Vivian Zetetick

Honestly, I don't know if books would be useful for learning handheld camera work -- unless you plan on using a stack of them to practice with! But perhaps someone else here with more experience knows better. Some people have a rock steady hand & some don't. It's a gift. However, if like me you are a bit shaky and are always looking for a few low budget tools to do the work for you, allow me to recommend: http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/sto...&categoryId=119 I hope that link works. I bought one of these miracles for $70 a few months ago from Benny's hardware store. It's a metal gardening utility cart with terrifically soft inflatable wheels. It has a small metal lip around it which is perfect for holding the tripod legs, and it is DEAD QUIET. It can also turn. I cried out when I found it. http://www.studio1productions.com/dvbrace.htm I just bought one ($150) for my DVX100/Bolex/Super-8 and I couldn't be happier. I hope the people that make it don't read this forum, because I would have paid more than $150 for such an efficient little device. It's also very adjustable. Probably not good for heavy cameras, though. My one fault with it is that the handle will occasionaly loosen & start unscrewing. I may have to weld it on.

I wouldn't worry so much about these micro-changes in processor speed. There's much more to the modern computer workstation than processor speed, or even single or dual processors. Look at a computer workstation as a point-in-time purchase. If you get a reasonably good one now it will last you five years (or more) and then you can upgrade again. Technology is always improving. Remember that the gents who filmed and edited "The Last Broadcast" ( http://www.dvdreview.com/html/the_last_broadcast.shtml ) did so on a single-processor Pentium II 333Mhz with around 512MB RAM and only 30+GB of hard drive space (I'm pulling this from long-term memory -- someone correct me if I'm wrong). That's fractional compared to even the cheapest modern *new* computer workstation -- particularly a new Apple workstation. The 1.8Ghz G5 is like a Ferrari compared to the Volkswagen Bug they used for that film -- and they drove it all the way to Blockbuster Video. If you work for yourself as an independent movie mogul you can afford to wait for your machine to render. I've edited my last 3 short films (shot on film, transferred to DV) on a PentiumIII 700Mhz workstation, producing the same result (with a bit more waiting time) than the latest dual-processing workstations. It's all MiniDV -- if it's your movie, so what if you have to wait?

Many apologies if this topic has been done to death.... I'm on the brink of purchasing a matte box for a DV camera, and this particular model accepts 4x4 filters. I've used filtration for color and b&w photography on many occasions, and am more-or-less informed on the use of various types....but I've mostly used glass thread-on filters. For ye olde Bolex I use gel filters, for those little in-camera filter holders which slip between the film plane and the lens. Looking into the matter, I see that 4x4 filters are available in Glass, Resin, Polyester, and Gelatin. Does anyone have a preference for DV work? I'm pretty sure I want a hard filter like resin or glass...but does one produce a better (i.e. sharper) image than the other? -- and is that in fact advisable for DV work, where it is often the case that people use ProMist filters to soften the image?

Very humorous! Well, it's certainly an issue, but fortunately the camera has many positive qualities also. I think most people could do with not moving thier cameras so much. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise! I've seen the jittery "problem" at work in HD 24p movies also, most notably "The Anniversary Party" and "Session 9". The stuttering movement of objects is faint but noticeable. Though I've heard many people claim this phenomena is native to 24p material, regardless its digital or film origins, I just don't see the problem at work in movies shot on film. Perhaps there is something physiologically wrong with me, but I don't see it. I feel like I can see it right away in 24p digital material. By "see it", I mean I stop and think: "that movement seemed a bit unnatural". It's more of a feeling kind of thing. The same feeling I had when I saw the gladiator fight sequences in the film "Gladiator" -- the movement seemed odd. I've read they shot those bits at less than 24fps to get this "effect". All that having been said, I just watched "The Exorcist" on DVD again, and the Egypt sequence in the beginning of the film, particularly the shot of the young boy running through the trench, exhibited the same stuttering movement problem -- worse than any digital movie I've seen. Maybe they were shooting these scenes at less than 24fps also. Regardless, if the problem is on "The Exorcist" DVD, perhaps people won't complain about it being on mine!

Great filmmaker. Don't forget the other Kurosawa: http://midnighteye.com/interviews/kiyoshi_kurosawa.shtml ...a contemporary Japanese filmmaker whose work seems to be overlooked in the U.S.

Print this page and take it to bed with you tonight: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/location_sound.html

I was told by an Illford rep a few years ago that they make/sell SFX200 for 16mm. I've used this film for still photography but not 16mm. My understanding is that SFX200 is not full-on B&W infrared film, but a hybrid which will approximate infrared film if the same filtration is employed (dark red filters, etc). See: http://www.mawddwy.freeserve.co.uk/sfx200.htm One benefit of using SFX200 is that the film is not as sensitive as infrared, and therefore can be handled more like standard film. I shot about 3 rolls of the still-film variety. Only a few pictures were usable. Hard to get the exposure right. I can only imagine how frustrating real infrared film must be. But the effect is wonderful and it's too bad infrared B&W isn't used more often for dramatic features.

I managed to get a hold of one of these a few days ago and was able to run some tests. If a scene is photographed properly in the right way (24p) and captured properly (removing 3:2 pull-down) and printed to DVD properly, the results are, in my opinion, very serviceable for low budget dramatic work aimed at television viewing. For one thing, many dispiriting video artifacts (like stair-stepping on diagonal lines and chunky pixels boiling in the shadows) can be brought to an absolute minimum on the DVX100. As a matter of fact, I have professionally-made DVDs of films shot on 16mm which look worse, and exhibit more of these annoying digital artifacts, than my own DVD of DVX100 test footage -- mostly because these films seem to have been encoded to DVD very quickly & very poorly. As an example, Tom Noonan's film "The Wife" looks rather bad on DVD, even though it was beautifully photographed on super-16. A DVX100 film of the same type would, I think, hold its own against this DVD movie, for many viewers. However, I must say I cannot seem to get rid of a very slight but palpable "stuttering" or "jittering" effect on my DVX100 footage. It is only noticeable when large objects move quickly within the frame or the camera pans quickly passed a well-defined object. I've tried a few methods of editing, printing DVDs, etc., and it is always there. It's not terribly annoying, but it certainly isn't as smooth the 16mm films I've transfered to DV for editing/finishing. To verify this we videotaped an actor sitting in a black room, lit by a few studio lights. If you pan the camera slowly left & right, the motion looks OK. But wave the camera quickly back and forth and the stuttering motion is immediately evident. If anyone has managed to get around this problem I'd love to hear about it. So if your making the next "Speed 2" -- perhaps this isn't your camera. But if, like me, you daydream about another "Last Year at Marienbad"....

Please do...would love to see. I was given 1200' of Kodak PLUS-X Reversal a few years ago. The owner had been storing the 400' cans in a refrigerator since around 1970! It was wonderfully noirish -- very smooth and silvery, very rich blacks, and the age didn't seem to affect the image at all. I expected it to look contrasty like PI, but perhaps it didn't because I took the film directly to digital tape (Rank telecine at FilmCraft) & finished there. On a related note, does anyone have a particular preference for Ilford or Kodak black & white stocks, given that Ilford claims to use edge-code numbers now? A photographer friend of mine won't touch Kodak black & white products, always uses Ilford. I see that the Ilford Motion Picture Film page (http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/bw.html) shows SFX200 as an avilable motion picture film. A shot 3 rolls of this with a 35mm still camera (using a dark red filter) and loved the pictures -- at least the ones that came out properly exposed. Would be an interesting film to use in a movie.

Have you verified this personally? The Bolex Web site ( http://www.bolex.ch ) states: "The use of Kern fixed focus lenses of the current series, with the exception of the Switar f = 10mm 1:1.6, does not present any problems. This is not the case for the Vario-Switar zoom lenses traditionally supplied with our cameras: the old f = 18-86mm EE and OE models are unusable, the 16-100mm POE model can be used with some restrictions for the short focal length. The current 12.5-100mm and 12.5-100mm PTL models show a "port-holing" effect with focal lengths below f= 25mm." If the POE 16-100 is mostly usable I am a happy man. I saw some super16 footage taken with the Peleng 8mm C-Mount for Bolex. The image quality looked great for my purposes but it's a rather wide lens. It's not comically wide, but almost. I read that the Schneider Cinegon 10mm C-Mount Lens, which is most like the Switar 10mm, will cover the complete super16 frame.

In all fairness, I think the statement... "Your ONLY advantage with Ultra-16 is the ability to use old, cheap 16mm cameras that can't be converted over to Super-16 easily, cheaply, or at all..." ...is not quite giving the proposed format a fair hearing. I could think of many more possible advantages to shooting ultra16, for the low-budget filmmaker. For one thing, if you intend to edit film workprints on a flatbed editor, with the goal of having negatives conformed and an optical projection print struck, it seems that you can have standard 16mm workprints made for use on a standard flatbed editor -- you just make yourself aware that there is a bit more image on either side of the frame. The center is still the center. This is not possible or the case with super-16. Super-16 requires a flatbed editor modified for super-16 to be practically usable. I have access to the facilities of a nearby university which has around 5 standard 16mm flatbed editors, but not one is a super-16 flatbed -- and they even have a 35mm flatbed. I called ColorLab in MD about shooting super16. They said if I shoot super16 they will provide super16 workprints only. If I want my workprints optically "blown down" to matted standard 16 for editing purposes, they will impose a huge fee for the process. This would of course undermine my low-budget MO. They only other way to get an optical release print from your super16 originals (if you don't want to use an expensive digital intermediate) is to have digital workprints made -- the film is printed on digital tape with KeyKode numbers burned on the screen. As anyone who operates on a low budget knows, digital workprints are not cost effective for a low-budget MO. The low-budget filmmaker often has to shoot things piecemeal -- over the course of a few months or few years -- and labs impose large minimums for digital workprints each time they have to fire up the machine. If you want to edit your workprints on a computer, it's best to film the whole film in one go, and have the lab do the whole film-to-tape transfer at one go. That will save you the most money. But you wouldn't be shooting 16mm if you had the most money. You have very little. So what do you do? ColorLab told me they will just keep my negatives in storage for me! When I'm done shooting my super16 film -- after 6 months or a year -- they will make the digital workprints all at once, if I have the cash. This is not acceptable, and if the original film is damaged or otherwise unusable, you just can't wait until the very end to find out. As a low-budget 16mm filmmaker who works for himself and by himself (just like a poet or painter has to) I have to mastermind the entire landscape of my productions. Not just one bit. I write the script, find willing actors, build the sets & props, shoot the film on my own equipment, edit the film, etc., all with my own money. Yes I could shoot standard 16 and be happy -- and I have been. But if a proposed widescreen format like Ultra16 will integrate into the standard 16mm production path at ONLY the cost of the conversion, it becomes a huge savings over Super16, and the result, as has already been pointed out, is a native 1.85:1 image which needs no cropping for blow-up to 35mm. It should also be possible for a lab to go the less-expensive route and blow-down Ultra16 to a matted 16mm optical print. ColorLab currently offers this service for conformed super16 originals -- and it seems like an attractive cost-saving measure. So some of the benefits of Ultra16 for the low-budget filmmaker who owns older standard 16 gear, if the format were supported along the whole production path, would be no new lenses, no special editing equipment, and no digital workprints or intermediates. You just pretend like it is regular 16 the whole way -- and at the end you have a widescreen print struck. That's the idea, anyway. But again, the path is a bit overgrown right now because not many have begun to walk that way. I still maintain that, if it were a viable path, more film would get sold and Ultra16-friendly labs would do even more business.

1960s equipment....They told me my Bolex EBM was made in the early 1970s! David -- I'm everything you said in your first paragraph. That's a perfect description of me. I could shoot in regular16 and crop for 16x9 but would rather not, and I can't convert to super16 without getting rid of my lenses and buying new ones. Also, you correctly guessed that I am indeed sitting on my hands, not using my 16mm gear, exactly *because* I can't shoot widescreen. I don't want to spend a heap of money on film in a format which no one wants in a few years. That's why for the last 8 months I've shot two short films in super-8! Why choose the *lesser* of two evils? If I can't have widescreen 16mm I'd rather have full-screen super-8. I speak for myself of course, but Kodak would get more money from me if I could be sure there was a clear path through Ultra16 that cost the same as standard 16. I'd do the conversion next week. I truly suspect this to be true of other filmakers also. Please see my post at the end of page 1. I do not see why DIs would be necessary at all if labs/conformers supported Ultra16 in the same way they supported standard16. Why wouldn't Kodak want to jump in and try it out? They're a generous organization, they support film festivals, students, etc. If it excites people and makes them want to dust off some gear and buy some Kodak film, who suffers? Have you visited http://8mm.filmshooting.com in a while? There's still a lot of people out there, with some really old gear, spending a lot of money on film.

Doesn't Kodak have some sort of research department that could test fly this new idea? It seems like it would be in Kodak's interest to meet with a few labs, convert a few 16mm cameras to Ultra16, and take a test production all the way through Ultra16 to a 35mm release print. Getting behind Ultra16 seems like it would be a boon for Kodak 16mm film sales, particularly if they could verify a production path which costs the same as 16mm. If you're listening, Kodak -- I'll do it for you if you pay the expenses! ;) This practice seems prevelant in the computer hardware industry, where specialized devices are tested with various computer systems & configurations, and the compliance results posted on the company Web site.

If there were a complete production path in place for Ultra16 -- as there is for standard 16 -- that would be a great cost savings for me, since I do not rent, I own. If one good lab (such as FilmCraft in MI or ColorLab in MD) could get behind Ultra16, and were sure they could process it just like 16mm (without interfering with the added image area) & also provide workprints (standard 16mm for a flat-bed, or digital with KeyKode) then all that's left for the format to fly (correct me if I'm wrong) is a negative cutter who can also work with the format. A "blow down" of the conformed Ultra16 originals to a matted optical 16mm print at ColorLab (which currently offers super-16 blow down) would be far cheaper than either Digital Intermediates or blow-up to 35mm. Wouldn't it? And the benfit for me is that I work EXACTLY like I currently do in 16mm. All I've done is have the gate widened .7mm on either side. I compose shots with a slightly wider field of view in mind, edit workprints on a flatbed or computer, and the final print is matted optical 16mm (if I want an inexpensive solution) or 35mm if I can afford it. (The CamerasPro site has the following to say about the KeyKode area: "The gate is machined out by .7mm on both side increasing the width a total of 1.4 mm. How does that work? Doesn't that mean that you are going into the Perf area in at least one side of the frame and worse still the Keycode area? YES...and no. The finished frame vertically cropped to fit between the perferations and just inside of the key code area. This means that you can modify almost any older 16mm camera to shoot this format and use either dual or single perf film." ...I assume that means the KeyKode area is still usable.)

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin (the youngest recipient of the Telluride Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award) continues to work in super-8, in shorts and in features. His recent feature film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary was shot mostly in super-8. His rapid-fire Russian propaganda pastiche The Heart of the World (a super-8/16mm hybrid) won the 2002 New York Critic's Circle award for Best Experimental Film, and was the hit of the 2002 Toronto Film Festival. Guy Maddin has probably achieved more international success as a super-8 filmmaker than any other director. His latest film stars Isabella Rossellini. English filmmaker Derek Jarman also made features in super-8. His super-8 feature The Last of England is a classic work of Avant-Garde cinema.

It seems that one camera sales/conversion shop ( http://www.cameraspro.com/super16.html ) and one film-to-tape lab ( http://www.tfgtransfer.com/ ) are officially supporting the Ultra-16 format as a viable alternative to super-16, mostly for the creation of digital intermediates. These two companies may or may not be in bed together. http://www.cameraspro.com/ultra16cameraspro.html As an ultra-low-budget 16mm filmmaker who owns a standard-16mm camera, I've researched conversion to super-16, and it seems expensive and perilous. My own camera, the Bolex EBM, can be converted to super-16. Unfortunately, the 10mm Kern-Switar wide angle lens does not cover the super-16 frame, and the POE 16-100 zoom cannot be used below 25mm without vignetting. In my case, this makes super-16 conversion a rather lame prospect if I want to use my own gear. I am not a professional. I do not make Hollywood-style movies. But the idea of shooting widescreen 16mm and finishing digitally is attractive. However, I have read (online, mind you) that most standard-16 lenses, like the Switar 10mm and POE 16-100, will cover the ultra-16 frame without vignetting, and that the ultra-16mm image rivals that of the super-16 as a digital intermediate. Though there was one illuminating discussion last year regarding the use of ultra-16 on a super-16 feature production, I'm wondering, has anyone else followed an ultra-16 production through the paces toward a digital master? -- or, better yet, a film-out from a digital master? What were some of the issues involved?