off that much money, yet most of our population lives off less than half that and works 5 days a week every week of the year. Heck I've never made anywhere near that and I hustle my ass off. Perspective man

Go try to rent a truck anywhere without a union driver. The trucks are affordable. The workers are not. It makes production outrageously expensive. Those guys work every day of the week, probably 8 months out of the year. They really don't need to be making 45/hr and double time on most days. I have the union rate sheets for all the departments and as I said in my previous post, the standard shooting crew rates aren't anything crazy. My point is, there are many ancillary things that drive up cost and in the digital age we have even more: DIT, DI, 3D conversion and visual effects. Did you know, the most expensive part of post production is color on normal no vfx films. It's obscenely expensive and there isn't really any reason besides demand. Everyone needs their digital projects colored and a single LUT doesn't work. So yes, making our modern digital films is more costly then film and a traditional photochemical finish. For ulta low budget projects, I understand digital if you can do all the work at home. However for anything that's going to a theater, what do you gain from spending all that extra money? Some of the best looking cinema in film history is done photochemically.

Ohh got ya. I think you're right. If the mirrors are full on they would be fine.

Because David it costs 400,000 for a few grip trucks and honey wagons for a 20 day shoot. Four hundred thousand dollars!!! And if you try to circumvent the union, you'll get bullied. How about the $5000/wk DIT? Do you really think that's acceptable? How about the carpenters Union? They want 156,000 dollars to build us a small fake facade that would take them 7 days. Yes seven days of work and 8 guys = 156k!!! You're right David, the camera, sound, gaf and grip departments are all normal. You're also right that above the line is outrageous and is HALF the problem. But the other half are the unions. The kind of pay rates my Union post friends make is ridiculous. 250/hr for online. 450/hr for color. 3800/wk for assistant editing. Really? The guy who copies and pastes poop makes almost 10 grand a month?!! Does that make sense?

Far less discipline and now with the union costs being crazy, production of big movies is more then it's ever been. So people want to shoot less on set, which means movies are being made in post. You either have a lot of money or you make it in post.

Exactly. Not many of our modern films can hold a candle to those made 20 years ago. I re-watch the movies of my childhood and their so amazing. It was the beginning of a great era of filmmaking where people had figured out technology and all they were doing was telling interesting stories using the visual medium. Personally I can connect to good looking film that tells an ok story. But I can't connect to a bad looking film with a great story. I get bored because it's a visual medium and if it's not interesting visually, there is no point. All digital technology has done is make most movies look bad (like bad TV) and uninteresting to watch visually. Now some television looks amazing. Since its 1080i, you can't really tell what the camera original looks like and it's not being projected on a big screen. Plus nobody really cares about up-resing in later years. Ohh and don't get me wrong, when done right digital can look very cinematic. However, in my eyes, to do it right is far more challenging and more complex.

Just an FYI, my business is post production. I worked directly with Iron Mountain on their archiving solutions for 3 years during their initial development. LTO tape's don't last very long. So the data store houses charge thousands of dollars every year to duplicate those tapes. When you duplicate compressed media, you actually loose data. It only takes 10 duplications before there is irreparable data loss. This is why we use JPEG2000 (RAW) compression standards. It's the only format capable of loosing part it's structure and delivering an image. However, MOST movies can't afford this premium service for their camera originals. So their media resides on LTO tapes sitting in a vault or maybe even stacks and stacks of hard drives which will go bad. 20 years from now, there is a very good chance most of that media will be gone forever, only the final 2k export stored by the distributor will remain. So the problem is, how do you make a movie shot in 4k, finished in 2k up-res to 8k in the future when you don't have the 4k original media anymore. We've already lost some camera originals from the early digital films. Yes there is. Modern processed camera negative sitting in a household closet will last 100 years. Put it in a vault with climate control, make RGB (B&W separation prints) you extend that to 200 - 300 years. It costs around $500/year to store original camera negative at Iron Mountain's facility, which is pretty much bomb proof. You can also store internegatives at the library of congress and in your closet. Most of my film work is commercial. Anything to get rid of that horrible "digital" television-esque motion blur.

My previous statement was directed at our modern vision of cinema, which is less about telling stories and more about tricking the audience through artificial means. My problem isn't illusion, cinema in of itself is an illusion. My problem is taking the illusion too far and just assuming the audience doesn't care. Do you really think the general audience didn't notice that horrible helicopter green screen in Spectre? Or the flat image that wasn't very interesting to watch? Ohh and Nolan... no green screen. I've studied Interstellar more then any other modern film, frame by frame in a lot of cases with the BTS on in the background. Sure, he was forced to use modern compositing techniques, that's simply because nobody developed a decent optical printer. Sure, they made a few 100% computer generated shots and punctuations on other shots. They also did some wire removal when necessary. Yet, when you see the finished product, it's so seamless only a few computer generated elements irked me, which is pretty amazing. What bugs me Satsuki is that we've gone backwards. All of this new technology, hasn't made better movies, but it's made the movies closer then ever to television. As filmmakers, if we aren't striving to separate ourselves from television, cinema as we know it will eventually fade into history. Filmmakers who choose to let their "films" look like television (flat, lifted blacks, aliasing, poor FX, etc) clearly don't understand this concept and it's a real shame.

Oh that's interesting. However the moment you add a DLP chip, your dealing with digital pixels again. Even when the imager is all the way black, the edges of each pixel can be seen. I've done lots of testing with DLP and found even without signal, it still letting light through. Plus and this is the killer, you can't shoot light through a DLP chip. Now, you could make a small mirror shutter. That's possible for sure. The DLP chip can reflect on the mirrored shutter onto the screen. That's totally doable, it would just put the shutter in front of the film plane. Not the end of the world. I actually would like this design to be very simple. More like a rolling loop projector. Use a stepper motor with large steps to bring the film into position using a combo pull down claw and registration pin on a drum that rotates and pulls the film through. The stepper would be controlled by computer as well and use mechanical alignment and electronic alignment. When the film has stopped and has been centered properly, the shutter will open. Brain is working on this one. :)

I don't consider photochemical timing "trickery" and it's not required. In today's digital age, filmmakers know they can manipulate more, so they're ok with things not being right in camera. This is what lead to material being unwatchable out of camera. There are many modern films that have little to no post manipulation shot on film and projected on film. The moment you add digital anything, you have to manipulate the image to fit the color space of the digital world. This is why when you watch raw shots from a film scanner that aren't corrected they look like crap. I've watched the work print of many 35mm films untimed. They look fantastic, they don't need anything. But that same material looks like crap on video because it doesn't match the color space of video. So the argument that film MUST be timed isn't grounded in any truth. That's just how people shoot today. Adding film grain doesn't solve anything really. It's a patch for a problem that shouldn't exist. The real problem is that we're filmmakers. The word film is the mere definition of what we do. Our business wouldn't exist if it wasn't for celluloid. People are so eager to play around with alternative technologies to maybe save a few dollars and have a product that only exists through a computer screen with some ones and zeros! There is nothing physical about digital media. At least with video tape you had a physical asset. With modern digital you have nothing. You have to trust some tech wizards that your data will exist 20 years from now... Which by the way, it won't because most films won't pay to store that media. So all your camera originals? Gone. Wanna up res to whatever the next format is? Good luck, your master is whatever you could afford when you did post. I can sit here all day long and explain how utterly pathetic it is that filmmakers could care so little about their products they shoot digital and don't care about the future. We'll be watching separation prints of modern films 100 years from now or we could continue shooting film and keep the tradition alive for our future generations. It's all education and most "filmmakers" don't have that education. They trust other techies and when those guys fail, the filmmakers will he screwed. Oh and by the way... 45 deg on film and digital is totally different. Why? Because digital doesn't have a shutter. the film physically moving in the gate means in every second, there is actually less image on the screen. So as a consequence when you scan film to digital it's removing those moments of black between each frame. Thus, the film camera and digital camera don't really have any similarity in how they work. So digital at 45 deg looks totally different then film at whatever your camera calls 45 deg.

Anything can be done in post. Good filmmakers don't resort to trickery in order to fool people. That's why films like interstellar are so great. Nolan did almost everything in camera and didn't resort to digital manipulation in order to sell his movie. How would you like to go to a theatre and see 3d holograms of actors on stage? The only reason that doesn't exist yet is because nobody would go! Deakins is such a great cinematographer, he can make magic out of a pixel2000. Mind you, it still looks digital. Actually they are technically entirely different. If you don't understand why, you should research how film cameras work. Then all movies suck. Or maybe when I pay $16 to watch a movie, I expect it not to look like television.

how about this... Lcd shutter? When you turn the gate, it automatically figures out what format your using. Then all you do is punch in the perf format and it protects it. Idk about it being a scanner. But digital and film projector built into one unit... That's not a bad idea. Most theaters could care less about it being a scanner. I'd aim for 35 only because that's the best projection format due to its size and quality to cost ratio. Just module the living heck out of it so owners could build the machine they need.

Ohh now that's a cool idea! I'll just name it "the looper" lol :)

Heat is the biggest issue. If you really think about it a 35mm projector isn't that big until you add that lamp housing. So developing a 2 perf projector system that uses all of your awesome technology concepts would be perfect in my eyes. I envision 3 boxes, one for your supply and take up system. One for the desktop projector and one for the reels. It would be totally stand alone just like today's digital cinema projectors. In fact, I'd put it on a table just like what they do. Have a fly-in lcd display that comes in during previews and once the film starts, it mechancially flies away and the film starts... Or it stays there just deactivated. All of this stuff is simple and if you us electronics to make it work vs gears and single motor design, you can build something that not only works better then current projectors but is simpler to manufacture and smaller. I need to write some of this down! Lol :)

I like your idea Carl, it's cool stuff. Film stock retail pricing is: .56/ft 35mm .36/ft 16mm 400 ft of 35 is $224 @ 2 perf almost 9 min 400 ft of 16 is $144 runs 11 min Processing is the same .21/ft Telecine is the same The only difference is scanning per foot cost, which is slightly higher then 16mm. When you shoot 4 perf 16mm horizontal you're using 4x the amount of stock, but are creating almost the same image size as 2 perf 35mm. So if you do the math, a 400ft roll of 16mm at 4 perf, would run 3 minutes instead of 11. To get the same time as a 400ft of 2 perf 35mm, you'd have to shoot close to 4 rolls of film, equivalent to 1600ft. In my eyes 4 perf 16 is a lot more money then 2 perf 35. It's actually closer to 3 perf 35 cost. Which is why it doesn't make any sense. Plus, dealing with the single registration system is substandard to 35s double system. No matter what you do, 35 will be better. In my eyes, the cost to develop such camera and the limited amount of use, doesn't make sense. On the flip side, a new light weight 35mm camera that accepts canon and Nikon glass and shoots 3 perf and 2 perf, that would be killer. It would be hard to make due to flange distance issues, but I think it's doable. But honestly, that's what the professionals need right now. If that kind of camera were available, I think there would be sales. Arri has pretty much stopped supporting film cameras. So used newer arri cameras are going to be worthless not to far from now when the electronics fail and you can't make them work. This is why a newer camera would be nice to have. At the same time, I'd develop a 2 perf projection system with digital registration system using Carl's design. Don't quite know how it would work, but it's totally doable. Small light weight 35mm projectors that can be easily installed using powerful LED lamps as a light source with manual kelvin control. Because an entire movie can be held on around 4000ft of film in 2 perf, no need for platters. You can ship a reel already built for way less cost and film stock costs would be substantially less. This is what will save film... Not some toys that artists play with for fun. We need professional solutions that will keep film in the theaters alive.

Ohh I don't take it personally. I just expect a lot more from such a great cinematographer. I'm sure the camera negative looks wonderful, it's depressing in post production they never wanted that to shine through. It's also depressing that the filmmakers said the digital and film mix was unnoticeable, yet in my eyes it stuck out like a sore thumb. Now I'm watching the trailer for 'Sunset Sun' with exteriors shot on 65mm and interiors shot on the Alexa. Again, the filmmakers are saying the two look identical, yet the digital material in the trailer sticks out pretty bad AND worst off it looks like crap compared to the 65mm material. It's flat, lacks any depth, is almost de-saturated and has pretty poor motion blur characteristics. Ohh and I know it's the cinematographer creating that motion blur look. I shoot at 45 degree shutter angle on most of my digital stuff to avoid that look because I simply despise it. Yet, if you shoot with that high of a shutter speed, the low-light potential of the camera is reduced. Since most filmmakers shoot digital in order to underlight, they simply don't mind that horrible motion blur of lower shutter speeds, thinking the audience won't notice it. To me, this is a big no-no. The audience notices everything and just because they can't turn those thoughts into words, doesn't mean they won't react negatively. I'm just frustrated with modern cinema. I rarely go to the cinema for this exact reason. I simply can't watch a movie without being the cinematographer and trying to understand why they did XYZ when it looks bad. Digital in my eyes looks bad MOST of the time, with a few exceptions like "Skyfall" which proved to me that the Alexa CAN look very good. Just watching "Bridge of Spies" a few weeks ago was wonderful, I could just relax and watch the movie for what it was because there was nothing in the film that pulled me away from the story like so many other movies including Spectre.

It's just depressing that's all. :(

Yea, it's for sure an acquired taste. I've seen it used a lot in classic cinema, especially european and Japanese. For one or two quick shots, it's cool, but for the amount of it seen in the trailer of Revenant, it gets me kind of scared.

I spotted the Alexa 65 stuff right away, it stuck out like a sore thumb on the 4k cinema projector. The highlights look like NTSC video and there is a lot more motion blur. I didn't notice those things as much on Skyfall, probably due to camera settings. The Revenant trailer looks great on the big screen. Though I will admit, I'm not in love with the super wide distorted hand-held shots. I'm anxious to see the film.

I mean 3 perf 16mm would be cool, but the moment you put the camera gate horizontal, you make the camera a lot bigger. Plus, the benefits of 35mm (double pull down/double registration pins) help it become a better format. 2 perf 35mm is still a better format in my eyes. The cost difference is also minimal between 3 perf 16 and 2 perf 35. I did all the math and even standard super 16 vs 2 perf 35 isn't that much, few grand in stock and processing/transfer. Camera rental is the biggest difference since 2 perf cameras are so rare and Super 16 so available. If you owned your own 2 perf 35mm and super 16mm camera, the cost differences between 16 and 35 would be minimal, even if you rented lenses. Since any NEW 16mm camera would be expensive, that kinda negates the whole "lower cost" element in of itself. The nice thing about 16 is that low camera, lens and stock cost. You can own all the equipment necessary to make a feature for less then a decent digital cinema camera.

Man, I just researched that oscillating mirror design, what a mess that is! I can't imagine that assembly holding up like the spinning mirror shutter. It doesn't save much space either, so I'm at a loss why they choose that mechanic. Thanks for the info Perry! I didn't know they came with C mount. Even the EBM doesn't come with c mount, it's an adaptor. For longer shots it's nice to have a shoulder mount, that's for sure. I got good at shooting with the bolex over the years though, don't mind it.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens next. It's almost "Die Another Day" all over again, where they'll spend another 2 years finding a new Bond actor and trying to re-boot the franchise in 4 years. The sad part is, most of what is wrong with Spectre is the script, I could live with the "meh" cinematography if the script had any redeeming value, but it didn't. I also don't think Hoyte is the right guy for Bond anyway. He's more of a hand-held shaky cam guy and Bond is more of a dolly, crane, smooth shot kinda franchise. The post production coloring was MOST of the problem with the look, it was certainly not a camera problem. They could go back and re-color it to make it look good, which I bet they will for the video release. I just loved Craig's worthless dialog and facial expressions. All I saw was "I'm tired of this franchise so I'm gonna **(obscenity removed)** it up" which is too bad cuz I like him, but I do believe he kinda screwed the pooch.