Mitch Gross

That's an old PanaStar reflex 200. It had a shutter that could open to 200 degrees to let in another 1/10th a stop in light. It was huge and heavy and generally used for studio-shot TV work, although it obviously made its way onto other sets, apparently including Alien.

Just sounds to me like it's a misloaded roll. If the mag door was not latched properly or light hit the film while loading it could look exactly like this. I've seen it before. :( As for the scratch, it sounds like a fairly deep emulsion-side scratch, one again that could occur either in the mag or in the camera gate if they were not cleaned properly and thoroughly. The mag may even need service.

I think George could help on that one if you're brave enough to try to tackle it. :o

I love the Wall-O for it's large, soft source that's still somewhat directional. It emulates ambient window light very well and when you put a diffusion diaper over it (diffusing material that wraps the whole unit like, well a diaper) then the soft quality is lovely. That said, it's a major pain to flag. It's very large and the only way to effectively control it is with very large flags at a distance, which is often impractical. The good news is that as all Kinos it has a dramatic dropoff, so you can put it fairly close to your subject and the light will be fairly weak by the time it reaches the background. Also note that it's very large qand heavy. You can't simply put it on a C-stand like a 4x4.

Pull-process and then pump the colors in the transfer.

It's still an experimental research device. Look for more as we get closer to NAB in April.

I had one producer we were all really proud of. We had a couple of actors who were extremely high maintenance ("C**t," was the term the female director used for the lead actress). After one nearly interminable 1/2 day, the producer had had enough and shut down the shoot for the rest of the day. He gathered the actors (on paid time) as well as some key crew members. He then pulled out a list, culled from the Daily Production Report submitted by the AD, of all of the horrible behavior of the cast members that violated their employment contracts. He then hit them with some SAG warnings and stated that if the nonsense continued he would simply shut down the production for good and sue the actors for the ENTIRE production budget. Then everyone was excused for the day. Things went a lot smoother after that and the guy got major respect from me. Then there's the actress who decided that she wouldn't talk to the director anymore and used me and the AD to convey messages. That was a lot of fun for nearly a month.

Often cheap lenses for video gear such as this one are not particularly high quality. They do not resolve a great deal, have poor contrast, distortion, chromatic abberation and are very susceptible to flare. In addition they may not have marked aperture settings or even focus marks. Lastly, a video lens is often designed for a 3-chip block which means that the focus depth for red, green and blue are each slightly different, which is not the case in a cine lens. In the end the lens may not perform very well for your intended application. Mitch

The upcoming project is a feature for the same writer/director of "Cold Feet," a film we did together in S-16 something like six years ago (and available at your local Blockbuster!). This film has a significantly bigger budget and we're trying to push the envelope a bit with things. It takes place in and around offices in New York plus various practical locations (restaurants, apartments, etc.), and much of the comedy/fanstasy happens inside the daydreams of the main character. He dreams of killing his boss and other such fantasies. We're still working on the look, knowing that we want to go for a slightly "hyper-reality" that will work with the craziness of the story. I may go a bit of "Joe v. the Volcano" flo green work in the office, along with slightly off-kilter framing. We also want a high gloss, contrasty sheen to the look. That coupled with the likely T stop around 5.6 to get the best out of the lenses pushes me towards 5279 or maybe 5218. I like '79 for the snap but prefer the color rendition of '18. The stars are African-American so '18 definitely helps there. I still haven't decided on filtration as of yet. The project keeps getting pushed back for various reasons so it gives me a lot of time to play with things like the Elites. We're scheduled to start around the beginning of February at this point but we'll see. Right now I certainly forsee lots of Steadicam using the 32mm. I certainly plan to chronicle the shoot as you did with "Northfork" and I did with "S.I." as I found that a very cathartic diary service. My last two features were out of town and my available time to post a journal non-existant. I missed it, having to complain to my wife on the phone instead. For the sake of my marriage and sanity I'll post here instead.

I know about the Willytec--nice system. It came out right after I bought my Chrosziel for my Aaton, and had I known I would have gone with the Willy. But I'm not going to ask the rental house to get one if they can make their gear work fine. I'll let them know in case they have a problem though. Don't know about the focus mechanisms for the Elites. The scales are large and accurate, so I have no problem with these. Of course the focus rings are located at various distances as well, so it means that the AC has to slide the followfocus as well as the lens support, mattebox, front rods, etc. all over the place in order to deal. Knowing my AC, I imagine he'll mark a series of colored indicators on the rods to note placements for different lenses for quick changeovers.

Russian lenses from St. Petersburg. Unlike some other conversion lenses, all the glass including the anamorphot cylinders are new. The lenses are very clean and sharp and I've been really impressed with the contrasty, "tacky-ness" of their look. A really snappy look. The wide angles have a bit of barreling to them, but nothing too extreme. So far the lenses have been extremely flare resistant, even wide open. But I do find that the curving focus field as you described flattens out nicely when closing down a couple of stops. And this helps the contrast and color saturation. One thing I'm not thrilled about is the housing designs. They just don't seem quite as well thought out as the Primos or the Hawks. The lenses are a few different sizes, as I knew would be the case with anamorphics, but for longer lenses it appears that they simply extended the cylinder while keeping the same elements and with all that weight out front it necessitates lens supports for all but the widest lenses. And because of the design these supports are all located at different distances from the camera. I forsee delays at lens changes and a pain when rigging for handheld or Steadicam work. But the housings have improved from the first generation of the lenses where the screws would work themselves loose and rings would pull right off the housing. Handheld Films in NYC is designing a mount for a clip on mattebox for the 32mm for me, plus machining down an Arri FollowFocus-4 so that it can clear under that len's super wide diameter. All things to be dealt with, but no issue with actual lens performace. Elite even has a lightweight zoom for handheld/Steadicam use. It's a 25-80 spherical/50-160 anamorphic T3.9 with a tiny little rear anamorphot. It has pincushion issues at the wide end and seriously suffers from the curved focus plane issue in anamorphic, plus it has some really oddball quirks like a zoom rate that is not consistant as you turn the ring (gets really slow near the telephoto). But it's also super small--smaller than my 16mm zoom lens. I wouldn't ever consider using it for film finish below a T8, so I don't think I'll use it much. The Elites are available in NYC from Handheld Films and in Burbank from Slow-Motion, Inc. Slow-Motion is the dealer. Next time you're in LA you should give Anatoli a call and check them out. So far I like the Elites over both series of the Hawks.

The color stocks are so much newer with so much more exposure range and you can manipulate so much in tlecine--I wouldn't bother with B&W unless it gave you exactly the look you wanted right out of the box. It may be easier to pull color matte effects by starting with the color stock.

Yes it's true, right in the credits. Caleb Deschanel supposedly shot some inserts of the boat at Coppola's vineyard home during post.

Matt, what are you doing to your cameras?

The Bolex is NOT the camera for you to use. Check the archive from last year for extensive discussions on this topic. The Bolex is not a quiet camera and was never intended for sync sound use. While it can run at sync speed it will make far too much noise for your purposes. You are much better off with a self-blimped quiet camera such as the CP-16R, the Eclair NPR or ACL, the Arriflex 16-BL, SR-1 or SR-2 or an Aaton. While the SR and Aaton cameras may be out of your price range, a camera such as the CP-16R can be found for around $1000-$1500 (US$) and the others go up to around $4500. Don't try to use a Bolex to shoot sync sound--you'll just frstrate yourself. It's a great camera but not for this purpose.

It's a nice unit, but there are a lot of similar competing units out there that use the same bulbs in similar configuration. I'd certainly look around and price them out. Depending on the type of work you do you might be happier with something like a Lowel Caselight.

A cinematographer can work for years on high end commercials and never be listed in a visible credit anywhere. This can be a very successful individual in the industry who works all the time and is paid vast sums, yet sinse he/she does no feature film or episodic television work remains unknown to the public at large.

Hey, one of the purest cinema experiences I ever had was going to see a Saturday matinee of Bambi when it was re-released in the late eighties. It was me, a couple of moms and 400 little kids--most of them likely enjoying their very first movie ina theater instead of home video. You could have cut the tension with a knife when Bambi's mom bought it. Wow.

23.97 refers to the speed of the frame rate only and that's what the DVX100 records. Drop Frame and NonDrop Frame have to do with the counting of the timecode and having nothing to do with the actual frame rate. In 24p (actually 23.97) the camera only uses NonDrop timecode so that the numbers are a continuous stream, making for easier frame flagging if one wishes to extract the 24 individual progressive frames from the 60i signal. One can have many frame rates and they can be in Drop and NonDrop timecode. This is a very common misunderstanding.

Okay, first post to the new forum; how exciting. This was my first CHristmas (I'm Jewish), over at the inlaws, and of course I was handed the camcorder right off. I don't celebrate so might as well put me to work, right? Anyway, I thought I did a good service of capturing the moments for everybody, but I was disheartened later in the day when I sat down with my nephew and sister-in-law to watch a holiday DVD with them. They'd been viewing a 16x9 version of "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" in 4:3 for about 40 minutes without noticing that Steve Martin & John Candy looked rather tall and thin. When I told them I could reset it they truly did not know what I was talking about and the 10 year-old thought I was making it up. He was into the movie and they didn't want to stop, so that's how they viewed it for the next hour. It's great to be appreciated and have my work so understood. <_<