Frank Wylie

I would also vote for checking the takedown claws to see if they are "hooked" or worn to the point it chips the perforations as it retracts...

Thanks Jeremy, but as Phil indicates, those are the holders not the actual squeegee material itself. We have been experimenting with all manner of rubber and neoprene squeegee blades from just about anything you can think of, but so far haven't had much luck. You would think this a simple matter, but it's not. The hardest part of keeping a photochemical film lab going is beginning to be sourcing expendables and spares. Edit: I added photos of the machine, the vacuum knife, materials we have tried and the mounted knife.

Does anyone have or know of a NOS cache of these squeegees? We need a good supply of these for our Triese Film processor vacuum knives and have been unable to find them anywhere, or even a good substitute. Any leads appreciated! THANK YOU!

Be careful Webster! That movement and gear train sounds terribly dry! The Walls I have heard running are no where near that loud. Remember, they were designed as newsreel cameras, so being quiet was of paramount importance (pun not intended)! Lift up the sheet metal cover on the back of the camera and you should see a number of spring loaded, capped oil ports much like you see on an old B&H 16mm projector. I used to use a 50/50 mixture of watchmaker's oil and Marvel Mystery Oil on my 2709 and it worked great. Do not over oil! You might want to give Steve Krams of MTE a call to get some advice on how to lubricate the camera. He sells on Ebay and has tons of Wall camera parts and refurbishes the cameras. These are fine cameras. Don't rush it and score a bearing or lock the movement!

I'd hate to lose my loop on the 2nd pass...

Once you reach a certain size threshold on crew/cast size, the capture medium cost difference is academic and a fraction of the total budget. "More expensive" is not a simple thing to define unless you relate it to the project budget at hand.

It would help to know what camera you are using; a lot depends on the weight and size of the camera when you don't have a big budget... (edit) OK, I just looked up a zhiyun crane 2 and see you must be using a DSLR or similar size camera. Two step ladders, a long 2x4 board, a drill, a coupe of clamps and a 1/4 20 bolt with a washer will allow you to shoot straight down. Just bolt the camera to the middle of the board, place it across the top of the step ladders, clamp it down and shoot. Of course, you'll have to remote trigger the camera to start and stop, or just let it roll. I don't recommend you try this with a Mitchell BNCR...

There is a lot to be said for reciprocity characteristics in gradients of exposure that yet can't quite be matched by digital. The logarithmic fall-off of densities (local contrast) is automatic in film but must be artificially created in digital.

Well, they tended to stretch them over frames and put them in the mattebox rather than behind the lens. Of course, the "secret" of how this was done was closely guarded and only referenced obliquely in interviews. Trade secrets!

Photokinestatis far predates Ken Burns and was typically performed on a rostrum camera. NFB title "City of Gold" is a good example of a film that pre-dates Burn's popular Civil War series. I am not implying Burns takes credit for this type of animation; I think he actually states that he did not invent the process in a few interviews, but his name has become associated with this type of filmmaking.

Silent Cinematographers often stretched various types of French Stockings made of silk across their lenses for diffusion in close-ups. Of course, they had to be French and, like any fad, the brand, weave and color were of intense debate...

I once owned a Steinman printer for 35mm, but it was incomplete and was missing the developing spiral and tanks. Foolishly scrapped it in the late 1990's, thinking I would find another one in better shape. Haven't found a trace of another yet... The drum shaped units tend to oxidize the developer quite rapidly, but can be easier to handle by one person. I intend to build a copy of the one in the book to test some theories I have about tinting and toning positive film; when I get the time (read as "pipe dream"). You can find a veritable cornucopia of motion picture related literature at the Media History Digital Library, which are word-searchable via the Lantern tool bar. It's not a fool-proof system, but at least you can get within a page or two of the subject and is much better than having to wade through endless PDFs to find what you seek. Contact printing on a Steenbeck? Wow, that would take a lot of masking and testing!

Well, I think that was more dictated by the director than the cinematographer, but I am sure there were personal variations for whatever reason. I do know that projectionists would routinely "interpret" film with their hand-cranked projectors; often at the insistence of the theater manager to get an extra screening shown in an exhibition day. Silent film speeds crept up from roughly 16fps in the mid-teens to over 28 FPS a the end of the Silent Era for that very reason; to combat the problems of theater owners "speeding" film through the projectors to get that extra screening. Somewhere in my archive I have a very good article on silent film speeds and how they changed; if I can find it I will post a link...

Almost every silent film camera exposed 8 frames per crank. Seems like a few oddball camera models were 7, but I cannot recall the brand; Probably was one of the cameras sold to accompany that correspondence course offered in the 1930s' from Chicago.

Make your own processing pin racks: http://archive.org/stream/condensedcoursei00newyuoft#page/136/mode/2up Not everything has to be bought off the shelf with a brand name stamped upon it...

Everybody did clip tests...

No specific shutter speed in this info, but might be useful to you...

If you just want to be sure it is operating properly, shoot a few shots and snip 5 foot sections out of it and process with a typical still film developing tank and examine the negative over a light bench. Since you don't state the type of camera you are using, I can't know if it has a gate punch. A lot of early hand cranked cameras had a lever that would punch the film in the center of the frame to identify takes that could then be broken down in the dark to individual shots and then hand processed on racks by visual inspection. If you do have one of these cameras, you can scrounge up some lab stock short ends of Kodak 5366/2366 interpositive film stock and shoot that as a negative at an equivalent of ASA 16 or so and punch each take individually. The beauty of this is it is blue sensitive (not even totally ortho) and can be handled under the safelight typically used for still film printing (OC). You could build a pin reel and process each take in a deep tray by visual inspection, but this is probably getting beyond the scope of effort most people are willing to expend...

Also, cleaning a camera with compressed air is a bad idea. You can blow film chips and shavings down into the movement. Use a soft camel hair brush, orangewood sticks and a lint-free cloth instead. Sounds like a bearing going dry. If you keep shooting, it may seize.

That certainly looks like the onset of nitrate decomposition and the gamma looks good! Coffee does mimic the look of pyrogal-based developers, as it stains the negative too. Thanks for sharing this!

Depending on the monitor, it might cover more of the desired colorspace natively without resorting to such drastic internal color management. You also get to say "4K " a lot... Seriously, if you use internally generated proxies or proxies on the fly, it taxes the system more heavily doing the conversions on the fly. A native 4K monitor takes the burden of dynamic scaling and colorspace conversion (provided it has the native colorspace), off of the GPUs, provided your data pipeline can handle the 4K overhead. Better have a good 0 RAID or a fast SSD or a SSD 0 RAID. Bottle necks are typically I/O data from source discs to GPU and to Cache drive. Get a SSD for a dedicated Cache drive, have a good fast RAID for Source material and NEVER save files you are working on BACK to the drive from which you are working. You can mitigate this by Pre-rendering HD proxies of the 4K files, but then it gets more complex matching back to the original 4K files.

+1 on the Display Cal Software! It's as good (in my opinion) as any commercial grade color management software and they specifically support DaVinci Resolve calibration of a grading monitor with a Decklink card. You can, of course, use it on systems that do not have a decklink card, but READ UP on the documentation! It IS a bit of a learning curve. https://displaycal.net/

Just use the 7366/3366 variation of the 5366/2366 Intermediate stock; same thing. Process as a negative in either Dektol or TD-3. If you have to use a normal lab, if they insist on processing it in the negative machine, push it 2 stops but expose "normally". If they will run it in the positive machine (Higher contrast), try "normal" ISO of 6. NOTE: a lab might balk at running intermediate stock through their positive machine, as the anti-halation dye could color their developer... Run a short test. Always run a test...

Profile your monitor to the proper colorspace and use HD proxies and render @ 4K; it will work. Blackmagic just made their Resolve 15 Certification materials free. Build a proper pipeline and it will work. The information is there for free. If your friend is hung up on the resolution, I'd pass. Resolution has nothing to do with color correction; the colorspace and proper monitor calibration does.

You really want to make an authentic 1915 silent film? 1. 35mm Hand Cranked camera with lenses collimated to blue light. Use a 45-50mm lens mainly. 80 to 100mm optional. Nothing wider than 40mm. A Parvo or 2709 would be ideal but you could press an Eyemo into service, provided you treated it like a Mitchell BNCR that weighed 150 lbs. NO HAND HELD, NO MOVING CAMERA unless you bolt it to a compact car and push it. Abel Gance was an exception to the rule, so you ignore him; he's not a typical silent film maker... Frame shots in Extreme long shots, Establishing set shots and at the knees to the top of the head. Closeups are RARE in the early films. You can only shoot a few... 2. Shoot on 2366 Intermediate B&W lab stock and rate at ISO 6. You get 2 takes per shot maximum. No 100 to 1 ratios. Blow a shot? Cut around it... 3. Caucasian actors will need pancake makeup. Max Factor still makes it. Caucasian skin photographs very dark on blue sensitive film; red doesn't register. 4. Get a lot of reflectors, a large mirror and several large silks to diffuse the mirror. Shoot everything outside you can. Make open air sets with silks over the top. Exposure is determined by on-set tests. Learn to "bottle" test and judge exposure from a wet negative. Remember YOU process the film yourself that night... 5. Process by inspection under an OC safelight in a pin rack for a negative density typically 1/2 more dense than our current "normal". Expect Dmax in scenes to hit 3.0 but no more than 3.6 d transmission. 6. Cut the neg into a single strand with handles on each end of shots, strike a one-light dupe and use that to edit. 7. Write bridging title cards, photograph on same 2366 but soup in positive developer for contrast and strike a one lite for editing. 8. Edit film with title cards to your satisfaction, meanwhile taking notes as to which scene or scenes you wish to tint or tone various colors. 9. Break down negative into as many printing rolls as you have tints or tones. If you have a typically mono film with title cards that are sepia and a night sequence that is blue, you will have 3 printing negatives. 10. Time each negative reel and strike show quality prints from each. 11. Send the tinted reels to be tinted in dye baths. 12. Cut the tinted reels into the mono release print reel in proper order. Every Silent film that had tints/tones was a spliced print - every one... Make 3 of these a week on average - about 1000 feet each. You've done it.