Tyler Purcell

1 hour ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Lots of stories, I guess. In this day and age...dunno, never know about prosecution, Tyler. Just depends on the DA and all.

It would need to be proven that he maliciously stole from banks and clients. It's clear by reading the documents, he was a scammer. It's clear he took millions of dollars. What did he do with it all? 

19 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

To the point however, you've mentioned many times how collaborative and helpful FF have been with assisting with issues that you've had with your HDS+ - you don't hear people sharing the same experience with MS! It either works the way it came and people are satisfied with that, or if they're not satisfied with how their MS scanner works then they do their own modifications to it with no assistance from MS other than "encouragement" to do so. With the RUMkII it had subpar parts from the start, I have a felling the Universal MkI was better mechanically speaking.

True, the team at FF have been wonderful. Leon is a great guy who truly wants to make a great product. Sure, we didn't like his gate design, we had to re-engineer it a bit and the scanner does need a bit of post work to achieve the qualify levels of other scanners, but the results speak for themselves. Sure, a scan station would be faster and probably deliver a slightly sharper image, but at a $200k price tag + yearly service support contract, I don't understand how that works unless you have guaranteed work for 5+ years.  The vast majority of people in this industry, do not have that work. We were damn lucky to even buy a scanner, we paid for it with two feature length negative projects. 

I talked to Roger once on the phone and he was a complete dickhead. I'm surprised he didn't hang up. 

8 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Sorry - misread your original post and thought you said you don't think it was a scam. Not enough coffee in me. 

 I'm gonna be shocked if he walks way from this. The documents are so damning it's not even funny. The guy literally got loans and maxed out his credit cards, then decides to go bankrupt? I mean what was he doing with all that money if it wasn't living a lavish lifestyle? I'm not flabbergasted in this day and age, but holy crap, he's in trouble. 

1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

I wouldn't take this as a sign the industry is in trouble. If you read the bankruptcy filing it sure as hell looks like he was running quite a scam. Over the past two years he paid himself $1.4M yet the company apparently has no assets. At all. over 200 people ordered stuff that wasn't delivered - parts and whole scanners apparently, and some of those orders go back to 2022 from what I've read on various forums. 

I do think it was a scam. Many people have been waiting for machines, which of course he has not delivered. Looks like he wanted to get out and used this opportunity to walk away. 

I was always shocked how he was in business to begin with. 

Can I ask, how anyone can scan anything without a rigid gate for the film to ride on? Any film that was warped, shrunk or even slightly damaged, would never be able to be scanned. I think some of the home made 3D printed machines, have more "tech" in them and I bet that's why he just gave up. It's hard to sell "scanners" that don't have super basic features/functions. 

33 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Uh the films made the studios billions of dollars in profits why would they not green light more 65/15p films when they clearly make huge returns and audiences love them?

Oh because the entire film industry was shut down in 2023 and right after the negations were finished for the new contacts, they all announced 20 - 30% cutbacks on new projects AND substantial reduction in budgets for future releases. An example of their idiocy is the canceling of Dune 3. Warner finally has a "batman" franchise on its hands and they CANCELED the 3rd installment? Of course,  it'll eventually happen, but doubtful in the next 3 - 4 years. The decisions they're making are horrible. I also think a few of the big releases shot on IMAX lost their shirts financially outside of Oppenheimer. "Nope" was a financial disaster supposedly, don't know how with such a reasonable budget, maybe they spent 500M in marketing? 

With my ear on the concrete here in LA, I can tell ya right now, this is what the last recession felt like. Everyone is selling their gear, people are moving out of town, nearly all of my production friends are doing personal projects not commercial projects. Even my friend who works with Hoyte said, he's been pretty dead as well. I think the studio's are freaking out with Sora's announcement and the impending IATSE and Teamsters strike. Plus the Paramount and Warner merger which is still up in the air. Disney is also several billion in debt and is trying to shed assets, but nobody appears to be buying. 

Na, none of this is good and I feel by the time the new 15P camera is out, the studio's will find it tricky to green light those shows. Just remember, Tarantino proved 70mm print screenings, sell better than standard digital with Hateful 8, but the film wound up doing poorly in the box office. We didn't see another big push for film prints until Dunkirk, which also did poorly. Tenet was a wash out due to Covid and honestly, Oppenheimer was the first big 15P release since Dunkirk, what... some 6 years later? I don't think the studio's are horribly excited about risking another release shot and finished on 15P. Dune II will do well on 15P per screen, but I believe that's the future for the format; digitally shot, film projected. 

Tis a pretty cool video AND time period we live in. 

Alas, I don't think the studios will be green lighting any big 15P movies anytime soon. This may all be for nothing. 

It doesn't say flicker free, so it's probably the low end chipset. 

The problem with super 8, as we've talked about on the other forums, is that it has a 5x crop factor over FF. 

So an 8mm lens for 35mm equivalent, would need to be a 4mm minimal to get that look. Well, nobody makes a 4mm lens. So that's the problem. The super 8 frame is so small, there wasn't any other imager tech like it outside of specialized stuff in the video world. So there just wasn't a market to make lenses. This is why the widest lenses you'll ever see are in the 5 - 6mm range. That's about what the decent zooms have for super 8 as well. The 6-70 being the "promo" zoom for the format, but not having that look at all.

Also remember, what makes that look so cool, is that with S35mm you still can have some depth of field. Never going to have that with a wide shot on S16 or Super 8. It'll look super flat with wide lenses. To get any decent depth of field, you need longer lenses, which of course is the anthesis to what you're after look wise. 

There are some macro lenses however, where the subject can get super close to the lens. The lens I recommended the 6-70 does have a macro mode. However, in macro mode, you can't gauge focus. They kinda do some weird stuff and from my experiences using professional super 8 cameras, the results are generally poor. If you have someone moving around a lot and don't mind soft focus, then it's not too bad, but you will never NAIL the focus on macro mode. They also don't work well all the way open, so you need to stop them down, which can help a bit, but can be more tricky to tell detail in the viewfinder. 

As a side note, I did use a 6mm super wide lens with front ultra wide magnifying lens, which made it more like 5mm. It worked pretty good, very distorted, but it was a $6k lens and only PL of course. I wish I remember if it was the Century optics one or not, but C mount lenses are NOTORIOUS for having horrible back focus issues because there is no hard mount. Every lens fits slightly differently into the camera and you need to collimate each one to the body and set the gap properly. It's not supposed to be that way, but it is sadly. A wide angle like a 6mm, will not be capable of being collimated. You need longer focal lengths to use a collimator. So a ZOOM can be collimated, but a single prime like a 6mm can't. So you simply don't know until you get your footage back. It's one of the odd issues with calibrating equipment sadly. 

1 hour ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Or are the charts misleading, Tyler? 

 

Very. 

60 theatrically bound feature films were released in 2023 that were shot on film. Thats the most we've had in a single year in over a decade. Forget about the released on film movies to boot, which we had a few of in 2023 as well. Heck Dune II is being released in over a dozen theaters on 70mm. That's pretty impressive for a time period where every major theater is digital only. 

Anyway, the charts are discussing still photography. To which in Los Angeles alone, there are a dozen still labs. So still photography is, nowhere near dead. Big brand stores like Walmart and Target, still sell film. Heck, drug store chains like CVS and Walgreens do as well. You can even drop off film at those stores for processing in some locations. That's pretty incredible and frankly, I don't find working with still film today, to be any more tricky than the 90's. The only "got ya" is getting prints same day. That doesn't happen anymore. Back when I was a kid, you could drive up to a same day lab and get them back in a few hours. Eh, long gone. But ya know, it's pretty fast. Most stills labs are few days max. 

14 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

OK, agreed, but film is not what it used to be as far as sales. If it was, do you think Fuji would have bowed out? Kodak has gone through so many down cycles it is pitiful. I don't keep up with the day-to-day affairs of Kodak, but the amount of product, chemicals, equipment and media they used to produce was staggering Tyler. 

I mean, right now Kodak is making film 24/7 using a staff of several hundred full time employees. They are so busy, they had to wake up and start using perforating machines they hadn't been using for years. So sure, we're not talking volumes of the pre-digital age, but remember Kodak use to make their still film over seas. So now that ALL film is coming from the single plant in Rochester, it's a lot more work. 

Why did Fuji die? I'm shocked you asked that question because it seems that everyone knows. 

Kodak has non-competition agreements with all the studios. They physically were not allowed to shoot Fuji film, period. 

Fuji was literally denied access to the largest productions, not because of the filmmakers or the quality of product, but because the studios agreed to keep Kodak a float. This is also not a new thing, this isn't post bankruptcy, oh no. This has been going on for decades. Similar to how studio's had non-competition agreements with technicolor prior. 

Fuji was used by many high profile films. However, if you actually research the funding, you'd see many were independently funded, even though studio distributed. Obviously anything non-studio could have been shot on Fuji. Today if they were around, I bet they'd do very well honestly. Especially with their Reversal stocks which have a very beautiful and unique look. Everyone is after that look today and when they closed down their factory at the end of 2011, people were outraged. New Fuji stock is just re-badged Kodak FYI. Fuji does not make any film products. 

They had kept their black and white coating line running for a few years after they killed the color line, but they eventually closed that as well once separation's weren't done as frequently. I absolutely blame the rise in lab costs to the lack of another brand. 

One COULD spend a billion dollars and make a new photochemical company. It would be easy to poach engineers and pay for the Fuji patents to bring the stock back. However, who would want to do such a thing? 

1 hour ago, Robert Houllahan said:

This is a clearly uninformed statement.

Kodak film products and photo chemistry are excellent in quality and in plentiful supply, labs are busy.

From my understanding, there is zero competition. 

Once Fuji stopped, that was the end of that. 

What camera are you using? It's very camera dependent as each one has its own unique workflow. 

Do you want to use the relight tools? 

On 2/11/2024 at 4:48 PM, Deniz Zagra said:

According to some ARRI research from 2009, new photochemical facilities are so advanced that "generation loss" is a thing of the past. I remember reading about it on a lengthy, 60 page document that compared a digital intermediate and traditional photochemical print (from tests shot on Vision 2 200T) and found out that the print contained much more detail and sharpness. I haven't done any tests myself, so ı'm just quoting what that article said.

Yes DI can be much sharper, especially if you record out using an "Arri" 4k laser recorder. You'd record directly to internegative and strike prints directly from it. I'd say they could be upwards of 3k, which is a marketable improvement. 

3 hours ago, Johnny Liu said:

would I be able to take footage that is about the same as what an Arri SR2 or SR3 could take?

Theoretically yes. The lens and the film really create the image. A properly calibrated CP16 would create a good crisp image. The problem is stability. The CP ain't known for its good stability. A well maintained SR will be rock solid. 

On 2/26/2024 at 2:45 PM, Robert Houllahan said:

Yeah them CRTs got to be looking pretty crisped by now.

Yep, I can't even imagine. 

On 2/26/2024 at 2:45 PM, Robert Houllahan said:

Kind of difficult to keep them and even the Arrilaser machines running.

I can't imagine. We tried to make one work, totally failed. I'm beyond belief how bad they are designed. 

On 2/26/2024 at 2:45 PM, Robert Houllahan said:

Sony just came out with a new 4K x 3.5K Micro OLED I am trying to get my hands one one when they release them, of course they want to know how much volume you will be selling and that is not allot...

Good to know! Let me know when you know more. 

13 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

FotoKem would be the only lab with Celco Fury 65/15P recorders I would think.

IMAX themselves does the 15P recording actually. They have a fleet of Celco's. I'm not sure if Fotokem even screws with the 15P format recording unless it's just VFX shots going to negative. I think their CRT tube collection is fading fast and they really don't want to use them. 

10 minutes ago, Johnny Liu said:

Aside from the electronics difference - is the film transport/gate mechanism the same between Beaulieu 2016 and R16?  Does the R16 take as steady an image as the 2016?

It's a totally different camera outside of a single part of the movement, the camshaft. The original R16 doesn't even have the same drive mechanism, it uses a horrible gear drive that literally falls apart over time. The 2016 is a proper gear drive movement. 

On 2/24/2024 at 10:28 AM, Johnny Liu said:

I do like the idea of a Beaulieu 2016, but doing some quick Google searching, it looks like a camera that does not come up for sale very often.  I have though about maybe getting a Beaulieu R16 as they are more readily available (and I believe I have seen crystal sync add-ons available for this model).

 

Na, don't bother with the R16, entirely different camera. Just keep your eye open. The 2016 does show up now and again. 

21 hours ago, Johnny Liu said:

It seems that (from what I can see), theatrical releases are either 1.85:1 or 2.39:1.  Streaming releases are 16:9, which is 1.78:1, which is close to 1.85:1.  Ultra 16 is 1.85:1.  Super 16 is 1.66:1.  Thus, to get Super 16 footage converted to 1.85:1, you would have to crop off a little bit off the top and bottom anyways. 

I always wondered why people go down this path of "commercially acceptable" product in a world where 9 times out of 10, everyone's show will be presented on a streaming platform. Theatrical is such a dead medium, only the absolute top of the top tier films will ever get US releases anymore. So to pressure yourself into conforming to some theatrical standard, is just a useless waste of brain power. Also, there have been a few 1.67:1 native Super 16 mm releases. Jackie is the most notable of this and even on BluRay, it's got bars on the right and left, not top and bottom. It went global theatrical as well, all be it digitally. So it does not matter and frankly, formatting for 1.78:1 HD TV is what you'd wanna do anyway. You aren't cropping that much at all. The nice thing about a crop is that you have room to shift your frame around a bit, which is nice. So I actually prefer cropping over not cropping. 

21 hours ago, Johnny Liu said:

Thus, I am thinking that Ultra 16 is not so bad then.  Am I mistaken?

Ultra 16 is not really a "workable" format. It's kind of a gimmick. The concept is to use the area between the perfs, but that area isn't protected by the camera. So it can be damaged very easily by the camera. Also, because the lens isn't centered for Ultra, you will be getting unusual vignetting related to the Ultra format, you would not get on standard 16 as most standard 16mm lenses which are wider than 12mm will just barely cover the 16mm format. So if you use long lenses, it maybe ok, but the moment you go to zooms OR shorter than 12mm, then you're in trouble with any wider aspect ratio format using standard 16mm lenses. 

So yes, Ultra is a no-go for many reasons.

The CRT recorders can do upwards of 8k onto 15p. The problem is the length of time it takes to record each frame is exponentially more when you do 8k vs 4k. So most of the time, they just record out 4k. I don't remember how many recorders IMAX has, but it's quite a few. The problem is; once the CRT tubes are all used up, that's the end of that. There is currently no replacement for recording high res images to large format which even gets close to competing with the CRT models. They've tried new tubes, but they don't work as well. It's a real problem in the recording world honestly. I'm hoping the density of OLED gets better over time and switching over to an OLED solution would work well. Right now the only alternatives are LCD and they just don't have the dynamic range of the CRT's OR OLED displays. 

One more thing to note, very few films are "finished' in 8k anyway. So even if you COULD do an 8k record, who is actually doing the entire finishing process in 8k? Maybe Nolan? But anyone else? Doubtful. 

2 hours ago, Johnny Liu said:

Nice to know that the SR3 Advanced is very steady

If serviced. 

If not, it's pretty diabolically not steady. 

38 minutes ago, Samuel Preston said:

My sr3 advanced has a rock steady image with an unnoticeable amount of gate weave, but i’m not sure how an old sr compares directly with a bolex or beaulieu in terms of gate weave.

No comparison, a properly serviced SR3 will kill any of those Bolex/Beaulieu cameras. Heck, it'll kill a properly serviced Aaton as well!