Joseph Konrad

Very good to know, thanks.

I made 4 movies in high school, all on digital video. They each got progressively longer and more complicated. The last one I did in my senior year was a Godfather spoof that was over 40 minutes long, in widescreen, and had an original cut and a director's cut with alternate actors and added scenes in the director's cut (I directed and I wanted my physics teacher to play the mob boss, but it was a project for my friend's class and he didn't want that teacher cast- so we wound up shooting it both ways!)

-35mm film. Preferably a bunch of unused, unexposed Kodak 5254 stock laying around. Realizing this is probably impossible, looking for the next best thing. -Possible to somehow motorize a high-end 35mm still camera and remove the back so I don't have to pay Panavision? (need to run it past my engineering friends...might be a crazy idea). Arc lights don't sound like a low budget option. OK. Is that for buying them, operating them, renting them? Thanks

Hello everyone, I am posting here because I know there are some very experienced professionals who could help me find out the feasibility of what I am planning to do. I am moving to Chicago shortly and within a year I will be moving into a place with offices (one can be an editing room), an equipment room and a soundstage. I would move to LA, but the workflow I am using is completely different and I think Chicago will do just as well. The goal: Do a 90 minute low-budget film circa the 1970s. -35mm film. -My script -Storyboarded so as not to waste film. -Nagra 4.2, dozens of spools of 1/4" tape, and old Sennheiser directionals for capture on location. -Arc lights- no HMI's. -Using 100 speed film, max (although we can treat it as higher of course) -Developing it at a good lab that can do "pushing" and tinting and etc. -Cutting it on a Moviola or Steinbeck (I saw one on ebay recently for under $5000). -Writing and copying the score by hand (I am a professional composer) -Getting strings, piano, horns, drums into the soundstage. Neumann and Telefunken tube condenser microphones, 35mm magnetic film recorders, etc. (this is where costs start skyrocketing, even though this is "old" equipment nobody really uses anymore). How much does this cost provided that this is an "easy", low-budget script, I am the cinematographer (I have much more studying to do), we use up-and-coming non-union actors, and we use non-union musicians? Are there any ways to cut down on costs while still using this workflow? Learning this equipment and producing a complete 90-minute movie this is way is by far the most exciting thing I can think of but I want to avoid all the pitfalls before I begin in earnest. Thanks!

Hi all, I am trying to track down old issues of American Cinematographer. I am especially interested in all of the 70s issues. After those I am looking for 60s and 80s. Unfortunately it seems these are incredibly hard to get. I looked at the ASC site under back issues, and they want minimum $75 for ONE magazine. Many are $100, and some are more. Does anyone know of any kind of digital archive or CD-ROM I could buy somewhere that has scans of these magazines? Something like the National Geographic CD-ROMs? I think the information in these old magazines is invaluable. Since I was born in 1990, obviously I wasn't around to buy these the first time around. Thanks, Joe

My pick would be the Star Wars prequel trilogy. And Brave New World.

I think a great director is one that feels passionate about the film and is trying to express himself through film to accomplish something in particular that he has decided- while surrounding himself with talented, like-minded people from whom he takes advice and criticism. I think a great director is also always thinking about what will make an impact on the audience, and how to orchestrate everything so that that happens. And yes, I think a director must have great taste and a knowledge of what will create impact. He must be able to enforce his good taste in all areas of production to come up with a high quality result. He must appreciate the power of cinematography and editing, not be afraid of powerful music, have the ability to change the script if it isn't working, etc. Finally, I think a great director must be born with a certain genius. Directing is understanding film. It's not something you can truly learn, in my opinion, if it's not innate. You can learn the technology of course, and learn the communication skills necessary, but if you don't have that talent to string shots together, or a vision of how movies should be made, then I don't think that's something that can be taught. That was badly worded, but I think it's true.

It is a shame that Technicolor printing has fallen by the wayside. It sounds like they still do it, but it would be prohibitively expensive and take too long, and the studios and whatnot wouldn't go along with it. Thank you very much for all of that. The different stocks, the different film speed, the push-processing to get around the slower speeds, the lenses....This gives me a lot to research, a lot to go on...

Of course. The differences are mostly artistic- the way shots are framed, shot length, music spotting, acting style, the pacing, the uncontrived staging...all the things that come together to make a great movie, in my opinion. All of these elements I have a good intuitive grasp of (or I'd like to think so). But I couldn't help noticing the radical difference in the color saturation and the grain and the way the film caught the light, even after these older movies are restored. So I'm trying to find out what technologically is different now that would have a major effect on the look of the film. True. I don't want to deliberately date my movies though. It's just that aesthetically I really like what was being done back then a lot more than today's look. And just to recap, Technicolor and CRI are now obsolete? There would be no possible way to do that today? Yeah, tha'ts one of my biggest pet peeves. Actors are all in heavy makeup nowadays- they look like mannequins. It's even worse in those movies where they're always in extreme-closeup and they cut back and forth every second (the "ping-pong" style, like Brian said). I miss the realism, grittiness, and impact of older movies. ---------------- I would love to hear more about the different lighting style used back then as opposed to now. All I know is to not use HMI lights because they didn't exist back then and they give a colder, bluer light. Is there anything else that comes to mind that was done differently on a consistent basis? To go back to the example of "Rocky," it looks they used almost entirely practical lights. Is that true? And if so, could it be done that way today? Thanks so much- I'm learning a lot here. The issue of lenses is very interesting- I need to do more research on the ones you mentioned...

Oh, OK. So although editors might be tempted to cut differently as Brian said, cutting with Avid on a computer is no different than cutting the film itself- exact same result. But isn't it true that the DI process WOULD have an effect on the look, unlike the Avid EDL process? Because at that point you're not cutting the negative...you're printing out a completely new negative.

Oh, and could you comment any on the the difference in lighting technology between the 70's and 80's and now? I know it involves not using HMI's and using more light and not crunching the blacks the way it's often done nowadays. Again it depends on the movie, but on some movies (Rocky comes to mind) it looks like they didn't light it at all...it looks like they just set up the camera and shot it. How did they pull that off I wonder? Again, thank you so much to everybody. This is making a lot more sense to me now.

Ha ha! I'm sorry....I meant old in comparison to now. I don't consider the 70's old at all, and I think many of the best films came out of the 70's:) I will definitely check out more Robert Altman and James Gray. Thank you so much for that reply, Mr. Mullen. I know there are a whole slew of creative and stylistic differences between films back then and more current films, which I am very familiar with, but what I'm interested in is the technical side, which you covered really well...Very interesting about flashing the negative and Chemtone. So in general this gritty look came from a combination of slower film stock and push-processing to get a higher speed. This would give you the look of movies like "Taxi Driver," "Rocky," "Saturday Night Fever," etc. whereas bigger studio movies like "The Godfather," "Logan's Run," and "Jaws" to name a few were shot more in line with what they were doing in the 60's? After reading about the stocks, Kodak 5254 is what I'm most interested in. Too bad it is obsolete now. "...consider how you are currently judging this old movie -- on DVD? On Blu-Ray? An old print? A new print? This may have an effect on the look." Well, I'm still in college, so I'm too young to have seen most of these in the theater, although I've seen a couple 70's/80's movies rereleased in a theater and it looks fantastic. But most of my experience would be seeing these movies on DVD or television. Now I know the grain probably looks quite a bit different with the MPEG compression on a DVD, and the look also varies depending on whether the movie has been "restored", although I'm getting wary of that because in some cases, like "Star Wars" or "The Godfather" I think they artificially punched up the colors and removed the grain. So it's sometimes hard for me to tell what these films actually looked like in the theater.

Hello all, I'm new here, but I have been studying filmmaking and cinematography for a long time, and this is definitely what I want to do with my life. I'm interested in directing and film scoring as well as cinematography. Anyway, I am a huge fan of the old look, the look seen in movies from the 70's and early-mid 80's. Obviously there is no one "look" from this period, but it seems to involve more grain, lower contrast, different framing, and a warmer look. And shooting on actual film of course and cutting on a Steinbeck or Moviola or that type of thing (not sure how this actually affects the look, though- as I understand it even films shot on film today are scanned into the computer and then printed out again at the end. Surely this has some kind of different effect?) It seems like it's very difficult nowadays to get this look without actually going back to the processes used back then. For example, the new Indiana Jones movie was supposed to look like the old ones, but it looked completely different in my opinion. I remember Janusz Kaminski saying something to the effect that it might look different because arc lights are no longer used anymore(?) I was wondering if any experienced cinematographers here could perhaps summarize the differences in lights, stocks, etc. used back then and the ones used now, and how one would go about shooting films this way today. Would you just purchase old equipment and lights? How would this be done? Please don't hesitate to speak in technical terms if necessary. I haven't gotten an adequate answer from anybody so far but since you are actual working cinematographers I thought you might have some ideas on this.... Thanks so much, Joe

Forgive me if they've already been mentioned, but I think a couple more definitely worth mentioning are Jordan Cronenweth, who lit "Blade Runner," and George T. Clemens, who did the Twilight Zone episode "After Hours" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DewXNkdj5M) which still creeps me out to this day...