Gregg MacPherson

At art school in the early 80s I think my sculptor tutor, the late Tom Taylor joked that when sculptors get together they discuss metaphysics, space, singularities, but when painters get together they discuss where to buy the best turps I guess the lesson for us then was that ....what artists of different kinds chose to talk about or were able to talk about was no indication of what they were able to achieve. We could apply that to film makers, but film making normally comes with a heightened conscious awareness of process, for both development and execution. Unless you are Salvador Dali and you just.....threw that camera up into the air while it was running (as he did). But hey, maybe he planned that all really carefully. I'm with you completely that there are great film makers who can defy categorization into genre. Actually, I think genre is a really odd concept in the way it is being so universally applied to film. Given enough time, does the new simply become another category (genre). Is that what really happened to the avant-garde. Is there is no real avant-garde, just a history lesson? (not asking, just talking) On a personal level, hopefully without shifting the axis of the thread. I have seen a little of Dereen, Cocteau and yes Svankmajor. He I thought was a very original guy and a master of ideas. Cheers, Gregg

I didn't master this multi quoting from multi quoted thing. I tried. Blade Runner was the most useful, personal to me and widely understood illustration I could think of. Accessible meant we could all go and see it in the cinema if we really wanted to when it was released. At least that was true here. I'm really interested in what people think happens in this magical gap between the level of the creative impulses in an artist, the formation of "idea" and the devolvement into story or poetic form, a fusion of those, or whatever it becomes. In terms of film. No, I don't think you are being careless, but there is potential for carelessness, not necessarily from you, on some of the other threads up at the moment. That's one of the reasons why I made a new thread. But that issue is not important to the subject. Cheers, Gregg.

May I suggest that by your cutting that quote short you are effectively miss-quoting me. I said "...landmark educative piece on film as art, poetry in an accessible form". Accessibility is a factor in this so please pay attention (and that, is a joke).. Maybe I should have written more carefully. Ridley Scott only made this one film that I absolutely adored. I think he could have retired after that. I had a perod of maybe 20 years where I was uninterested in films so I haven't seen all his films. I have seen Gladiator and Blackhawk Down and thought they were great works by the great man. I didn't see Hannibal and didn't really think about it. These kind of themes are really ugly to me. Re whether you have to respect Ridley Scott or not. We can all say what we want, but if we are careless about it we will take some heat in the end. I can't separate RS from the one masterpiece he did. Thats how I identify him. It infers the identity or selfhood of the artist, not bounded by the present moment or the momentary condition of the ego or the body (age). Anyway, back to the thing about what underlies "story" yea? Take care, Gregg.

I know that gushing about Blade Runner is like preaching to the choir, but I don't think that gently challenging the primacy of storey in film making is. What actually spurred me to this post was a message of yours in one of the Prometheus threads where I think you said something like "story is everything". So I wondered if other people thought much about this. I'm sure most working writers, directors and DoPs can do their job really well without thinking about it. There will be a few deranged artists and intellectuals who can't help but think about it, and a few visionary film makers (R. Scott, A. Tarkovsky) who understand it intuitively and maybe didn't need to think about. When you say "core concept" that a "story gets built around" what do you mean? Are we taking about themes and short hand for the narrative. If we think of the core concept for some of Tarkovsky's movies, maybe it sounds like poetic, transcendent experience. Is it more of a quality of experience than a concept? Not asking, just thinking. Gregg. PS Shamelessly gushing about Blade Runner yes, but it's an important illustration for me, and we may not all have the same experince when seeing it.

I was almost going to join in the discussion here and stick up for Ridley Scott. There are a few threads about Prometheus. Then I had some thoughts that are mostly illustrated by his work. I started a new thread "Poetry...Story...Bladerunner...Prometheus" in General Discussion section. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=56599

There is a lot focus on the notion of story amongst film makers. I think it's symptomatic of the style of thinking that human beings have at this point in history. Everything broken down into manageable parts. In film people are looking at the units of construction in terms of story. I'm think that this doesn't give an adequate insight into some truly great films I need a language to help imagine what underlies story. And what's hidden while we focus on story. I think "story" is founded on "idea". Idea is bigger and more potent than story. In turn, underlying idea are those fleeting, rapidly morphing notions that reside in the deeper consciousness of an artist. With Blade Runner the artist directly infused the film with those deeper layers. The film is so rich in poetic intention and idea that it becomes a sort of education in experience. This film is the landmark educative piece on film as art, poetry in an accessible form. Even the limited success it initially had fully validates its being made. It's influence on creative people was immediate. I think when we watch a movie we flick some switches in our head. We like or dislike. We respond or not to different layers in a film. I think our head can be too full and one layer can disable another. It may be that with Prometheus Ridley Scott has missed the mark, but we have to be respectful of this great artist. The idea for Prometheus is great. If it had as much time, talent and creativity oozed into it as Blade Runner I think it could have been great. I'm imagining him shooting 2D, on film, the medium where he is a master. When I looked at the documentative footage of Hampton Fancher, the original Blade Runner script writer, there was an amazing sense of creative ntensity to him and committment to idea. It was strange but somehow logical, I imagined I felt him in the movie. Prometheus feels like a movie founded on a much lower level of personal intensity. Cheers, Gregg PS. Just to be clear, I saw Blade Runner when it was first screened in New Zealand. All us young artys were stunned, in awe. Thank you Mr Scott.

I really liked the idea, and the way that this turned into a story, a narrative. Idea and story are not the same thing. Don't let the bullshitters fool you. I like the idea of the community of artists, all slightly skewiff characters when you see them. I guess all the characters are in that category. There are flaws, but my attraction to the idea sort of over rode them. I thought that all the dialogue should have been post recorded, even if you had to improvise that. And much of the dialogue could have been over MOS pictures, more of a free montage approach. Like someone else observed, the chess game scene stands out. No real reason why all your immages could not look as good as that. There were some where (I hope I remember correctly) I didn't like the colour cast on the skin tones. Why only two days for the main production? If you don't have money to employ a lot of skilled people, don't you need more time. Cheers, Gregg.

Hey, A fellow New Zealander! I really liked the intro bird images over multiple screens. But for this song and these musicians I thought the multiple screens idea, as executed, was misapplied. Sort of rigorously misapplied. The music feels real, the people feel real, but I'm not learning much about them. Feels like my head's in a vice and I'm doing eye exercises. Interesting formal concepts are often seemingly randomly applied in MTV and if people think it's cool then all is OK. I thought this song deserved some seriously intimate observational photography. Some diffuse excursions into the texture of their lives would be interesting. Cheers, Gregg.

Hey Erkan, If it has to be simple and cheap you could make the support plate long enough to go from the camera base to the support point under the lens. Just a length of say 80x10mm or 12mm or thicker aluminum plate with a line of counersunk holes for the camera and another line of tapped 3/8" threaded holes under the lens axis. The camera base 3/8" hole and the lens axis are offset about 9mm. Or just make whatever hole pattern suits. This idea is simple to do if you have a workshp. It's a bit heavy and bulky, but the plate needs to be stiff enough otherwise it's not useful. The NPR idea I've only seen photos and it doesn't look good for supporting a heavy lens. If you want to swap ideas about custom making a plate you can contact me direct at viz(at)xtra.co.nz. Cheers, Gregg.

Can you get a dovetail plate with 19mm rods? Can you fit the Arri one to the ACL? Then you could support the lens and get the balance. Or you could make a basic cheese-plate yourself out of 10mm aluminum plate and adapt the lens support. I don't think supporting the lens from above with a plate bolted to the top handle mount is a good idea unless the camera is being suspended from above at the balance point. The top handle mount isn't stiff or strong enough to react loads (moments) from a big lens. The lens mount would take all the load. I was just recently doing some drawings to design a baseplate for ACL II that would take 19mm rods, handles etc. With 19mm rods in the correct position I found that the base of the ACL camera itself would interupt the rod on the left hand side. Cheers, Gregg.

It's a Proaim brand, marketed by Cinecity and sold by various resellers on eBay for about US$550. Made in India. I'm also curious to hear from someone who has used one. Hope they speak up. This FF is almost the only cheap one (Cavision also do one) that lets you put the drive gear above the rod clamp rather than offset. Cheers, Gregg

If you search "16mm syncroniser" and "hot splicer" on eBay in the Cameras Photo section there are some quite cheap. You could also try to find an out of work neg cutter to do the job. Or at least to give you some advice, maybe lend you some gear. I did a neg cut on a 1/2 hour film I shot years ago. With the best advice and proper gear, but I still heard from the lab later that a couple of my splices didn't hold. I would only do it yourself if you're really broke, or really interested in the process. Cheers, Gregg

I think I drank a double brandy and outed myself re this film vs digital issue on the Indietalk forum. Rather than link to that I'll paste here. Quoting myself with a few corrections for typos: "....In the limit (as in a mathematical proof) the medium of film I believe will have an evolution into a medium for artists only. Think Lynch doing Erazerhead or Chris Marker doing La Jette, but imagine that history haden't yet happened (in order to guage their significance). It (film) may be wasted somewhat on narrative film makers as a medium. If film makers and thair audience can't tell the difference between film and digital it (film) may dissapear quickly as a mainstream production and exhibition medium. We live in a world where we are told that everything can be expressed as a collectiuon of discrete parts. The world is deconstructed. An image is encoded as a matrix of zeros and ones that are transposed off to somewhere else. But like the frog that we may have been forced to disect in class, the analysis of parts is an exercise that can easily end the life force or whole value that glued all the parts together. When light collides with a piece of celluloid it is a kind of total event leaving a vivid record. Analogous to the way all impacting experience on us (mind/body/physiology) leaves a record. These impressions don't easily dissapear. even if they are undersired. I think we are obliged to find or make images of significance or unavoidable fascination and then learn how to deal with them. I think there will be some artists who will linger in the world who will find film as a medium a fascinating loadstone in this respect. There is a line that is being crossed as film dissapears from our experience in the mainstream cinema. It's a validation and reinforcement of the completely eroneous idea that only the surfaces matter. If we make digital look like film, who wiull ever know or remember it (film). But consider this, if you could have a rubber doll that looked , sounded and did everything in an identical way to your life partner, would you accept them as being of equal value? To accept that (the rubber doll) are you really even human enymore. So please go ahead and enjoy film medium while you can....." Cheers, Gregg.

The magazine test stock was old Ferania with sound stripe. Replacing that with some 1995 Kodak neg the problem dissapeared. I can't explain that. I have two 400' magazines here that look like they did a lot of work early in life and had frequent service. Maybe the "shoes" to drive sprocket alignment is affected by that. The steps for the screw heads are a bit worn. Cheers, Gregg

Boris, Just so you don't get swamped with requests for an English maintenance manual, I can say that it is a set of parts drawings with numbers for an English ACL I and does not include the 400' mag or the list of parts. It was very useful though. I have almost serviced about 3 English 400' mags. I have noticed that the plate that holds the "shoes" and rollers for the drive sprocket on the take up side is not that accurately located by the screws. So the shoes are not that accurately positioned to the drive sprocket. Maybe they had a jig or trick to set the position. The French mags have a couple of allen screws that align each sprung retainer pin for the shoes. The English ones don't. On one mag I found on reassembly the film somehow escaped the shoe and tracked off the drive sprocket. Assuming that the relative position of the shoes to the drive sprocket was to blame I set the clearance of those by bi-packing some film around the drive sprocket while all the screws were loose. (camera was off). Seemed to work. The same thing is happening on another mag after reassembly. Do you or anyone else have any ideas? The reason to remove the plate was to dissassemble the shoes so I could soak the little ball bearings in oil. The bottom ones are not accessable. Cheers, Gregg.

Yes I was on full alert with that one, but I was still quite curious. If the price was $40 I would probably get one and have a look. Things like deburing and some re-machining where I wasn't messing with the resulting flange position I would just do at home. Cheers, Gregg.

Hey Boris, I got this one really cheap from the asherphoto guy in Israel. I thought I might put it with my old ACL I that I plan to sell locally in New Zealand soon. The Arri-B adapter feels jamed in fairly tight. If the FFD is good like that I will probably leave it. Cheers, Gregg.

If you have a look at the numbers on this page it's useful. I didn't check his numbers properly yet. It's an area where small errors make a big diffeence to our ideas so I would check carefully. http://marylandfilms.com/16mm-super16-ultra16-compared.html Assuming he has no wrong data. U16 projected frame area does look close to S16 for Cinema (1.85/1). For HD (1.77/1) based on the areas he gives U16 has about 11% less area than S16. If you do go U16 there are less labs and some charge more for U16. I saw one that did anyway when I was researching labs yesterday. So you need to be happy with your lab and transfer costs and access. If you are trying to get sharp images for HD or cinema then you need sharp lenses. If you only need to own a zoom then maybe a Zeiss 10-100 will cover. They sometimes are cheap. If not then you end up with the same problem as S16 - the Zooms are still not cheap to own. If you need sharp primes for your U16 and end up getting MKI Zeiss distagons, these cover S16 so you might as well be shooting S16. Do Kooke Kinetal 9mm cover U16? Sometimes Kinetals are cheap. Paying 800 for a new adapter is a fairly expensive way to do it. Cheers, Gregg

Yes very funny. I asked the vendor who the manufacturer was and he said he did not know. He said he has a lot of them. He didn't want to measure the thickness of the flange with base and the spacer ring. I'm wondering if he has a source of these in India or China. I'm curious about the Indian made one you are refering to. Do you have any clues how to find that. Cheers, Gregg.

If you search the forum you'll find the ideas about standard/ultra/super 16 have had a lot of debate. Some will argue that if you are shooting fine grain stock on standard 16 you can get a good cropped image. S16 cameras are quite cheap at the moment. I have seen well serviced ACL and Aaton sell on eBay for what your conversion will cost. You have to watch carefully for these, and here I am assuming the vendors are not liars or conmen. Sorry, I have not been following NPR on eBay. If you do stick with NPR the CA-1 mount can take an Arri-B adapter. Don't know if it can take a PL adapter. When you are deciding what camera and format to go with you need to plan out what lenses you may end up owning or renting. Cheers, Gregg.

Robert, I like the spinning butterfy images. Have you degrained those shots somehow? Or just graded it down to get that nice solid black. My eye says there is less grain in the grey compared to the walk through the lab. Cheers, Gregg

Hey thanks Dom, Tom. If I can get some inexpensive hard mounts I would far prefer it. There are some fairly inexpensive interesting looking adapters that have better variations of the grub screw idea. I might round up the references and see what you think. But for now I'll research the hard mount idea and see what happens. The plated brass hard mount I mentioned before is also an adaptor. I may get one on apro (meaning I can return it) to have a look. The vendor on eBay wasn't that helpful with measurements. From the photo it looks to me that the critical dimension from the mount base to the flange seat/rear of wings will be less than 5.5mm even with the spacer. Here is the eBay URL http://global.ebay.com/Arri-Bayonet-Mount-Lens-to-PL-POSITIVE-LOCK-Adapter/300710926766/item I have a friend with a large CNC wjho may make the adapters for me for free. If the increment under 5.5mm is not that important I think he can make a consistent dimension for that from mount to mount (maybe within just a few microns). Before Dom's post I thought we had to be within a couple of microns of the idealized dimension. It's a ;lot easier if we don't. Wether he will be happy to make them in stainless I am less sure of. He would be happy using 6061-T6 aluminum or probably brass. How long does it normally take to collimate a set of five S16 MK II primes? Steven Spooner at Panavision Auckland was friendly and keen to help. But he may have to do it after hours. Dom I found the previous thread on Fabricating a PL mount which made me wonder about different versions of the mounts. Are you sure that the dimension given above as "one or two hundredths of a mm under 5.50mm from base to flange seat" is good for my S16 MKII lenses? Cheers, Gregg

I was looking around to find an inexpensive way to re-mount some S16 Zeiss MKII primes from Arri-B to PL. They have the 8 screw hole pattern. Visual Products have some nice looking stainless ones, not inexpensive. I saw some inexpensive plated brass ones but I think they are were for Optar lenses. They came with a spacer ring that may help set the flange position. Does anyone know the distance from the front of the PL mount (the drilled face that sits on the rear of the lens body) and the rear of the flange/wings? Were the original Zeiss Arri-B mounts machined super accurately? What tolerance could one assume for that? If the PL remounts are really acurate will they still need re-shimming? Cheers, Gregg

Actually I just found email from Spectra. I think they normally process weekly. Maybe that has helped the price.

Spectra are really inexpensive on their rate card/website. Was 13 cents/foot for 16/35 colour neg. I'm guessing they don't move much when negotiating for a feature. Is there any downside to using them? I think they batch process but that might be for stock other than colour neg. Looks like a great place for indies/microbudget folk committed to film. In New Zealand we had two labs at NZ 45 cents/foot (US 34 cents/foot). One just closed. LA looks good. I talked to an indian film maker the other day and tried to find out how to guage costs in India. Very difficult for a white European to get a straight answer. Normally someone inserts themselves between you and the labs and negotiates a good rate for a commission. I can't help wondering, if you turned up at the labs looking like a veteran hippie Euro-expat holding an Arri ST what rate you might get. Gregg.