Gregg MacPherson

Grab a soft pencil and learn to quickly express ideas on paper early in the development process. Grow some skills and a habit with that and storyboards can feel easy, again with a pencil. Have a look at sketches in the working process of Eisenstein or Ridley Scott. It's not to produce great drawings (although Escher thought that anyone could learn). Its about documenting the development of your ideas. If you throw away the pencil you are missing a chance for direct connection with the realization of your idea

Dom, Can you just remind me what it costs for you guys to do a lube and adjust, assuming no unexpected problems. Cheers, Gregg

If Matt is curious about it just let him do it. The "fool and his film stock" saying Why is this specially applicable here?

Matt, You could do some rough sync shooting with your noisy, non Xtal camera if you really wanted to. Shooting a music video to playback for example. But there is extra work tweaking the sync. If you want to make some short dramas with lots of dialogue then you are better off getting a quiet running Xtal camera. Maybe just borrow one at first. Re the editing on film. The other guys are a bit discouraging. I think it depends on just how deeply or profoundly one is connected with the physicality of the film itself. On a practical level you can learn the basic knowledge in one short project. To see how strong your afinity is with it, just shoot some very short project with your noisy Arri, borrow some time on someones pic sync or flatbed and start cutting. Some of the facilities or people that you need may be very hard to find. You may be forced to go with a hybrid film/digital working process

Tim, To fix the problem of people multiple posting the same message, is it possible to automatically delete all but one of the posts and politely notify the post auther? This is a great forum. Cheers, Gregg

I searched the sold listings in eBay and saw a Steenbeck sold for $50. So anything is possible. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Steenbeck-16mm-Flatbed-Editing-Machine-6-Plate-with-Sound-/140887227059?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20cd887ab3 There are other makes as well as Steenbeck. I have 2 Moviola flatbeds. KEM. Maybe CP made an unusual semi flatbed that had the beds arranged on stepped surfaces with a vertical syncronizer in the centre.

"PS. I would also love to edit the old school way. Are there any alternatives to a full steenbeck flatbed that would allow me to edit by cutting and splicing?" There are what we used to call pic-syncs. Like a gang syncronizer with a little viewing screen. Quite nice to cut with but the viewing screen is quite small. Why don't you want to use a flat bed? Flat beds will be realy cheap if you can find one. Search eBay for Moviola, there's a Moviola pic-sync there now. Sorry I had trouble using an actual link here.

Freya, Those stills are really interesting. Are the last two done in camera with clever things held in front of the lens or are they modified on your laptop? The images have a soft, smudgey, sort of spritualized feel. Pyramid icons and the ambiguous paw/hand. Suggests this could be anything from the scary serious to the eclectic or casually exploitative (IMO, most music videos are unashamedly the later two) Maybe when we see the finished video I'll get the Kenneth Anger connection. I'll have to brush up. All I remember of Anger from my brief stay at film scbool is homo-erotica and motorcycles (on screen). Looking forward to seeing the video. Gregg.

Well, for the benefit or amusement or others (those who can read it), my guess is that a switch has been flicked in your account so that you will not see my posts. If you consciously did that then I guess the post above is you just telling us all that you did that.

For as long as film makers/directors are attached to the notion of story telling, good cinematographers will see their roll as to "serve the story". A phrase that comes up repeatedly in the conversations. So is cinematography about storytelling in the common modern context. Obviously yes. Use of the word "about" does not suggest that the cinematographer is the default lead storyteller. This is clearly not what Matteo is saying.

Some of these ideas about the PL - c mount adapters has been discussed before. Some good answers from Dom Jaeger and others. Do you have the adapter fitted the right way ? With the relatively small FFD of c mount, the lens should be sitting deep in the adapter in order to achieve that. If it's the wrong way around then you will only be able to focus on very close objects (by eye).

PS: Camera is already a S16 conversion. Started by Les Bosher, finished by Visual Products. The LED array does crowd the left hand edge of frame but fits OK.

I'm looking at page 25 of the Eclair ACL Camera Operating Manual. There's a picture of the mirror, prism for the meter (1), prism block for the viewfinder (2). The prism (1) is stuck on the back side of prism (2). Intuitively, it seem like the prism (2) back surface is not fully reflective, and even if the prism (1) was not there there would be light loss. But this may be only a fraction of a stop. If I'm missunderstanding this can someone give me a nudge. I just felt that with light meter, video tap, that light was lost that I would prefer to have for the viewfinder. It's the big kinoptik finder, x10 magnification (almost too big, but great for focusing). The image looks bright, but I haven't done side by side comparisons with Aaton / SR. Does Bernie's lazer brightening improve on a new GG? If so how does that work. This camera and VF are literally almost new.

I bumped into this old and very fascinating thread. Reading it I had some compelling thoughts. People were a bit non receptive to a lover of Shakespeare. This feels odd given what film owes to the stage. Regarding whether film stock cupping due to the Aaton A minima wind could produce discrepancies in effective FFD on an ACL. No one seemed interested in the comparison between the Aaton and ACL gate / pressure plate. Most importantly, the way that the ACL gate / pressure plate constrains the film from this cupping. There are contact surfaces on the camera gate that fully constrain the edges of the frame (movement in the forward direction). The pressure plate on older mags constrains the sides and centre in quite a forceful way (movement in the rearward direction). Newer mag pressure plates have a very forcefull approximate overall constraint, then a sepatrate small pressure plate over the gate that has quite soft pressure (on the sides only) to give the actual film positioning.. So the problem probably separates into solutions or ideas relative to these two types of pressure plates. But going back to the initial thought. Some consideration of how these systems actualy succeed or fail in constaining the film is where the discussion should start. And obviously the simplest thing to do is to shoot some test film that could show some differences. Like someone said, this may be sensitive to fps. Lastly, the issue of 400' mags falling off ACLs. I jumped off a truck with my camera once and the 400' mag came off and hit the (fine) gravel. I dusted it off and all was OK. But after that I checked the relative dimensions of other mags between the top and bottom where they are gripped by the camera. I ended up shimming the magazine part at the top (1) so that both the mags had equal security. One can feel if the magazine dimension is a bit small by wiggling the magazine from side to side. On a well adjusted mag I don't see any wiggle. Very scientific. There were no cheap verniers back then. Simply measuring a good mag with a vernier would be the modern way to do it. Match the others to that with some shims under the part at the top. Such stuff will get easier when a workshop manual ends up in the public domain. Shimming the mag part is something easy to do if one had a specific dimension to achieve. (1) Part 310 in french drawing, "magazine location mount".

Is this Siemens star test downloadable anywhere or does one have to buy a hard copy? Thanks, Gregg.

There's a limit on total upload volume. You have to delete some of the old ones. If you go into your account through your name at top right of page then go into "my settings" then "manage my attachments" Edit: spelling

Fenn Penridge may be an amusing fiction. See this...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qleG61tuQgk

Does anyone understand how the light meter works in an ACL II? Not from the user's point of view. Thing I'm wondering about is, is there any light loss for the viewfinder? Depending on the light loss I would probably have it removed. Thanks for any ideas. Gregg.

Multple posting or cross posting as it may be called is against the rules of the forum. Not my job to mention this but thought I would take a turn at it. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules

Brian, Were the Zeiss Contax lenses remounted somehow? Otherwise what was your solution, what adapter, what camera? I have spotted that Kimcamera in Sth Korea can rehouse Zeiss Contax for $1200 incl PL mount, gears and (I think) 80mm front. But suddenly it's not cheap any more. Cheers.

Hey Jean-Louis, I was always put off the Kinetals because of them having to focus by turning in the lens port with vaseline or whatever lubricant. Do you think that the ACL / Arri S adapter is particularly bad for the Kinetals, because of the shape of the locking part perhaps. Is that locking part shaped diffeently, maybe better for the Kinetals in old Arri camera ports? Les Bosher does a nice ACL / Arri S mount that gives Kinetals a focuing sleeve in the mount, but it's expensive.

Heikki, The Switars always looked quite sharp and can be cheap. But they are really small and fidley to work with and not very practical if there are a lot of lens changes. You could look at Arriflex Schneider (Arri standard mount) primes, Cooke Kinetal, or MK I Zeiss super speeds. I saw a set of Zeiss sell a few months ago as singles for about $500 each with gears and 80mm front mods. That seems really cheap but I don't know your budget. The Scneider and the Cooke Kinetals are often cheaper. Are there any lenses for sale in Finland so you can see them first, get some advice from the sellers etc? Another option is to get a Zeiss 10-100 T3 zoom. These are quite sharp and sometimes cheap.

Or if it's daytime in Sacramento just point it at the sky.

If you put a sheet of paper on the wall, illuminate that, go full frame, stop down, how does it look? You could blow the ground glass off a bit with your Rocket bulb stringe first.

Evenly distributed over the frame? When you stop down you will see the ground glass texture.