Tyler Purcell

and when you do experimental non-commercial products you watch at home on the original files, then it doesn't matter. However, most people try to make commercial product and in that case, film grain is a nuisance for both theatrical and home video distribution due to compression and how it deals with noise/grain. I personally can't stand grain, as I've been stuck with it for decades of shooting on film. I'd rather over-light something and reduce that grain to an almost infinitesimal level, then have a film fill of noise. I don't give any credit for people with noisy films. It takes a real talent to produce a grain-free image in-camera.

Admittedly, I've never had a professional union loader on any of my shows. When you work low-budget, you get what you pay for. I did a documentary shot on 16 with SR's and the director brought in "top industry guy" to take care of the film aspects. We shot three cameras and you can't make mistakes with doc's because you get one chance. Two of the three cameras jammed right at the beginning of the show, both because he didn't wind the take up reel enough and the film fell off the reel and filled up the mag. So we got maybe 50 feet in and the cam's jammed. Problem is, we didn't know until we stopped the cameras because we couldn't hear the cameras. During our scheduled mag changes, we noticed the perf's were torn. I slammed the next mag in and kept shooting, put my assistant on the camera to try and diagnose what was going on with the mags. I collected them and took them apart in the changing bag, sure enough my suspicion was right, we lost the first 10 minutes of the show. I've had similar problems on narratives, but as you said, it's no big deal. You grab another mag, clean the camera and keep going. Part of my big beef is fingers on film and oil, greases, dirt getting onto the negative. I worked with this great crew shooting commercial's for a while and their loader was horrible. We'd get the transfer and the first 30 seconds of each load was dirty as all hell. I had a discussion with the lab and made sure they weren't somehow causing the problem. I then went over how the loader was putting the film into the mag's. Turns out, he didn't wear gloves and he'd touch the center of the film to help push it through into the take up side of the mag. He was leaving physical debris in the magazine itself, maybe left over food in his arm hair, don't know. I watched him load the Arri 3 once and you know that gate, it's simple. Man, by the time he was done, he had touched every surface of the film with his greasy fingers, yuck. It really dismayed me because I had no say since I was just a freelance gun. Unfortunately, the company moved to F900 and eventually went out of business, so that was the end of me shooting 35. Anyway, on small shows, it's just important to keep an eye on these things since you can't pay for the top people who know what their doing.

Since the film is being shot in 2.76:1 aspect ratio, the only screens which are setup for this are curved one's like the cinerama dome. So there are only 3 theaters in the US really capable of projecting the film as it was meant to be and the cinerama dome in Hollywood is one of them. My only worry is the anamorphic presentation. Since it's a curved screen, there needs to be a curved lens. The cinerama dome has one for 35/70, but I'm not sure if they have one for anamorphic 70. Having seen test footage, it's going to look amazing in 70mm. It's absolutely not so amazing in digital.

I personally think they ran out of money. There might have been a problem we don't know about, maybe a re-shoot or something and it drained the budget. The finish sure feels "polished" so if there was a budgetary problem, it didn't show up on screen. I'm frustrated with IMAX anyway. The use to be a large-screen high-resolution format and today they're just a joke. IMAX has turned into a way for cineplex owners to make more money. So IMAX is certifying garbage theaters, diluting the IMAX name. They put so much hype on laser 4k projection, yet their film format is 12k. So when you think about that, who really cares if a regular film is finished in 2k, if the IMAX version is only 4k. It's just bonkers I tells ya! Bonkers! They charge MORE MONEY for less quality!

Yea, David is spot on… clapper/loader. However, as a DP, I always load my own mags. First thing in the morning as we're setting up for the first shot, I'll give my AC/Gaffer some directions, go back to the camera truck and load some mags. This gives me ample time to load the stocks I feel are necessary for the day based on the sides. Plus, and this is something I always tell people wanting to get into film; It's your ass when poop goes wrong. If you let a loader build the magazine and it jams, ruining a take or worse off, the whole roll, nobody blames the loader, they blame you. I had two bad experiences with loaders and I will never do that again. I load my own mag's, cameras, I check my own gates and I insure personally that every foot of film running through the camera will be exposed properly and usable in the final product. If there is something wrong, I will be the one to decide what to do about it. I always aim for a 10:1 shooting ratio as well. Log sheets are VERY important. A lot of people skimp on these. However, they really help with post production. I always photocopy my log sheets before the lab get's them. This way, my script supervisor and I can look at what we shot in our post-shoot meetings and discuss what the next day will entail. Plus, I use those sheets for editing, especially when cutting on film. I've never once been in a position where I've shot too much and it's been a problem. Generally, when doing the budget, we account for a 10 - 20% overage when it comes to aspects of "film". This generally covers mistakes/over-shoots and allows the production to keep going without getting into financial worries. Yes, I've absolutely used up that extra 20% before, we've been "tight" on budget, but never overage enough to warrant taking from another department. It all comes down to proper budgeting and understanding the constraints of using film as a capture medium.

Ghost Protocal was finished at 6k, not 2k. We're talking about the most recent film, Rogue Nation being finished in 2k, which has no IMAX material, only 4 perf full-frame 35mm anamorphic.

I know, it's pathetic! Especially since they already booked the film in IMAX theaters.

If you light things properly, you can get away with a higher ASA stock and reduce that grain.

I've been watching some classic westerns recently and no, they weren't shot like that. Honestly, I'm very much into motivated lighting and I don't see much coming from that main set. However, we won't know until we see the film. Perhaps there are holes in the roof everywhere and that's why we see shafts of light coming down. I'm reserving judgement until I see the film.

I can't imagine how bad vision 3 500asa will look in super 8, its pretty grainy in 16mm as it is. For super 8, you really need to be in the 50 - 100asa range to keep the grain down and have some sense of a clean image. Since you really can't get 100 anymore, you're kinda stuck with 50. So lighting your night scenes appropriately will be your biggest challenge. Desaturating in post is what most people do anyway, so that's not a problem.

That's correct and in my eyes, there is no reason to scan at a rate higher then the physical resolution. To me its no different then capturing a Hi-8 tape a 1920x1080. The format is only capable of delivering 420 lines of resolution. Bandwidth costs money and the technology existed 10 years ago to make the same network speed we have today, only not enough people were willing to pay for that faster service. As people started paying, the price for the service could be reduced and now we have faster speeds because the cost has been amortized across many people. Mind you, the average bandwidth is still 20mbps, which is slow. As a reference, I've had 100mbps to my house for 13 years. I don't see any substantial increase in average bandwidth with current technology. Verizon is the only company using fiber to the house and it has massive network latency issues. So sure it's fast, but accessing data is slow, because they're overwhelmed with customers. .h265 is an interesting standard because it's the first consumer-level streaming platform which can provide 4:4:4 color space at supposedly 8k max resolution. However, this is all just engineering speak at the moment. When products start hitting the market, we should reanalyze the final format and I have a feeling it's far less spectacular then the white papers. It's true, if anything, we're getting some super fast/small/cheap processors hitting the market. Just look at the iPhone and how much it's capable of doing in such a small package. Yes and there is new storage technology on the horizon which will double current drive sizes and keep the price similar. However, it's not a HUGE savings and it will be a while before these new drives are standard on any modern electronics. So yes, this is a future solution, it's going to take a while to trickle down. Yep, the duplication house I used in Chicago went under as well. It's a real shame because as a filmmaker, you have a lot more control over a disk asset then VOD. This is part of the reason why I think 4k BluRay is already dead in the water and why internet speeds are the leading factor for future high resolution streaming services. Yep and scanner technology will continue going down in price, that's a given. Yep, I'm talking with the Blackmagic guys about it today at an event, I'll report back what I hear. :)

I'm kina shocked DNX works because that's absolutely not a freebee. It must be included in DaVinci.

Even the steady shot has quite a wobble. :( But then again, it wasn't shot on a Logmar.

Yea, this is the problem with Ultra 16mm, it's kinda of a pain to find someone who can do the scanning. Give the guys at Pro 8 a call and see what they say. I'm sure Perry knows as well. ;)

That's odd because DaVinci uses the quicktime formats to work with and my mac has nothing special to make them work. Hit up blackmagic's site, download the manual and do a search for "pro res", I'm certain you'll find the answer.

I'd love to do a 35mm resolution test with modern stocks. Do you think anyone has done it?

https://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows

If you use a SMPTE resolution chart on a film camera, you will be able to understand film's actual available resolution. Sure, the chart is more line based then pixel count, but we can extrapolate pixel count based on the lines we see in the scanned image. This varies on stock grain density of course, but the tests were all done with 200T Vision negative. You can read more about this study in the paper called "Resolution of 35mm Film in Theatrical Presentation" http://www.motionfx.gr/files/35mm_resolution_english.pdf Now, I do understand these tests were done with what we'd consider "antique and outdated" stock. Our modern stock is FAR superior in many ways. However, it's pretty conclusive that 35mm color negative has 2400 lines of resolution and since they were testing at 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and we know horizontal and vertical lines would be the same. We can extrapolate a theoretical maximum resolution of 4440x2400, which is slightly above 4k. 16mm is less-than half the size of 35mm, so that means it's right around 2k. With super 16 being being only slightly higher then that, only if low-grain stocks were used. Now, I didn't take part in those tests, but I have done my own resolution testing as part of school. We found that 16mm negative had around 750 lines of resolution, using a very similar chart and projected onto a huge wall as a still frame, so we could really get detail. Yes, there are many variables in this discovery and modern stocks are better. So this is where I get my "knowledge" from. A little bit of relying on other people's studies AND doing my own experimentation. That I agree with whole heartily. But let me respond to my reasoning below… First and this is a huge misconception, most television is 1080i/720p and we are damn lucky to have those resolutions. Within the current standards, it will be impossible to update to 2k, let alone 4k. Plus, there isn't a single true 4k consumer-grande television on the market. Second, I recently did research for another thread and found out, only 40% of all movie theaters in the world have 4k projection. That means, most theaters are 1920x1080 or 2k and the vast majority of big hollywood theatrical films are finished AND distributed in 2k. Third, streaming services which claim to be 4k like Netflix, Youtube and Vimeo, are a complete failure because to get that resolution through the already extremely limited bandwidth available to consumers, they have to compress the ever-living snot out of the images, making them very soft, negating any of that added resolution. Fourth, digital cinema projectors use three imagers and there is zero percent chance they're calibrated. So even if you were to make a 4k DCP and rent a 4k theater, you aren't seeing anywhere close to 4k worth of resolution. With that said, the only way to see a true 4k image is at one of the big color correction facilities in DPX on their monthly calibrated 4k projector. Even then, I've been pretty un-impressed with many of those facilities in Hollywood. There are only a few that have surprised me with decent projectors and resolution. I understand for bigger theatrical productions where the filmmaker may not hold the rights to the negative and the film is guaranteed a theatrical run, you do want the highest quality possible for your budget. However, most people shooting S16 aren't doing big theatrical runs and the cost difference between 2k and 4k workflow is astronomical, for resolution they will never see outside of the lab where it was scanned. If their film does well, they can always go back and re-scan the negative at any resolution they want with the backing of a distribution companies piggy bank. This is why cataloging key code and reel numbers during post production is so important. In summary, I agree that getting the highest quality master possible is important, but that's why you shot on film in the first place, that's your "master". For post production, you edit and deliver to the max resolution of your pre-planned distribution method. If that's blowing up to 35mm, then you cut the negative and blow up to 35. If that's television, you'll finish in 2k and down-sample to 1080i for broadcast. If it's internet/web, who cares what it is, damn thing will look like crap anyway. You can always go back and re-scan, you can always get more resolution out of your image as the imager resolution increases and the costs to use those scanners decrease. People put too much emphasis on resolution and not enough emphasis on how consumers will see that resolution. P.S. I do plan on finishing my upcoming S16 film in 4k using the Blackmagic real-time scanner. This is simply because we will be doing theatrical and most of the film will be low-grain 50 asa stock, so you will see more detail in the image. So yea, you can call me a hypocrite! LOL :)

I know you think it's a software/digital glitch, but unless I'm not understanding how the software works, we'd see the same issues with the perf and we don't. If you can post some other good scan's of Super 8, I'd love to see them.

Truthfully, good modern color negative stock has a much greater dynamic range then most digital cameras. So even if you make a grievous error with exposure, you maybe able to learn from it and still have a good workable image. Technically film is a lot easier to shoot then people make it out to be. It has set rules and guidelines you must follow, all of which you can notate on a little card that you keep with you, to remind you what to check before shooting. Having a good meter is really the only thing you need because everything else is simply turning knobs on the meter and camera. You will learn what to meter within a given scene and use that skill to make a proper exposure over time. Reading books and understanding theory will only get you so far, experimenting and understanding the dynamics of film, really allows you to take that next step. I never got to shoot color negative in school, they always taught with black and white reversal, which is very challenging to expose properly. I highly suggest buying a wind-up Bolex R16 camera. They're really easy to use, have a fixed shutter speed and are cheap to buy with lenses. 100 foot spools are cheap to buy and process and they give you a bit more run-time @ 24fps then super 8, which is nice. Plus, there are no batteries necessary, so nothing really stops you from grabbing the camera and going to shoot. Then you can get the lab to process and make a one light print of your film and project it. This way you can see exactly what your negative looks like without going through any digital processes. All of this by the way, isn't very expensive, you've just gotta buy a meter, camera, projector and go experiment! Once you get the techniques, then it's really easy to rent or buy a better camera and shoot something for real. I too am dismayed with the lack of film programs out there. I'd love to do something about it when and if I have money!

The only correlation is the camera. That's why I'm guessing, that's where the problem lies. The film needed "stabilization" according to Friedemann, so if it were perfect on the scanner, he wouldn't have needed to use it.

Yea, I read that yesterday and I take it with a grain of salt. I've been in his place before, the last thing you want to do is be interviewed when your in the middle of cutting something. Your mind is focused on the cutting, not the stupid questions the interviewer is asking. He clearly had no interest in doing the interview, some of his answers were like "I'm done with this" so I assume that's why he seems frustrated.

So wait… your contemplating it's a problem introduced post scan? The original posters clip has the same problem… so… could they have used the same post processing? (seems unlikely) Honestly, I don't think it's something done after the scan because it doesn't effect the perf. You'd see the same rocking motion with the perf, but you don't. Maybe it's a red herring, but it's absolutely a game stopper in my opinion.

When companies make multi-thousnd dollar cameras for a format that's "inherently flawed" it really riles me up. It's like making a DV camera with a 1080p HD CMOS sensor, what's the point? I don't think super 8 is intentionally flawed and the minor flaws it has, are easy to fix. Logmar fixes MOST of them, but they can't fix the cutting of the stock, that's down to the manufacturer. My issue is that people spend money assuming they're getting the best quality possible and they aren't. My beef has nothing to do with buying a used camera on ebay for $100 and running some film through it. My beef has to do with people spending thousands on a "better" camera and it having lots of other flaws.

There are many companies who cut their own stock and still have these problems (more about this below) Here are some examples which are not from the same camera and all have the same problem. https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287 Now… with that said… I haven't been able to find very many scans of other cameras where the entire frame is in the scan. Most people crop it out, so comparing to other cameras has been hard. I've done some comparing, but other cameras have such horrible registration issues, it's almost impossible to figure out if it's just registration.