Josh Silfen

Hmmm -- I've always thought the opposite. Freeze frames look grainier to me than the part of the shot that's in motion.

Well, I guess it's just my own perception then. I agree that this is the case most of the time -- looking at a still frame gives you the time to really focus on details like grain, but I think excessive grain or noise becomes more apparent when it's in motion, precisely because you don't normally notice grain when it's in motion.

I was doing a DI once and was really pushing one particular color in a scene, to the extent that it was adding excessive noise to areas of the scene that were that color. It all looked fine on the monitor, because we were just looking at one frame, but when we actually applied the effect and played the scene, the noise in those areas became immediately apparent and we had to go back and tone it down. Watch that trailer in high res and see if some of the noise moving around in the background of some of those scenes doesn't jump out at you.

The Knowing trailer contains a bunch of night shots, presumably shot on the Red One like the rest of the movie, though of course it's impossible to know exactly how well lit they were. (They don't particularly look like available light.)

I watched that trailer (the 720P version) and some of the footage did look extremely noisy in the shadows to me. One shot that jumped out was one of a creepy-looking guy with blonde hair pointing his finger towards the lens. It jumped out because it was noisy enough that it noticeably did not match the shots that came before and after it. I think these kinds of problems are often exaggerated by trailers, because footage from every part of the movie is thrown together in a way that was never considered when the color correction was being done, so things don't necessarily match as well as they might in the context of the actual film, but nevertheless I did notice the high level of noise several times in that trailer. And sometimes it wasn't in the "dark" scenes you would expect, but in an otherwise bright scene there might be a gray object or wall that showed an excessive amount of noise. I also don't think frame grabs really illustrate the noise level very well, because noise (or film grain) is much more apparent when you seem it in motion.

All of the action will be between a couple seated at the bar on the right. I'll be shooting with either a Canon XL2, or possibly a Sony Z7U and using Lowel lights.

 

The director wants to enhance the woody tones of the place. The lighting inside is amber/gold and the walls are that color as well. My thought is to use straw filters on the lights to warm the image up. What advice can you give as far as how strong to go with the gels? I see them sold as Straw 1, 2, and 3; with increasing intensity of effect.

 

 

I plan tentatively on using a 500w Rifa softbox for fill and a pair of 250w Omnis for key. I realize 1000w isn't a lot of light, but I'm hoping to do some tests before the shoot. If necessary I can bounce some more light off the walls for fill.

 

Advice?

Don't overlight it. With the equipment you have, you're not going to be able to light up the whole place, just close-ups. That's ok, because the location seems to be lit nicely for you already, but if you use all your lights to light the close-ups, you're going to have to stop down on the camera and you will lose all the nice lighting that's going on in the background. I would choose the camera that performs best in low-light and then dim any units you bring in to shape the close-ups way down, so they don't overpower the general ambiance level and you can shoot wide open. Plus, if you dim them down, it will also warm them up quite a bit, so you may not need the straw gels.

I suspect it may effect the pacing of the film, in that editors may be tempted to cut much faster because they're commonly viewing the material on a smaller screen and with less projection of a cut onto a large screen. With a large screen the scene's detail and the nuances in a performance become more apparent. Although the ping pong editing tends to be more used in television, it could become more tempting if you're cutting on a smaller screen

This may be true, but there is no reason why an editor must cut a film in a certain way just because they cut on a computer. It opens up options and makes it easier to try out new editing styles, but if they wanted to try to replicate the pacing of a movie from the '70s, they could easily do that too. I'm just saying that cutting a film on a computer doesn't inherently alter the look of the film.

And shooting on actual film of course and cutting on a Steinbeck or Moviola or that type of thing (not sure how this actually affects the look, though- as I understand it even films shot on film today are scanned into the computer and then printed out again at the end. Surely this has some kind of different effect?)

Cutting on a Steenbeck or Moviola would have no effect on the look of a film, unless you were watching a work print, which would be full of splices and grease pencil marks, but I doubt that's the look you are going for. These days many movies (thought not all) are scanned into a computer and printed back out through the DI process, but people were cutting movies on Avid long before the DI. The Avid cut generated an EDL (edit decision list), which a negative cutter would use to conform the original negative, which would then be used to make prints (or interpositives and internegatives which would be used to make release prints).

There are some filters designed to produce the anamorphic lens flare effect, but I don't know where you could find them to rent. I wanted to use them once on a film that I wanted to shoot in 2-perf, but we ended up shooting Super 16 instead, so I never investigated them further.

http://www.vantagefilm.com/en/news/news_2005-09_01.shtml

Has anyone used the shape to creative effect - either as part of the storytelling or even just as a gimmick? As an example I'm thinking along the lines of the Lensbaby 'Creative Aperture' system. I'm not sure how possible it would be to change out the aperture on most camera lenses.

I was once going to shoot a short film that was a fictional story about the origin of paisley. I planned to use a cut-out of a paisley shape on the front of the lens, and lots of Christmas lights in the background to get all the circles of confusion to look like paisley. I was even hoping to use a lens with a rotating front element so all the paisley shapes in the background would rotate as the lens was focused and call more attention to them. In the end, the shoot never happened, and I haven't found a use for this gimmick since.

Magic Gadgets makes dimmers that produce random flicker.

http://www.magicgadgets.com/

Hey, has anyone else noticed a color space shift when doing h.264? My gamma sometimes goes nuts when I do it (and/or a few other quicktime formats out of AVID).

Yes. This seems to be particularly true of video files that are exported from a Mac and viewed on a PC. h.264 is supposed to recognize the OS of the user and display the proper gamma, however there's some bug that causes a much flatter, more washed out image on a PC. Apple is apparently aware of this problem but they have done nothing to fix it. I only discovered this the other day after having used h.264 encoding for the last several years and was horrified to see what my reel has been looking like to PC users. There is a strange, somewhat complicated work-around solution to this problem that you can find here:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=10&t=643310

It requires quicktime pro and note that if you are using a Mac, you want to use "composition" transparency instead of "straight alpha". I have no idea what any of this means either, but it seems to do the trick. To further complicate matters, I found that once I followed the above steps, the resulting file looked ok on a PC, but the movement was somewhat juttery on my Mac. It might have been a little juttery on the PC too, but I didn't really notice it. In any case I would rather have slightly juttery movement for PC users than the major gamma shift. In the end, I made two versions of all my videos -- one with the above gamma fix for PC users and one without it for Mac users. Since my website is in Flash, I added a line of Flash code to detect the user's OS and direct them to the correct version of the video. Another option would be to just have two different links for PC and Mac users, or just live with the motion artifacts. Hopefully Apple will correct this problem soon.

Since the original production company must have been missing three rolls of shot material, one wonders why they didn't do something. Like recalling the short ends they sold to Media Distributors for example. I think you have a case agaisnt them just as much as you have with Media Distributors.

True, but they are not the ones that guarantee and test their product and we had no dealings or arrangements with them, only Media Distributors who sold us their film.

Firstly, as to the discussion of how could this happen: one simple question, Josh. Are the Perretti images on the neg upside down or the same way up as yours? If they are the same way up, then the stock must have been rewound before you got it. If they are upside down, then the loader for the Perretti production simply unloaded a half-shot roll, and put the exposed half in his pile of short ends. Three times. I presume he or she is now their ex-loader.

The images were upside down if I'm remembering correctly.

I wonder if maybe some intentional fraud was involved-- such as the orginal user just choosing not to print the takes, and then quietly cashing the film in as "short ends." Three separate rolls makes me VERY suspicious....

How much money could really be made from selling a few hundred feet of short ends to a reseller? It seems unlikely that they would do such a thing for so little money. I think it would have to be either gross negligence on the part of the loader, or some kind of vendetta they had against the production company (and/or other productions that might use short ends).

Were you folks insured? I know you said that this was for a personal project, but I have heard you can get insurance for just about any sort of shoot.

We did have production insurance, but it was the cheapest insurance we could possibly get, just to allow us to rent equipment and get locations. I don't think it would cover negative damage, and even if it did, the deductible may well be higher than the cost of the re-shoot.

-Josh

I can't see any loader carefully winding several feet of unexposed neg onto the end of the exposed roll when it was removed from the mag.

Neither can I, but then again, I can't see any loader unloading an exposed roll and labeling it as a short end either.

They would have had to have rewound the film back onto a core before selling it to you.

Not necessarily. They must have shot on a camera that takes up emulsion in, onto a core. And it's 35mm, not 16, so there are perfs on both sides of the frame, so it could easily just be reloaded and shot in the other direction.

-Josh

A production I'm involved with is in an unfortunate spot involving some bad short ends, and I was hoping to get some unbiased opinions on the situation.

I recently shot a series of three 35mm spec commercials for a director I know. He works mostly as an editor, but recently attended Columbia University's grad film program in an effort to start working as a director. He is particularly interested in commercials, so for his first project since graduating, he decided to make three specs for his directing reel. He was financing them entirely himself, using all of his savings, as an investment in the future of his career. At the time I came on board as DP, I think the intention had been to shoot on Super 16, but through a connection I had to a cheap 35mm camera package, I was able to convince the director and producer that we would be better off shooting on 35. The producer suggested that we shoot on short ends to save money. I was a little wary of short ends, because I'd never used them before, but I told her if we buy short ends, Media Distributors was the place to go. I've seen them recommended so many times on this message board and elsewhere, and I knew of their reputation and the fact that they test and guarantee every roll they sell. According to their website: "Every end we sell is tested - one of only a few sources here in the US providing such service. All short ends and recans are tested in a Kodak certified laboratory. Each and every can is tested to insure proper color levels and guard against any damage, before it's certified and sold by Media Distributors."

Last week we went to the post house to do the transfer of the footage, and we were shocked and horrified to discover that three of the rolls of film we had bought from Media Distributors had already been shot! We watched three rolls that were completely double-exposed with our image and what looked like another commercial both on the same film. It was a little disorienting because we had shot 3-perf and the other footage was 4-perf, but we could easily make out an image of a man standing next to a computer screen, talking to the camera. There were even slates that identified the production, production company, director, DP, and date, so we knew where the film had come from. Now, I have heard of rare problems with short ends, but they had all been things like minor color differences between rolls, or slight fogging. I have never heard of being sold film that had already been shot! I'm not entirely sure what the short end testing process consists of, or how it works, but if it is able to "insure proper color levels and guard against any damage," surely it should be able to reveal that a roll of film has already been exposed and has another image already on it, waiting to be developed! Plus, the problems I had heard of were extremely rare, maybe one bad roll out of hundreds of thousands of feet of total footage. In this case, we bought maybe nine or ten rolls total, and THREE were worthless. Worse than worthless, because we shot them thinking they were fine and that the footage we needed was in the can.

Now, my question is what exactly does Media Distributors mean when they say they guarantee their product? If they offer us new film to replace the bad film, is that the end of their responsibility? One of the three specs made it out unscathed, but one scene each of the other two need to be re-shot. By the time we rent all the equipment again, hire the crew again, secure the locations and actors again, etc, it will cost several thousand dollars to re-shoot those scenes. It will certainly be way more than we saved by shooting on short ends in the first place. I understand that there is in inherent risk when shooting on short ends, but then what's the point of testing "every roll" if you can still get burned so badly. Had I known that the tests wouldn't reveal such a glaringly obvious flaw in the film stock as having already been shot, I never would have agreed to use short ends in the first place. That was the only reason I thought we were relatively safe. Media Distributors claims to have fired the lab they had been using for the tests as of this incident, and hopefully that will save other small productions from the same fate as us, but in this case, where their tests and guarantee so utterly failed us, should they help us out with the costs of a re-shoot, or is it just our fault for rolling the dice with short ends and losing? And if short ends are inherently this much of a risk, why would anyone use them? Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.

Josh Silfen

PS: If director Jim Perretti, DP Romeo Tirone, or anyone from Perretti Productions is reading this and is wondering what happened to three rolls of film that was shot for a commercial you did about a year ago, well, it was sold to Media Distributors as short ends, and now has other footage on top of it.

When I said it looked bright on my computer, that was from a version I encoded earlier. I replaced that one with a better-encoded one, so I think it looks ok now.

Which parts of the reel are mini-DV; they seem to have held up really well.

The band performing on stage from the music video is HDV from the Sony Z1. Most of the stuff after that is DVX100 (with and without PS Techniks Mini 35 adapter) except for the supermarket stuff and the last 2 shots, which are 16mm.

Thanks a lot for your helpful feedback.

-Josh

Hi,

I am in the process of recutting my reel and I was hoping to get some feedback on what to leave in and what to take out. It's still pretty rough and I know it could be better cut with the music. I'm also still playing with the H264 quicktime settings to try to achieve the best results (everything looks a little bright on my computer), but please let me know if there are any shots that don't belong or look unprofessional. It's hard to get a sense of perspective when you're cutting your own reel. Thanks a lot for your help.

-Josh Silfen

http://www.joshsilfen.com/reelbnew1.mov

I'm looking for advice on Super16 zoom lenses. All the ones I've worked with have been quite old. I know that there have been great strides in zoom lenses recently with the Optimo series for 35mm, but are there similar sharp modern zooms out there for Super16 as well? Specifically, I'd like to know what Super16 zooms have the best anti-flare coatings and least breathing. Thanks a lot.

-Josh Silfen

Nevermind. Apparently there was something wrong with the way the projector had been set up, or they were projecting it at the wrong frame rate or something. Saw the film again last night on a properly set up projector and it looked 1000 times better.

-Josh Silfen

When in post, did you get to view the footage in full HDCAM SR 4:4:4, and was the monitor you used showing the footage at 24p, or was the monitor itself operating in 60i? Have you been able to verify that the motion artifacts were definitely introduced in the transfer to HDCAM 60i?

We were viewing the footage in full SR 4:4:4, and I never noticed anything, but then again it was a small monitor as opposed to a large movie screen.

I'm not positive that the artifacts were introduced during the conversion to 60i, just guessing, but I'm wondering if that is a common side-effect of that process or if this is an abnormal case.

-Josh Silfen

I just saw a film I shot at Tribeca, projected in HDcam, and was surprised to see significant motion artifacts. We shot Super16, did our post digitally in HDcam SR - 24P, and converted to HDcam - 60i for festival projection. Any shot that had a lot of camera movement exhibited very stuttery motion. Is this a normal consequence of the 24P to 60i conversion, or did something go wrong somewhere else along the line. I have seen other films at festivals projected digitally and do not ever remember noticing this kind of problem. But, if this is normally the case, why do festivals only project 60i and not 24P?

-Josh Silfen

As David has stated, the quality of 2K vs. HDCAM SR is very close. Some transfer engineers at major D.I. facilities quietly concede that it's even more than close. Also, the Spirit Datacine is starting to be used for high-end productions (Walk the Line, Lucky Number Slevin, etc.) that chose this method of transfer over traditional film scanning. That, and a growing consensus that log files don't necessarily lead to an easily perceived qualitative difference over linear transfer, is why HDCAM SR is becoming a viable intermediate format.

Well, I know that many 2.35 movies have done a 2k DI, and I know there is little perceivable difference between 2k and HDCAM SR, so I guess a Super35 2.35 movie could have an HDCAM SR DI and still look decent, but it still seems very scary to me to actually be using less of the HDCAM SR resolution for a 35mm film than for a 1.85 or 1.78 Super16 film.

-Josh Silfen

For lower-budget people, HD in various flavors has become one method of doing a D.I. for 16mm/Super-16, even some 35mm (I had to use HDCAM-SR for a 35mm feature due to budget issues...

What was the aspect ratio of the film? If you do a HDCAM-SR DI for a Super35 2.35 film, does the 2.35 image get optically squeezed to use the whole 16x9 HD frame, or does a fair amount of the vertical resolution of the tape get lost? What about Super 35 with a 2k DI, where the native aspect ratio is 4x3? Again, would the 2.35 image be squeezed to fit into the 4x3 frame for later film-out to anamorphic print, or does some of the vertical resolution of the scan go unused?

I am trying to figure out the cheapest way to do a DI for a Super35 2.35 film. I did an HDCAM-SR DI for a Super16 film, but I think it would be silly to shoot on 35 and then end up using less digital resolution than with Super16 just because we want to shoot in the widescreen aspect ratio.

-Josh Silfen

Of all these cameras, the Arricam LT and the Millenium XL are the lightest and designed with handheld in mind. The LT is about 8 kilos (body and shoulder magazine), the XL a tad heavier. All the other cameras on your list are kind of in the same weight category, around 11-12 kilos roughly.

 

As for the 3 perf movement, that is an option for the Arricams and the 535B as well as all the Panavision cameras that you mention. I am not sure if there is one for the Moviecam, I have never come accross one.

 

The differences between the Arricam ST and LT are quite small. The ST is more quiet, but the LT is still a very good camera for sync sound shooting. Otherwise the ST goes up to 60fps, while the LT does 40 fps. Both cameras have electronically adjustable shutters and LDS for instance. All the mags are interchangeable between the cameras, but the LT has ony 1 mounting position (at the back), while the ST has 2 (top and back). Most big shoots carry one of each, so you have the best of both worlds, but there have been some films like 'The Bourne Supremacy' that used 2 LTs for instance.

Thanks. Anyone else have any info? Best ways to "train" for a handheld 35mm film?

-Josh Silfen

I'm sure it comes as no suprise from my moniker that I'm in the film camp. Maybe I'm crazy devoting my energies to preserving this medium, and maybe one day there will be no more film, but do you really have to friggin' say incendiary poop like this? I mean, it's a good thing we are in a forum, because if you said that to my face, I'd flat out wanna punch you in the jaw. There are people who make their livelihoods from motion picture film, many of them my close personal friends. Are you REALLY elated that, were digital to take over, they'd be out on the streets? Huh?

 

Regards.

 

~Karl Borowski

I'm firmly of the belief that film is the best origination medium that exists RIGHT NOW, but those who think that digital will NEVER surpass film in quality are being naive. I'm sure when it comes out, opinions of how "Superman" looks will run the gamut and the relative image quality produced by the Genesis will be hotly debated, but there is no question that this camera and others like it produce images that are technically leaps and bounds ahead of those from the cameras that were available just a few short years ago. Digital will continue to advance in quality, and one day, maybe two years from now, maybe five, maybe ten, maybe fifteen years from now it will be technically superior to film.

Arguments like yours weaken the case for shooting on film now, while it still is better, by giving credibility to the claim of digital advocates that people who want to shoot on film are dinosaurs who do so solely for nostalgic reasons, like writers who still use typewriters. (That very comparison was made by George Lucas in the Time magazine article about the future of filmmaking a couple weeks ago.)

In my opinion, the argument in favor of shooting on film -- the only valid argument -- is that it is still technically superior to any digital camera yet manufactured. When that stops being the case, I think it will be time to let go and embrace the new digital age, where images created by chips hold just as much resolution, selective focus, and dynamic range, not to mention subtlety, power, and emotion, as those created by photochemical reactions.

What I don't understand is the current pressure, especially from outside the industry (such as the publishers and readers of the aforementioned Time magazine article) to embrace this format NOW, BEFORE it has been perfected. Some have mentioned that many technological advances in film history have been a temporary step backward, but I don't see why that should make it necessary. Even IF (and that's a big 'if') it is cheaper for a current production to shoot on a camera like the Genesis, in an age when one star of a film gets paid more than $20 million, why do people outside the industry really care if an extra hundred thousand is spent on film and processing?

One prevailing opinion seems to be that in the hands of a true cinematographer and/or director, a digital image can have every bit of meaning as one shot on film. This is true, but why does it mean that they should be forced to work with a medium they don't feel is technically as good? Given the chance, Rembrandt might have been able to do some great things with Sharpies or crayons, but that doesn't mean he should have been pressured to do so simply because they're cheaper and better understood by the general public than oil paints. Similarly, if a DP finds that digital is well suited to a given story, he should by all means use it, but as long as there is another medium out there that is able to capture more subtlety and texture, he should have the choice of using that as well.

I guess I just don't really understand the point of all these arguments. WHEN digital is better than film, I really think most cinematographers and Hollywood in general will embrace it. Until then, shoot whatever you want, and let others do the same.

-Josh Silfen

Actually, when Techniscope was introduced, it was considered sharper than movies shot with the anamorphic lenses that were available at the time. Recent optical restorations of movies shot in that style still look surprisingly sharp, even by today's standards. Some lens technicians have explained that having the image centered in the "sweet spot" of the lens is what accounts for that quality. If you ever have the opportunity to see a good Techniscope print projected in a theater, you may be surprised to find less grain than you were expecting, as well as a uniformly sharper image.

 

I'm currently working on a project in that format, and with modern glass and film stocks, you'd be amazed at just how good it can look on the big screen. I hope you will get to see the results.

 

By the way, I also hope you will surmise from my grammatical style in the original response to your comments that I was just being playful. Of course aesthetics are a subjective, personal choice. Personally, I'm just glad to be working in ANY format.

I've done a fair amount of research on Techniscope, and while I'm not really sure how this worked, or exactly what the process involved, I've been led to believe that the lack of grain in these films was not due to negative area (or lack thereof) but something called dye-transfer printing, which is no longer available. I don't know if that process's disappearance caused or was the result of that format's decline.

I've also heard from someone on this forum that they were involved in the restoration of one of these films for the DVD ('Once Upon a Time in the West') and they said that they had quite a bit of grain reducing work to do to make it look good.

How the dye-transfer prints compare to a 2-perf film shot on today's film stocks and lenses with a DI rather than anamorphic blow-up, I don't know. I would be interested to find out, though, as I'm also very interested in shooting 2-perf.

-Josh Silfen

I also have a potential upcoming 35mm feature with a fair amount of handheld work and have been thinking this subject myself. I searched the forum and found this thread. Some useful information here, but I have a few more questions. Does anyone (Steadicam operators maybe?) know specific weights of any or all the following cameras (camera body or body plus full 400' mag only since lens and accessories would obviously make a difference):

Arri 535B

Arricam Studio

Arricam Lite

Movicam Compact

Panaflex GII

Panaflex Platinum

Panaflex Millenium

Panaflex Millenium XL

Which, if any, of these cameras are available with a 3-perf movement? What does the Arricam Studio offer that the Lite doesn't? Does the Lite take 1000' mags as well as 400'?

Also, I am not a very muscular guy, and I'm wondering if anyone knows any specific back or shoulder excercises that might be good to train for having one of these cameras on my shoulder for several hours throughout the day. Does anyone know of any good household or easily obtainable items that one could put on their shoulder to approximate the weight and balance of a 35mm camera with 400' mag, lens, mattebox, etc?

Thanks a lot.

-Josh Silfen

Thanks a lot for your informative answers. So, I guess in the future for a low-budget project, my preference will be to get more contrast and "useful" information out of the HD transfer, and then apply a LUT in reverse if/when a film out is ever needed.

-Josh Silfen