Stuart Brereton

Ah, film snobs. Gotta love 'em.

This is not as clever as you think it is.

So anyone who disagrees with your subjective opinion is in denial of basic facts? That’s a rather arrogant and close minded stance for a student to take.

There are significant numbers of well known cinematographers who would disagree.

The year is 2249, and cinematographers gather for the annual Film vs. Digital debate, now in its 241st year...

It may depend on whether they've done that particular rehousing before. If they haven't, and they have to prototype it first, it's going to cost more. I'd imagine there's not that many people rehousing 16mm Kinetals these days. It may be worth talking to Les Bosher in the UK. He offers a "jacketing" service for some Cooke lenses that would probably work out cheaper than a full rehousing.

That sounds like a pretty reasonable quote. Is that GL Optics? Most of the US/UK/EU vendors would be asking a lot more.

As well as reduced contrast and increased flares and halation, you’ll find that the uncoated lenses are no longer as fast as the aperture might suggest, unless the aperture ring has been adjusted to compensate for the less efficient light transmission.

Nice work, Phil

That appears to be a flash umbrella, so there’d be no way of mounting it to most continuous sources, because it doesn’t have an opening in the back of it. You’d need to use a lamp with an umbrella bracket (like a photoflex starlite). Generally, with cheap gear, it will not be as well made or as durable as professional equipment. Soft boxes do take a beating because of constant assembling/disassembling. The cheap ones also rarely have an identifiable type of diffusion on the front, it’s generally just some form of white nylon. You may be able to find proper replacements from a company like Chimera if they’re in standard sizes, but they won’t be cheap.

Started well, but got progressively sillier. 30 minutes too long.

It’s not a problem. Not all film magazines require a take up core anyway. Arri SRs had collapsible cores in them. Just make sure the can is labeled “no core”.

I'm certainly not trying to blame Roger Deakins for 2049's problems. His work is beautiful, and I'm sure it's exactly what Villeneuve wanted, it's just, for me, it's not Blade Runner. Yes, I'm not suggesting that he is dogmatic about a 'clean' image, but I think his basic philosophy starts from that point.

Deakins work is generally very clean. He uses only the sharpest lenses, doesn’t use filtration, dislikes grain, hates lens flares or other artifacts. Compare that with Paul Cameron who was lighting a very similar world in Total Recall. Cameron used old anamorphic glass, which had been modded to increase halation and lens flares. He actively embraced the flaws of the anamorphic design. In his previous work with Tony Scott, the handcranking, double exposure and cross processing all demonstrate a willingness to degrade the image in artistic ways. It might be sacrilege to say so, but I think he would have been a better choice to create a world for BR2049 that was consistent with the original.

I agree, it seems way too clean to be a part of the same world as the original BR. Prometheus and Covenant suffered from the same problem with regards to the Alien "world". With all three films I found myself wishing for a bit more grit and dirt in the design, and even film grain for texture. That's not to say that digital formats can't provide that. Paul Cameron's work on Total Recall, particularly the early scenes, looks wonderfully grimy and textured.

You mean like the Alexa Studio? The camera that everyone asked for, but very few used?

The problem has always been maintaining the pixel pitch that gives Alexa its sensitivity and dynamic range, while trying to squeeze ever more pixels onto a s35 sized sensor. They'd already increased the sensor size as far as they could and still reasonably call it Super 35, so I guess they must have solved it another way.

This makes perfect sense for TV production and VOD. They should have done it years ago.

David, I was really just making a joke about the numerous opinions and sometimes esoteric ways people describe ‘light’. Much as I love using tungsten, I’ve never thought of it as having texture.

But Phil, Tungsten looks better. It just does. Is this an opinion? Yes. Can I provide evidence? No. Will I argue this point forever? Absolutely. ?

Usually, Muslin is used as a bounce material. Roger Deakins uses it a lot, sometimes with HMI lamps (usually bleached muslin), sometimes with tungsten (unbleached Muslin). It's a lovely soft light, without any specular quality, like you sometime get from harder bounces like griffolyn. You can also light through it, but it takes a lot of light to do it. Robert Richardson did this on Snow Falling On Cedars, but he was using maxi-brutes and dinos to do it. It's a very inefficient use of light. I doubt there are many LED units on the market that have enough punch to push through muslin.

My local lens tech likes to relubricate the helicals with a high viscosity grease. Being thicker, it offers more protection to the threads, at the expensive of it being slightly harder to turn the barrel.

Union feature rates vary greatly depending on what production Tier the budget is in. There isn't really a 'typical' union rate for anything. Under the Low Budget agreement (Tiers 1-3), which makes up a large chunk of union feature work, an assistant editor would make around $2100 a week on a Tier 3 movie. An editor would make $3600. On Tiers 1 & 2, the rates would be substantially lower.

If the lens has a filter thread, you could try stretching the net over the front of the lens, then screwing in an appropriately sized skylight filter. If not, try rubber bands.

Looks like a Manfrotto stand. Probably a heavy duty baby stand with a lighting boom on it.