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Frank Wylie

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Everything posted by Frank Wylie

  1. Sorry, I don't really know. You might write Dwight Cody at https://www.cutfilm.com/; he should know. I flipped through our Steeenbeck literature, but found no specific oil mentioned...
  2. Straight "3 in 1" oil is not a good choice IMHO; it becomes sticky after a few years. I have always used (very sparingly) a 50/50 mix of clear sewing machine oil and Marvel Mystery Oil on totally mechanical cameras. I am unsure if Marvel is sold outside the USA... According to the company's 2015 safety data sheet Marvel Mystery Oil is composed of: Petroleum distillates (hydrotreated heavy naphthenic) also known as mineral oil, 60–100% Petroleum distillates (Stoddard solvent) also known as white spirit, 10–30%
  3. The LOC took delivery of a Director this week. Don't know too much about this particular machine, as I am a Lowly Timer and only qualified to help lift the head onto the base cabinet...
  4. You can run about any flavor of Windows inside a virtual machine on Linux with device pass-through if you do the proper research...
  5. Christmas anyone? https://officialexclusive.com/products/steenbeck-film-editing-table-pin-for-the-motion-picture-industry
  6. If nothing else, you could get a Lomo tank and try your hand at processing shorter lengths of film. Not ideal, but something...
  7. Nathaly, Personally, I would think that any side light strong enough to give you a "good" exposure (that's open to personal interpretation) would also project a beam of illuminated smoke/fog toward the subject. Again, I would try to steal some light from the key light by putting reflectors on the table behind the various objects on the table and bouncing it back into the subject's face. Play with reflectors both hard and matte; a reflected light source from a mirror can be softened with a light spray of white paint around the edges and very fine mist across the face to give you more punch but less diffusion than a matte surface. One thing is certain, you have to actually try it on the set and judge the results. Trust your eyes, they are your best tools. It's just a matter of experimentation; try "crazy" things; you have to be resourceful.
  8. Simply because there is not enough light falling on her face to register a proper exposure. The key light is directional, hard and behind her. The key light is also not pointing at her face, nor is it bouncing back toward her from any object on the table. The atmospheric fog in the shot creates an interesting problem in this shot if you want to hide the lighting source for her face. I would try placing aluminized reflectors, basically crumpled-up and smoothed-out, rectangles and squares of aluminum foil on the table behind any objects on the table and try to kick some light back into her face. If you place a practical source anywhere outside of the frame, it will probably destroy the shaft of light effect. There might be a possibility of rigging some small fill light to appear to be coming from the practical bulb hanging down, but it's hard to say if this will produce it's own shaft of light in the smoked-up room. You could also try cheating the subject back a bit from the table and placing a diffused light under, pointing upwards, but that might cause some problems with eye sockets and nose shadows. My 2 cents...
  9. Interesting. With those Micarta flanges, I doubt it would be for high speed use, as they generate a lot of static when wound with film at higher speeds. We use Micarta flanges in the lab and they zap you when the air gets dry and you wind the film even moderately fast. Could be for an optical printer or even a step printer like the Debrie Matipo. https://www.filmlabs.org/docs/matipo.pdf I seem to recall seeing a photo somewhere in the past of an Arri step contact printer that looked a lot like the Matipo, but I couldn't provide a concrete reference...
  10. Christian, My apologies, I have been off of work for over a week due to illness. I spoke to Brian Allan, formerly of Title House in Los Angeles, and he seems to think the shimming of the viewfinder might be the solution. PM me and I'll give you my personal contact information. I will return to work tomorrow and try to get you a more definitive answer.
  11. I suspect the ground glass is slightly out of place and might need to be re-shimmed. Let me have a look at our 1600 and see if we have that tool you speak of. Our optical printer guy will be in tomorrow and I'll ask him about it.
  12. Silent film speeds varied from 14ish fps up to 27/28 fps for major films at the end of the era. Of course, initially Edison shot at 40 fps for kinetoscopes and frame rates were all over the place until Lumiere "standardized" it at around 16fps. The speed increase was typically not for the reasons you would think. Theater owners were notorious for "speeding" features through the projector to squeeze in another screening during the day's run. Trade journals of the late teens have many letters from annoyed patrons complaining about this practice. Major films fought back by increasing the speed of production to the point it would place severe strain on most projectors to run all day at speeds above 24 fps, thereby discouraging the exhibitor. The "right" playback speed for silent films is a non-question. If you can find a cue sheet for the music score that accompanied the film, it gives suggested frame rates throughout the film; slowing down and speed it up. Just set the rate at what looks right for "normal movement" for the most part. Battle scenes were sped-up and love scenes were typically slowed-down. Of course, it all depends on the producer/studio/director and era. So, in effect, there is no "correct speed".
  13. FSU (Former Soviet Union) is a term used a lot for gear originating from that entity. Maybe an option?
  14. Stretch a stocking over the lens and burn holes in it to create sharp areas of the scene. Cut an irregular iris out of black card stock and place it very close to the front lens element to make a broken-up vignette around the image.
  15. "https://cool.culturalheritage.org/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/1991/0156.html Wet printing (which has been turned into the generic "wet gate" term) was developed by Technicolor to extend the lives of their printing matrices during production of 3 color Technicolor prints.
  16. I have to agree with Dom. It looks like the film is being pushed through the gate by means of the loop formers, rather than being advanced by the take-down claw. The Krasnogorsk has a terrible auto loading feature and the loop formers tend to be more of a drawback than a help. We had two at Ohio State University and I wound up removing the loop formers entirely and having the students manually thread the cameras. This helped somewhat, but the gate and take down claw are not well made and it could still lose the loop when the pressure plate spring became fatigued. If nothing else, find a way to fix the loop formers at maximum distance from the gate and manually thread the camera with a dummy roll to see if this solves the problem. It also helps to NOT let the camera spring tension totally run out during a take, as the film can slip in the gate while winding the camera and cause the film to lose a frame when the spring re-tensions and the claw cycles partially until the trigger stop engages. This small bit of movement, against an area of the film that has no perforation, will cause the loops to become uneven. Eventually, with enough takes, you will lose the upper loop due to this frame skipping and the problem will manifest itself.
  17. Aaron, I went through what I can access at the moment and didn't see anything related to Moviola flatbeds, sorry! Will keep an eye out for anything I can find, but it's not looking good. I have moved many times since then and it might have fallen victim to a purge, but I will still keep you in mind as I unearth new boxes. Frank
  18. Aaron, I might have some literature on this flatbed; I will have to search and see if it has survived many moves. I worked with and maintained several of these flatbeds at Ohio State University in the early 1990's. The main issue I had with these flatbeds was the tendency for the platter motor drive cards to malfunction and go into extremely fast shuttle mode without warning. These, of course, were flatbeds that had heavy, sustained use that contributed to their break-downs, so a unit that is treated less drastically may not encounter these problems often. Routine maintenance should include examination of these controller boards/cards and careful cleaning of any edge connectors to avoid corrosion of the contact points, which can cause higher resistance and eventual failure. In any event, I will attempt to dig through my "archive" and see what I can find. Frank
  19. Oh, I agree with you there, but I think some are not talking the difference between Caviar and Lobster, but between steak and potted meat... ?
  20. Not avoiding your question, Dom, just trying to dig the source of this information out of my rusty mind. I may be totally off base here, but I seem to recall it being conveyed to me by a Dr. Robert Wagner of the Ohio State University Department of Photography and Cinema back in the early 1990's. As I vaguely recall, he indicated that Barnack had experimented with cine frame sized camera frames and was dissatisfied with the results, therefore he formulated the new 36 x 24 frame format in response. Barnack then proceeded to design lenses to cover the added width and developed the famous lenses everyone knows so well. That's totally anecdotal, I understand, but that's probably where that came from...
  21. When Vistavision was introduced, it was in part a measure to try to bring back cinema audiences to motion picture theaters due to the encroachment of Television on their revenue streams. Being that 35mm 4 perf had been a standard for about 60 years, the amount of physical infrastructure in place around the World made it economically unreasonable to adopt a totally new standard that would require total retooling of the entire process from inception to projection. There were many other large format systems before and after the establishment of 35mm, 4 perforation as the standard; American Biograph shot and projected in 68mm in the late 1890's and there were several larger format systems developed in Europe about the same time, but Edison's format won-out for some non-obvious reasons. Edison failed to secure patents for his system in Europe, thinking it was a toy/fad that would soon pass and that it simply wasn't worth the effort and expense to establish these "foreign" patents. This left the field open in Europe for entrepreneurs who wanted to enter the moving image business to dodge the royalties and costs of universally adopting any other format which would have encumbered them with said payments. So, it was legal and profitable to copy the machinery and format of Edison as a standard to open both kinescope and theatrical parlors, as well as devise new projection and cameras systems based on that format.
  22. I think you can safely say that if an inexpensive, super high quality scanner could be built for mass production, it already would be on the market and selling like hotcakes.
  23. Historically you are looking at this backward. As David Mullen points out, the standards for 35mm framing were established by cinema, not by still photography. Leica and other 35mm cameras were developed to use cinema film well after the 35mm Silent Aperture was established and eventually went on to formalize the 36 x 24mm frame size for still photography. Even this was subject to some variations, as both Leica and Japanese still camera manufacturers initially used 4:3 aspect ratio frames, but quickly thereafter adopted the 3:2 aspect ratio for 36 x 24 (nominal). Silent Aperture cinema, the image 4 perforations high with an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 1.33:1, IS the historically accurate, original "Full Frame" specification. Don't confuse Cinematic "Full Frame" with Still Photography "Full Frame"; the latter being co opted by marketing types to hawk DSLRs with sensors more closely sized to typical 35mm still camera frames .
  24. Determine hyperfocal distance on the lens and fix it with a pin to that fixed focus point. Make some waterhouse stops to vary the aperture.
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