GeorgeSelinsky

Thanks John for the referral! The shipping is expensive because both of them weigh over 13 lbs! I believe these have a barrel diameter of about 70mm (which is a 35mm projector size), so if that's what your projector takes it should work.

Two anamorphic projection lenses, one has nice glass, another has a dig on the rear element. If nobody bids against you, it's $0.99 plus shipping! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...E:L:LCA:US:1123

I'm actually toying with the idea of buying an HV 20 and getting a DOF adapter. Granted, I've been shooting for quite a few years (and have shot all film formats save for 65mm), but I admit that I like the idea of cheap equipment being stretched to the limit. Personally, what I like about the 35mm adapter aside from the DOF possibilities is that you can manually focus with it as opposed to that horrible servo focus that so many prosumer cameras come with (like the XL1, a great camera but I'd shoot the guy who invented the servo focus ring!) Also, it encourages you to use primes, which is a healthy habit to get into I think. So I think a DOF adapter isn't necessarily a bad thing for someone who wants to learn. Focus is very important and I think one of the greatest plusses about film students who learn on 16mm and project their work on a large screen is that they become quite aware of focus. With a 1/5" CCD camera playing back on a 20" TV screen you really don't take as much notice of it. Btw, I'm really against this idea of "zooming in and getting more DOF" that way. First of all that goes against the basic fact that DOF itself doesn't change if you want to keep the same subject to frame relationship. As my cinematography teacher said "You get nothing for nothing". If you have a guy's head filling a frame with a 25mm lens, then you back away and have his head fill the frame with a 50mm lens, the actual technical DOF is identical. What is happening is that the lens's perspective is making the softness in the background more obvious. Either way this is just a gimmick and you're not going to get 35mm like DOF by doing that trick. What you will get is a camera operator who's backed up against the wall who has to have a feather touch on the tripod and have at least 4 hours of sleep from the night before :lol: Definitely get a few primes. I'd get three: 25mm, 50mm, and something in the telephoto range. That's enough to do most work I think. I'm not really big on using like a 40mm versus a 50mm. And what's great is that if you want maximal Toland style DOF, you just take off the adapter and do your thing with the stock lens. And absolutely don't go overboard with always shooting at an f 1.4. Many DP's generally like to shoot between an f4 and f8. That's exactly how I'd use my DOF adapter, to give it a real 35mm look, not the "swimming in circles of confusion" look :P Sure it's great to be able to get f1.4 dof outdoors without having a huge stack of ND's but why bother if it's not needed? What concerns video gear and the moment when built in achromats will be the case, that day will surely come. But I'm sure we won't see that in reachable grasp for quite some time to come. It took quite a while for the 24p video camera to come out, and remember how badly people in this forum were clamoring for it years earlier? Generally, I think the best learning tool is probably an Arri S loaded with Plus X and Tri X reversal filmstock. But if we're to play with video, your option here is actually not so bad. I just HATE HATE HATE those consumer camera's so called "manual overrides". That is my biggest criticism with such a package. A good learning camera should easily let you control everything, but in the video world such combinations are usually not cheap, whilst a Bolex lets you control everything you need to. My opinion FWIW...

Hi folks, I've been looking to play around with the consumer Canon HF100, do you know if its 24 p mode is real progressive scan or is it one of those pixel shifting type of jobs like the XL-1's 30 P mode? I was thinking of putting it together with an DOF adapter for my Nikon lenses. Thanks, - George.

For those who are wondering how low you can go, all you need to do is some math. First, you need to find out how much on stock and processing you can spend. A 5:1 ratio I'd say is a very bare minimum. 7:1 is more like what you need to begin having some flexibility editing wise. Call up and find the price for short ends, then check lab book rates for developing and knock off a few cents a foot because when you do a big job you get a discount. Then you have to calculate final transfer costs, mastering, and so on. Anything after that, it's already possible to get pro bono or very cheap if you know the right people. People who have connections with camera houses can get killer packages for very little sometimes (or maybe you already own a package yourself). Actors can work free. Crew can work free. You just need to give them something, like profit points, and a hot meal. You can get free locations if you have the right connections, same concerns wardrobe. You can edit on any decent PC with a separate hard drive, and believe it or not Adobe Premiere does a really good job. Once the unavoidable expenses are accounted for, it comes down to who you have relationships with and how well you can strike a deal, as well as how good you are at coming up with slick solutions. That involves ingenuity, experience, and luck. So at a certain point, the question really becomes "How clever and lucky were you?" For example, Richard had luck going for him in a few places, he knew some media people that helped him get TV exposure, he found a designer who set him up with an expensive customized dress, etc. At the same time, you can tell this wasn't his first feature that he's been involved in. He definitely knew what he was doing. I think it's pointless to worry about budgets, really. They are all very specific animals. There is no rule of thumb. I mean, it's obvious you're not going to be able to shoot a Roman epic in VistaVision for under $50K using your friends on weekends. But really there's so much variability within any given genre. You film all your outdoor scenes without a permit - over $1000 in insurance saved. You run on the subway with a camera for one day, no permit - you've just saved $2500 in insurance fees and all the necessary hassle. Your friend has a restaurant - you can film without having to pay him for it. Your other friend owns a car dealership, you can get a nice used car to film in for a day. Your dad owns an assault rifle, great - another prop you don't have to pay for (just don't you dare point that at an actor, even if it's unloaded!). You meet a super talented actor who is just getting started and willing to work for nothing - great, you've just saved another item in your budget. You don't get so lucky - you have to pay for it all. What is important is to learn all the cost saving tricks that smart producers use. Roger Corman belates a lot of interesting tricks he's used. That includes things like getting a neighbor who wanted to be bribed to shut off his sprinklers during a shoot to cooperate by asking the guy "Could you turn them higher please, we like the effect they have on the lighting".

The reason people don't disclose budgets when they make a film that's meant to be acquired for distribution is simple. It's all a part of the negotiations game. If Richard came out and said "Guys, believe it or not I got it in the can for $24,000", the distributor isn't going to jump and say "Wow, you resourceful genius you!". He's going to turn around and say to his buddies "Okay, now we know this guy paid very little for this, so we've got a lot of room to cut him down on the deal." Also, a future producer or production company can also view him as a guy who is good with micro budgets and just pen him in that category, "Yeah, so you shot your last one for $24K, so you should do just fine if we give you twice that, right?" This also concerns Richard's actors. If he throws a budget on the table to the public, other producers can say "Oh, so she works for that little? Good to know in the future, we can get her cheap". Actors don't like that because it ruins their marketability and image. Nobody wants to be known as the cheapo charlie. Bottom line, there are good reasons for keeping tabs on that sort of information. And I'm absolutely positive Richard didn't do it for as little as $24K! Btw Richard, thanks for the Pioneer suggestion. They apparently don't have HD projection however. Darn, I wish I had a 35mm print! But I can't justify that economically, unfortunately :(

I have to say Richard I think you really did a great job with your self distribution gig. Based on my observations and assumptions, I believe you had two things playing on your side that I don't. First, you have a film that isn't too hard to market, horror is a fairly universal genre that many can appreciate. Second, you were doing this in Canada where I'm assuming the competition for screen space isn't as intense as in New York City (where I am), where there are 8 million viewers that distributors are fighting over. I wanted to add to my heap questions, if your patience is so great, how many theaters were you able to manage to squeeze in? How did you get through to the bookers/owners, cold calling? Was it easy getting paid? Did you count the house? How much of your daily time was devoted to the screenings and dealing with the press, etc? How much time should someone budget for that - rough approx? Thanks again!

Wow, impressive. By the way I'm very appreciative that you're taking the time to share this information, Richard. It's going to be a help not just to me but to anyone else out there who wants to self distribute. The info out there is around, but still a bit tough to come about. The whole theatrical deal must have taken up a lot of your time, especially the wolves promo :lol: I noticed btw that you're not selling DVD's off your site. You want a video distributor to handle that for you? Have you ever thought of the high margins you'd get off selling direct, or you just don't want to bother with it? Thanks again Richard...

Rodriguez had an unusual situation, his budget was a press item. These days it's super old hat, nobody cares how little you spent. It's best to keep that kind of information under wraps because it really does more damage than good. The only people who should know are the investors, and in Richard's case here they're probably pretty happy because it seems like he did a good job at making their money back for them. You can do a 35mm feature for under 100K, it's been done. At a certain point it comes down to the inevitable expenses: stock, processing, and transfer. Those things (at least the latter two) are pretty hard to get free. Outside of that it's really your ingenuity and who you know. Like Richard I wore many hats with my film, it wasn't an easy job but it was certainly economical. I had a resourceful exec who got some really nice locations and extras for free. The main cost we had was short ends stock and processing/transfer, that was the bulk of our budget. I shot all MOS and dubbed it all later, so I didn't have to pay a soundman and I used an MOS camera (that's the LAST time I'm doing that!). Another few questions for Richard, treasure trove of experience he is! How many people did you have helping you with the theatrical self distribution? Any gimmicks that you used to help get butts in seats, outside of the press release? How did you like the quality of the HDSR projection (I imagine you got a good transfer - where?), and how did that compare to your 35mm experiences? Oh and um, were you nervous when it all started? :unsure: Thanks!

Oh and one more P.S., did you buy E&O insurance? You must have had to for your TV deal, right? How about theatrical?

The budget of any indie film production is a well guarded secret. It's sort of like asking an actress how old she is. I understand Richard and especially since we're talking a public forum here, he needs to be careful what he reveals publicly because there are sometimes business consequences to such things. What I find interesting is that Richard bypassed the critics and went straight for the release. My big question though, how do you get press to cover you and get excited about you if you don't invite the critics for a screening? Another question for Richard, when you screened in Toronto did you have to rent the HD deck? What kind of an HD deck did you get (HD digibeta, or?). How did it work out with setting it all up? Do you think there'd be a big difference if you went from a Bluray disk vis a vi a proper HD deck? I'm thinking of going this route myself right now. It's heck of a lot cheaper than going to a print, esp. since I noticed you had enough effects there (like that evil wolfie!!) Thanks for all the advice, this is great info and to be honest there's so little good self distribution info out there!

Congratulations Richard, I just googled your film! It looks like you really busted your butt and were rewarded for it. That's a nasty looking wolfie... So I imagine you had a 35mm print made and you went to theaters, cut deals with them or fourwalled?

Sounds like you have a lot to offer here, Richard! Congradulations!! I think nowadays theatrical self distribution is probably the surest way to get into a movie theater. I'm sure that probably helped a lot with your TV sales didn't it? Btw, did you approach the stations directly or through an agent/rep?

This is a link to a forum I found: http://www.self-distribution.com/ It's not very active. Also, I suggest looking at this video: http://arincrumley.com/adventures-in-self-...er-to-the-pixel

Some helpful links that others may also want to explore: http://www.aivf.org/08/04/adventures-self-distribution http://www.microfilmmaker.com/tipstrick/Is...8/selfdist.html http://www.iofilm.co.uk/io/mit/001/film_di...on_20051115.php http://www.newenglandfilm.com/news/archive...istribution.htm http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/07/ballast_steadie.html http://www.road-dog-productions.com/cgi-bi...re_driving.html http://www.road-dog-productions.com/cgi-bi...w_thoughts.html http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Movie_Making_.../Film_Marketing http://www.moviescopemag.com/index.php?opt...mp;Itemid=10032

Hi Paul, Of course it's going to be tough to buck the old distribution system. Anyone who goes against the system is not going to have an easy time doing it. The way I see it, the greatest challenges of a self distributor are: * Having leverage to get your product to a theater screen or video shelf. * Having the leverage to get paid. * The time investment required to actually distribute a film. * The increased capital investment required to distribute. * Having to shoulder the burden of the marketing/publicity campaign. * Inexperience. It's all scary when you look at it, until you think carefully about how crooked many distributors are and how many films get badly mishandled - not to mention the highly restrictive contract terms that first timers are offered. The plus with self distribution is that you're going to get back a higher return on the dollar, and you get to control how your film is shown and marketed. You also get the fun of counting your own dough, not worrying about any skimming off the top and having to check books. The biggest cash cow is a direct DVD sale from your website, but the big challenge is getting people to want to buy (everyone loves renting, esp. with Netflix) and getting them to your site. AIVF (do they still exist?) put out a good binder-book called The Self Distribution Toolkit (I guess the xerox published binder format is sort of very true to the self distribution spirit, lol). It has xeroxed articles from a number of publications on self distribution, with a lot of mention of theatrical and some helpful things like budgets, etc. That's what got me started on the subject to begin with.

It seems like more and more filmmakers are interested in self distribution (http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/07/ballast_steadie.html) . I'm strongly leaning in that direction myself. Has anyone here done it before? Also, are there good online communities dedicated to it? I haven't really found any myself as of now despite my intensive searching.

I agree, everyone always shoots for the pop culture references. It's sort of like getting celebrity cheap, although the problem is that while it's hard to get a celebrity in your film it's all too easy to drop the song into the soundtrack. Problem starts when you want to show it somewhere :) It's interesting I know a very talented videographer in Russia who puts together great videos that win awards there. She uses WHATEVER music she wants without worrying about getting sued for copyright, because intellectual rights are not really enforced there. Lucky her. Greek TV gets away with it too, I heard them rip Stones tracks, you name it. I'm sure the low budget programs there didn't pay for the rights. Problem in those countries you get screwed because you can't sell your videos easily due to all the piracy! As far as trying to emulate another artist's cue, I think it's not the best approach. I think there's always more than one piece of music that will suit a scene. If you're just trying to make a copy of something, the copy is never going to be as good as the original in most cases. I can tell when a piece of music is too familiar but not there, like if you took a well known riff and changed it oh so much, it's just too obvious to my ears sometimes and my ears want to hear the real thing - not some ripped off piece of music. I do have to say there is something amazing that happens when a talented composer works on your film. Now with software like Vienna orchestra and stuff like samplers, it's awestriking what you can do. And you'll have the knowledge that this piece of music was created with inspiration from your images. It's an awesome synergy. That said, I'm very tempted to try to get the rights to use a piece from Soft Machine in my next movie, lol

Yes, many have done this in the past, but badly looped features are the fodder of endless jokes these days. If you're for real and aren't going for the cheese, you're not going to be taken seriously. It's sort of like bad optical bluescreen or cheaply done puppet monsters in horror films. I think Americans in particular are sensitive about it.

I think that foreign flicks in America already have a serious problem being released as is. If this person is on such a low budget that the film can't afford to shoot sound then it stands an even lesser chance. Yes, Fellini got away with it but back in his era loose looping was still somewhat accepted by audiences (i.e. Soviet cinema - the looping on Chapaev was just comically bad but that was 1934). These days standards have changed. Back in 1969 you could still get away with shooting in B&W. Now it's a real tough sell. Besides, let's not forget one more thing - Fellini was FELLINI! The only way you could get away with it is if your looping was done exclusively for comical effect. On my feature I decided to loop for accuracy, we'd spend lots of time getting stuff smooth. The result is that everyone thinks we shot sync. If you're shooting in 16mm you can pick up a cheap CP 16 or Eclair, try to get some untrained person or student to do the sound on some decent equipment, and then figure that 50% of it you're going to have to loop anyway. At least here you have a chance of getting some stuff done right. If you're shooting 35mm then either get a BL (Visual Products has a decent package with glass for $15K) and do the same or go the MOS and post sync route. Rely on visuals and narration, that's a sure bet to minimize sync. Design your shots and choose your locations so that the sync recording will be easiest (tighter shots for dialog, very quiet interiors with minimal risk of noises).

I was wondering, how do you go about finding a Unit Production Manager? I'm looking to do a low budget feature in the New York area. Thanks for all advice in advance...

I just started working with another writer and it's an enjoyable experience if you find someone you can click with. You don't necessarily need to think the same, difference is important because that helps you complement each other and produce better work. I think the best is to start with a mutual brainstorm. Each person will have ideas and they will begin to grow and develop. You start taking notes and then basta, you have something to work with - an outline, a treatment, etc. What I did with my writer when it came time for the script is we started by discussing, then took turns writing alone, and then we submitted the laptop to each other and would look it over, do some suggested adds and changes, and keep going. From a business perspective you absolutely MUST have a contract that explains 1) who will own the story (only one person preferrably, and that person should put some money down or something), and 2) how the percentage is split (usually 50/50).

If you want to be the boss on the set, director is the closest you can get to that. If you are willing to have some other guy look into your camera and say "No, this way, not that way", and you're fine with that, and the thought of having to work with actors makes you uneasy, DP'ing is a possibility for you. If you want to make money, stock brokering is a much better thing to do :lol:

I think from a director's POV it's not a really prudent idea to design a film around filming just MOS. That's really sort of messing things up. I can't imagine watching a 90 minute feature with various funny cuts that cover up sync, that's just nuts. If you want to really do that though, inserting narration would be a much better way to go.

I agree, everyone is so in love with pop cues but the truth is there are a million unsigned bands who have good music that is recorded professionally and will do just as well, if not better. Just surf myspace music, find the cue you want, tell the band you're in love with their music, pitch your film to them, offer credit if they agree, get a CD of the music, and then get the right paperwork signed. Much easier than hoping that some major label will agree to get you the rights, and then having to negotiate and pay separate licensing fees to a number of oustretched hands. We're talking months of waiting, playing phone tag, etc. When you get as big as Martin Scorsese, then you'll have a wheeling and dealing lawyer taking care of the details for you to secure that million dollar Stones song, lol.