GeorgeSelinsky

I'm glad you mentioned those films because they're one of the few comedies where cinematography is done most deliberately - and to good effect. I think that all too often comedy directors simply don't want to be bothered by cinematography, feeling it makes less of an impression and therefore should be lent a tertiary role. I think this is really incorrect - establishing the right mood visually with lighting and doing good camera work is just as important in establishing the desired comic effect, in my view. - G.

I am currently the director, DP, writer, and co-producer of my feature film. You'd think I'd have the ultimate reigns of control but that's completely not true. As a matter of fact I discover that since I'm busy on the set with so many tasks at once, there is more "room" for people to get in and try to push their ideas. As I'm setting up my camera one person goes "You should really get (insert prop, background, etc) into the shot", without realizing that this may be exactly what I intended. Then later during dailies "You see, that was my idea about having X in the shot, ain't I so clever?" Other times I'm running around and getting my equipment together when someone is idly standing by and goes "Wouldn't it be great if character X comes up to character Y and then character Z is looking through that bush over there..." I'm not in a position to go "Shut the f up, if you've studied your lines already how about helping me coil up some cable instead?", because nobody's paid, and some people put in their much needed money. But it's not hard to be driven to the edge sometimes, and with every instance it gets worse. So, being a director, writer, and even a co-producer who footed a significant part of the tab doesn't make you immune to the many chiefs few indians syndrome. A lot of people have secret creative egoes, and some think they could do your job easily if they simply bothered to take the time to learn the "technical stuff". Some people can look upon you simply as a mechanic who's taking care of the f stops. In that case I say "show me the money!" :rolleyes:

I never heard of what you describe, it is interesting I must say. What I was referring to was processing a color negative in a black and white bath entirely, and then at a later point reemersing the film into a color developer to get the color couplers to release. I'm assuming the B&W hypo doesn't eat away the color couplers/dyes. You could also then theoretically bleach the silver out too. - G.

i've read that 16mm equivalents of 35mm differ. How slight/big is this difference? Is it possible to accurately say, because they are different formats. One of the most discussed topics of all time in the cinematography internet message boards. There is no 16mm "equivalent" of 35mm, they are two separate formats. The same film stocks are available for each format in most cases. Production costs aside, could i effectively get the same picture [quality] from shooting super16 and 35? The film will be going straight to Beta from telecine. i will be going super16, but would like to know nonetheless. 35mm is always going to look sharper and more fine grained than Super 16, even on a video transfer. But the difference is less noticeable than it is when you project the image onto a screen. Is the grain size on the neg the same, for example, The grain is the same on the neg of a Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, and 65mm film. What matters is the amount of magnification you give the image, which makes the grains look larger or smaller. A Super 8 frame is very small so the grains have to be magnified all the more to fill the same screen size as a 16mm frame, for example. And grain aside, how similar/different would the contrast and colour rendition be between a 35mm pos, and 16-to-35mm-blow up pos? That has to do with the quality of the optical work. Any time you have an "intermediate stage" - that is, anything other than a direct negative to positive printing stage - you're going to have somewhat more contrast and a loss of resolution. This is true with 16mm to 35mm, or 16mm to 16mm, or 35mm to 35mm. I presume the lattitude of the negs is the same. How close are the print films of the formats? Print films are identical in 16mm and 35mm. The latitude is also the same, since the negative stock is the same.

Hi all, I got a dilemma. I would love to get a birdseye view of a few NYC streets at night at a fairly low altitude (about 200 feet or so), but of course I have no money to rent a chopper (nor do I think they can fly above NYC nowadays). I remember once seeing someone on a TV program take a remote controlled airplane and attach a Bolex to it. He flew it around and got some interesting footage. It was mounted in some styrofoam shock mount. I was wondering if anyone has any idea for this sort of thing - I have an Eyemo with a 12V motor that I can try to use for this. The shot does not have to be steadicam stable. I don't know if flying these babies over NYC streets is legal or not, but that's a different ball game. Thanks in advance, - G.

I wanted to run my own tests, simply to satisfy my technical curiosity, but at the moment I have no time to. Just yesterday I had to ship a bunch of color negative film to the lab and one roll was mislabelled, so I decided to test it by snipping a few frames off the tail and developing it in a black and white developer (didn't bother with a stop or a fixer since I just needed to get a rough idea of what was in the frame). The rem-jet backing seemed to come off in the developer bath (I was agitating it like crazy because I needed speed over quality). This got me thinking... what would happen if I put color negative film through a black and white negative process? What about a black and white reversal process? My guess is that I'd get a black and white image with an orange coupler mask. I'm curious what the quality of that image would be. I've also read somewhere on Kodak's still site that it's possible to take a piece of color negative film that was developed in a B&W negative bath and have the couplers release color into the image (I never was able to find that link again, even after searching). I'm interested if John or anyone else could share their speculations on this. Thanks, - G.

I am both a still photographer and a cinematographer. I can tell you that still photography as an artform has many common points with film BUT it's a different art form. For example, there's no such thing as a camera move or focus pull in still photography, nor can you apply certain still photography tricks to cinematography. There is also a difference in how things are framed many times, because of the factor of motion (and needless to say, you can't do a vertical shot in cinematography) So unless you're talking about learning how film emulsion reacts to light, you can't really say that a still photo class taught you more about movies than a video class would. Video can be thought of in several applications - live television, documentary, or narrative filmmaking. Each of these applications is more closely related to film-filmmaking than still photography, save for the way you light. So I wouldn't write off your video class so fast - there is a lot to be learned there, and be happy that you're shooting on a cheap medium like tape, which is a gentler way to learn your mistakes. Yes, I really dislike videotape, but you should learn how to work with it because face it - unless you're lucky a lot of the work you'll be doing to get somewhere will be video. Don't expect to have a cable network hire you to shoot a documentary with a CP-16 - that's just not going to happen most of the time. - G.

Well, in that case any King Crimson fan has a major plus when they walk on a set :lol:

Out of all these terms, the only ones I use on occasion are "MTF" (very rarely), "nodal point" (for some expensive tripods), and "opacity". The rest I've never applied in practice. You have to know how to mount a camera on a nodal head, and that combines practice with theory. The art of applying the theory to practice correctly is what you spend all those years learning. Books in this business are only the very beginning, it's mostly all in the field work. - G.

I never used a Mitchell BNCR, maybe someone else here did. One thing you should know off the bat is that it weighs about 120 lbs, plus lenses. This is an old camera that is based on a 1930's original design (which was changed in the 60's to accomodate reflex viewing). I personally can't imagine working with a camera like that unless I had a decent sized crew to work with -although I've toyed with the idea just for fun (I mean, those cameras do look awesome - I just wish the ones Visual Products has weren't painted that ugly blue color). In still photography you're expected to own your own gear, that's not the case with MP work (partially because the equipment is much more expensive, and it's used in short blocks of time that make renting more financially feasible). You really should start with 16mm, it's what most cinematographers start out doing. The filmstock is cheaper, yet you get the look of film. Buy a silent camera like an Arri S or a Bolex if you want to practice and have your own package. If you want to shoot jobs with your own gear, sync sound cameras like an Arri SR, CP-16R, Eclair NPR/ACL, or Aaton (modified for Super 16) is what most DP's invest in if they want to get hired with a package. But most people usually choose to rent, because you can get the latest and greatest and don't need the headache of owning your own equipment (maintanance, insurance, etc). If you want to work with 35mm sync cameras, you could concievably get a used Arri BL 1 for 10 grand (decent lenses would bump it up higher though). If you buy "short ends" of 35mm film you can pay just a shade above the prices of new 16mm filmstock, so it might work out. But I say stick with 16 for starters. - G.

...and while we're at it, although it's not 35mm only... http://www.movie-camera.com/bolseye.html Now you can wonder where JVC got their design from for their smallest line of mini DV cams <_< - G.

Come on, work imbedded image. Anyway, http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/kinarri.jpg Cut and paste. It's worthwhile I think. From the site http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/cinelist.html - G.

I was just crusing around doing one of my favorite pasttimes, looking at old cameras, and I found what appears to be one of the first 35mm cameras made by Arri in 1925.... I'd love to show up with that to the set one day, it looks way more awesome than anything out there today, film or digital. - G.

Sorry, didn't get it :( Is this the name of a real film? Either way I don't know how helpful the Cannes market is to a film... - G.

Especially when you consider the fact that anything near professional in DV is going to cost you at least 4-5 thousand dollars, and that those cameras are probably going to be deadweights in about 7 years or so. I have a Canon L2 Hi8 camera. That used to be the most awesome prosumer camera you could get. I just barely managed to have it pay for itself when DV became big news, and then I simply wouldn't allow myself to do work in that format anymore - I knew it wasn't competitive enough to everyone else who had their DV packages out there fighting for the same job. So at that point I said "No more video camera investments!" That's two grand that became worthless pretty fast. Furthermore, film cameras are so much more durable than video cameras (good luck having a DV camera survive a respected drop - it's called "replacing the board" at best...), yet they are more precision instruments. An unusual combination. Indeed it's quite a bargain to get a motion picture camera for a price lower than a DV camera. Yeah, you could look at a garage sale special Kodak 8mm Brownie and say "Why not make a 16 or 35mm version of this?". But who the hell is going to go out there and shoot anything but a short experiment on something so limited and potentially unreliable? I certainly wouldn't risk my rep on it. Just go on Ebay and take a look - you can get a cheapo Bell and Howell or Kodak 16mm camera for under a hundred dollars (which, when you calculate inflation, is much cheaper than their going price new). But these cameras were meant for baby's first steps and the like, and most home movie makers were lucky if they could get within decent focus and exposure range. They'd hardly be in a position to judge things like pressure plate problems, gate weave, optical alignment/calibration, etc. Not to say that some of these cameras weren't excellently built - some are actually very good. But remember also, the most useful cameras retain their value best, which is why they cost so much. Herein lies the market value aspect of price. It's also nice to know that a camera has been maintained, which it most likely is in professional hands (they need the stuff to be reliable in order to make a living). I also think that if portable video hadn't come up in the past few decades, 16mm equipment would cost considerably more than it does now. - G.

What all the others have said is very true. That said there are instances where some equipment is priced high, for example if you take a single lens 35mm Eyemo (a portable 35mm camera you can handhold) made in the 30's or 40's and compare it to the same company's 16mm Filmo (which is virtually identical save for the film gauge), you will notice that one goes for sale for a thousand bucks, maybe even more, while the other one can be often had for under two hundred, sometimes even under one hundred bucks. Both cameras were produced in fairly large numbers (although I suspect strongly that the Eyemo was less produced, and is less of a likely find in yard sales as it was never used for home movies). The basic rule is - whatever the market can bear. There is video equipment that cost ten grand new, and can be had today for six hundred dollars or even less because it cannot by far compete with today's latest and greatest (in the case that it lasts, which is not a frequent occurance). Meanwhile, an Eyemo can deliver images that compares well to other 35mm equipment costing much more. There was once a time where film processing cost less as compared to the rate of inflation than it does today - volume was much higher (and environmental standards probably lower). Film stock, however, has more or less stayed consistent. If you think that in 1978, 16mm Plus X reversal film cost around $0.07/ft and today it retails for about $0.20, that rides smoothly with the inflation index of the day, I checked. - G.

I like it when someone says that their film "showed at Cannes" or "showed at the IFFM", I can say the same thing about my movie if I had the money. - G.

I suggest that you New Yorkers look into the Family Health Plus plan. Thank God for that, it's keeping me insured right now. Otherwise I'd have to pay $300+ a month for med insurance. -G.

I always wanted to try creating a home telecine device for the same reasons, using flatbed scanner CCD's. I wanted to be able to control and run the whole operation myself, in house - just get the processed negative and do it at home. Just recently, for the hell of it, I took a 35mm positive print and scanned a few frames from it on my Microtek flatbed scanner (it costs around 200 bucks). The image I got was higher in contrast and the color was bleeding compared to the rank transfer (to be fair, the rank was directly off the negative - I didn't risk putting my neg through the scanner's negative holder which can scratch it easily). There was also more noise, especially after gamma adjustment. The color adjustments created noise as well - this is hardly one's idea of color correction. I did of course get higher resolution (2K), but that was simply a function of the rank signal being NTSC versus this being a raw digital file. Besides, the "2K" scan was on the fuzzy side, it looked more like a 16mm frame than 35mm when I blew it up full screen (and the emulsion orientation was correct - I scanned both ways to be sure). The optical resolution of the scanner is listed as 3200X6400, so this is supposedly native all the way w/o interpolation. I personally thought that the electro-optical elements in modern flatbed scanners were better in quality than they actually are, since so many still photographers use them nowadays. But you get what you pay for I guess. I gather nothing beats a good drum scan (and the opto-electric elements in a rank are the same tubes, I believe, that drum scanners use). I didn't, however, test this system to death. Automated scanning software can do strange things sometimes. - G.

It seems Phil you're really got an axe to grind with the transfer costs. I'm paying $150 an hour for unsupervised at a place in New Jersey. I am gathering that in the UK it's considerably more costly. Most labs when doing dailies will transfer at a per foot rate. Granted, supervised is obviously more expensive (that same place I told you about charges $250 an hour for this). But the transfer is one of the cheaper parts of the equation. To me the raw stock itself is the most costly part of the enterprise. When you consider it, it can cost under 5 thousand to get a feature film transferred, supervised, to a high quality digital format. Add a little more time and you can really go to town with corrections and whatnot - which in itself is a great creative process. But it costs many thousands more to do a 35mm print and interpos/interneg - which going the conventional optical way has less avenues of image control. So to me the price of the transfer isn't really the big killer. The Rank machines they use aren't cheap, and they certainly kick ass quality wise when compared to the old "film chain" method. Might I add that many people who operate film chain transfers are out right ripping off their customers compared to Rank transfers. I've seen film chain transfer rates that are almost if not equal to unsupervised Rank transfer rates, per foot. It's absurd when you consider that a 16mm filmchain costs under five grand, while the Rank costs over one hundred grand and requires more skill and knowhow to operate and maintain. - G.

I only saw ten minutes of Buffalo 66, and I was mostly interested in two things, the look of 35mm Ektachrome and one sequence involving a tap dance done under a King Crimson song, which all the King Crimson fanatics were nuts about. I did a search on this guy on the internet and had to laugh when I saw that on his next film "Brown Bunny" (never saw it) he did practically everything by himself - acted, directed, shot, art designed, makeup, etc. Either he wore himself thin with a long schedule and did this all himself, or he had a ton of assistants who got secondary credit when they in fact were probably doing most of the work, or the film looked horrible. - G.

If I'm not mistaken its Czech film. I used to see a lot of it in Russia. They even had a reversal film called Foma Chroma. Never shot with it. I did shoot with ORWO though, I can't say I was thrilled. - G.

One of the best kept secrets of 35mm is "short ends" - the resold film of production companies that are short loads (2 minutes long usually). I'm paying one sixth the price of Kodak catalog prices. 16mm short ends are usually in much lower supply and higher demand than 35mm stock. They go for the same price per foot as 35mm short ends, sometimes even more. If you want to shoot a 16mm feature on short ends and recans, you usually gotta get fresh stock as well, unless you want to be gathering it for, like, a year. So, when it comes down to it I'm paying about $26.00 a minute for 35mm, processing and one lite transfer included, whereas in 16mm (new stock) it costs about $22.00 a minute for the same. To me the extra four dollars a minute are very much worthwhile, and the cheaper labs don't process 16mm as clean as they do 35 in my personal experience. If I had to pay Kodak catalog prices at its high rate of 0.62/ft or thereabouts, there's no way in hell I'd ever be shooting my project on 35 right now. By the way, that Arri IIc you see me holding in my picture is what I'm using right now. It's a good camera. I'd also suggest checking out the Konvas. Obviously you'd have to loop your dialog for those cameras (which is what I am doing now), unless you want to invest in a blimp. - G.

If you used a condenser lens, perhaps you could...

I don't think it pays to discuss things this way. Every professional image maker is going to be interested in what happens in the near future to film and digital. I can tell you one thing for sure, the death of film has been greatly exaggerated for the past 30 years if not more. Ever since video evolved above the two inch quad, people have been awaiting the day when it will take over film. I've read articles written back in the 70's and 80's, and one such article said "Don't put your 16mm camera on the shelf yet, chances are you'll still be using it ten years later". Not just ten but twenty years later, and even more as it still seems (would help to add that widening the gate would be necessary). Naturally there are areas where tape replaced film, i.e. network news, docs, industrials, and home movies - and I think that is a great benefit. What news shooter wants to worry about exposure on reversal film, then rush off their footage to the lab and wait at least an hour and a half before it can be broadcasted? The practicality of the medium is what is more important than aesthetics in these cases. But when it comes to film's primary application, it is still strongly in place. I feel (on intuition, without any real numbers to back me up) that as many people who were shooting 16mm/S16 for low budget films before digital video are still doing that - it's just that other people who would have never made a movie at all are now grabbing digital cameras and making features. As to who is going to ultimately "win", or what is going to outdate what, it's fairly obvious to me that digital has the greatest potential advantage in the end. It's just that the development of the technology still isn't there yet. We still need much, much more time for it to become not only "good enough", but practical enough for narrative cinema. It's getting closer every day, but it's not close enough for a real revolution. I keep guessing how much more time film will be predominant in the MP business. I said 10 years four years ago. I am still looking at the state of things now and that figure doesn't seem to shrink in my head. Kodak is raising the bar all the time (and I'm increasingly feeling bad for not having the best lenses to take advantage of their stocks), and digital has to not only match yesterday's stocks but play catchup with the latest and greatest. Just six-seven years ago 5298 was the king of high speed stocks. Then came along Vision 500 when I was leaving film school. We were all stunned when it came out how low the grain was in contrast to the '98. Now as I started shooting on '79, 5218 came along, and it's even finer grained with more neutral color repro. The underexposure latitude (with the '79 - I have yet to see the '18 under and printed up) is improving all the time. Meanwhile, the ASA is getting higher while the grain is lower. If you want to compare, just shoot some of Kodak's Ektachrome 400 T/D which is based on a 70's emulsion design, and compare it to '79 or '18. It's really impressive how progress goes by, and it goes by as fast as the engineers in Sony and other places get their gear together. What concerns the practical end of things: I can buy a Russian made Konvas that shoots images with greater resolution and dynamic range than a $100,000 HDTV camera - for a mere two thousand bucks. A camera like that is more reliable and much less fragile than its HDTV counterpart. I can own the gear. If there's a nice location or an actor happens to be in town that I want to do something with, I can be working within a few hours. If I need to do a pickup after a film's wrapped I need not call the rental house, and worry about late fees if I'm stuck in the tunnel returning it. So, I see myself working with film for a very long time - as long as I can get short ends and lab for a rate comparable to what I'm paying now. There would either have to be a serious jump in film/lab cost or a very positive change in price:quality ratio for me to switch to a digital format (as well as a significant price reduction for laser output to film - if we're to talk theatrical considerations). The best attitude I can take is keep alert and "let's see the proof". Let the innovators do the thinking, that's what they're being paid for, and that's what they spent years and years studying and working hard for. When film is dead I'm sure I'll be amidst those to know, as will you. - G.