Prashantt Rai

Read the article, Nice! Christopher Doyle's outburst is not against Claudio but the mockery that was made out CGI/academy in the name of cinematography.

Here are some of the popular films shot on S16 besides BLACK SWAN, MOONRISE KINGDOM, THE HURT LOCKER, MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, & EL MARIACHI ... LORE (2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HN6TNDmaNw THE WRESTLER CHOKE JAPON http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNfxDFbQY10-- PRIMER RETURN THE RUM DIARY THE RUNAWAYS COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6a7i2L4bGQ STONED http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB6bKHGikbw JUNEBUG DOG SOLDIERS PREFONTAINE NINE LIVES

This is really a GOOD news for all film lovers.

James even I felt so that 35mm might have been used in some places. Also possible that after reshoot, the earlier shot 35mm may not have made it to the final cut. CO3 colourist replied to me on twitter that all the footage is from ALEXA and some from C500. strange.

just expose them nicely and you wont have problems with grains.

I saw the movie and saw credits of 'filmloader' and 'KODAK' logo in the end. I tweeted to Company3 if they could advise what portion was shot on film but didnt receive any reply.

Can someone please enlighten us as to what percentage of the movie - World War Z was shot on film? The processing lab i saw on end credits was Company3.

In regards to the original article of Spielberg and Lucas, what i infer is that films are made to be seen in theatres and it takes an industry to sustain film making and its subsequent business. you need a whole gamut of people - directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, actors, etc etc. who all have vertically specialised in their own field over years, maybe over decades. odd cases of some indie filmmakers being director/editor/cameraman themselves but once they have a producer, doesnt matter even if the producer doesn't have deep pockets. they still like to work in the conventional way - hire professional actors, editors, a good cinematographer, and rest of the crew. they make a film. producer gets it distributed somehow. they make some money/lots of money/or lose money. This process is repeated over and over again by various sets of people to make many films that release over the years. Some of these are big films with actions and huge sets, medium budget flicks, rom coms/ low budget horrors. This creates a sustainable cycle of business - actors get jobs, producers turn investments into profits, editors are busy, camera rentals are busy, Kodak and FUJI are busy, cinematographers are busy, directors are busy, and writers are busy. Even theatres are busy. people have option to go see the films they like and movies just dont run for a week they even run in select theatres for weeks maybe a month! Now comes the process of reinventing the wheel - digitisation! the big buzz these days. The first casualty were the cinematographers - the beautiful craft of photochemical finished films are over. We watched movies all over 80s/90s/early2000s and they were beautiful in their looks. weren't they? with progress in digitisation came CGI and all other inventions - now they re create characters on computers. I would have loved if this was just for a niche market of films. but no, they are main stream. these are not even big films which had top stars and good action sequences - these are MEGA films. but whom do they benefit? to the studios and swanky post houses who are literally co-producing it. And if this model fails in a year or two then where do the filmmakers go back to ? FUJI is dead and KODAK is just producing negative on a small scale. Print distribution is over except for South America and small towns of India. the impact has been so drastic that conventional distributors have all but vanished in India. it is sad. we watch movies in theatres - not all theatres are 2K projections. may be in US bot not everywhere in the world. it costs a bomb to install 50K-100K digital system compared to a 12k conventional german projectors which we grew up watching cinemas on. you ask the producers today - whether small or big, and they would also say the same thing - Prints cost money. I never saw them say this 20 years back or even 10 years back when they made (in india) films for as less as 300K to half a million dollar with a decent distribution budget built in. today these same guys make bad looking films for 200K and output it on 1080P. in small theatres it looks trashier when projected with heavy compression. I think in one stroke the greed of big corporates has taken artistic filmmaking and the craft of it from most of us. Now everybody is making films on 5D (which is actually meant for interviews/journalism) and other digital cameras with cheap post process. It results in an overdoes of content. it creates so much clutter that it becomes difficult to separate the meaningful films from the BS. Digital filmmaking has created what you call an informal economy. Since there are so many directors, cameraman's, editors, sound guys that you are literally working on projects for nothing. just as a favour. Unlike in the olden days where there was some unsaid rules/regs on hierarchy there is none to be found now. in another 10 years none will know set protocols or will know how 35mm looks on screen.

The print bracket I mentioned above is my knowledge couple if years old. If it has changed in the recent past then please update me too.

Transferring your sound mix from the sound studio on to a sound negative for 110 min costs somewhere like 1800 USD. Dolby license fee depends on the number of prints you are striking and the fee is charged in the following brackets 1-5 prints 5-30 prints 30-75 prints 75+ prints = 7000USD I think the good option is to just record stereo. I have also heard Dolby amplifier is often switched off in the theatre :-) or down for maintenance and the movie is running on stereo.

Where are those good movies like - the green mile, bridges of river Kwai, pulp fiction, one fine day, ... Movies with human characters whose emotions were captured in camera on set and not in swanky post houses on a computer!

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steven-spielberg-predicts-implosion-film-567604 Spielberg said. "That's the big danger, and there's eventually going to be an implosion or a big meltdown. There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm."

Regarding finishing a film with print . We did a single light telecine transferred a to a "beta" tape. Did the edit. Finished the film on print. We sent the festivals a DVD of the print telecine. But told them that the film is shot on on 35 anamorphic and finished optically on print. We got acceptance from karlovy vary, georgia, Montenegro, Paris spiritual film fest, and a couple of more which I don't remember. In India, distributors or potential buyers come and see your film in the edit suite. Seriously, not kidding. If they like the movie they pay you lump sum money and tell you to get lost. They take on from there. They treat this as an investment. This way they buy a lot of films and distribute it in the best theatrical window they deem it fit. Some major film corporations have 40-50 films in their kitty.

Khondji in interviews is often unclear about whether he is applying the silver retention to the negative and/or the prints, but generally he means the prints since he is referring to print-only processes like ENR, CCE, ACE, etc. I think bleach was on the prints as you mention because what I'd read somewhere was that internegatives were sent for overseas distribution where distributors didnt bother to bleach all the prints. And I guess in some theatres the movie did play with a flashed negative low contrast look. I don't know how much of it is true.

Thanks Mr Mullen for the heads up! details are clear now. And also thanks for the link. regards

Haha Matt, you are so right! One really has to try hard to screw up on the shoot to get a bad image. These stocks are very forgiving. I try to follow the zone system metering (10 stop thing) and am always surprised - a bit more details in the shadow and a bit more info in the highlights. Ansel Adams would have surely cringed at Kodak for exceeding beyond the purist 10 stop dynamic range. :-)

I think option of shooting 4 perf anamorphic and then contact printing is a good idea. i shot my first low budget indie that way. it premiered at Karlovy Vary film fest on a 35mm print. a) superb resolution. b)No DI needed (we didnt have money) c) nothing beats, even today, an anamorphic look on 35. I think there are still plenty of negative cutters around so don't worry. But what you have to worry about is find or make a list of film festivals that would still screen 35mm on Print. Your film will stand apart from those rest of those digital originated/projected films. Its psychological, the impact on the minds of the audience and jury. Many of you may not agree, but I think it does play a role. if you get a distribution offer, then I guess they will take on from there - scanning, colour grading on 2k etc etc.

Whatever little I know and read is that Khondji, at that time, was more of a fan of Arri Varicon than panaflasher because in Varicon you can see the light as it is flashes the negative during shoot. I think he flashed it to range of 5%-7% if I am not wrong. Bleach by pass to around 35-40%. I dont know whether prints were also treated to some diff chemical process. But what a superb look of the movie, Khondji created. With on set of digital and high end colour grading machines and systems, people say - 'oh we can all do these stuff in the post' but I have yet to see cinematography similar to SEVEN. Cheers

Adrian, you said the fact.

WILL, I apologise for creating a misunderstanding. the very first, opening shot of girl starting from the block is shot at 150 fps. rest of the twilight shots of hers sauntering in the water is at 36 fps. Late afternoon shots are at 25 fps. Sorry, I didnt mention this clearly in my first post. regards

Hi Bill, have sent you an email. cheers

Serendipity always favours the filmmakers :-)) Its good to plan and go for shoot and maybe best to watch things unfold different way on the set/location. Maybe.

Thank you Bill! Even I was amazed to see the beach footage pretty clean. Even though I shot in twilight at 36fps. Still there are details. I think Vision3 stocks are terrific. Next time 2K scan, come what may :-)

Adrian, I did some reccee and luckily I found a nice isolated beach 125Km from the suburbs of Mumbai. Very calm, isolated beach. Travelling took 4 hours each way - Roads are narrow. I shot the whole thing in 2 hours. started at 5 and finished around 7PM. The babe is hot. Her name is Drisha More and she is a regular feature on India's fashion shows. There is a story on how I ended up using a model. I was actually making a video with professional female runners/marathoners and female pro cyclists. I shot the cycling part in a guerrilla style on a remote highway. When it came to shooting the running part - things began to go wrong. there were bureaucratic hassles and issues with runners. So I changed my approach to the video and instead made what I usually feel - running helps me sync with my inner self. I have been a runner myself. not that fast anymore. But the thrill of having real pros running would have been different.

Hi Adrian, thanks for the compliments - feel flattered, especially so when there are so many distinguished DoPs/Cinematographers on this forum. I used vision3 50D for the late afternoon shots. And, you were right, I used vision3 500T for the twilight shots. I shot the whole magic hour sequence (90% at least) on 36fps.