Tyler Purcell

3 hours ago, Raaf Sundquist said:

I know you love the Beaulieu 2016 quartz but I note that while you mentioned it, you didn't recommend it on this thread. 

Is this because they are so difficult to find?

Yea, the 2016 is IMPOSSIBLE to find actually, more rare than any other good 16mm camera I've seen. Plus the pricing would be way too much for the OP, who clearly is looking for an entry level system. I would never suggest the 2016 to anyone who isn't specifically ok with waiting 2 - 3 years for one to pop up AND requires the special functionality that camera has such as a good built-in light meter, standard c mount lens operation, 80fps, crystal sync, Forward/Reverse operation, 200ft magazine, actual mirror reflex design, etc. I absolutely love mine and have been on many adventures with it around the country, but it's very much a specific camera for a specific task; the run and gun 16mm filmmaker who needs more than just a consumer camera quality. The Scoopic is a very good camera that I recently started recommending because frankly, there are so few options like it on the market today. Back when you could get an EBM for $500 bux, it was a no-brainer to buy an EBM or an EL. However, with the crazy pricing today, it's clear the Scoopic wins in so many categories. For $800 bux it's probably (though unfortunately) the best deal today. A camera I have glossed over in the past because there were far better options for not much more money in the past. 

7 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

Thanks Perry, agree 100%. 

Of course you agree, you don't know that Perry is full of shit. 

6 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Incorrect information has to be corrected or else it flourishes. 

No incorrect words were stated. An incorrect word is the opposite of the truth.

An "omission" like .h265 can also be wrapped into an MP4, is not an incorrect in any way. It's an omission because it's not relevant to the conversation, nor would I have even suggested it. 

This comment, is in no way shape or form incorrect, according to my over 30 years in the industry, wikipedia AND Chat GPT. 

On 3/7/2025 at 2:12 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

MP4 or (AVC part 10) encoding is identical to .h264.

Here is the textbook explanation of the .MP4 wrapper directly from Wikipedia. You will notice the terminology I used, matches the terminology in the Wikipedia explanation. 

The history of the wrapper is thus; 

6 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

I mentioned JPEG2000 as an example of a codec MP4 supports that's not an MPEG variant after you said that any codec in MP4 has to be MPEG of some flavor.

This has nothing to do with modern encoding of media, which is what the OP will be using. In fact, if you research Part 12 and 14, you will find the ISO 14496-12 to be depreciated as of 2017, thus it most likely was someone looking to patent something for their own product that never took off. Heck, even under the JPEG2000 page, it only denotes MP4 once, by saying in the past there was a variant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000#JPEG_2000_image_coding_system_–_Parts

The fact you felt you needed to correct me as some sort of "win" based on outdated information that has no validity in modern times, is truly the problem. 
 

6 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

You also say that H.265 in MP4 is "theoretically" possible. Well, it's more than theoretical. Have a look at this screen shot, taken from Resolve 19's deliver window. These are the codecs Resolve supports on MP4 export on the Mac.

Yes, in some software like Resolve it's possible, in other software like Premiere (not media encoder), it's not so cut and dry. 

So it's "theoretically" possible, if you have the proper software. It would NOT be possible, without the proper software, which is why it's theoretical and not fact. 

7 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

People read things in a forum like this, and assume they're correct, because most of the folks posting here know what they're talking about. Incorrect information has to be corrected or else it flourishes. 

Perry, you have zero interest in the truth, if you did you wouldn't say straight BS like this; 

On 3/10/2025 at 8:58 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

MP4 can also contain .....  and even ProRes (MPEG4-Part12/ISO Media) is MP4, among other codecs. 

You didn't once respond to the OP. You came on here, saw I responded, did not like the omission and the copy and paste from Wikipedia and thought you'd denigrate my responses with a total wash of nonsense that doesn't help anyone. It's like you need to stroke your ego, but none of your response has anything to help the OP, zero percent. So you were only here to denigrate me, nothing else, just me. 

So the bastion of getting it right, basically is discussing hacks and old methodologies that are long out of date, to prove a point that someone else on this group is wrong. You have no interest in the truth, because if you did, then you wouldn't go around bullshitting everyone here as if you have a doctorate in the subject. Furthermore, your response hasn't helped anyone. It hasn't furthered this conversation one bit. 

For what it's worth, not even Chat GPT agrees with your assessment. 

1 hour ago, George Hill said:

Ok this makes a lot of sense because I was rewatching one of the films I’m taking a lot of inspiration from and there are tons and tons of handheld shots on the arri, and I like that there are minimal electronics. Plus it seems like they are selling for similar prices as the scoopic right now? Which is weird considering what you guys are saying about the quality.  

A lot of people get confused watching BTS of old stuff and wondering why they used the equipment they did. With older stuff, the reason why is simply because nothing else existed and/or it was the best package at the time they could afford. The image quality coming out of a Scoopic vs 16S will be negligible unless both cameras have been serviced, especially the lenses. Remember, today these are very old cameras. The 16S is from the 1950's and the Scoopic 1970's. So just because you see something on film and say "wow that looks amazing, I want that" doesn't mean the quality of the kit you'll purchase is anything like that. We also have more options today than ever before honestly, so many great cameras to choose from. 

As a documentary filmmaker, someone who shoots on 16mm nearly exclusively AND a professionally trained camera tech, I have a very unique knowledge base and I have run into so many people like you, looking to start out with something and what to go with. I find the vast majority of people who start out heavy/large, never use their cameras. Those who start out light/small, use them all the time. It's the same with cinema cameras, would you shoot with an Alexa Classic over a Komodo X? You'd probably grab the Komodo for most things because it's so small. It's an enabler to help get you out and shoot more. It's why I bought a Beaulieu 2016 even though I have 2 XTR Prod packages, because I want to go out and shoot stuff without the bulk of the XTR"s and that Beaulieu is an enabler. It's why I still have ANY super 8 cameras, a format I have denigrated and relegated to BS work, but still shoot from time to time because the cameras are so darn small. They enable me to go out and shoot things in places, I simply can't take a 16mm camera. 

So in the end, there is a lot to think about and it not quite as simple as "that camera looked great" the "look" itself is the stock (most of the time long been since discontinued) the coloring of the film, sometimes even the unusual lens or even filters, which create the entire look of the finished product. It's not SO cut and dry with motion picture. 

1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

All I'm doing here is pointing out a mistake. Of course the primary codec used in MP4 these days is H264/AVC. But it's not the only codec, which is what you were saying above. Words matter. 

Yep, I'm certain all of us use words that 20 years ago had a different meaning than today. 

15 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

That is irrelevant. I used it as an example of a codec that can live in an MP4 wrapper because once again, for the record, you stated that "MP4 or (AVC part 10) encoding is identical to .h264." Which it is not. 

Please, that's like saying Pro Res can be in an JP2 wrapper. Give everyone a break. 

20 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

There are labs that will attempt to get a b/w negative image but it's uncertain and expensive and it's meant for old exposed films- you'd hardly take a chance shooting on them now.

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. 

5 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Again, No. For example, MPEG-4 Part 12 can contain JPEG2000. 

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. 

On 3/8/2025 at 11:04 AM, Fabian Schreyer said:

I am not sure if I understand you correctly. You did research and found out that MP4 is not a container format but instead equals to h264 encoding?

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). 

On 3/8/2025 at 12:35 PM, David Mullen ASC said:

This article says that Paramount converted some 3-strip Technicolor bodies to VistaVision but that the Mitchell elephant ear camera was a separate camera:

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. 

1 hour ago, George Hill said:

One of my favorite ski films was shot on the arri 16s, how different is the quality between that and the scoopic and in what way? 

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. 

1 hour ago, Fabian Schreyer said:

MP4 is a container format for digital media. While the container can, of course, contain H.264 encoded material, the use of MP4 says absolutely nothing about which encoder was actually used.

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. 

19 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I wonder how they got around what must have been a pretty noisy camera. Think about it: all that 35mm whizzing through horizontally with those wide frames. And not a physically huge camera apart from the slightly awkward sideways configuration of the mags.

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 😛

11 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

Sure, there were some clear differences, but that's not how I watch a film. I am rather out of practice though having only seen three or four films at the cinema in the last 20 years, the last 2 in 70mm.

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.

11 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

I am a fan of brutalism though so maybe I made allowances. That said, the interval countdown shot was like looking at a picture in a gallery. The BFI haven't forgotten how to do 5/70.

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. 

12 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

The one I saw wasn't. Not as sharp as "Oppenheimer" but you couldn't expect that from mixed elements.

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? 

8 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Even when buying from Kodak, B&W isn’t cheaper than color neg: https://www.kodak.com/content/products-brochures/Film/Kodak-Motion-Picture-Products-Price-Catalog-EAMER.pdf

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. 

9 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

There’s no warranty that the previous owner correctly stored the film, that the film hasn’t been x-rayed at some airport, that the previous owner  didn’t accidentally already exposed it to light/dust/sand/… etc..

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. 

12 hours ago, Geffen Avraham said:

I also hear that Corbet will be making his next feature on 8/65.

There is "A" camera around, but no post workflow from my understanding, making the format useless. So I doubt he will actually do that. 

12 hours ago, Geffen Avraham said:

Oh, how nice it would be to have a quiet self-blimped 865 camera... Nolan would never have to switch aspect ratios again.

There isn't one, it's a very loud camera. 

12 hours ago, Geffen Avraham said:

Anyone know how loud a System 65 is at 32fps, as a reference for whether this is possible?

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. 

4 hours ago, Geffen Avraham said:

If I'm not wrong, the title of "first all-Vista film in 50+ years" is still up for the taking. There were 19 years between Hamlet and The Hateful Eight without any all-65mm narrative features, but Vista is coming back from a much longer hiatus.

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

4 hours ago, Geffen Avraham said:

Do we know if all the dialogue closeups were shot on 3-perf, or did they ever use a blimp?

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. 

56 minutes ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

And comparing prices of color negative with B&W does make as much sense as comparing the prices of a BYD with a Lamborghini - especially when one of them is re-caned (=„used“).

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. 

6 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

You can also buy your films directly from OrWo (e.g. https://www.orwo.shop/products/orwo-un54-35mm ) or Foma (e.g. https://fomaobchod.cz/en/blackwhitenegativefilms/perforatedfilms-meters/fomapan20035mm50bm-metraz[11340]?ItemIdx=22 )

$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.