Mitch Gross

First off, this is not the CML (Cinematography Mailing List). That's at cinematography.net, this is cinematography.com. You can subscribe there to CML-basics and ask your question on that list as well. My suggestion would be to volunteer on student films on the weekends. Check on mandy.com for shoots going on in your area. If you are in a major city there is usually a film & video commision or office that co-ordinates permits for shoots. Often they will have a listing for what's going on in the area. There's nothing better than helping out for free to learn, especially when you're on a restricted schedule.

Oh God, drunk actors! So insanely annoying--like working with children or animals (worse because you assume they'd know better). Did a film with a number of love scenes and come The Big Day for one of them I had the pleasure of sharing a car ride in with the Associate Producer and the three (yes three) actors in the scene. AP driving, me in the front passenger seat and the three of them (two female, one male) bouncing along in the back for half an hour. The AP & I looked at one another because right away we knew that at least one of them was pretty far gone. They'd been "rehearsing" in their hotel room earlier and apparently shared a bottle of wine or seven to loosen up a bit. One actress (all 90 pounds of her) was wildly gesticulating and inviting me to join in on the fun once we got to set. We tried shooting another scene first and pouring hot coffee into her, but by the time we got her to set she made it through one shot before passing out. It was pretty impressive actually--she did 4 rehearsals and five takes nearly flawlessly but her energy kept getting lower and lower. When the director finally called cut the girl stod up and immediately went down for the count, narrowly missing cracking her skull on the jib arm. We shot some B-roll material and called it a night, coming back the next day to shoot the scene. Funny thing was, we were able to use the drunken shot in the edit. She really was a trouper and nailed it every time. Another actress really reamed her out for being so unprofessional but when it came time for her love scene she was slurring her words from her own wine tasting. Fun shoot. And then there was the guy who showed up on set tripping on acid...

I just taught a whole troop of students how to do this. First off, tear the film across a perf; this way it will more easily engage the sprocket wheel. Some people like to load the film through the pass-thru to the sprocket wheel before putting it on the core adapter. I diagree--there's plenty of room to send the film into that hole after mounting it on the core adapter. Just roll the film end in your finger a bit to curve it the opposite way it normally curves--this will aid you in getting it into the slot. Push gently until you make contact with with sprocket wheel. If you tore the film well you should be able to simply push it right onto the wheel, but if you meet some resistance simply reach underneath to the main drive gear (the gear wheel that interfaces with the camera body) and wiggle it a bit until the film properly engages with the sprocket wheel. Push through so there's plenty coming out the front of the camera--at least a foot. Engage the tensioning roller on the feed side for the footage counter, and be sure that it is wraped around the film and not riding on an edge. Also be sure that the film and core are fully pressed down onto the core adapter. Close the feed side door and secure it. I like to cover it with a bit of camera tape for safety. Now you can work outside of the changing bag. Pull the film around the front of the mag and underneath to the line scribed on the base. Open the take-up side door and hold the main drive gear in place. I like to again curve the end of the film back now so that it will load straight into the sprocket wheel. Push the film into the housing on the front of the mag below the main drive gear (the opposing corner to where it came out from the feed side) and push until you feel resistance. Make sure you have held the main drive gear in place so as to maintain the proper length for your loop. You should again be able to feed the film right onto the sprocket wheel, but if not then slightly rock the main drive gear until the film engages. Now feed through into the take-up side. If you have a collapsable core (metal ring core with a clip built in), feed the film into it and close the clip. If you have a core adapter as on the feed side then mount a 2" (small) plastic core, fold over a single frame of film and push the double layer into the core's slot. Wind the core a few times until the tension begins to tighten. Engage the tensioning lever making sure it wraps around the film. This lever helps the film take-up in a tight wind so that it is easier to download. Close the take-up side and put some tape over the latch. Note--those core adapters costs $50 to replace, and it can be very easy to send then off to the lab by mistake, where you'll never hear from them again. Also, if you have a collapsable core, I like to insert a standard 2" core inside the space they leave behind so that the film doesn't unwind into that space (really annoying to the lab guys). Other notes--Although it can sound very satisfying, resist the erge to slap the mags into place, as this can burr and damage the main drive gear and cause a lot of camera noise. Also, there is a small spring-loaded flap on the camera body where the top of the mag engages. If you go in at a slight angle this flap may not lower, in which case you could fog the entire roll of film and not know it until viewing the footage. If you are using on-board batteries be very gentle with the battery mount adaptor. The little screw that mounts it should always be snugged in tight or you will stress the 4-pin XLR connector. You have no idea how many of these I've seen broken over the years. Be very careful mounting and removing the battery and actually put a couple of fingers on the adaptor mount to relieve some of the pressure. When swinging the battery up into place to hold to the mag, do so gently so as not to crack the plastic housing of the battery. Hope this helps.

There's not that many made frankly. They're special one-of machines. I know the new lab in NYC, Moving Images, bought a processing system from a company in England. That company flew a couple of guys over to install it. It takes up three rooms and they had to re-enforce the floors with steel beams to support the chemical tanks.

Because they are being precise. Kodak currently has a single 250 ISO (ASA is outdated) filmstock, but it replaced another from the past. And Fuji has two 250 ISO stocks, one tungsten and one daylight balanced. By giving the stock number it is the most accurate way to convey information. Between the two major manufacturers there are seven 500 ISO film stocks.

There may be more out of work actors, but there are certainly fewer famous actors than anything else. That's the commodity.

Century recently came out with a new zoom through wide angle adapter for this size lens that is supposed to be excellent. It's also at a new lower price point of $995.

They're not called "B" cells, they're called "sub-C." I believe that Panasonic makes the cells that Abel Cine Tech in NYC uses to recell the Aaton bricks. I let them do it for me because the rate is reasonable enough and they'll usually throw in some other service work at the same time. If you really want to do it yourself I imagine you could just call and ask them what cells they use.

I can tell you that while this is the quick and easyy route, most professional productions might do scans for the offline and then replicate them using a rostrum camera. There is a qualitative difference.

I've seen the film and while it is great that they were able to extract the images to 35mm IP, the quality varied wildly.

I think the original poster was comparing very old 16mm format lenses, not modern 35mm lenses. In this case, the Zeiss Superspeeds are dramatically better lenses than the old Cooke or Schneider glass.

Ah, clasic problem. Very often people either do not securely attach the film to the core or they roll onto the core in the wrong direction. If the film disconnects from the coe it will simply fill up the mag until there is no more room and jam up. If rolled onto the core in the wrong direction, the film will unravel from the core as it rotates in its correct direction and then either properly respool onto the core (but loosely now due to slack) or pop loose from the core and eventually jam up. To attach the film end to the core properly, fold over half a frame and tuck it into the slot on the core. It should be snug and seat firmly in place. To quickly check whether the film is spooled onto the core in the correct direction, simply rotate the core and watch the direction the film travels on the sprocket wheel. They should all move together smoothly. Good news is there sounds like there's nothing wrong with your mag.

Yes.

You're watching 60i unless you choose to transform it into 24p. When you choose to do so you'll certainly know if you got the sequencing correct. It's ether perfect or a real mess, with fields from separate frames mixed together to make a hodgepodged image.

Did the jams happen early on in the roll? That would indicate a loading issue. If the problem happens later on the clutch may need adjustment (slipping). Did this happen while shooting at something other than 24fps? Sometimes a weak clutch can allow film from the feed side to float through the pass thru and accumulate around the capstan roller, possibly getting caught up in the sprocket wheel. What was the nature of the jam? Did you lose your loop and find one of the two loop latches (usually the lower one) popped open? Was there any tearing or accordioning of the film? All of this information can help assess the problem.

Thanks Tim! Will I see you there?

The 24p frames are spread across 60i fields. A 24p frame is made up of two fields that are captured by the sensor at the same time. The order of the spread is what is indicated by the 2:3:3:2, meaning it's 2 fields of frame 1 of 24p onto two fields of 60i, then 3 fields of 24p onto 3 fields of 601, and so on. So you need to know where that sequence starts on the 60i material in order to reconstruct the original 24p. The flags will tell you, but otherwise you can simply guess until you find the right one as there are only five possibilities until the sequence repeats itself. If this is not clear, try this. Get yourself a set of checkers, red and black and label them A & B. Line them up in a row as red A, red B, black A, black B, black A, red A, red B, etc. In order to reconstruct the 24p signal, you need to stack red A & red B then black A & black B. It's easy to do when you can see the colors--just drop the 5th field and combine the others. That's if the frames are flagged. But if they're not you are essentially doing it with your eyes closed. There are five possible choices for a start point, after which the sequence repeats. So you can try it blindly and if you're wrong you just move on to the next one until you get it right. BTW, how you do this in your editing program I have no idea. Ask someone familiar with FCP4. This is possibly the single most confused concept in the DV world today. You don't know how many people cannot wrap their heads around 24p on 60i.

Not a common problem at all. It's very rare to have a mag jam on the Aaton, especially shooting at normal speeds. Are you sure of the loader? Were the loops set properly? You may need some servicing. Did both jams happen on the same mag? You should be keeping track to see.

The flags are embedded in the user bits of the timecode, so if you generate new timecode then you lose the flags. However, there is a fairly simple order to the flagging (24p = 2:3:2:3:2:3, 24pa = 2:2:3:3:2:2:3:3), so it can be fairly easy to figure out what the extraction needs to be. You simply need to know whether you're in 24p or 24pa and pick the correct starting field, a one out of five shot. I believe 2-pop has a more in-depth discussion on this and how to deal with it. Frankly, since you're using FCP4 you should have absolutely no problem--Panasonic and Apple worked together to develop a system that would make their products work swimmingly together.

You'll lose the flagging on the frames that makes extraction of the 24p simple. If you are watching in standard 60i this makes no difference, and if you do later need to extract the 24p then you'll have to hunt a little but it's not impossible (there are only five choices).

I'd choose the 5218 first for pushing. It has better grain structure and the contrast is already a little smoother than 5279, so pushing it might give you that gritty snap you desire.

The improvements are functional ones, not performance. You will get get just as good a technical image with either camera, but the new model has improved features over the old.

I am told you can expect the release within the next month or two. The rest I'm sworn to secrecy.

I think the roll of film was likely flashed by the AC during loading. But this is a guess and I don't think it would be fair to blame an individual. The scratch could be in the mag or from build up in the gate. It is the job of the AC to clean and check both of these.

The '29 has slightly (and I mean slightly) more grain than '18. The colors are also more muted, as this is the "Expression" stock. Both stocks benefit from the Vision2 technology's lack of color corruption in the shadows and highlights. If I were going for film to tape, I'd probably choose '29 for the slight benefit in versatility.