Robert Edge

Keith, Thanks for the reference to the new T&S Quay film. I'll see if I can get my hands on a copy. Cheers.

"i think you simply like organic texture and a hand-drawn look" Well, you've got that right. Same reason that I like Van Gogh. I just hope that nobody gets it into his head that a Van Gogh painting can be improved by being scanned and played around with in Photoshop :) It's interesting that you mention the word "organic", because it is precisely the word that one would use to describe Larkin's work and the last word that one would use to describe Landreth's work and, for that matter, most of the computer generated animation that I've seen. As you may know, Landreth's resources included the students in the animation programme at Seneca College in Toronto, whom he thanked during his acceptance of the Academy Award. So it would appear that you are right when you say that "most" of the animators on his project got paid, assuming that the number of people who got paid exceeded the number who didn't. Not that I have a problem with this. It is a great thing that students were involved in this project, and that Seneca got a public boost during the Awards ceremony. However, I guess that means that the real cost of the film was in fact in excess of US$1.5 million. There is only one more question. Did the US$1.5 million include, or exclude, the cost of sending Landreth to Monaco and Cannes (depicted in Lawrence Green's making-of documentary) while Larkin, the raison d'etre of the film, was panhandling on the street and living at the Salvation Army? Jaan, thanks very much for the references to the curious pictures and wildbrain websites. I'll check them out.

Keith, Cool your jets :) If you read what I wrote, instead of what someone else wrote, you might notice that I simply said that I can understand a particular point of view and I raised some questions. There are people who prefer to make dovetail joints by hand than by machine. There are even people who think that the former have more character. Having spent part of last weekend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at an exhibit of furniture made by the Newport cabinetmaker John Townsend (see http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event....nk=special_c1b), I'm just not prepared to write off such people as ignorant "old codgers" who are afraid of technology. When I wrote my post, the idea was to generate some discussion, not invite a diatribe. Jaan, I don't think that technologies are just tools. They don't just affect how we make things, they shape what we make. If you examine how Larkin made his films, it seems evident that software would not have improved either the quality or the speed of his output. As it is, he declined to use the technology that was available to him (e.g. rotoscope) because it wasn't consistent with how he wanted to work and what he wanted to make. He wanted to draw every picture himself, apparently freehand, and he clearly was interested in something other than speed and efficiency. For good or ill (and I want to emphasize "for good or ill"), software would have changed both his manner of working and the final product. I'm not an expert on animation, but my understanding is that current technology has a distinct impact on how animated television programmes are made and what those programmes, such as South Park and The Simpsons, look like. If this is true, I'm not convinced that we are witnessing a new dawn. I think that South Park is amusing, but I sure don't think that it is visually impressive. Nor am I blown away by current animated feature films. I agree that there is a lot of animation out there these days. I'm just trying to figure out why I find so little of it compelling and why I think that it looks so mechanical. Maybe I'm visually impaired, maybe I'm not looking at the right films, maybe it's a matter of giving the technology more time. The other thing that I can't figure out is why Chris Landreth's film cost something like $1.5 million and Ryan Larkin's films cost next to nothing. I just don't see the money on the screen, and Landreth's film isn't a better film than the one of Larkin's that is embedded in it. What did spending all this money, and bringing in about a hundred collaborators, actually contribute in terms of either efficiency or quality? As far as I can figure out, a lot of it went to turning motion picture footage into graphic images. In other words, what we appear to have here is a very fancy, and very expensive, Rotoscope process. Is that the point? To be honest, this question of artistic control and resources is part of a larger question that I find confusing. I don't understand how it is that Eric Rohmer and Nestor Almendros can make Pauline a la plage (Pauline at the Beach) with a crew of five and a budget that would be pocket money in Hollywood, whereas it apparently takes hundreds of people and millions and millions of dollars to make a feature film, regardless of quality, in Los Angeles. I'm not asking this question to be smart. I really don't know the answer. The closest I've come to an answer is what Almendros has to say in his autobiography about Hollywood filmmaking. He's pretty caustic, but maybe he didn't know what he was talking about. Jaan and Keith, if you guys can recommend some animated films that you think are damned good and involve the use of the latest cutting-edge technology, I'd be obliged. I like much of Michel Gondry's work and I'd like to see the work of others who have his kind of talent. By the way, have you had a chance to see Ryan, or any of Landreth's earlier films or Larkin's films? I may be ambivalent about Landreth, but I don't think that watching his films is a waste of time, and Larkin's films hold up beautifully despite the passage of about 40 years. [This post has been edited]

Keith, Personally, I can understand why someone might think that animation as an art is being undermined by current technology and the resource demands of that technology. The differences between traditional animation and computer generated animation are nowhere more striking than in the DVD for Chris Landreth's Ryan, for which Landreth won an Academy Award this year. Ryan Larkin, who is the subject of the film, drew every single frame of his films by hand. He did not use assistants, and contrary to what many people apparently think, his film Walking was not rotoscoped. A film that ran a few minutes took many months of work. Landreth, on the other hand, makes extensive use of computers. I have no doubt that Ryan Larkin's work is art, and very good art at that. To my taste, Landreth's work is much less compelling, and I wonder whether his methods have something to do with it. For info on this DVD, see http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...899entry51899 I find it interesting that Ryan Larkin's films were dirt cheap to make (his time, paint, paper and a cameraman to record what he created) and that Landreth's film about Larkin, according to Landreth's own statement on the DVD, cost well over US$1 million. If you look at the credits, you can see that Larkin's films were made by himself with the aid of a few colleagues whose job it was to record his creation, and that Landreth needed a small army to make his film about Larkin. There is no question that Larkin's work is at least as good as Landreth's (Landreth himself thinks that Larkin is brilliant), so you have to wonder what exactly is gained by pissing away huge amounts of money, bringing on board about a hundred people and making a short film effectively by committee. What drives this? Is it faster? Doubtful - I suspect that Landreth's film took at least as much time to make as one of Larkin's, quite possibly longer, and maybe a lot longer. Is it lack of talent? Is it the technology? As you probably know, Michel Gondry, director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and several interesting music videos, comes out of an animation/stop motion background. On the DVD about his work, he acknowledges his debt to Norman McLaren, who also happens to have been Ryan Larkin's mentor at the National Film Board of Canada. To my taste, Gondry's earlier films, which were made very simply, are very attractive, in some ways more attractive than some of his more recent whiz bang material.

I'm currently involved in a still photography project in which I'm finding that testing with a digital camera and laptop is invaluable. The ability to view the test shots on a computer instead of the camera monitor makes a big difference. Between the camera and the computer, we are saving time and film and we have much more peace of mind when we move to the film cameras (a 6cmx7cm and a 9cmx12cm) for the final shots. Given that you have access to the site on Wednesday, with your lighting gear, I would make tests a major priority. If you possibly can, get someone else to do the painting.

Eugene, Before sunset or after sunset? Will the sky be in the shot or not? I'm also planning to shoot some evening footage of New York buildings. In my case, the available choices are the Brooklyn Promenade, a balcony on Roosevelt Island, a balcony on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, the roof of a building in Queens and an elevated parking lot in Queens. These locations give very different views of the city, and would require different approaches to lens choice and exposure. I also need to take into account time in relation to sunset, amount of cloud cover and whether the sky is in the shot. The other day, I did some meter readings from the balcony on Fifth Avenue in the direction of the Plaza Hotel at the entrance to Central Park. If it helps any, I can tell you that an hour before sunset with a fairly clear sky there is a big difference between the meter reading you get off the buildings at the South entrance to the Park and the surrounding sky. In those conditions, and at that time, I think that it would be difficult to hold detail in the buildings without overexposing the sky without a graduated neutral density filter. I'll be doing some further readings from the same spot, but just before and just after sunset, tonight or tomorrow night. I've also done some recent readings just before sunset from the Brooklyn Promenade in the direction of the Fulton Fish Market. Very different situation, especially if it is mostly buildings in the shot. However, the problem is that you need either a long lens or a lot of height if you don't want a lot of the river, and for that matter the tops of the warehouses on the river just below the Promenade, in the shot. I had a 35mm camera with a 50mm lens attached and the lens was way too short. The ideal vantage point would be one of the apartment balconies above the Promenade, but I don't have access. I realize that you are planning on shooting from a different location. Just thought I'd mention what I'm finding in case it helps with identifying some issues.

If you don't mind me asking, do you plan to photograph from Manhattan or New Jersey or Long Island, and from what location?

Thanks. I gather that Katz lives in Utah. He's worked on some very interesting films, must be an interesting person to know.

One possibility: If you go to the home page of www.dedolight.com and open their catalogue in .pdf format you will find something called an eye attachment on page 52, together with some examples of its use. It connects to the projection attachment discussed at page 48 of the catalogue. I have one of these for some still photography that I've been doing and it is pretty nifty.

Thanks, this is very helpful. I've had some discussions with people at Cooke about one of their large format lenses. I was impressed with the compay, and I like the way that they deal with customers. What prime series should I be looking at?

Thanks Stephen. I got the impression from a recent but brief post on cinematography.net that Canon has just come out with, or may soon come out with, a new super16 zoom, but perhaps I misunderstood. Before buying the camera, I spent some time with an A-Minima going back and forth between a Canon zoom and a Zeiss 25mm. Initially, I much preferred the way the camera felt with the prime. However, after fiddling with the way that I was holding the camera, the balance with the zoom felt much improved. I was with a friend who actually preferred the feel of the camera with the zoom.

The musicians I know, most of them born well into the solid-state era but who without exception prefer tube amps for live performances, don't think it is just sentimentalism. However, I don't know anyone who plays hip-hop. I think that tube amps are slow compared to solid-state amps, and have trouble doing justice to some kinds of current music. Two of the things that I like best about my tube amp - that I understand it down to the last bit of wire and could fix it myself, and that the electrons put on a great show in the dark - are truly sentimental/psychological considerations, having nothing to do with actual performance.

Jean-Pierre Juenet, in the opening credits for Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, shows a wry sense of humour.

I've purchased an A-Minima with a PL mount. Now I need to do something about a lens. I want a solid f4 through f16, which I assume means that I want an f2 or f2.8 lens. The A-Minima is a dedicated super 16 camera, so the lens has to cover that format. I'm looking at three options: (1) Purchase a used zoom lens that covers at least 16mm-50mm. (2) Purchase a used prime lens somewhere between 16mm and 25mm and rent others as needed. (3) Purchase a new zoom or prime lens and arrange with one of the rental houses to rent it out, splitting the rental fee, when I'm not using it. I'm not really looking for advice about renting v. buying and zooms v. primes. What I'd greatly appreciate are suggestions for specific lenses for each of these options. Also, I'd appreciate comments on placing a lens with a rental house for rental. My only knowledge of such arrangements has to do with ocean-going boats, where it is a fairly common arrangement, but perhaps less than fully relevant to lenses and other camera gear :) If I buy a used lens, I'm going to want to have it checked. Who in New York, Montreal or Toronto is good at checking/maintaining cine lenses?

To draw an analogy, perhaps flawed, perhaps not: A few years ago, I built a tube amplifier from a design by a highly-regarded French sound engineer named Yves Cochet. It is a wonderful amplifier for many forms of music, such as classical music and jazz, but a solid state amp will do a better job on hip-hop.

The first time that I used compressed air, the plastic straw shot forward like out of a canon and struck the lens head on. Have used compressed air since, but without the straw :) It's very handy for clearing dust from large format film holders, etc. A couple of years ago, I started using something called a Lenspen (www.lenspen.com). Skeptical at first (the part of the pen that cleans is saturated with some kind of carbon compound), I've found that it works very well, does no damage to lenses, and is more convenient to carry than a can of compressed air. I have UV filters on each of my lenses that come off only when a lens is in actual use. For me, that's the best solution. It's amazing how much gunk the UV filters pick up.

A chef who knows how to grill food without burning it. Either that or a fire extinguisher.

I watched Gods and Monsters the other night and got a kick out the end credits, which begin with "A Good Cast Bears Repeating".

I priced the 400 HMI today at a shop in New York that is open Sundays. Yes, renting one might be more commensurate with my pocketbook.

Thanks Stephen. The 650 is now on my shopping list. The 400 HMI does sound good, but with a price to match. Maybe if I swallow hard :)

I think that this is a difficult film to make credibly. If I were involved in this project one of the first things I'd do is look at the work of Leni Riefenstahl (as well as whatever Nazi propaganda footage I could get my hands on) and re-read Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory. I'd also view, as a start: Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire; Carol Reed's The Third Man (and I'd read Graham Greene's treatment); Truffaut's 400 Blows; Terry Gilliam's Brazil; Orson Welles's Citizen Kane; Bob Fosse's Cabaret (and I'd read the Sally Bowles stories, by Christoper Isherwood, on which the film is based, as well as Stephen Spender's autobiography World Within World, especially the sections on Germany before and after the war); Alan Pakula's Sophie's Choice (and I'd read Styron's novel); Wolfgang Becker's recent German comedy Goodbye Lenin; Vigo's Zero de Conduit; Lindsay Anderson's If...; Apocalpse Now Redux (and I'd read Conrad's Heart of Darkness); Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove; Kubrick's Clockwork Orange (and I'd read Anthony Burgess's novel). To evoke what being in a wartime bunker is like, I'd also read Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That and parts of Thomas Pynchon's V, especially the parts about World War I. I might even have a look at Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls and Hector Babenco's Kiss of the Spider Woman. Pontecorvo's The Battle for Algiers has a fair number of black and white claustrophobic scenes, maybe also worth a look. I think that I'd also look at some of Pasolini's and Fellini's films. Not that I'd want it to go to anyone's head ( :) ), but there are parts of Northfolk that I'd also be thinking about. [This post has been edited]

I have two Dedo DLH4 heads, with a power supply for each, that take 100w (12v) and 250w (24v) lamps. I also have a projection attachment. Not having used the Arri and Pepper lights, I can't draw a comparison, but I am very happy with the Dedos, and the photometrics, at least on paper, are very attractive. The Dedos are also very well built. Lately, I have been thinking about buying a 650w Dedo. Although one might think that the design is the same, the published photometrics, in comparison with those of competitors, are not as interesting as those published for the DLH4. If anyone knows why the photometrics are different, or has experience with the 650w, I'd appreciate comments.

David, Many people draw a distinction between discussions on the internet and discussions face-to-face. If I have trouble understanding the point of this thread, and in particular the vehemence of the language, it is because I know of a forum where this is not an issue and that has been very successful in fostering the type of environment that you and Tim and others talk about achieving for this forum. There is a critic named Daniel Rogov who operates a forum about wine and food. Although Rogov is based in Israel, there are participants, both Jewish and non-Jewish, from all over the world. Some people use their full names, some use their first names, some use last names, some use initials and some use pseudonyms. I participate in Rogov?s forum because it is one of the very few internet fora, on any subject, where the discussions are invariably civil, even when the topic is politically or morally volatile. Despite the fact that many of the participants in Rogov?s forum prefer not to divulge their name, rank and serial number, they frequently meet one-another face-to-face. These meetings take place in various parts of the globe, and it is common for a participant in, say, Jersualem or Sonoma County, to meet with someone from another country who is visiting. In fact, on Monday night I went for dinner in New York with three other forum participants, including one who recently arrived from overseas to teach a course on human rights at Columbia. If you read about the dinner (http://stratsplace.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=9044) you will note that none of us use our full names on Rogov's site, but rather AmyD, Aeyal, Asher and RRE. You will also see comments in the thread from three other people who use only first names, Chaim (Tel Aviv), Leanne (California) and Matilda (South Australia). I can assure you that none of the seven of us harbour an irrational fear about misuse of our personal information (that is, we are not "paranoid") and that none of us is mischievous ("the majority of problematic posters are the anonymous ones"). In an earlier post, you wrote: "Someone who posts behind a pseudonym simply cannot be trusted to be sincere or honest, nor can I respect anything they write if they can't bring themselves to attach their name to it. And you constantly wonder what they have to be so afraid of,or what they are hiding..." If you wrote that on Rogov's site, or on many, many other internet sites, people would not consider it an argument, but rather an unprovoked ad hominem attack. Those of us who enjoyed dinner together on Monday night (well, enjoyed the company and the wine ? my own view is that the restaurant, WD-50, is more trendy than it is good) are just people who like their privacy, and who think that communications on the internet, viewable by the whole world, are not the same thing as a face-to-face meeting in a restaurant or pub. Come to think of it, I like my privacy in a restaurant or pub, too. And yes, some people are indeed concerned about leaving personal information all over the net. It is that simple, and ought to be pretty simple to understand. I brought up the example of Rogov's site because it has been extremely successful at attracting a diverse group of people who are civil to one-another on the net, and who have been able, through the site, to meet interesting people face-to-face both in their native cities and in many parts of the world. Having followed cinematography.com for some time, and having more recently participated, I think that it has a way to go before it achieves the same state. If I have made a financial contribution to the site, it is because I think that it just might get there. That said, I hope that I can say, without being attacked as paranoid, insincere, dishonest, mischievous and unworthy of respect, that there are perhaps some lessons to be learned from Rogov?s little forum, not the least of them being common civility and tolerance for the views, including views on privacy, of others. A Note To Forum Participants in New York: I?ll be in the city for another four or five weeks, and frequently during the year. I?ve met Nathan (he?s working on my camera) and I?d love to meet others who participate in this site. If anyone is interested in getting a few people together, whether for lunch or dinner or a drink, send me an IM.

Tim, I don't think that I can make my views any clearer. Having chosen to respond, I would have preferred that you address the thrust of what I had to say, instead of isolating one sentence, and a rather secondary one at that, but that is your privilege. Look, this is your site, and you can run it as you see fit. I just don't think that the concerns that some people have about privacy and personal information, especially on a site that is deliberately accessible to hundreds of millions of people, are as hard to understand as some people make them out to be.

Understanding a rebuild in this way, I assume that no work is done to replace lens elements or correct for scratches, etc. How hard it is to find older lenses that are not showing signs of use that impair them optically or mechanically?