Gregg MacPherson

This edges toward a question that may be relevant. Are all scanners and scanner operators posing the same level of risk to the film. LAX vs Mumbai or Nigeria. Do they all have the same standards for scanning gear and operators?

Post 4-1/4 (a bit like the train station in Harry Potter) Chris, You poor chap. Having to endure 5 years of that. I have no connection with them other than trying to provoke some vigorous, serious debate in their small cotton wool universe. I pulled my head out of the sand (1) a couple of years ago, looked at some kiwi shorts in the Int Film Fest and felt no real progress had occuered over the 17 years that I had been avoiding them. Films were less formally adventurous, sort of normalized. Similar feeling about the (seemed to me) reduced intensity of the core creative values in the ideas. About half were shot on film. I looked around to see what shape the creative sub culture of grass roots or emergent film makers was in. Did they communicate and help each other? All I found was this large perenial thing on the 48hour forum. I thoght this contest and the culture that has grown with it was a very bounding, limiting thing. Of almost no value at all as far as enabling the emergence of exquisite talent or exquisite little films. But the city walls are well defended, and inside all the space is taken up with the most inane short, self congratulatory bable. Endless variants of Bevis and Buthead on nitrous oxide. I think if that culture can't somehow grow a limb that encourages these more exquisite qualities that I missed seeing then IMHO it desrves to fail, dissapear or just own up to the fact of becoming "white noise", irrelevant to anything except affirming film making as a fun social exercise and achance to learn some basic skills. Again, my condolences on having spent 5 years of palpable conract with them. I have a 10 year project like that, but not to do with moving pictures. (1) Any mean folk can enjoy the obvious oportunity for a joke at my expense. Must be time for Matthew to point out how far off topic I have strayed.

Chris Millar from over on the F vs D thread was or is a proffessional mechatronics guy and may ooze helpfull ideas. When you are over there just ask him, invite him back here. He may not have noriced your thread. Cheers, Gregg.

Daniel, I've been tracking ACL gear on eBay for a while. A PL to ACL mount adapter sold recently quite cheap. Needed a new threaded ring, the one that goes on the camera flange, or some skill to fix it (thought it was called TS mount on the ACL). Was stainless but I didn't recognise it. I sold an unbranded one on ebay for about $280 maybe a year ago, aluminium apart from the rear part that sits on the camera flange. So if you can ge patient they do come up. I have a Les Bosher one, beatifully desgned and made, stainless steel in all the right places, but they are 380 pound ($620 approx) Maybe someone like the Linoptik man could make a good one cheap if you are in a hurry. Thanks for the private message re batteries. Don't worry, we may clog Jeroen's thread but we are usefully bumping it up the board (smiling). PS: Thanks Jeroen, for the battery information.

Me personally I already found a comparison that really interests and concerns me. It's clearly offered at the start of the thread, then expanded on a bit later. If someone has ideas as a direct response to that I would find that interesting. But the topic "sprawl" is inevitable, and people are free to do whatever they want unless they get ugly and over personal, in which case I suggest they be completely ignored. There are things in your posts I'd like to chat about but I can't be in too may places at once without loosing focus on the idea that brought me here. Did you enjoy any of the jokes? I thought ACHE (art, culture and human experience) was pretty good. But Chris did better with "sprawl", perhaps by accident. Too obscure? I don't know why, but over the last few days, in the face of some serious thoughts, including this thread, I've had inexplicable, obscure, humorous ideas and fits of laughter.

I'm glad someone else around here has a sense of humour. So a "sprawl" would be a fight or brawl that you can do while horizontal, perhaps while skimming the www ? Or a "sprawl" is like a multi directional divergence from topic start, like spilling a can of paint? I'm not sure I'm signing on for either of these personally. We'll see. I'll follow those links in an extended jiffy. Is there any refference for that "just saying" sign off? Did you go and read some of that 48hours forum i pointed to. That chap never actually said a darn thing. He and pals normally filled their thread with short nonsense that looked like Bevis and Buthead on nitous oxide.

Post 5 Hey Bill, The key ideas that I've offered, hoping for some response to, I don't know if they ever have been discussed on the forum. I never noticed them. If they have, just nudge me along by pointing to where. I do include some ideas that have come up before and may feel old, and I do express some of my feelings, which may feel similar. But, actually I am quite overtly taking this Film vs Digital comparison to another level. Those that believe the world is constructed only of what they can in the moment objectively see will think my proposition is gobledy gook. Those that acknowledge even the most basic hidden things or processes in nature may be curious. I put the thread title as Film vs Digital, Impact on Art, Culture, Experience. My original tittle was longer, something about a comparison between the two. Too long to fit. The vs makes it seem like it's all about the conflict between these two media. Mostly I was interested in the comparison. But I know the conflict part is inevitable, and I have obvious feelings about that too. You were one of the guys who I thought might respond to my idea or theme. My first thought was that you hadn't read me, but were responding to Matthew and Khaleem's debate. The ideas in their interaction are not central to the core of my idea. Yes, there is a good chance that all the old emotional fights can happen again here, but the core idea I offered was actually new. It could alter peoples perception of the comparison and suggest some left field ideas for the development of digital. There is still time to respond before you wake up one morning and your parner has been replaced by a hybrid cyborg. Maybe you didn't read that one yet. Hope all is well in NYC, Gregg.

Just shake it off mate. I think you wound each other up a bit. Got slightly emotional and personal. I was maybe the only other option, and my ideas mostly have never been discussed before so it's harder to find a start point for a reaction (guessing). Chin up.

Post 4 Chris ! So I'm a crap researcher! Let the combat begin! Neah just kidding. These facts did float through my world about 1978 at art school. You would assume that someone starting a theme like mine would do a lot of objective research. The internet makes this so fast. But no, I wanted a subjective and experiential foundation. The main axis of my theme, or to me the most important part, needs to consider finer values of human perception or awareness and subtle, microscopic elements at play in an interaction, a photographic event. By extension a motion picture negative and.... So how does one prepare a subjective and experiential foundation. I did spend a lot of time with my eyes closed in a very quiet but vitalized state and had my chance to listen to the enlightened. I do fess up that I started study at uni in physics and quantum physics when young. The quantum physics lecturer had big curly hair and a goatee, a happy maniacal gleam in his eye. I remember him writing the Schrodinger equation at demented speed on the board without looking...... Thinking of the idea of making the film negative more densely detailed, a more literal photograph, A big leap in that direction may be almost available now, or actually ready now, at least for B&W. The microfilm style emulsion of the Gigabyte film. I talked about really refined values of process in the photographic event, seeming to imply that an almost infinitely fine result on the negative was the ultimate thing to achieve. That may be one version of it. If the info rich playful photons arrive at an emulsion with coarser grains then you simply have more photons making a detailed map over a larger grain. In the terms that I have been talking about it, this map still attempts to express all that information. The idea of photo etching on concrete came up on another thread. I heard that an old ex art school colleague Ronnie did some of that. I didn't see them, but the idea is an extraordinary expression of photography. Its a good nudge that the ideal "grain" size is not always small. I get a similar sense from silhouettes of hands made by blowing soot onto cave walls. The "grain" here is formed by soot onto the texture of the rock. What's common to all these is that the obvious unit of image, the grain if you like, is organic within the image making. I use that word in exactly the same way that many of you use to describe the look or grain of film. Consider now, maybe Ronie could have somehow achieved small rectangular image units on the concrete, up close quite visible. As a photograph, odd, uninteresting (to me), but if he jumped camp to the sculpture class it would be a remarkable piece previsioning and commenting on the concerns we have today.

Post 3 Commonly the words objective or subjective refer to relative qualities of awareness. More or less of one quality or the other. The style with which we entertain an idea. I have proposed that a level of connection exists between cinematographer, object and emulsion, personified as a vast stream of interacting photons. There is the commonly accepted physically objective value of this, and what is commonly seen, but the density of information on offer is vastly greater than that. Whatever the cinematographer or the audience is able to "see" beyond those boundaries of the objective, we shift by instinct into the realm of the subjective. Or perhaps the imaginary, or the magical, the inexplicable, or art. I see it as somewhat obvious and unarguable that film emulsion is currently the only medium with potential to capture these more intensely refined values of an image. And the idea of developing a sensor that literally emulates the human retina and nervous system, in order to emulate the film emulsion, does seem odd when film itself is such a simple thing, a practical solution, already achieved. The question will come up, wondering about just how valuable or necessary these more refined values of subjective connection are in the photographic event. Assuming it's actually real, does it really matter? Qualities of human awareness and modes of thinking have undergone a gradual shift towards more objective values and greater objectivity. In general people are happy, because they equate subjectivity with myth, unbelievable magic or Santa Klaus......things that objectivity seem able to disprove. But this change in style of awareness and thinking is accelerating. The world seems more particular, broken into manageable units, de-constructed if you like. And what has suffered is the value of wholeness in experience, the sense of profound integration within the universe. So in short, my opinion on the value of subjective and often inexplicable layers of experience, especially as they impact on art and culture......It's as vital as life. We can't afford to loose more of that. If we do we will end up forever trying to recapture what we have lost. When we talk about the accelerating shift to the objective, the particular, the material, in human awareness and life basically we acknowledge that this has occurred in parallel with the growth of technology. I'm not sure whether either one is clearly a cause of the other. That's another big issue I guess. Considering the future and wondering how far these changes in awareness and technology will take us. Consider this imaginative exercise. A future where your life partner is a hybrid cyborg. Better able to provide for whatever you need. If you itemized all the parts or elements of their function as discrete objective items, they were better. When this becomes an option, some people would just happily accept it. Some would be horrified I hope. How will people react when this becomes mandatory, when there is supposedly no other choice. Digital is almost at the point where it has the same context in our time as that hybrid cyborg technology in that imagined future. What we will loose may not even be noticed. We have been mentally conditioned to simply absorb and accept inevitable change. Inevitable change is commonly confused with "progress". All too strange really. Globally we are a feisty lot, going to war for reasons that often seem inexplicable. Here, coming close to loosing film, something that I think IMHO has profound value to art, culture and human experience, there is barely any objection from the human population. There are a few islands of sincere dissent, but globally this change is occurring as if unnoticed.. There is a scene in that Julia Roberts Movie about Erin Brockovich, where her dad is eating a soya cheesecake, complaining that he knows that every bit of it is made from soya, he doesn't like (hates) it, but he's eating it. This kind of wisdom is suddenly less certain when that's GE soya, a fact that may ultimately signal the irreversible compromise of the human genetic code. By accepting digital we are helping to enable a compromise or loss of a similar order. We are replacing a medium that enabled direct connection, "seeing" on an incredibly refined level, with one that does not. In this thread the idea of "seeing" having more refined states was put in a sort of literal way, considering the microscopic, as an obvious way of going beyond commonly accepted boundaries. In physics the apparent functional laws change as we shift from the macroscopic to the microscopic. Without film, is there still potential for refined experience, profound experience or art in stills or motion pictures? My feeling, bear in mind that my whole construction here is intuitively and experientially based, is yes of course, but of a less direct or absolute kind. It's of a different order, some will say lower order. Perhaps impolitic, but probably true.

It's hard to know what to think or say without knowing much about the film. But I was going to say before that it could be a useful shakedown or test for the cast or crew. Thats me guessing that you are taking some risks there due to money.

I meant a very short promotional piece that sold the film, a trailer basically for selling the idea and you. For meetings or intimate screenings with the people that may help with finance, or help make the film. Cheers, Gregg

Kahleem, I didn't get that reference. Is it towards anyone or anything in particular? Is that your take on my original post?

Hey Matthew, fancy bumping into you again.... What about shooting a very short persuasive piece that sells the film idea. You, key people, crew, actors all identified with that achievable goal. Could be usefull in lots of ways. But I don't know if you have some practical difficulty with that. For example, being forced to spend large on sets or something you would rather spend on later.

Dom, I got the new part, old stock from Panavision Auckland for about US$39 before tax, old stock. Talking to Gary Oliver there, he soakes the glue joint in acetone and knocks the part off. He uses Locktite 480 for the glue. When I look at the gluing surface in the new part it is ribbed. Maybe the Sachtler design engineer was being kind. This is somewhere for the acetone to go. But when I remove the old part I may find those ribs full of epoxy (laughing). The insert thread that the twist lock screws into. It's screwed into a threaded sleeve in the plastic. Is the insert thread just kept with locktite or is there something else holding it. Cheers, Gregg

If there were six degrees of separation between our topic start point and, say, talking about cabbages, then you and Kahleem just made the first step. Sorry, I'm still in a humorous mood from the Skyfall thread. I was thinking about art, perception, photography (by implication cinematography). A look at a hugely more refined interaction than is normally part of common experience, but which, even by intuitive analysis, is obviously occurring. My opinion is that these more refined, more subtle values are more potent, even if they are not consciously experienced. The question then comes, is current digital technology disabling that or compromising that? The obvious answer is yes. Next question is, what are the implications of that in terms of art, culture, human experience. Should one be fearful that another increment of inevitable "progress" is about to perhaps irrevocably compromise art, culture and human experience (ACHE ?). Yes. Should all people live in fear? Don't know. Those who are aware will probably feel it for the others by proxy. If digital camera designers and the mind-set of their market agreed with me on an obvious, objective level but (of course) still wanted to evolve digital, then I don't know the direction they would take. Simply having even more pixels and being able to mimic film on a crude objective level would not cut it. The only hope might be a sensor or capture process that more literally paraphrased the human eye and nervous system. Ultimately, cultured living tissue would be a likely possibility. And when they felt they had finally matched all aspects of that quaint, archaic medium called film, I guess they would feel quite good about it. By that time what will the world look like? The vision of Bladerunner is probably too romantic. Think more like Imortal (Ad Vitam) by Enki Bilal. If I am still alive I will be trotting down to whatever obscure place still projects sprocketed film. A museum or an underground subversive society. Unless we were blowing up bridges I think we would be considered quaint and irrelevant. It sounds like I'm really taking the piss re the slight divergence from topic. I think the ideas at issue there are important and worth arguing over. Probably deserving of a thread all of their own. Here in New Zealand the grass roots emergent film makers are coming through and very identified with a large local culture based on the 48hour film making contest. I have "stood on a soap box" alone before and raged against the happy limitations they hold dear within their culture. Digital technology has played a huge part in the democratization of film making that they enjoy. But also, to make the obvious joke, one can also see it as a mediocratization. If you want to read some of that visit here: For my rage and the ensuing bun fight. http://www.v48hours.co.nz/forum/general-discussion/ratty-crack-bride-rules-beyond-48-hours-etc/ For a more reasoned but still hopeless approach. Scroll about 1/4 way down the page. http://www.v48hours.co.nz/forum/general-discussion/the-trifecta-of-bullshit/?i=500#forum-replies If you are in a hurry just read my posts, forget the other guys (smiling). I think anyone can post there. Please do if you have any bright ideas. Cheers, Gregg

Jeroen, Thanks for that info. What batteries are you using? Type (NiMhi / Lipo....), Voltage, Ah? Cheers, Gregg

I posted this before on Bill Dipiettra's thread, Sad Day For 35mm Film. It may have got lost there, so I'm starting a unique thread for it. This is my sincere attempt to write some kind of personal begining point on this. It's not an invitation to conflict. I'll call it an invitation for others to offer their own thoughts about it or to make creative reactions. For those interested in that, I suggest we basicly ignore any reactions of an ugly or personalized sort. For some years, from 1993 to 2010, while I avoided any involvement in film making, I occasionally had the strange thought to write something on the differences between the film and the electronic motion picture image - the impact of this difference on art, culture, human experience. I didn't, the grass grew under my feet and now it's almost too late. There are many reasons why people may lament the apparent demise of film and it may be that they all have some legitimacy. Some important things may be wrongly dismissed as mere sentimentality. For example some people are intimately identified with the physicality of the camera, the perforated film and a photographic process which verges on the inexplicable or magical. This can be quite profound and not to be dismissed. The photographic process is more densely packed with intelligence and meaningful information than we can possibly imagine. A tiny pixel sized dot on the cheek of an actor. How many photons arrive there per 1/50 second while the cinematographer watches. There are probably some on the forum who can tell us, per unit of measured light. It's a lot, a vast number. The interaction between the photons and the actors skin, we have to assume is on the molecular level, or on the scale of the atoms there. My contention is that this interaction between the photons and the material structure of the actor is changing the physicality of both photon and actor. I mean on an incredibly microscopic level. Further, some would contend, that the microscopic contains functional principals of the macroscopic. I'm thinking that each single microscopic interaction somehow encodes a snapshot of the macroscopic, at that moment. So this deluge of photons heading towards the cinematographers eye in the 1/50 seconds interval is overwhelmingly dense with information far beyond issues of light, dark, color, contrast that the cinematographer might normally deal with. You could assume that human sense perception is incapable of responding, or that common disbelief would disable the chance of receptivity. Again, taking an intuitive leap, I suggest that some cinematographers are at least subconsciously receptive to this more subtle, densely rich stream of information and process and make use of it without even being aware of it. Regardless of the degree of receptivity in the cinematographer, after the expiration of 1/50 second, all that stream arrives at the emulsion. Thinking intuitively about that, and yes again making some intuitive leaps, the interaction between photons and emulsion could be conceived of on a microscopic level. Maybe black and white is easier to talk about. Imagine a very small element of grain. The arriving photons make an impression apon it. This can again be considered at a microscopic level. Being saturated with information on a very refined level from their interacation with the actor, now an interaction on a similar level is possible with the emulsion. My guess is that with current methods, contact printing the camera original, we loose a lot of or the purity of this vast storehouse of photographed information. On the conscious level, normal human perception may be unable to see it, but this does not mean that it is unable to make an impact upon us and leave us with something useful. Think art, magic, subjective experience. Now, the digital version. The cinematographer, assuming he is lucky enough to have a spinning mirror, no longer has a photographic capture process that is analogous to his own ocular perception. As before we could hope that his retina, neurophysiology and style of awareness is responding in some way to the microscopic interactions with this vast incoming stream of densely laden photons. Again, after the expiration of 1/50 second, all that stream arrives at the .......sensor. All I can think from what is commonly described about the configuration and function of sensors is that the vast bulk of all that impossibly dense, richly packed information is suddenly all but gone. It's replaced by a relatively) tiny stream of zeros and ones that encode a crude value of only some aspects of that. I think photochemical process is capable of creating a direct and profound impression. The photons landed on the negative and changed it. It enables a direct visceral connection that someone can later make with that moment. Not imaginary, not virtual, not smoke and mirrors. It's real, palpable, can feel as real as being punched in the stomach. But I don't think we all respond uniformly, most significantly for me because we don't all have the same acuity of seeing or functionality of awareness. But then again, moving pictures as a popular art form require some degree of common or shared style of seeing. So perhaps the main stream film industry, in particular, digital exhibition, will culture us to see in a way that is useful to them and no one will notice or know any different. On Bill's thread I rounded it off here , thinking I was using more than my share of space. Cheers, Gregg

Of course, I agree with Darrell. I never spotted any "film is dead" dogma on Deakins site. I did see him often give really practical tips on lighting. He likes redheads and doesn't like LED's so I thought he might be one of the good guys. If he is in fact a significant figuire in the sea change to digital then this is an interesting and maybe important thing to discuss. But, discussing shouldn't be about taking reactive, emotive and over-personalized positions. And Raj shooting his mouth off is almost completely non usefull as a start point (oh crap, now there's another two metaphors I'll have to explain). Intense discussion and even violent dissagreement is OK in my honest opinion. Provided people don't degrade into the ugly personalized stuff. Do you know Deakins as a friend, collegue or adversary well enough to declare that you have no respect for him as a person? That's a rhetorical question. In case you are wondering whether I am an ally or an enemy, I wrote at length some of my thoughts on the differences between the film and the electronic motion picture image here http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=58360&hl= Page 1, scroll to the bottom. I needed more space but thought I was using more than my share. I should have put that as a start point to a new thread. May still do that. Here's to objectivity as a method or backstop. But genuine subjectivity is always OK.

Hey Jeroen, I'm trying to help collect names of ACL service technicians for the useful database. Are there others at ETKON as well? Does Edwin or ETKON have the experience and equipment for major overhauls? Cheers, Gregg.

jeroenvanderpoel (his spelling) listing his ACL II for sale on the cine market place forum mebtioned that his service tech was Edwin Schouten at Etkon (www.etkon.com). Worth adding to the list of techs on the eclair website. Cheers, Gregg.

So, you say the cinematography was "hideous", the "girls were sloppy and ugly" and Bond was "arrogant.....with no emotions". Seemed like a quite agressive tone to me. Regarding the joke(s). Humour is good. Try to culture some.

Just remember, in the history of it, I was the one trying to crack jokes. You're right that there was a chance that Raj wouldn't get the joke, and that maybe Americans wouldn't get it either. Separate thing. There was a thread posted, not sure on category, offering preview of a documentary about a group of Christian missionaries helping/converting a remote tribe in Africa. That thread may have just dissapeared. I wondered if you knew what happened to that thread. Had a hunch you might have been watching the forum and noticed something. Here's to preserving ones sense of humour.

Hey Matthew, It seems to be my lot to be misunderstood. I'm definately not one of the fanboys. I barely consciously knew his work untill I stumbled onto his forum a couple of weeks ago, suddenly realizing that he had shot No Country for Old Men and some others that I have enjoyed. Really open, generous and practical thing he's doing on that forum, but me reading there a few times and that reply to Raj does not make me a fan boy. Raj's tone was quite aggressive. Rather than see him get ripped to shreds I thought some humour might help. Was that joke i lifted from Entourage too obscure, even for someone from Sacramento? The suggestion about Raj visiting Deacons forum may look like a "wind up", a "leg pull" or "piss take", meaning making makin fun of, but I don't see why he couldn't actually do it, assuming he was very respectfull about it. But the tone of his post makes it look like he would have great trouble with that (being respectfull).

Raj, That saying about ripping someone a new (rear end) was a joke. Seeing (hearing) it on Entourage I assumed it had some currency as cool humour in America. So, I was not denegrating Americans, but honouring their sense of humour. Enjoying some humour was an option rather than taking your post too seriously. At least Chris Millar thought it was funny. So did you go there, to Deakins forum? He seems a really open guy. If you disliked his work but were fully respectful about how you approached him there I see no harm. But there are fans there, you should keep your back to the wall.