Tyler Purcell

I believe it was a modified Mitchell movement 65mm camera with a mount for large format still camera lenses. Kinda of what Kubrick did on Barry Lyndon with the 35mm cameras.

You can tell a story with an iPhone and a decent camera app with manual adjustments and lens adaptor. I was stuck telling stories with standard definition equipment for a decade before moving to high definition. The quality you can achieve with an iPhone these day's is far better then what we had in the SD day's. Today, people seem fixated on telling stories with the highest quality camera possible, yet amazingly enough, most theatrical workflows are 2k and mostly all cinemas project in 2k as well. So the point of needing/wanting a camera with resolution of 4k or better, is kinda flabbergasting to me. If you're learning, the key is for the camera to be on you ALL THE TIME. You wanna pull it out at a moments notice and shoot stuff. The BMC 4K and Red camera's aren't really designed for that work. They need fancy shoulder kits in order to shoot hand-held and good luck trying to use anything else but a decent set of sticks. This means, you can't carry around the camera all day, the camera lives at home 99% of the time. Plus, big camera's draw attention, LOTS of attention. So if you're going out and shooting random stuff, you don't want that huge bulk so all you get is people waving at the camera or worse, being kicked out of places you want to shoot because they think you're producing a hollywood feature… it happens here all the time. These are some of the reasons I invested in the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. Sure, it's not quite 2k, but it's close. Sure it "looks" like a toy, but it's absolutely not. My camera's live with me all the time, in a tiny little backpack I keep with me 24/7. When I leave the house, the camera's are on my back. This way when I'm out and about, I can grab one of them, throw it on a monopod and by the time it's powered up, I can start shooting. The camera is much smaller then any DSLR I've seen and with a $99- viewfinder adaptor and mic, you can see what you're shooting very clearly AND hear it as well. The whole kit fits ASSEMBLED in my backpack, battery's installed, card installed, ready to go. I always shoot in standard pro res unless it's a paid gig, then I shoot raw or HQ depending on how much money I'm getting. I get home from shooting and in a few minutes I'm watching the material, maybe dropping it directly into my editor and cutting something in ten or twenty minutes. No post workflow necessary, just drag and drop. Plus, you don't need fast storage OR lots of storage either. 4k material is astronomically large and unwieldy to deal with. Needless to say, I've spent two decades shooting ENG (news gathering) cinema (S8/16mm/35mm) and High Definition (5DMKII, 7D, Dalsa, F900, F55, RED ONE, BMC…) and I wouldn't think for a second about owning anything else BUT the pocket camera's in today's market. You will never need something better for personal shooting and if you're doing a paid project, talk the client into using your cameras OR budget for a body rental since you'll be buying standard Canon or Nikon mount glass for the MTF pocket camera. I've used my glass on 4k shoots no problem, stuff looks great! :)

Plus… the RED camera's require quite a lot of post workflow. So seeing instant results and judging them is quite complicated and requires skills in post production to verify you're doing well in the shooting department. Buying a cheap camera to have fun with, even a Blackmagic Pocket camera… is probably a good way to start. The files pop right into any quicktime native editor and on "video" mode, the camera shoots like a camcorder, giving you exactly what you see in the display. Plus, the one thing you may not realize is… to operate the Red and BMCC 4K, you really need a viewfinder, which can get expensive and make the rig a log bigger. Plus storage is outrageously expensive for both of those cameras.

I've shot a lot with the blackmagic cinema cameras, the 2.5k, 4k and I own two pocket cameras I use for documentary work. I personally like how the camera's look. I'm absolutely not in love, nor would I consider them a replacement for film in any way shape or form. Personally, having shot and worked with MANY of the D cinema camera's, the Alexa is the only one which has fooled me. Every camera has it's issues, just like every film stock can usually be pointed out. So in the past where the stock and lenses generated the look, today the camera head's do which means people need to shoot with many different camera's to get different looks, if they want that. Slumdog was mostly shot on film. If you watch it, you can tell what shots are digital and which one's are not, with the BluRay, it's night and day. All of the fast moving stuff in the slum's, the tv show material and mostly all of the night stuff, was digital. When you re-watch, look for motion blur… the film material won't have it. If I had the time to get my home theater up and check those shot's, I would… maybe someday in the near future.

Actually slumdog was mostly shot on film. There are many digital shots but most of them are hand-held running stuff when they're children and of course the night stuff. So that's why the film looks great! It's film! :) So can a Blackmagic 2.5k do this? Maybe I mean it's down to the cinematographer, shot composition, lighting and color correction.

Yep, that's the biggest problem with the Bolex, they weren't ever built for quietness. I've done a lot of sync sound recording with Bolex cameras for temp stuff and it's amazing how loud they are. Even if you cover the camera with ferny pads, it's still making noise.

The thought of that makes me cry! I heard a rumor PT Anderson's crew dropped one of Panavision's remaining 65 cameras into a river making The Master. Since Panavision made those cameras in-house, I wonder if they plan on supporting them indefinitely.

We used an earlier/older version of the C700 which allows you to set a target range and shows you how far off you are from that. It's a pretty cool tool to have when you care about color temp. The other camera operator happened to have it, that's the only reason I used it. Normally I don't even carry a meter with me because the spot meter in the blackmagic camera has a histogram and I just pan around the room to get a sense of things before shooting. When shooting film I always carry a spot/ambient meter like the 758.

Good question and I asked that! He said electronics are the biggest weakness. They can't take extreme temp's and I gather moisture can build up within the camera because it's so sealed up. This causes the electrics to fail and henceforth no turn-over. Also, he mentioned one thing that disturbed me, which is making me re-think everything. Because 70mm film has to be moved through such a small area, the potential for jamming is huge. He said a technician is required when working in 65mm because of these jam's. You've gotta take that into account when shooting. You could get a great shot and then all of a sudden the camera looses the loop and jams. These are some of the reasons why Hateful Eight has almost every 65mm camera you can find in the country.

Yea, I agree with Chris. I still vastly prefer tungsten and florescent (kino's) over LED. I recently did a shoot with a new panel which has three colors and allows you to adjust the color temp so all the panels in your shot are the same color balance. It was a cool idea, it worked OK, but the amount of light they produced was only highlighting what already existed from my tungsten overhead sources. Even though we used a meter which helped match the colors, you could tell the shots were lit by LED's, even though they were on the warm side of the spectrum, they still felt cold for some reason. These are the reasons I haven't invested in LED's yet. I have a huge tungsten light kit I carry everywhere with me and I'd love to have a nice soft bag that carries 4 - 6 panels of LED. However, they just aren't bright enough and the color balance issue is a huge problem for most stuff.

I'll say this much, anyone can tweak the dials on a digital still camera and get a shot that looks great. Learning how to run a moving image camera is a totally different animal because unless your shot is totally static, things like focus and exposure need to be constantly managed/adjusted. Also, modern DSLR's don't teach you how to pull focus because there are no more focus aids like on optical viewfinder film cameras. So you're always reliant on auto focus to insure what you're shooting is absolutely in focus. In my view, if you wanna learn how to shoot moving images, you need a moving image camera, not a still camera pretending to be a video camera.

Actually, I asked the rep at Arri Rental NY and he said they weren't going to sell what they have. I'd assume they'll either destroy what they have OR send it back to Germany for their museum or something. He said there were only 10 cameras made and only 3 exist in the whole world that work. On a side note, I asked him about rental pricing between the 765 and the new Alexa 65 and it sounded like both were very similar in price due to the workflow necessary on set to deal with the Alexa 65. At least with film all ya gotta do is load the mags… no digital village necessary. Ohh and I had a brief conversation with Panavision who kinda said the 65mm camera's are all rented and will be for a long time. I'm looking for some price quotes, but she couldn't even give me that! I have absolutely no idea if it costs a billion dollars to shoot on 65, or just double 35mm.

If you wanna learn, the best thing to do is buy an all-manual camera like the one's I use called the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. With a small investment in a few lenses, you'll learn a lot in a short period of time. Camcorders are hard to learn with because they're lacking the latitude necessary to make mistakes and still get decent material. I've made lots of grievous errors when shooting film over the years, but I've always gotten something out of it. With camcorders, that's something a lot more harder to achieve.

If you're looking for spectral quality and resolution, not much compares and absolutely not an HDV camcorder. Unfortunately, reversal is grainy and unless you're ultra careful with focus (hard to do with an optical viewfinder) it can be a huge problem. I've actually shot with similar cameras to the Canon HV20 and they're pretty sharp little cameras. I did a tun of shooting with one before I bought my cinema camera's and I was never dissatisfied with the final image. I ran the camera on full manual, using the zebra stripes to show over-exposing and tried to keep the camera in the proper exposure range all the time. The main key is to never let it over-expose, the moment do that, the material is unusable. The other trick is to never use the gain system, it needs to be turned completely off. On the bigger brother to the HV20, the AX H1, which is what I used the most, all of this was controllable. I'm not sure if the HV20 can do that stuff, but I'm sure it can if you go through the menu's. Canon is good about offering prosumer features like manual exposure and gain controls. The other key is to never let it kick the gain up automatically. The moment it does that, the image turns to poop because the sensor is very small and the electronic gain ruins the image. So my guess is, your camera is doing all sorts of auto correcting and that's why the consistency is low. Also, if you watched the reversal film on a projector, it's going to look A LOT BETTER then it will scanned through a telecine and put onto video. A lot of people try to compare a format designed for projecting to a format designed for watching on a television. I know every time I project something on film, it blows me away and every time I watch that same film digitized, it looks like crap.

Just an update in my research, Arri will be discontinuing service of their 765 later this year. Evidently they have three working camera's left and will be discontinuing service sometime this year. I'll have more information and numbers next week.

Plus X, Tri X, Vision 500 made B&W in post… I put it all in one film! :)

It honestly depends on how you're viewing the final product. I think the pocket camera is perfect for everything outside of theatrical distribution. The 2.88X crop factor makes most poop glass look good because it's only taking an image from the center. That's how I can get away with using Korean-made Rokinon glass and it looks acceptable. If it's going to be seen on a big screen, I'd absolutely use a bigger sensor camera like the Blackmagic 4k and with that comes glass expense as well. I shoot pretty much everything today with my pocket camera and I have yet to run into a situation where it wasn't capable. I did a two television show pilots in 2014, big crews, 5 ton grip truck, the whole 9 yards. We had more audio equipment then camera equipment… people were like "you're shooting with that toy" and when they saw the final product, it shut them up right away. So yea.. umm, just roll with what ya got and have fun! :)

Heck, here in So Cal I wouldn't either. You've gotta offer a very unique service that nobody else does and renting Alexa's and Cooke lenses… that's plain out normal stuff. The most successful shop I know focuses on cheap rentals, blackmagic camera's and stuff for low-budget productions. Instead of spending a half a million on two bodies and a few lens kits, they spent quarter of a million and got 15 camera bodies and more-than 50 lens options. They're constantly booked, they never have anything in-house because their prices are good. The best way to start a rental business is to acquire one which is going out of business, then add some flair to keep it in business. Maybe move or down-size so it's not as big. Finally… owning equipment for feature productions isn't smart because every DP you hire, will want to use what they want and not necessarily what you have. It's one thing if you're a DP and you're building a kit for smaller productions. But even those guys, tend to rent on bigger shows.

The shape is very good, it was a smart move from Sony. It's the one thing Blackmagic Designs doesn't understand… they remind me of Toyota and the Prius. They think packaging is the most important thing, where in reality usability is far more critical. Blackmagic have the technology, but outside of the pocket camera, don't have the form factor. That new Ursa is a worthless tank of a camera. I messed around with one not long ago and within a few minutes realized how absolutely worthless it is. Even the standard blackmagic cinema camera's have less-worth then they SHOULD have due to the internal battery and ridiculously odd form factor. Nobody wants a big display, everyone wants an elfin' viewfinder!!!! HELLO!!!! Anyway, I was at a blackmagic event last year that gave me some hope. Rumor around the mill is their new camera will be more shoulder mountable like the URSA and they've been researching OLED technologies to perhaps build a viewfinder for the URSA in the future.

Yep, you'd be scaling it down to 1920x1080 for editing purposes. It's not just resolution loss, but bit depth loss as well. If you don't change the clip names, after you edit, it will be easy for someone to take the rd3 files and re-conform the show at original resolution. Shooting at 4k so you can zoom in later, is a pretty lame excuse. People tell me that all the time and I'm like no… its digital video, just get the coverage on location and be done with it. I shoot pretty much everything in 1920x1080 standard 16:9 HD because frankly, there isn't anyplace to see it in 4k. Cinemas are 2k and 1920x1080 is only slightly smaller then 2k. Heck, most televisions and broadcasters aren't even 1920x1080 native. So yea… people who push 4k onto unsuspecting filmmakers infuriate me. If you don't apply a LUT, the image will be super flat and desaturated. Maybe your cinematographer applied a Rec709 LUT when he shot, I don't know if you can do that with the Red. You don't loose or gain by having the software apply a LUT. All that does is bring back some of the lost colors. You can still color the files no problem. However, you SHOULD be conforming the rd3 files in DaVinci at a later date once your done with editing. Frame rates stay the same throughout the process. Red Cine X however is a complex tool, I'd absolutely read the documentation before use. It could very easily spit out 4k Pro Res 4444 files and you'd be sitting on terabytes worth of information to edit with! EEK!!!

I'll admit, with film I'm constantly changing focal lengths to achieve certain looks instead of moving the camera because a lot of times there is simply too much to move and it's easier to simply change lenses and leave the camera in the same place. I also like zoom lenses for quick focal length changes. Since I shoot everything spherical and light properly, the slower zoom lenses aren't a big deal. However, when I shoot with my own digital equipment today, I tend to shoot entire projects with one focal length for everything except establishing shots. So 90% will be the same lens. This is mostly because I can't afford a cinema zoom lens and I refuse to use still camera lenses for cinematography. I like my kit to be super small, compact and lightweight as well. The moment you add a heavy piece of glass, all of that goes out the window. With the Arri SR's it's no big deal, put the handle grip on it and use the other hand for zoom/focus/exposure. With the smaller digital cinema cameras like blackmagic, red, Canon C series, etc… it's hard to mount big lenses and shoulder the cameras. It's a huge problem and it causes a great deal of complexity when shooting digitally. I truly wish someone would come out with a cheap shoulder mount digital cinema camera.

Unless you paid for a managed telecine, most operators will throw a roll of film on the machine, do a basic correct on the first shot they see and let it roll from there. It's called a "one light" transfer and unfortunately it's what you get unless you pay a lot more. A good telecine artist will give you a flat image with almost no correction, like your bottom S16 image. That's actually the best image you have out of the lot for sure. The two top one's were clearly someone on the telecine machine trying to make corrections, that's NOT what camera negative looks like at all. So your 2nd lab looks great. All you need to do is download DaVinci color correcting tool from Blackmagic design's web site, do a quick tutorial and correct the material after you're done editing. Getting a super flat image from the telecine is what you want, so you can fix it later. Hope that makes sense…

Yea, marketing/promo guys are usually "in-house" employees. However, the jobs are very far away from filmmaking.

First off, welcome to the forum! Second, you need to download a program called Red Cine X which is on Red's website. It will allow you to do batch transcodes of the rd3 files and apply a basic LUT to each shot so there will be some sort of continuous accurate color. You can't drag and drop them into FCPX and expect them to work, it's just not going to happen even if Apple says it will work. Final Cut X is a majorly flawed program and unfortunately it's still a toy. So sure it will accept anything you wish to give it, but working with it on any serious level will cause huge headaches. The best thing to do is transcode everything using Red Cine X into something more palatable like standard Pro Res 422, which is a native quicktime codec, unlike red files. Then drag and drop those transcoded files into FCPX and work with them. I'd honestly do the same thing with the MPEG2's that come out of the Canon 5D. This way, everything is in the same format. The Red camera's shoot in a "raw" format which looks desaturated and very flat. They are a highly compressed camera as well, which is why it literally takes forever to transcode the smallest of files. It's not your computer, it's literally the decompressing of the codec. The Red workflow is designed for professional use, nowhere near "drag and drop" like the MPEG2's which come out of your DSLR Canon 5D MKIII, which can be worked with in FCP X, though with some potential issues. Hope some of that makes sense. ;)

Yea, I just had dinner with a filmmaking friend of mine who was like; "Why would you ever shoot on film" and I was like "what else is there?" LOL :) I'm gonna make some calls this week and get some numbers. I'm happy to share my findings. :)