Alex Gaynor

Thanks guys, great ideas, I'll look into the 12-120.

not sure if you've shot already but I have gone to Abel Cine in LA & NY and they have fed-exed me the 2.35 ground glass for the xtr. It's pretty easy to swap out if it's available, but they are elusive, I think they only have one or two of them...

Hello, I'm shooting a small behind-the-scenes/rehearsal/performance style special on an upcoming band and have been looking at lots of the old documentaries on Creedence, Cream, Rolling Stones, The Band and am trying to capture an older, more 70s look with the camera. We're trying to do a lot of it in camera and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with older lens mounts from that era and/or PL mount equivalents. While the grain and latitude of the film lends a look, I'd like to also see if there are any accessible lens sets that might add to the older feel. Here's an old Creedance video and a Cream video that have some of the lens qualities (or lack thereof) that we're looking for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqh54rSzheg Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. -aogaynor

For anyone interested, here's a screengrab I was able to steal from our dailies. Hopefully I can post a quicktime eventually for the grain movement part of this discussion. I just thought I would post a pic for any newcomers that might be able to learn from my experience. I ended up shooting on Vision 3 250D 7207. I was nervous at first about using the 250D, but the 200T wasn't quite fast enough (I only had access to 40 amps), and I'm never quite happy with how 500T looks in Super16. So after doing a few stills tests and reading some old articles on how "Backdraft" used daylight stocks to get that nice orange fire look, we went for it. For the daylight portion of our film, I've been using the antique suede quite a bit, so the warm fire was exactly what the director and I were looking for. I shot the colorchart under a clean tungsten light and did the usual flicker generator with a redhead and 300w gelled with a mix of CTS, Amber, and red pushing through a 4x4 of hampshire from about 6 feet away. I used a 650 to throw a little light towards the background (nearby grass and shrubs- spot reading was 4 stops under) for a little depth, and rounded off our amps with a 150w with 250 about 20 feet away. My incident meter read the 150w at about 6 stops under, but it was just enough to provide a slight sheen on the guy's hair and separate him from true black behind him. I shot the scene on an Aaton XTR w/ canon zoom, no filters, at a f2.8. His key ranged from a 1/3 stop over to 1 stop under. Again I'll try to post a quicktime eventually to show the flicker and grain size. Overall, I'm pleased with the look, and the blacks came out rather clean and dark. Thanks again for everyone's suggestions and time.

I don't think it gains you much to get fancy or tricky, not if you are doing a D.I. Not to mention, some labs don't offer pull processing for 16mm. I would use the slowest speed stock that is practical and expose it well, and process it normally. Thanks David, that's the words of wisdom I was looking for. We're shooting tomorrow night, I'll try to post some stills when we get our dailies back. Thanks for the advice.

But to truly have smaller grains in the image, you have to use slower-speed stock. Thanks David and Tom for the discussion and all the info. Do you have any thoughts on pulling a stop in processing to help diminish grain in the super16mm negative? The side effect being this would also lower contrast which we would hope to add back in the DI process by bringing down the shadows and midtones...

Good ideas, thanks for the input Tom!

Hey guys, I'm looking for a few opinions on shooting a night campfire scene. I am trying to reduce the amount of "distracting" grain in the blacks at night around a lone man at a campfire. We are shooting Super16mm vision2 stocks, potentially 200t or maybe even 250D. We have filmed a portion of the film already and we are quite happy with the reduced grain in the daylight 50D and 250D stuff so far. The director would like a pretty natural looking campfire scene (ala "Gerry") with no backlight, very little ambient, and sharp falloff. Currently we'll be using a small collection of tungsten heads ranging from 150s to a 1k zip. We have the usual magic gadgets and a small 5500 gennie. So I guess I'll start by asking if anyone thinks a simple 2/3 overexposure would help and then crushing the blacks in post? Or should I think about pulling the film a stop or two to reduce grain in developing? I've watched various shorts and feature films clips and noticed that some campfire scenes have nice rich blacks with little to no grain, while others have the distracting chunky grain in the blacks while the faces of the actors are still at or just under key. Thanks for your thoughts. -alex g.