Tyler Purcell

FYI; The Film Photography project has been pretty successful at recovering VFN and older A/G Ektachrome. Not something I would use for a project, but still cool to know.

This is 2025, there is no "modern" application for this. JPEG2000 in 2025 are using different wrappers like; .mj2, .mjp2, .j2c, etc. I'm certain you can dig up some software written in 2002 that uses an .MP4 wrapper. Nobody is encoding that today with modern software unless they're using some sort of antique engine.

MP4 is a container, but it also directly dictates the type of media within the container. An MP4 must contain an MPEG variant within. Sure, you could theoretically use HEVC .h265 as well, but for the most part HEVC's are MXF format (media exchange format).

Yea, weren't they only used for the initial tests before Mitchell made the elephant ear cameras and then those older initial cameras were used for Technirama.

16S is a pretty heavy camera and it's not really friendly for run and gun. Things like the separate battery pack really suck. There is really no comparison, the 16S, M and S/B are commercial cameras designed right after the war and released in the early 1950's. They were designed for commercial production and even though they did make a little shoulder bracket for it, they really suck for handheld work, right up there with the worst cameras for hand held ever made. So unless you're on a tripod and mind you, a tripod that can hold a cement brick due to the weight, it's really not an option.

If you need the ability to get your focus, then you need reflex. People are recommending the dogleg reflex cameras, but sadly they aren't great and it'll be hard to find something that's been serviced. 16mm isn't a "cost savings" format anymore, this ain't the 1980's. If you want to actually shoot material that comes out acceptable, you'll probably spend more servicing a low-cost lens and body, vs buying a better camera up front. I mean just 1 roll of 100ft film, raw stock, processing, prep/clean and 4k scan, will run you over $100 dollars. So if you're trying to save money on the body, do you actually have money to shoot anything? You have to think of that first, do the math on how much it costs to make movies and see if it's something you can even afford to begin with. There are a lot of good cameras in the under $1k range, but if you're running and gunning, without potentially a light meter, which is something I run into a lot, then your choices are limited. Where it's true, some Bolex cameras had a light meter, it was the Japanese cameras like the Canon Scoopic which cemented the integrated meter for prosumer cameras. Beaulieu R16 has a built in meter as well, but they're not as reliable as the Scoopic. The Scoopic is also a small camera, which is easy to load, has reflex viewfinder, has a decent integrated lens AND can do some high speed stuff as well. You can literally load it and with that one single device, go out and shoot without worrying about what lens you have attached or what exposure you're choosing. I don't know of another inexpensive system that works like that, with that sort of confidence in final image. Any of those other options like wind up Bolex'es with doglegs and such, none of that is a good option in the long run. You will be very disappointed.

Ya know, I always thought the same thing, then I researched.

MP4 or (AVC part 10) encoding is identical to .h264. So just use the .h264 encoder in Resolve and simply change the wrapper ID (rename .mov to .mp4) and you should be fine. Where I don't do many 1080p outputs anymore, if you set resolve to automatic, it does a great job with .h264 outputs. Retaining the grain with a .h264 file is challenging, if not impossible because the LONG-GOP compression system used, its entire job is to "ignore" that doesn't move much. I find pre-sharpening the output just a tiny bit and then encoding it with Resolve, to a pretty decent representation of the grain however. You'll never get the color accuracy tho, it's always going to be 8 bit 4:2:0 with .h264. HEVC or .h265, can do 10 bit 4:2:2 in resolve, but good luck getting that file to playback anywhere. I've had nothing but problems working with those files even on powerful Apple Silicon systems. At least the .h264 variant works fine and you gotta remember, no consumer streaming service (YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox, google drive etc) can stream in 10 bit 4:2:2 anyway, they're all transcoding to AV1.

Oh in 1961 it probably was the same camera system Hitchcock used with the blimp, which used 2000ft loads. So yea, it was not that loud actually but man did it require one heck of a dolly! hahah 😛

Yea I guess good point. I'm so use to seeing stuff on 70mm, I basically only go out of the house for film prints. We've seen 2 already this year and those are the only 2 movies I've seen in the theater. Yeah, I bet the projection was great. Ours was very good, stable and sharp. I think a lot of 70mm shops generally do a good job maintaining their equipment. Many of my friends in the UK vastly prefer the BFI screening room over other places.

Well considering its mostly 3 perf with 500T, it doesn't really get more grainy then that unless you push 500T 2 stops like PT did in Phantom Thread. So you didn't see the difference in sharpness and grain structure between the vista vision shots and the 3 perf shots?

This was never the case until last year. Corporate wanted to charge more for color negative. In the MP division negotiations with corporate, they came to the conclusion that if they raised the prices of B&W to match that of color negative, they could help compensate and keep the color negative price the same for another year or two. With the US tariffs in place, film will certainly start to increase once Kodak needs to buy more silver, which will start to go up in price.

If you buy from Kodak, it comes directly off a professional show. Also, NC (non conforming) is new/sealed and they have lots of it in stock right now. Pricing is around $.68/ft for over 6 month old stock, properly stored.

There is "A" camera around, but no post workflow from my understanding, making the format useless. So I doubt he will actually do that. There isn't one, it's a very loud camera. System 65 has both MOS (3 bodies working) and Sync sound (2 bodies working) over at Panavision. The sound bodies are pretty quiet, like under 30db.

Yes, PT Anderson will nab that with his next film which is nearly entirely shot on VV with a proper 70mm print.

Well, nearly all the BTS images have an 235 or Arricam in them. I only saw 5 BTS pictures out of all the press stuff, with a vista vision camera in it. When watching the movie, I only counted 12 shots that were CLEARLY vista vision. The rest of the film looked like 3 perf. We have a hunch, the reason why is because they couldn't afford to do a real 70mm record, so they recorded to 4 perf 35mm and then blew up that to 70mm. The 70mm print was extremely grainy, in no way did it really represent the source, but the VV shots were night and day sharper than the 3 perf ones.

Where I may not like the film because the director simply gave a middle finger to the audience (more on that later), I have to say Lol did a great job. It was really nice listening to him talk about his life story in a recent podcast, where he went over his oh so humble beginnings, basically admitting that without his mate Bradly, he'd probably be nowhere. I felt that interview alone was worth the statue. I like down to earth people who simply do good work and you've gotta admit, he did excellent work on the Brutalist. Heck, Vox Lux was also well shot too. I think the "vista vision" aspect helped sell it to the academy, even though a lot of the film was shot on 3 perf 35mm. It's still horribly unfortunate the film is missing its 3rd act and it felt like a middle finger to the audience who waited for nearly 4 hours to find out what happens. Bradly knew he wasn't going to win director or picture, probably because he was so stubborn and simply refused to shoot at least a 15 minute scene that fulfills the audiences desires. I think had he just done a good job wrapping it up, maybe trimmed some fat and never even attempted to shoot that atrocious epilogue, he probably would have received a best picture win AND global distribution. It's frustrating when filmmakers think they are gods and can do no wrong. I hope Bradly learns from this and his next film, has a damn 3rd act. By the way Vox Lux was the same and was viciously panned by everyone for similar reasons. The only saving grace of the Brutalist was the phenomenal acting across the board and the cinematography.

I'm confused, you think black and white should be MORE than color? Fresh/new Kodak Vision 3 35mm stock I believe is $.79 cents a foot. So why would you buy some odd-ball black and white stock from Germany for substantially more? Re-canned means never exposed. It means the film was loaded into a magazine and unloaded, put right back in the can. Kodak Hollywood (somewhere you can order from throughout the world) also offers something called "NC" or Non Conforming. These are rolls which are over 6 months old that didn't sell. 50D is very easy to get as NC, you sometimes get 200T as well. I've purchased tens of thousands of NC can's from Kodak over the years. They are good as fresh.

$1193 dollars for 1000ft of black and white negative? That's $1.193 per foot, for black and white negative?!?! Kodak Hollywood, sells brand new Vision 3 color negative for discount, you can normally get it for HALF that price as re-can or NC (non conforming) loads.

People were abusing the discount system for film and buying in bulk (largest orders of 35mm for non-registered production was 5k feet prior) and then selling to companies using it to make bulk still film. Kodak's parent company Alaris, was started as a pension fund repository post bankruptcy. They handle still film in the US. With the increasing competition from companies selling MP film as still, Alaris was not doing well financially. They were purchased recently and I'm not sure if in that deal, they Kodak MP was forced to make changes or what, but clearly they DID make changes to try and push Alaris film rather than simply re-packing MP. Corporate bean pushers, have been trying to push prices on MP film up to where still film is foot per foot. The MP division leaders have been pushing back for years now and this sort of move, is what will keep MP prices where they are. We have to all be extremely thankful someone is looking out for us, otherwise MP film would be WAY too expensive.

Ah yea, that may be it. They don't have the same support people outside of the US. They have offices in different countries to deal with support and maybe different laws apply.

Yea, 15:1 is excessive for raw, you'll see problems if you're moving the camera around a lot. I learned you have to shoot in pretty much full imager to get the best out of these cameras.

Wait, so it's under warranty? That's very odd. I mean it's their prerogative to get it fixed. Are you based in the US?

I just dealt with BMD support for 2 cases, they properly diagnosed them and replaced the products. I don't think they "fix" the internals of the monitors, it's a wholesale replacement and if it's out of warranty, there isn't much they can do. BMD have been working on resolving this issue with future products, by making them easier to service. This way consumers can simply buy parts to replace broken ones. So in the future, this may be a moot point, but for now, they generally replace like for like, which is why they told ya to buy a new monitor.

Oh the pulldown claw is made for BH only, so it'll just become a big hole punch.