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Robert Hughes

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Everything posted by Robert Hughes

  1. A bit of good news for you "D" word naval gazers. The Minneapolis 35W bridge re-opened today! I drove across it within 2 hours of its reopening, and it's a nice bridge, it would probably be good for 200 years if they didn't dump salt on it every winter. The local, state and national governments, the construction companies and the community are all very happy with the ahead-of-schedule completion.
  2. Old what's his name, you know, the guy who did 2001 and Barry Lyndon? On his first movie he borrowed an Eyemo 35mm news camera from a friend, set up a tripod in the bed of a pickup truck and captured his dolly shots with that. But remember - safety first! Don't do anything that could get you or somebody else hurt. That's rule #1 in real world filmmaking.
  3. I have an L-398 - it's fine for filmmaking - that's what it's for. Be sure to check any lightmeter you get (particularly a used one) against a known good calibrated source light meter. My current L398 is one stop oversensitive, I have to compensate in my head whenever I use it. My previous one was spot on, but it died after 20+ years.
  4. Video's great - it has a steady image, it can run reliably in auto mode, and you can see what you've got immediately. It works very well if you control the light or have low contrast such as cloudy weather. Film's great - it has a classic look, you can dial in the exposure for effect, and watching your dailies is like Christmas all over again. It works very well if you have uncontrolled lighting such as outdoors in sunny weather. Fish or foul? Yes... :rolleyes:
  5. I agree. Don't buy a cheap S8 camera, it's not worth the money & frustration. I own 3 S8 cameras, a Bauer 715XL (great lens, really sharp!), a Nikon R8 (simple and portable, sharp pictures with enough light) and a Beaulieu 4008 (a typical French sweetie - beautiful but high maintenance). Just remember, S8 is a teeny-tiny format. Use it for the feel, closeups, simple subjects, and you will like it.
  6. If you shoot straight 2.35 you're going to lose a significant portion of your film area to the mask unless you make use of an anamorphic adapter. But shooting anamorphic reduces your lens options. Do you really need to shoot S16 on a 2.35 format project? If you're doing a short, you might be better off shooting in 35mm and being disciplined in your shooting.
  7. I've got a Cine-Voice 100, modified with a Bodine 60 Hz hysteresis synchronous motor such as they put in the 400's. The synchronous motor is using the 60 cycle 120C house AC to keep itself in sync with the world. But, in a pinch, I have run my Cine Voice off one of those 100 watt square wave inverters you buy down at Fleet Farm. The motor doesn't draw a lot of power, but its inductive kick-back may fry the inverter if you get one that doesn't have enough power capacity to handle it. Keep in mind that your motor will synchronize with whatever frequency that inverter is kicking out, so you may want to do a frequency check on the inverter while the camera is in operation. Try it and see what happens.
  8. Uh, everybody? That red flag is an end-of-spool flag, also shows up when there's no film in the camera.
  9. Melting point for the emulsion or the base? When processing, the emulsion starts flaking off if you run your chemicals over 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The base is cellulose acetate, which melts at several hundred degrees.
  10. All you got to do is run it through a Super 8 projector at double speed. :rolleyes:
  11. Really? I heard it was erasable. Just run it through the processor backwards and get undeveloped stock! :lol:
  12. Nice thing about the cinematography.com forum is that the user is encouraged to think of their fav format (in this case Super8) in context to the whole world of cinematography and moviemaking, as opposed to filmshooting, which is centered around the hobby/obsession of small format film. I'm on both forums and enjoy each.
  13. A 5000 lumen projector is no great shakes nowadays, about what you'd see in use for a corporate Powerpoint presentation to 100-200 people on a 7.5x10' screen. For 500 - 1000 people I'd recommend using 12x16 or larger screen with a 10K Christie at least, perhaps double-stacked. But as you say, the price goes up ever more steeply the larger and brighter you go. A Christie rents for about $3000 a day. Keep the ambient light level in your theater to an acceptable minimum. I assume you're doing this presentation indoors? Otherwise, if you're outdoors you'll need bigger screens and more powerful projectors to cut through the ambient light of the surrounding neighborhood. It gets expensive and complicated - outdoors you'll probably need to talk to a professional A/V company to supply the equipment and services. Think $20K rental for a big outdoor event projection setup. As for the menus popping up, that's probably because the operator didn't know what he was doing or didn't have proper switching equipment. Some projectors go into menu mode when they lose a video signal (as when somebody is moving the VGA cable from one machine to another). Again, the video switch and ancillary gear costs money, so I'm not surprised the local no-cash filmfest had problems.
  14. I just saw this documentary at the AFI in Silver Spring and loved it. So much great source material much that I've never seen before, with interviews of Apollo astronauts. What format were used for the astronauts' interviews? I was counting the nose hairs... I was noticing how soft a lot of the old 35mm source material was - modern color film is quite a bit sharper than its 1969 equivalent, that's noticable. Some of the booster rocket separation scenes were amazing, taken from an on-rocket camera. I wondered how they recovered the cameras for some of these sequences.
  15. Recently I've seen films and videos where the frame dimensions are intentionally changed as part of the aesthetic structure of the work. Nothing says you have to stay in 4:3 or 16:9 through the whole film if you pay attention to it.
  16. No, you need the lightmeter to accurately determine the light levels on your subject. If you are shooting at or near high noon, you can use the "sunny 16" rule as a sanity check, especially with the more forgiving negative film stocks. Google for "sunny 16"+exposure and you should get all the information you need.
  17. Go buy a RED. Then sell it to one of us after you get tired of it.
  18. Look for an Ikegami, Sony or other 3 tube camera - and test it for an afternoon before you put down serious money on it, because old tube cameras are finicky creatures with lots of adjustments that need tweaking. Also the tubes wear out after years of service, and their replacement cost is prohibitive, so don't buy one with weak tubes expecting to get a good picture out of it.
  19. You can do a quick camera test with 20' of film and develop it in your sink in the time you spend reading the internet forums. I once shot a project without a prior camera test. Turns out the lens mount was off, and half the frame was out of focus on every shot. What a waste.
  20. I read an article in the paper today, talking about how the music industry is adapting to the YouTube/vlogging craze by downsizing their music video production values. Who needs fancy sets and professional cinematographers when you're playing to a 320x240 screen beside skateboarding dogs?
  21. From a post house perspective, student films are generally more trouble than they're worth. They are often plagued with technical problems ranging from poor exposure to dropped sync, tinny audio and faulty edl lists. Students may not understand the nature of the problem and ask for band-aid solutions rather than taking their materials back for correction. After eating up valuable studio time, they realize they're broke and can't pay. No wonder it's hard finding labs that will bend over for student work.
  22. I've got a C-mount to Nikon F adapter. It works OK. Keep in mind that the lenses used normally in 35mm still photography, such as 50mm, are considered long lenses in 16mm.
  23. I've had a set of 4 Tota Lites for years, they get used alot. They do run hot and have no beam control, but work fine for umbrella bounce lites. Strobe lites? How would you use them on a film or video shoot, unless you can flash them at 120 Hz?
  24. If you need to achieve this with artificial lighting you'll probably want a big HMI gelled with CTO, and fog machines behind the trees.
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