Tyler Purcell

Of course the review is shot with an A7S, yuck… but maybe has some more info: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/video/hands-review/hands-review-rokinon-xeen-true-cinema-lenses-full-frame-production I agree with Adrian, I wouldn't buy them because what's the point? You can buy used Arri primes for very close to that price and have something really good and valuable. Glass is an investment and if you buy something nobody else wants, then what's the point?

http://kenrockwell.com/tech/mtf.htm

David hit all the key points. I do think the whole point was to use those older lenses and get that more shallow depth of field look. That's one of the biggest problems with smaller imagers, the smaller they are, the harder it is to get shallow depth of field. You've gotta resort to opening the lens all the way up and using longer focal lengths. Remember, Arri has no intentions on selling the 65, it's for rental only. It's really a specialized product so they can ditch the 765 film cameras and have an alternative, at least that's what I've been told. It's unfortunate our distribution methods are stuck with a max resolution of 4k. I'm not even aware that finishing software like DaVinci can accept anything over 4k. So… yea, 6k shooting and finishing? Still a long way away.

Maybe that's why I never figured it out, didn't have the gizmo. Huh… very cool! Learn something new every day! :)

I thought it was only a limited adjustment, designed to help with super bright situations where you wanted less light in the camera. Not a fully adjustable shutter like current mirrored shutter cameras.

Really? So learning focal length, depth of field, aperture, shutter angle, ASA, magazine loading and threading, is somehow different between the formats? Arriflex 2C vs Arri M or BL? Sorry didn't mean to be cheeky, but I've shot a lot with 16 and plenty with 35, never minding which one I shot. Professional 16mm cameras like the SRIII and 416 are just like 35mm cameras, only A LOT smaller and lighter. The biggest difference between 16mm and 35mm is when you walk into Panavision. They use the Mitchell mechanics and that requires a 10 minute conversation to adapt your knowledge into that world. Otherwise, all the critical things about shooting motion picture film, are pretty much the same.

Yea, the monopod and viewfinder adaptor are really the only two tricks that work. So if you struggle to make them work, there really isn't anything else that's anywhere near that small for traveling. Even my gigantic should rig, is hard to backup. Side to side isn't bad, forward isn't bad, but backing up is always a problem. This is why everyone uses spotters when backing up, someone who can grab hold of your belt on your pants and help guide you through the backup process. When I've shot with stedicam's before, I usually turn the whole rig around and walk forward, when doing backup shots. I find they look MUCH more stable, even if you don't have a clean look at the monitor. Your 6D should blow the doors off any mobile phone camera. I've found the DSLR's like to do things for you, so perhaps it's auto adjusting the ASA/ISO on you, which his why it looks soft. The Canon DSLR's really like certain ASA/ISO's, so I'd do a google search and see which one's it likes. Also, that focus issue those lenses have is pervasive, it can really make things look soft. I've never been able to find a solution around it besides buying all new manual glass. So I stopped using DSLR's and changed to... If you want more quality in a much smaller, lighter package which is designed specifically for cinema grade images, you should checkout the Blackmagic Pocket camera. Shoots 12 bit raw and 10 bit 4:2:2 pro res.

I use a monopod that hooks right to the side of my little backpack. Plus, I use a magnetic viewfinder adaptor which magnifies the LCD display and allows you to press the camera against your face. These two things in conjunction with one another, create unbelievably stable shots, only out done by a tripod. Moving with the camera, I push it against my face and take my right arm and hold the top of the monopod. This removes any stabilization problems between your body and the camera. Then all you've gotta be is super ninja and figure out how to make your body walk smoothly, which can take some time. I use to operate stedicam's, so I learned how to walk like a cat. When I'm not traveling, I have a shoulder mount kit, which solves all the problems for not much money. The video side of the still cameras is SUBSTANTIALLY lower quality then the still side. So if you're looking for samples of lens quality, it's far better to look at still images, rather then video's on youtube. The camera only shoots 8 bit 4:2:0 MPEG @ 50Mbps, which is pretty much exactly what is presented on youtube, only @ 5Mbps instead. However the still's can be 14 bit RAW, which is isn't even comparable to the video side. Still glass is not designed for video work. The moment you touch the manual focus ring, you will find it will always pop out of focus, even if you didn't make any marketable changes. This is because the ring doesn't turn much at all. There isn't very much fine-tuning ability with manual focus and auto focus doesn't work great with video mode. So MOST people opt for lenses suitable for video, which are either very old and all mechanical or modern and expensive.

Honestly, I'd just experiment with a cheap 16mm camera and go have fun. You can buy books all about cinematography and they'll teach you the basics. Once you understand them, it's a lot easier to adapt your knowledge and work with another format like 35mm or digital. 16mm has some huge advantages, one of them is cost, another is being able to shoot something and project it on film at home. You can't do that with 35mm, you'll always be watching digital versions of your film, never really knowing where you messed up. Motion picture cameras are all very similar, so once you learn one, it's not so difficult to take a brush-up course at a rental house before you use a different one you're unfamiliar with. In that sense, what format you use is almost irrelevant. The camera I suggest you purchasing is a Bolex R16. You can by them on ebay. You can buy a book about using a Bolex online as well. It has a fixed shutter speed, beam splitter viewfinder and easy to use lenses. It's really easy to shoot with and requires no batteries since it's wind-up. Then all you need is a projector and some money for stock. It won't give you sound movies, but it will give you exactly what you need to experiment and film is A LOT of fun to experiment with! :)

Ohh I wouldn't worry to much about it. Building good working relationships can be very challenging, especially if there are two people on set with the same skill set, but one with a higher ranking. I'm a trained cinematographer, but I also direct. So if I get a paid gig as a cinematographer and I'm working with a first-time director, it can get very challenging. Good working relationships can be very hard to maintain in those situations. One part of you wants to make the project look great, the other part of you wants it to be watchable. I shot a pilot end of last year for a docu/reality game show (yea odd mix) and I'd say it was the worst thing I've ever done. That was mainly because the director/producer couldn't find a bucket of water if it was right in front of their face. Neither one had any experience directing and we were on a tight budget/schedule, which made things even worse. NO money for proper equipment or personal, like a gaffer or grip truck, two things that are important for any show in my book. I can't even watch the footage, but the producers were very happy with the results, and it's good enough for a pilot. So yea, I don't think you can ruin a career by doing work that you would consider sub-par. A lot of things are brushed off and you move on with life. Even if you did an awesome job, it doesn't mean you'd ever get hired again. You will learn from your mistake and next time around, you'll figure out what you can do better.

Yea, film cameras in general can be difficult to find focus with, especially with beam splitter cameras like Super 8 one's because they don't have bright viewfinders. So it could just be a focusing issue, that's absolutely where'd I go first, especially if you don't see any gate flutter issues with the projection/scan. In all my years of using super 8, I've never shot anything that could be considered 'sharp' or 'crisp'. Most of my stuff was soft, even when I triple checked focus. I did two huge short films when I was really young on super 8 and we used one of the high-end Elmo cameras @ 24fps (normally we shot 18) and it didn't make any difference. I also used one of the higher end Canons with the same results. I attributed those issues to the older Kodachrome cartridge backplate and most likely a dirty camera. Today, you can buy cartridges with really good backplates, you want one that's metal and the whole assembly (gate/backplate) really needs to be clean. You may see substantially better results just testing a modern preloaded cartridge, that's what I'd do first.

David, I'm a pretty big Kubrick fan and have seen almost all of his movies on the big screen. 'Barry Lyndon' is really the only one I keep missing, as it's more rare to find a 35mm screening then 'Full Metal Jacket' or '2001' which seem to be showing all the time in LA. To me, the problem with the current video transfers is multi-fold. - They used so much noise reduction, the image is soft and MPEG looking even on an HDCAM tape. - The BluRay's and DVD's were horribly encoded, accentuating the MPEG noise issue. - They all seem low in saturation compared to original film prints. - They have horrible registration issues. - They were made on a telecine machine in 1999. Not from a modern digital high resolution scanner. In contrast '2001' was scanned on a modern machine and it looks flat-out amazing on BluRay or DVD, without any of the problems those Warner films have. It depresses me greatly because scanning technology has progressed leaps and bounds in the last 5 years, let alone the last 15 years. Kubrick's films deserve more then telecine from 15 years ago. P.S. Got the 'Barry Lyndon' BluRay on right now and every shot, the frame is bouncing around with registration issues. The top of the frame on my disk shows the top of the telecine gate as well, darn thing isn't even straight. But then again, I do have a projector, most televisions you wouldn't see that unless they had an under scan function.

Yes, the current transfers are really really really bad! :( I have yet to see it in the theater, but I can spot a bad transfer on an iPhone.

Made out of wood. :)

I agree that in some cases, it does look milky. However, I don't attribute that to the medium. Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite movies and it's never received a decent transfer. Warner Brothers needs to take the original camera negative and carefully scan it to 4k digital. When that happens, I think a lot of the milkiness you see, will go way. Is Barry Lyndon a good example of what film can do? Still life is very easy to reproduce digitally and Kubrick is so talented with creating a perfect image in camera, it really doesn't matter. Where the digital and film world separate is when you have more complexity within a given shot. I look at films like (off the top of my head) Saving Private Ryan. That movie would look like crap shot and distributed digitally because the image would fall apart. Just watching a BluRay of it, makes me cringe. Digital technology is still in it's infancy, in 10 or 15 years from now, will it be better? Yes, I do think it will be markedly better. However the film industry as we know it today, will be dead and forgotten. Going to the theater will be a once a year event if. So who cares what it's shot on if the only thing you see it on is a 64" television at home, 8 bit, 4:2:0 color space, compressed to poop. Heck, most people watch content on their iPad's and laptops. I doubt highly "quality" plays any role. People are so desensitized to the crushed black look and ultra sharp images that look like 60fps, seeing film is boring for them. So teenagers today and their kids and their kids, won't even know what celluloid is, let alone care. As long as they get content on that box attached to their wall, they're perfectly happy. So is film better? Yes… in every way outside of low-light situations. But the general public, doesn't care. All they want is sweets, popcorn and to waste two hours of their time.

What happened when Canon started adding a video capture function to their cameras is quite remarkable and a stroke of marketing genius. Canon has a lot of top photographers at their beckon call, I know two of them. They get anything they want from Canon for free. In fact, Canon automatically sends them any new still camera they're developing. So those photographers go out and shoot with the new cameras, whether it's the MKII, MKIII or even the C series. They shoot some amazing closed-enviornment projects with tens of thousands of dollars worth glass and spend weeks coloring and cleaning in post production. Then they post the final product online for free and people go ape poop. They really think that's what the camera looks like, but in reality they're just seeing a heavily touched-up and modified version, shot by a top professional, using expensive lenses. I spent a year shooting a feature film on the MKII and MKIII, GH4 and 7D. The quality of the final output was barely acceptable. I was looking at dailies saying to myself, I can't believe anyone in their right mind would shoot with these cameras. The MPEG noise was at the level of intolerable almost all the time, even at lower ASA's. When you'd try to do any correction in post, there was nothing there to bring up. If you didn't crush the blacks, the grey to black areas would be physically moving around. Mind you, this was with ALL the cameras, not just the Canon's. The Panasonic GH4 was actually worse because it had severe clipping issues. We even brought in an academy award winning cinematographer for two shoot dates with his MKIII's, he said they'd solve the problems. He was mistaken and even his material had muddy MPEG noise over the whole image. We were forced to take the original MPEG files and process them at the lab. They have a special MPEG noise remover filter they ran all the footage through at great expense and converted it to 10 bit 4:2:2. This made the image softer, but it helped with the MPEG noise. There are still MANY shots in the final film which look like dog poop, like we shot on 500 ASA 16mm indoors with no lighting, even though we had PLENTY of light. So yea, I get the obsession with these expensive and not good cameras. I just hope over the next few years, people who shoot video as a living with them, will wake up and realize that they don't hold a candle in quality to anything professional.

Ohh interesting, so it can use the full benefit of the imagers larger pixel depth. I didn't know that. There is a huge disconnect between the production people and the distribution people. All distribution requires a 10 bit master, doesn't matter what part of the industry as I've worked in features, shorts, documentary, broadcast, music video's, trailers, EPK's, etc. Every single job I worked on, you had to hand someone a 10 bit master file. Those files were normally generated via the coloring tool like DaVinci. However, in some cases, you would simply lay them off to a 10 bit tape like HDCAM and deliver. I remember telling some production people on an EPK session that we wanted 10 bit files and they simply converted 8 bit 4:2:0 MPEG's to 10 bit Pro Res HQ. We had no choice but to work with those files and we showed the EPK producers the final product, they fired the production crew. The new crew they hired, shot with F5's and the problem was solved. Yea, yea, but those shot's looked like crap and most of the film was heavily treated in post. If you have a 10 million dollar (random insane number, I'm sure it was much more) post budget to remove people from shots, you absolutely have enough money to clean up halos from lack of bit depth. In fact, you can draw a new gradient right in DaVinci if you want. It gets back to my reasoning for disliking digital to begin with. Shoot anything you want and fix the crap you got on set in post to make a movie. In my eyes, your master needs to be highest quality possible and 1920x1080, 8 bit, 4:2:0 is pretty much the lowest acceptable quality format in existence today. Checking out his stuff right now, thanks for the links! :) I'd love to see stuff, thanks! :) The FS7 does UHD 10 bit 4:2:2 XAVC-I. So they just need to throw that codec into the smaller cameras. However, they don't do this because of processor power, but that will change soon. Arri raw and Red Code were developed before CinemaDNG. The big difference is that Arri Raw is uncompressed, where CinemaDNG and Red Code are both compressed. CinemaDNG being Tiff based and Red Code being JPEG based. However, all three formats equate to the same result, a 12 bit image which is captured directly off the sensor with minimal processing. The reason why there are multiple formats is quite simple, everyone want's money for their unique format. CinemaDNG is the only open-platform system. Adobe owns the licensing and native support is included within their software. It's evidently cheap to license because Blackmagic doesn't charge a lot for it. As new cameras come to market, I assume more people will eventually adopt CinemaDNG and maybe we'll see Arri make the change at some point as well, as the format is clearly excellent. Honestly, the blackmagic cameras are so good in Pro Res mode, I have yet to use CinemaDNG. I don't like transcoding, it makes a mess out of things. So I link to the original quicktime files to edit and then take the sequence from my editor and color using the original files in DaVinci. The camera workflow is 10 bit 4:2:2 and the output can be pretty much anything I want. It's a great workflow and for the money, NOTHING beats it. If I had an URSA Mini, I would use the same workflow.

It's still poorly organized Phil. ;) Nice article BTW. :D

Yea, that's what I meant by 1080p shooting. It's "cropping" the sensor, meaning the processor can focus on a smaller group of pixels. If the camera was a tiny bit bigger, they could run a faster processor, but they're more interested in physical size and this is one of the limitations. I was a professional colorist for a few years, working with Symphony and DaVinci. We'd get sources from all over the world and the 8 bit stuff was absolutely horrible compared to the 10 bit. Eventually we wound up rejecting any source that was 8 bit 4:2:0 and most post production companies will do the same thing. I currently live with a QC specialist and his company rejects anything that is less than 10 bit 4:2:2 color space. Most of the shows you quote only use the 8 bit cameras as quick cutaways, like the quick "shaky" cam that looks nothing like the main cameras. "Act of Valor" is a great example of that. Go Pro's are 8 bit as well, but if you light well for them and cut away quickly, you'd never notice. Yes, but the pocket camera is 1920x1080, only 128 pixels away from 2k, but you don't see Blackmagic advertising it as a 2k camera. It's false advertising and it's a way for Sony to sell a substandard product to the consumer because people are so absorbed in "tech specs" they don't realize what they're actually getting. Sony color science is nothing like Alexa. I've tried to match the F55 and Alexa in DaVinci, what a mess. It required many passes, a few traveling mattes and worst of all, the F55 was 4k and the Alexa was 2k, so the F55 material needed an un-sharpen mask. After days worth of work, it was acceptable, but I could tell right away. I guess your point is that an average consumer can't tell. That's great and all, but we're talking two of the best cameras on the market and they're so far apart. The consumer grade cameras have no chance at competing. I have yet to see that. All the online tests I've seen, still have the same problem. Direct light into the sensor has no edge detail (hard white) and sometimes breaks up around the center and edges (changes color). You'll notice it's hard white with no gradient. You'll never see a nice smooth gradient. It's most noticeable when shooting at night with street lights or car's driving by. Heck mix that with the rolling shutter, it's very easy to spot a Sony shot. If you wish to send me a few samples that you've done, I'd love to see this problem fixed. I'm sure it's versatile for people who want to use Sony cameras forever. However, for people who want to make an investment in glass, being stuck with E mount in my view is silly. Far better to buy EOS or PL mount glass and use adaptors. So a lot of the benefits these cameras have with E mount Sony glass, don't exist the moment you put PL glass on it. It will happen very soon, now that XAVC-I has been adopted by Sony. The only reason they don't put it in the smaller cameras is processor speed. It needs a much faster processor and it's a huge problem for the DSLR market. Besides, true raw like CinemaDNG which all the blackmagic cameras have, gives you exactly what's coming off the imager. It doesn't really tax the processor, but it does tax the memory and costs money because there is licensing from Adobe. The Japanese brands don't think about this as an option, they want to do everything in-house, so they don't even contemplate using this format. Sure, the commercial cameras all record raw, but none of us are going to be buying one. All cameras have weaknesses, but the three things that are most important are: Lens selection, Imager/color science and recording format. If any one of those things is compromised, you've got a big problem. Blackmagic have nailed it on all three of those and even though they've had some hiccups with developing the right box, they sure did with the pocket and now URSA mini.

WHHAAA!!! Digital Bolex? - No usable Viewfinder. (costs around $400 bux to buy a monitor and eye piece) - Internal Storage ONLY - Internal Battery ONLY - Glass to cover the S16 sensor is expensive as most glass was made to cover a square sensor. - Not very sensitive (good luck shooting in ambient light indoors) - Huge issues with bright light hitting sensor. One of the reason nobody else uses CCD's - Hard to hold for long periods of time due to weight - No compression codec, stuck with RAW shooting only, which means you can't edit right away and huge file sizes. - Expensive! For a few more grand, you can buy a REAL cinema camera with a full-frame S35mm sensor. The only real positives, is one of the camera's biggest negatives; 12 bit RAW. It means the image looks really good. It has plenty of dynamic range to play with in post. However, it means post processing and HUGE files to store and work with during post production. I've met and talked with the owners of Digital Bolex and they've worked really hard to bring this camera to market. However, when they started developing it, cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket weren't around. The pocket is 1/3rd the price, is far better equipped (outside of audio), takes more standard/lower cost lenses and honestly is far better suited for the kind of filmmaking the Digital Bolex guys intended to achieve. I assume the next generation of Digital Bolex will solve many of the current issues, hopefully adding a viewfinder and maybe updating the sensor so it can deal with direct sunlight. But for the price, it really doesn't have a home outside of retro people who by the way, would rather shoot film anyway.

The problem lies with recording formats, not the imager itself. When the current digital technology was developed over a decade ago, there were standards set so everything would be compatible with broadcast television. Since broadcast already used REC709 color space, it was a no-brainer to make digital formats follow the same protocol. All be it, with more dynamic range then the standard definition versions that came previous. They also needed to come up with a way to record high quality images using slow processors and not very much memory. So they came up with an 8 bit 4:2:0 interlaced MPEG format, which only samples blue information on half the lines and red information every fourth line. This format has been carried along by Panasonic, Sony and Canon for years, mostly because of cost. This "problem" is all about money and when you buy a still camera that shoots video, they have to compromise somewhere. The problem with 8 bit 4:2:0 is that it doesn't have very good dynamic range. The solution these companies came up with to make the format work is to compress the image's dynamic range. Like noise reduction on analog audio tapes, this encode/decode system will increase your perceivable dynamic range to allow more adjustment in post production. It really only works well with 12 bit YUV/RGB software like DaVinci Resolve. Higher end cameras have 12 bit, 4:4:4 color space, but even they are restricted in color space when they hit a standard recording format like MPEG, XAVC, Pro Res, etc. So this encode/decode system is very popular in the digital age and it allows standard REC709 formats, to accept higher dynamic range images. Those cameras also allow RAW capture which gives you full dynamic range without being stuck in a Rec709 codec. However, they too are an encode/decode system and in the case of .r3d (RED CODE), Cinema DNG and the like, they need to be decoded before editing, which can be very time consuming. When you use standard REC709 formats, they generally work OK in most modern software without the need for pre-editing transcoding. Why more cameras don't have S-Log is simply laziness. Why anyone still makes anything that records at best with 8 bit 4:2:0 color space, is beyond me. It's the companies reluctance to license XAVC or Pro Res, which would raise the cost of their products. They're more interested in meeting a price point, then making a camera with the best quality image possible.

Actually, they are the worst rolling shutter of them all. That's how they get such great low-light capability, the sensor is scanned very slowly. At 1920x1080 it's acceptable, but at 4k it's nowhere near acceptable. https://www.cinema5d.com/sony-a7rii-rolling-shutter/ Speed boosters are made for all the brands cameras. Doesn't matter when your recording to 8 bit 4:2:0 MPEG files. Plus, the external HDMI output is only 8 bit as well. So you can add as many outboard devices as you want, it's still 8 bit. This limits the corrective ability in post production substantially. In contrast, all of the Blackmagic, Arri and RED cameras are 10 to 14 bit, depending on the recording format. In the world of post production, minimal requirement for producing a good image is 10 bit 4:2:2 and for mastering it's 12 bit 4:4:4, same as HDCAM SR tape(1920x1080). - It's not 4k, it's UHD resolution. So it doesn't match the resolution of any other 4k cinema camera. - Sony's color science doesn't match Arri, RED or Blackmagic, which are the "A" cameras. - Sony has hard clipping issues, which are exacerbated by the 8 bit recording issues. - The rolling shutter prevents it from being used in moving/tracking shots without substantial correction in post. - Uses non-standard lenses (Micro 4/3rds, EOS and PL are standard) - It won't be worth anything once sony wakes up and produces a camera that shoots 10 bit 4:4:4 I-Frame internally for the same price, which is right around the corner. Yes, it's a great still camera… that's no doubt. I just don't see ANY lower-end consumer-grade camera being a good investment right now, especially with the constant technology flux we have today. If you need to buy a camera for some reason, it's far better to buy one that specializes in whatever your workflow is. Then sell it after a year and buy the next best thing.

I guess my first piece of advice is to forget about equipment, that's really the least of your concern. I know this is the "gaffing" part of the forum, but I'll post something long winded cuz I'm bored. ;) The first step would be to come up with a great screenplay, something that people really enjoy reading. That is actually the most difficult part because it's very time consuming to do right and requires skills a lot of people don't have. So maybe picking up a book on screenplay writing first, will get you started on that path. Write something you can make locally without much cost. Obviously, you could have someone else write the story, or make a documentary which doesn't require the same intensity of writing. Still, anything you see on screen, is generally pre-planned on paper. An understanding how that works, is probably the best first step. Once you've got something tangible that you can show people, the next step is to prove you can make it, which is the first step of raising money. Obviously people who have a long resume of work, don't need to do this. However, as a first time filmmaker, it's a smart idea to take your iPhone or a friends camcorder and start shooting micro projects. It's at this point I'd get a book on cinematography and lighting, this will help you understand the language of cinema. You need to experiment with this language before you can even think about making anything serious. This includes not just shooting pictures, but also understanding how audio works because that's also very important. You will also need to learn an editing software, because that's really a HUGE part of making something work well. These little micro projects show people; "Hey I can frame a shot and make something look pretty as well". That, plus your fantastic script, will get people excited and that's where money comes from. I actually shot a prequel to a feature film in order to develop the history behind my lead character. The next step is to find some money. Crowd funding doesn't cost any money, but also doesn't make much money for projects like this. I've seen random features that looked interesting, only make a few hundred dollars on crowd funding. The projects that succeed at making a lot of money, usually have big backers already attached and they use that money to help boost their crowd funding chances. It's a commonly used trick and it works well. So unless you have a long lost aunt or uncle who are willing to back your film with a few hundred grand, you can probably forget about making enough money to properly fund a serious project with crowd funding. So your money is going to come from friends and family, $20 here, $50 there and you'll probably have a budget of a few grand when it's all said and done. Between me you and the wall, the only thing you really need money for is expendables (tape/gels/hard drives to store your media, etc) and of course food. If there is one thing that makes people happy, it's food. You're job as a filmmaker isn't to make a movie, it's to make sure your crew is well fed. On films that actually have a budget, you would budget things like art/props, lighting/gaffing and camera/sound equipment rental. However, with something small like this, your "budget" is whatever you can acquire, which maybe a lot or maybe nothing. So what equipment you use, is really dependent on how much money you make, not the other way around. Guerrilla filmmaking is kind of what you'll be doing and part of that is being very clever, as you said earlier, with building/making your own bits and pieces to achieve certain shots. Lights would be the first thing I'd focus on and those old style aluminum work lights with the reflector behind the bulb, they work great. Just need some filtration and a bright-ass bulb and you're in business. Pretty much everything you need for production will be available to you at yard sales or goodwill stores. Now comes the shooting equipment, camera/lenses and sound. Most people shoot digital today and I would suggest doing just that. Yes, it would be awesome to shoot everything on film, but once you learn about the expenses involved; (raw stock, processing, transfer) you'll find it to be cost prohibitive, even with small-gauge formats like Super 8 and 16mm. Now, that's not to say it's impossible, I've made micro budget 16mm films for years, but we had our own camera, sound and lighting equipment. We were donated film stock through a Kodak program that's long gone and I found 50 rolls of film at a garage sale that was still good. We got killer lab deals and one light telecine, which gave us something watchable. Now I see your a student, so perhaps borrowing equipment from school is your ticket to success. If you can't and you need to find cheap stuff locally, I'd put an add on craigslist to see if you can find a cinematographer locally to supply you with equipment. You can also try www.sharegrid.com, which is a great place to hook people up with equipment. As much as I love film and am an advocate for using it, you need to analyze your financial situation before contemplating. Digital is practically free to shoot (once you have equipment) and as a new filmmaker, you will see instant results to insure you've got the shot before moving on. On no-budget films, this is awesome because you can prove to yourself, you've got it in the can. With film, you could make a huge error and not know about it until that 12 minute roll is processed and digitized at an expense of around $500 (stock, processing, telecine, storage). We have these great digital tools today and for your first big short film, I'd use them. Ohh and don't ever forget about audio. You need at least a 4 channel recorder, wireless mic's on each person and at least one boom mic, with an operator. Just remember, one wireless and one boom per person in the scene. Record only in silence and make sure it sounds good before you move on to the next shot. Assume you will never get the actors back for ADR (automated dialog replacement) because you won't and if your audio sucks, you will not have a viable product. I always wear a set of wireless headphones on set, listening to the audio on my digital shoots because I can't afford to re-record anything. Cutting picture can be pretty easy, you can read about how to cut properly in books and watch lots of movies. Audio is the difficult part and it's hard because it's A LOT OF WORK. There are great online resources for things like effects and music, you will need everything you can get for free and make sure you jot down where you go it from so if your film does make it somewhere, you can pay the royalties. I suggest www.freeplaymusic.com and www.royaltyfreemusic.com to start with. Effects can be purchased on CD, but libraries are online as well, so I'd just do some google searching OR if your lucky, your school may have something as well. Ohh and one more thing… When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was make movies. So I saved up and bought a super 8 film camera, back when consumer video cameras were very expensive. I spent years learning my craft, experimenting with the medium, cutting it by hand, projecting final products, even if they were complete crap. I do think there is a lot of learning that can be had through just experimenting. Buying a Bolex 16mm camera, projector, splicer and viewer. You'd learn quite a bit about film and you may make some great products. However, that's an expensive first step and it will take a while to make an acceptable product. I wish the digital cameras we have today, existed back then because I could have afforded them and shot a lot of great stuff without the expense of film. I do love celluloid, but digital is the great enabler, so you should embrace it and make your film.

For web, it doesn't matter. If you haven't noticed, most people use copyrighted music and effects on a regular basis without any issues. As long as you're not monetizing the video, you'll be fine.

Technocrane's are big/heavy and you need a specialist to operate. I try to use more standard lightweight jib's and arm's which don't require specialists. I use to put the smaller/simpler jibs on a flat doorway dolly, which worked really well, kinda like the Fisher jib. Honestly, the fisher jib is probably your best option because it's a very versatile and complete package. It's something you can use for standard dolly shots, something you can use for cranes. For long moves, the jib works a lot better because then you won't see the track in wide shots. I do love the Fisher 10, I've used it on many shoots, but I'd much rather have a jib then just a dolly.