Tyler Purcell

I mean the ASC Master Class is unique. 5 days with a few top cinematographers? Ask any questions ya want? Yes please. Most people I know, have friends who live in LA, couch surf for a week isn't the end of the world. Honestly, if I had the money, I would have done it myself. I just can't randomly blow that kind of dough on anything that isn't going to make a return on investment.

The master class at ASC is 5 days, with some of the top DP's in the US and it's only $3200 bux. So yea, this workshop does seem expensive.

You can't buy time, you can buy space! If ya wanna work in Hollywood, ya gotta kinda pay to play. What we got working now, is really good. The benefit of a better scanner, gets us nowhere financially sadly. The work would not change. A lot of scanners like the DFT machines, have an enclosure which is pressurized with compressed air. This way, it's anti-static controlled air BUT ALSO, there is much less chance of air from the outside getting into the scan and the image. We built a sealed box for the FF scanner, but we're still working on it! When we're happy, I will post! We make camera parts. Mostly accessories for Aaton and Eclair cameras. We plan on expanding that business before we expand the scanning business. Currently we have 5 Aaton parts in the works, 3 available to purchase. We have 1 eclair part and we have a bunch of new ones that are going to be finished when we get back from our trip this fall. Ya know, loop formers, magazine caps, replacement knobs and such. We are also making our own seals for magazines as well. Basic things that people damage that need to be replaced. Gotta live where the work is. Sadly, I'd say MOST of our business is word of mouth from locals. If we moved, even outside of LA county, we'd be dead in the water. It's why we're trying to expand the engineering aspects of the company. I think that's the future, building parts (machined metal) for film cameras. That unfortunately is the future. Starting on the ground level, will help us grow and then we can eventually move out of LA. I can't say anything sadly. Been sworn to secrecy!

Very odd, wanna send me a sample?

I got a lead on some, plz PM me.

Resolve works great, you just have to try different versions of the stabilizer. Each one has it's own unique look/feel. I use the "translation" one the most.

I really like the first season. I'll work on watching season two soon!

I've never had any issues in all the years of carrying film around, with getting it hand checked in the United States. I've been all over the country and I tell the TSA guy that I have something that needs to be hand checked and they begrudgingly always accept. I don't see why film has to run through the scanner at all if it's hand checked. The cans are sealed.

Many people who don't live in LA, don't understand the benefits. Yes, traffic sucks, hence the reason I rode motorcycles until covid. Honestly I'd rather be near great theaters, awesome food, mountains for hiking, ocean for scuba diving, thousands of other creatives to team up and work on projects, no snow/nice winters, no rust on anything, very few big storms. All the boutique businesses to support not just the film industry but also other recreational industries as well. The ability to go trail riding in the desert during the day and watch the sunset at the beach on your board. It's quite the place and unless you're stuck at home doing nothing. I have tried to move many times; Seattle, Bay Area, back to Boston where my parents are and now Denver area. But ya know what, every time we try, we realize that 80% of our business is from Los Angeles. If we move, we lose nearly everything. Also, all of the above things as well. Can you imagine getting parts for our BMW and KTM's? All internet only. That sucks, what if you screwed something up and you need it same day? I got 3 BMW parts distributors within a bicycle ride from my house. It's things like that, which kinda force people to stay here. When you have to leave all that convenience behind you, the benefits of moving kinda don't make sense. The benefits are limited and I know, I've lived in other places and after months of being away, I'm anxious to get back mainly due to work. We don't own property tho, it's way cheaper not to actually. Most of my friends who own houses, spend about as much as we do on rent, just keeping their property in tip top shape AND paying taxes. I would never own a house in So Cal.

So the jumping is very common with the K3. The ones I've owned (I've had 2 actually) the film did not fit well in the gate at all. The rails are fixed, with no lateral pressure on the film. If the pressure plate doesn't fit perfectly and hold the film in place, nothing really does. So what I did was polish the shit out of the pressure plate and increase the spring pressure. That way the film is held by something and it did help the issue. Also, those stupid loop formers need to be removed. Not sure what the light leak is, but I would assume it's from the door or the footage counter, which is very prone to leaking. Maybe nicked that when doing the S16 conversion. The seal sucks and it generally flashes the film like that.

Hey. So what is converting the composite standard definition signal to digital? That's most likely where your problem lies.

I work with scans from 6.5k Scan Stations all the time, HDR and SDR, it's amazing how good they are. I've found if we scan a certain way on the HDS+ 4k, we can get excellent dynamic range in the blacks, which is all you're really getting out of the HDR pass anyway. The Sony imager is really good, it has excellent DR in the blacks, which of course means the highlights when you invert the image. If I had the space, the work AND the money, I would 100% own a Scan Station. Honestly, we had some serious talks with them recently and they were very accommodating. I almost bought a used one recently for not much money and I was going to have them update the imager. But alas, we keep on getting bogged down by limited space. It's a big problem when you also do so many other things. We have one workspace for camera repair only, one workplace for soldering/board work, which we also use as our assembly table for manufacturing. We have two desks for computer workstations for editorial/restoration. Then we have the scanner, which has it's own entire bench for the machine itself, clean box (we have a pressurized vessel the scanner goes in), all the parts and accessories. We've got a huge 3D printer workspace as well, which soon will have a 2nd machine just for production. We even have a film re-work table with splicers, rewinds and a viewer. Imagine all of that in your home, plus a 10x10 storage unit internal which is FULL of production equipment. It's kinda unsustainable, but it's inexpensive for Los Angeles. Ya learn over time living here, that finding a diamond in the rough is not easy and when you do, ya gotta keep it. So even though our space is jam packed, it's livable. The Scan Station would be an impossibility as it's profile is 2x larger than our current scanner. So hopefully the new HDS replacement, whatever it's called, will be a marketable improvement and we'll just have to "upgrade" with them.

Yea inconsistencies with the process will alter the tint just slightly. Ours was very green. I think some peoples vision varies of course and slight differences in color, effect some people, but not others. I know what B&W is supposed to look like and many people don't have that "instant" reference in their mind ya know?

Depends on the look you're going after, most of my friends use 81's these days.

Don't have room. We would have to expand into a bigger facility and that adds cost we can't really afford right now. Besides, I'd rather have a scan station. It doesn't make sense to buy another narrow gauge only scanner when ours works now that we've done the mods.

If the film all came from the same source and is the same stock, one roll test should be fine. 15 years is a lot, but if it was stored below 50 degrees for all the time, it maybe ok. We've tried freezing film long term and it does survive better, but not much. The difference is negligible, but deep freezers are cheaper and that's what most of us use for long term storage. Heck, I keep all my new film in the deep freeze anyway. My guess is, it'll have a lot of fog and fail the test, but that doesn't mean it's unusable, especially if it's a lower ISO like 50 or 100. If it's 500T or something, it'll be horribly grainy even if shot at a lower ISO.

The industry really only uses the four main Kodak Vision stocks. There are no other commercial stocks available for color negative today. What stock you use, is really based on the sensitivity range and grain structure. It's pretty self explanatory which stocks would have more sensitivity and less grain. There are only four to chose from ranging from 50D to 500T. It's not like the past where you had choices.

Should be fine, the new X ray machines are much better.

There is a pin that locks into the underbody of the camera which locks it in place on the XTR's and SR's.

Usually this OR prints made very fast for broadcast.

Engineering is the easy part. Making the part is the hard part. We probably will manufacture some kits for FF users. But unfortunately, in order to make our kit work, we had FF give us a few developer pieces which most users won't have. So if we were to make kits, we'd have to make those as well, which would greatly increase the cost sadly. Lasergraphics will still make a superior scanner no matter what. It's down to cost then and we'll see if FF can keep the cost low AND deliver a good product.

We've had similar issues with magnetic soundtrack. Vitafilm is a great start. Buy a container. Stick the film in a can/bucket not much larger than the roll itself and fill it with vitafilm. Then just let it sit. It's a lubricant and it will slowly start to seep into the actual emulsion itself. This should help considerably, but I will warn you, I haven't tried it with magnetic film yet, just optical film. I would google search and research if it will damage soundtrack. It may not do anything to the soundtrack because it's not "emulsion" and it can't absorb it. But that's the substance everyone uses and it works to fix sticky film like this. Since it's actual image too, you can't just bake it, which is what you'd do with full coat. I'm pretty sure it will damage the picture elements when you do that. The other thing is, depending on how fragile the picture element is, the stiction of the magnetic track may not even allow the film to unwind. I've seen this as well, where the film is so brittle before Vitafilm, that it just tears where the soundtrack is. Quite common on poorly stored magnetic super 8 film. So yea, recap. Vitafilm for picture elements. Do some research.

That's crazy, but it makes sense. Just run it through a machine that is real time sending it to DVD. It's the lowest cost, but in no way is it "restoring" the film at all.

It's getting bigger, they've got stages now and quite a bit of crew.