Mitch Gross

In theory you are correct. A lens designed to cover Super-16 only doesn't have to work as hard as a lens that must cover 35. But that's only in theory. In practice the lens design companies spend far more attention and money on designing 35mm format lenses, so the 16mm ones are not as current in technology. THe only place where this is different is in HD primes, which are designed to cover a 2/3" sensor that's actually just a bit smaller than the S-16 image area. Soon enough some of these designs will be incorporated into new Super-16 lens sets (the Zeiss DigiPrimes will likely be the first). But until then the centerline resolution capabilities of the 35 lenses are about on par with the best 16mm lenses if not superior. Why your film was soft is open to so many reasons. Perhaps your gate depth was off, or your lens mount. The optical printer may not have had inferior lenses or have not be set correctly. Perhaps you went through IP/IN stages while the other prints were direct blow-ups. There's many reasons why one blowup could look softer than another. Maybe your 35mm lenses were out of collimation. It's very easy to see how well a lens performs, at least in terms of resolution. Any decent rental house will have a lens projector in the back. Stick a lens on, turn off the lights and look to see how sharply it resolves at the center and the corners. I've compared lenses and been astonished at how off they can be sometimes.

I'm not a fan of the Tiffen mattebox--very flimsy design. The Vocas is much in my opinion. Chrosziel is even better still. Van Dieman makes a very nice clip-on (the Mosquito), and Petroff has some new models (distributed by Ste-man). Cinetech makes a very nice system and the stuff from JBK Cinequipt is supposed to be nice but perhaps bulky. Visual Products markets a carbon fiber mattebox made in South Africa and if you want inexpensive there's always Cavision in Canada (but made in China--plasticy stuff but it does the trick). Lots of choices out there.

Kino Flo makes a ballast that can be set to flicker, and you can adjust the rate and duration of the flicker. If you put a dimmer on a standard Kino Flo ballast you will burn the unit out, which is an expensive repair.

You can adjust the shutter on the SR3 to 144 degrees. This will reduce the flicker to a small horizontal line.

Have tons of compressed air, hair blowers and disposable paper towels. Every bit of equipment and crew is going to get wet and it's really annoying. Get rolls of visquein (clear plastic tarp sheeting) to cover anything and everything. Invest in not only a nice raincoat, but also rain pants, available at Home Depot. So very worth it. Remember to crosslight or backlight your rain, otherwise you may never see it.

Boy did you come to the right place. When you log in to the forum, scroll down until you see the link to the sister site, the Steadicam Forum. There you'll find dozens of professional steadicam operators who can tell you in great detail exactly what you need. You may even find a great person in your area for the job.

Niki-- Congratulations! Here's to success on your film. I've heard a bit of buzz on it--didn't know that you'd worked on it. And welcome back to the forum btw.

When the Frezzi was built the CP mount did not exist. The Frezzi was in fact replaced by the CP-16, which used the CP mount. It is very possible that someone retrofitted a CP mount onto your old Frezzi camera. Does the lens screw on with threads, or is it a three-bladed flange with a clamping ring on the camera? The thread design is C-mount and the flange is CP. You can commonly get 8mm lenses that are very wide angle but are not fisheye distorting. But no wide angle lens is particularly flattering for closeup face work. To get a closup of a face with a wide angle, you need to be physically very close to the subject, which will stretch the nose while pushing away the forehead and ears. Generally closeups are far more flattering on more telephoto lenses such as an 85mm.

For the exteriors, as long as you are shooting from public property they can't do anything about it. As for the interiors and anything else, while technically they may be in the right, in reality let's be realistic. No one will who cares will likely see it and if they do will probably not connect the dots. People sneak footage all the time whether it is right or not to do so. Years ago (pre-9/11) I strapped an Arri 2c to the hood of a car and drove back & forth through the Lincoln Tunnel a few times before we were pulled over. We then lied that we were simply on the way to a shoot and not actually shooting in the tunnel. Of course that footage is all over the movie and no one ever said a thing.

You'll want a mattebox with a minimum of two square tray stages (the 4x4), with at least one of the rotating for graduated filters. Behind this it is also important to have a round filter tray in the donut ring stage, often used for polarizers or diopters. If you get one with a 138mm (5.5") ring size then most manufacturers then have an insert ring so that you can use 4.5" round filters as well, giving you more flexibility. In fact, if you get a mattebox that can handle 4x4.560 size filter which protect you in the future for possible Super-16 upgrades, then they usually will also hold 4x4 filters in either the same tray or in a secondary replacement tray. You also want a mattebox that has an adjustable bellows or front-mount matte masks or both, plus you want an eyebrow (aka French flag) and possibly side brows as well. Some people really like a mattebox that can hinge swing on it's mount (swingaway) for easier access to the lens). Arri matteboxes are good but very expensive. Chrosziel are very good and common throughout the industry (so you can always rent accessories such as add-on stages). Vocas (distributed in the US by Century Precision Optics as Shade F/X) are nice but a little simpler. Cinetech makes a nice mattebox system with lots of accessories and adjustability. Visual Products distributes a South African-made lightweight carbon fiber mattebox. Petroff used to make an okay mattebox system but I don't believe they do so anymore. Van Dieman in England makes some good matteboxes that are distributed in the US by Serious Gear Co. JBK Cinequipt makes a fairly beefy model. And if you want lots of features for cheap, the somewhat plasticy Chinese-made matteboxes from Cavision can't be beat for price. Whew--and all off the top of my head! There's lots of matteboxes out there, and you have to choose the features to cost and style that you like. I have a Chrosziel but also like the Cinetech. You might be perfectly happy with a clip-on from Visual Products.

FYI, this is the British firm I referred to as supplying the processing equipment for The Lab at Moving Images in NYC.

Forget about using your little photo strobes for an exterior night lightning effect. The Lightning Strikes is several orders of magnitude bigger and brighter, like a mouse to an elephant.

Link didn't work.

CP mount is very different from C mount. And a 15mm lens is a 15mm lens. It's a little wide, but not hugely wide in the 16mm film format. I have a zoom that goes to 8mm and a prime lens that goes to 5.7mm. These are wide lenses.

One great advantage to Aaton image steadiness is the horizontal pressure plate, which is basically a little spring-mounted bar that pushes against the edge of the film frame at the gate. Aaton has had this from the beginning in the mid-seventies, but it took until the Arri SR-3Advanced (not the original SR-3) for the Germans to admit that the French had a smart idea. There are various places that upgrade Arri SR-1, 2 & 3 cameras and can replace the gate assembly with one that has the horizontal pressure plate. I consider it an absolute must for Super-16 work destined for 35mm blow-up.

You want a Lightning Strikes unit. These are very powerful strobe lights that are designed to specifically look like lightning flashes and they work great. Understand that you'll need a dedicated generator for this unit as it draws considerable power and spikes the electricity as it flashes.

Downconversions are something that happens in the tape room back at mission control, not out in the field. The 1st AC deals hands-on with the camera, pulling focus, setting up sticks, monitoring batteries, etc. The 2nd AC keeps the reports, runs the slate, lays marks and assists the first as always. Other than actually loading mags the jobs are essentially the same. When a setup is done and camera moves for next setup, the 1st AC moves camera and the second moves monitor or re-routes the cabling.

After all this actor bashing I feel I should point out that I'ce worked with some incredibly nice and professional people in my time. Bill Cosby personally called crew people the next day to thank them, and anyone who got the message on their answer machine was sure to save it. Max von Sydow was nice enough to appear in a Columbia University student film years ago as a favor and when the shooting was done began helping the students carry the equipment back to the van. I think he was in his sixties at the time. And I've had plenty of actors show up on set on days they're not in a scene simply to support their fellow cast members in their work, generally on unpaid time. But the naughty stories are a lot of fun.

practical lamps are around 2900k compared to quartz tungsten lights that are 3200k. Putting 1/8 CTB gel on these lights or 1/8 CTO on the 3200k lights should get them very close. From there you can adjust the color in printing.

Cloudy actually raises the color temperature so you'd need more orange gel not less. Full CTO brings 5500K light to 3200K, but a cloudy day can be up around 8000K. You could use Full CTO plus 1/2 CTO, but personally I would just use Full CTO and let it be a little blue/white outside.

More grain, higher contrast, poorer blacks.

These are private citizens at a public event. The event status makes it okay for you to use, as long as you do not excessively focus and dwell on these people. News footage is excepted from this rule, as is any footage of celebrities as they are considered "newsworthy" and therefore open to the public.

It will almost feel like somewhere in between. The biggest annoyance with HD is focus, because your viewfinder doesn't have nearly the resolution of the format and a small monitor is not fine-pitched enough to judge off of. A shot might look fine in the viewfinder and on the 9" monitor but be soft trnasferred to 35mm or even on a large 42" plasma screen. Other than that it's essentially a very sharp DIgiBeta or DVCPro video camera.

Well you can eliminate what is essentially some repetitious info to help clarify. 24fps with a 180 degree shutter is what gives you a shutter speed of 1/48th. So now you're down to two pieces of info: 200 ISO (ASA is no longer used but is the same thing) and 1/48th of a second exposure time. Each stop of light is a halving of exposure (or doubling depending which direction you go). Halve the time of exposure and you've also halved the exposure itself, so that is the one-to-one relationship between exposure time and aperture. So if a 200 ISO film at 1/48th of a second requires an F11 for proper exposure, you need to do some simple math of the shutter speed to find the correct exposure on your still camera. 48 x 2.6 equals 125 (close enough). So the difference in exposure time is 2.6 times. Put another way, 1/125th is 2.6 times shorter an exposure time than 1/48th, so you need to open your lens aperture by 2.6 stops to allow the proper amount of light in. If correct aperture at 1/48th is F11, then correct exposure at 1/125th is F4 & 1/3. Changing filmstock will have a similar effect. 100 ISO film is one stop less sensitive to light than 200 ISO film (it is half as sensitive). Hope this is clear. Simple math once you understand the relationship.

Sorry, it sounds better as a tease than the actual story. We figured it out in about ten seconds and had a PA take him home. But it was really fun trying to instantly recast the role (he was just a day player), call his agent and explain to the production office why shooting was delayed. I relished standing there listening to the AD's half of the conversations as he made the calls. Classic on-set moment--I almost filmed it for the wrap party. I do recall him writing a wonderfully obtuse entry into the Production Log (nobody was looking to destroy this actor's life).