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Stuart Brereton

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Everything posted by Stuart Brereton

  1. Actually handcranks are making a comeback - just ask Tony Scott....
  2. I'd go with varying grades of tobacco filters, combined with tobacco grads for the sky when your action allows you to use them. Sepia might work as well, depending on your taste. Some uncorrected overexposure might help with a sun-baked, otherworldly look, too. Unless you've got lots of time for testing, I'd be tempted to just go part of the way in-camera, and finish the look in post.
  3. If you're struggling for exposure, and there is no movement in the frame other than the road, you could of course shoot at 12fps and drive half as fast. You may even get away with 6fps.
  4. If you're shooting at night, where most of your frame is in darkness and the only thing which is lit is the road surface (which is probably dark grey) then all of your scene information is exposing on the toe of the characteristic curve of the stock. This means that you are exposing only the biggest grains in the film. If you decide to 'print up' to lighten the dark area a little, you will just increase the grain in the picture. By overexposing, you are placing the scene info much higher up the curve. This means that you will have additional shadow information, and less grain. When you get to telecine, you just 'print down' to however dark you want it. Lenses are often not their best wide open. Contrast and apparent sharpness can suffer. In this instance that's probably not too much of an issue as your subject (the road) will be moving past camera at some speed, and any slight lack in sharpness will be hidden in the motion blur.
  5. What lenses do you have available to you? Car headlamps are PAR designs and have a considerable output in the centre of their beam. Take your lightmeter out one evening and meter them. With 200T and some fast lenses you should be OK, particularly if you're not bothered about seeing too much outside the beams. If you can, overexpose your stock. A night shoot with only black tarmac (or blacktop) illuminated will cause you problems if you decide to 'print up' for any reason.
  6. I think it was actually Burt Lancaster in the film, but you're right, it had a lot of poolside scenes, each different in tone as the main characters' mental state deteriorated. I remember the film being very good. It was also 'homaged' by Levi Strauss in one of their 501 commercials from the 80's.
  7. For PAL monitors, switch the camera to bars, then adjust the brightness control on the monitor so that the Black bar on the right of screen matches the screen surround. Then you need to switch the monitor to Blue Only. The switch for this is usually bottom left. The display will change to black & white bars. Use the Chroma control to adjust the left most black bar so that it matches the surrounding screen, then use the Contrast control to make the extreme left bar White. Switch off the Blue Only, and your monitor should be properly lined up.
  8. Bugger. I knew you'd say something like that :-) I was hoping that there might be rule of thumb that could be applied (roughly), but never mind.... Thanks anyway, Dominic.
  9. John or Dominic, How far off from the reference densities can film be and still be usable? By usable I mean correctable in TK to intercut with fresh stock. I know that this is a hard question to answer, and it's also the question that labs err on the side of caution with, but Dominic described the densities that Adam quoted as being 'not borderline, but BAD'. So, what is borderline, and where does it change to bad? Is there a rough rule of thumb that can be applied? I promise not to hold you responsible for your answers ;-)
  10. Do you mean having very underexposed areas in the frame, or generally underexposing the neg? Your dark, underlit location could have small lit areas which are at key level, surrounded by huge areas of shadow, or it could be lit with less contrast and underexposed by 3 stops. The important thing is to get your key lights at the level you want them, be it on stop, or 3 stops under. If you heavily underexpose your key lights, and then decide later that you overdid it and print up, you'll start to see grain in the shadows. I'd shoot some tests of faces etc with varying degrees of underexposure. Pick the one you like,then when you light the location set your keylights to that level and let the shadows fall away into black.
  11. I'll second that! HD is not some magic format that always looks fantastic straight out of the camera! All programmes need grading, particularly promos.
  12. If you want to be equipped for that fickle director, you're going to need those lenses and all that grip equipment regardless of what format you shoot. There is no reason why a 35mm kit has to be any more complex than an HD kit. An Arri IIIC with a couple of mags and a decent zoom is no more complicated and just as capable as a basic HD kit. Let's not have this turn into another Film vs Video debate. The question at hand was whether either format was a suitable investment for a startup company.
  13. Deals differ, but I often get transfers done during the day at a very reputable post house in Soho, with a real colorist, not a runner, for less than £300 per hour. Obviously they don't do this for everyone, but that's the whole point of a deal - it's whatever you can negotiate.
  14. Ballpark figures for shooting 16mm: Camera hire £500 a day (although there are ALWAYS deals to be had) Stock £90.00 per 400' roll (11 minutes running time @ 25fps) Processing £0.12 per foot Telecine £250 - £750 per hour depending on location, machine and facility. Say you shoot a promo in one day, with 6 rolls of stock, and Telecine in a cheaper facility 3 hrs @ £300ph Camera £500 Stock £540 Processing £288 Telecine £900 Total £2228.00 For HD: Camera £800 per day (again there are always deals) Stock £45.00 per 40 min tape Downconversions to SD £150.00 pr hour Grade and Colour Correction £250 - £750 per hour The same promo on HD Camera £800 Stock £90 Downconversion £250 Grade £600 Total £1740 There's a lot that could be wrong with these figures, but they're close enough to get some idea.
  15. In this country the competition is between 16mm and HD. They are much closer in terms of both quality and costs. Although it's true that there are 35mm promos made in this country, it's a very small group of artists who have the budget for it, certainly not enough to build a business around. If you're talking about larger budget promos (£20k+) then it's going to be either 16mm or HD. They both have their advantages, but film is preferred for its' cachet. But, as I've said, they are both huge investments if you want to own the kit, and I don't believe that promos will provide you with enough regular work to make the risk worth taking. If you're determined to buy, then you need to figure out other ways of keeping the camera working, so you're not totally reliant on a rather fickle market.
  16. I've got to be very careful how I answer this - I don't want to start another Film vs. Video argument ;-) HD cameras, like the CineAlta, in Progressive mode, well set up, and well lit, can look very similar to film. They are commonly believed to have a resolution somewhere between 16mm and 35mm, although they lack exposure latitude and color information compared to film. These are not the reasons why top-flight promos use film rather than HD. That is about Prestige. Film has a notion of quality and expense about it, which even these days, when HD is making great advances, still remains. As for which Film camera to buy, money no object? 16mm: Arri SR3 Advanced shooting kit £100k ish 35mm: Arri 435 shooting kit £250k ish Ultimately, if you're basing your income projection purely on promos, there is no point in buying a camera in this price range. I would love to buy myself an older Arri SR, but even at second hand prices it's hard to justify the expense for a camera that you might use twice a month. Now, if you're shooting episodic TV or a long running Doco or something, then you can get back a large part of your investment fairly quickly, otherwise rent, rent, rent, and spend the money you've saved on kit that you can use no matter what format you end up shooting on.
  17. Most UK promos are shot on s16. A few are 35mm. If you find American videos to look sharper that because far more of them are shot on 35mm. 35mm is 'better' than HD in just about every way. It's also much more expensive. As far your investment goes, let's say you spend £80k on a basic package. If you do two promos a month, two day shoot, that's 48 days a year, or £1666 a day for your camera if you average over one year. Renting a camera would probably cost you less than half that. Two promos a month might not sound like much, but it's a lot of work for just two people, assuming that you can even get that much work. £40k promos do not grow on trees any more, and the competition for them is fierce. I don't own a camera, but friends of mine do, and they reckon they need 2 days per WEEK, not per month to make the camera pay for itself. If you can do that, then that's one less thing to worry about, but you'll still have to deal with the fact that with bigger budgets, record labels want film, not HD. Sorry to sound so negative, but basing an investment on projected returns from promos is a dangerous game at the moment...
  18. This is an issue which I often have to deal with, as Music promos form a large part of my work. My first question would have to be: Why buy a camera? In the UK, top end promos are shot on 35mm. Lower down the ladder, around the £30-50K region, people shoot Super 16. There is still a huge demand for film in the promo world. In my experience, any time a budget gets above about £10k, the label will be expecting you to shoot film, and you will have a hard time convincing them otherwise. It's not that s16 is better than HD, it's just that's their mindset. Budgets are being squeezed all the time, and the new arrival of HDV has added yet another variable to the mix. I guess what I'm trying to say is with numerous different formats competing for ever-decreasing budgets, I would be very wary of saddling myself with a £50k + camera that I couldn't guarantee to keep working.
  19. Bear in mind that any lab doing clip tests on recanned stock will be extremely conservative about what they say is usable or not. Understandably, they don't want to get blamed for any problems you might have. If you are going through telecine, you will have a greater range of 'saveable' stock than if you planned to go to print.
  20. Stephen, The shipping was about $80. There was no import duty. All in, for 1 4x3 Softbox, and 1 5' 'Octolume' it was about $160 or £90. I hate it when the shipping is more than the item, but it was still a very good deal. The softbox comes with an eggcrate, two baffles and various light shaping louvres. I believe Chimera charge about £300 for their equivalent softbox, and another £75 for the speedring :-(
  21. There is an in-depth discussion of these issues here: www.cinematography.net/Pages%20DW/ShootingPublicEvents.htm
  22. I don't know if we're ever all going agree on this issue, but even just using your first name and location would be preferable to some indecipherable nickname (not singling you out J-Ro)
  23. When I was doing Focus, I always used to insist on a 2k right next to the lens on night shoots. That way the lens markings were visible from 30 feet away and the lamp kept me nice and warm..... ;-)
  24. Shannon, Contrary to what you might believe, we all care much more about how the Canons' pictures look, than how they are recorded. However, we have all heard so much hype about this and every other HDV camera that we remain sceptical until proof is offered, which, from your own quote above, you could have done immediately, but didn't, hence this four page thread. Sorry if you feel mistreated.
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