Jeff L'Heureux

I've kept exposed negative in a refrigerator for upwards of six months and when it was eventually processed there was no discernable difference between that footage and some film that was sent to the lab the same day it was shot. It should be fine.

Sticks is a slang term for a tripod, I believe.

As Tyler said, the transfer is odd. The frame rate looks strange. Is it possible that you shot 24fps but the ProRes file is 25fps? As for the sharpness, I'd attribute it more to the lens used than the stock as there is halation around the light sources.

There was a short bit in Gone Girl that was shot dry for wet and augmented with CGI that I completely bought as genuinely being shot underwater. It was very brief though. Shooting a whole sequence like this probably wouldn't have worked. Here's the pic from American Cinematographer for that set:

In my experience, most camera rental houses that have 35mm cameras for rent would be glad to show the renter the basics on using one, especially if it meant renting from them. Of course, how helpful they are would depend on how extensively you want to use their cameras. Don't expect a full afternoon of instruction if you're just taking out the camera for a day. If, however, you were shooting an entire short on 35mm, I'm sure you could get the basics. I brought an old, obscure 16mm camera to a rental house years back on a slow day and the entire camera department was happy to spend over an hour figuring out how it worked as we were all interested. They even lubed up the gears and gave me a scratch test roll of film for free. However, I wouldn't go to a rental house expecting to learn about dynamic range, composition etc. That's what actual film school/photography courses would be for. At most they'll show you how to load the film and run the camera.

I think David's right and this ramp was done in post. The entire shot was likely done in slow motion and in post they sped up the portion pre-ramp. In cases where they really want to fool the viewer they can even add back in motion blur. Zack Snyder does this a lot in his action scenes in movies like 300. I actually shot a real ramp shot on 16mm on my most recent film from 24fps to 75fps and needed to compensate for the exposure change mid shot. I smoothed out the rest in the color grading.

Yes, I know the current topic is on Rogue Nation, but that raises even further questions still. Why downgrade from a 6k finish on Ghost Protocol to a 2k finish on Rogue Nation with the same cinematographer/relative budget? The AC article on Rogue Nation mentions Tom Cruise's preference for shooting film over digital as well, and he's also arguably the head producer as well so you'd think he'd advocate for the best finish too. That's what concerns me overall, is when even the mega blockbusters start to skimp on quality to save a few bucks and have the "it's good enough" attitude with the final stage of post before getting it to the screen. Fine, if it's an independent film or a smaller budget film that can't afford a higher resolution scan and DI. This had no reason to go 2k, especially if they knew it was going to have an IMAX release, and the Mission Impossible series has always been about visual spectacle to begin with. It's strange too, the article in American Cinematographer on Rogue Nation does not include any talk about the DI either. It was added in as an editor's note at the end.

Does anyone know what the post workflow was on Ghost Protocol when they actually did shoot IMAX film for some sequences? All I can confirm is that a DI was done, but was it a 2K one as well, with IMAX footage? That seems ludicrous to bother shooting IMAX if you're mastering it at 2k. Even on films like The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar they talked about trying to keep as much of a photochemical post work flow with the 65mm footage as possible to preserve the quality for IMAX film prints, even noting that the release prints were struck straight off of the original negative wherever possible to maintain the highest quality output.

I'd personally say the "Fincher look" you're describing belongs as much to Jeff Cronenweth, or at least equally for both when they work together. The films where he didn't have Jeff as DP don't look the same as Fight Club, Gone Girl, Social Network etc. Se7en does not look like the above, nor does Panic Room or The Game. On the other hand though, films like Hitchcock and K19 were DP'd by Cronenweth, and don't look anything like his work when he's with Fincher, so it seems when they work together they like that look.

I'm curious if it would be worth it and/or if anyone has attempted to shoot anamorphic but also use up the entire horizontal width of the 35mm frame as is done in super35. Would this not be the overall best use of the 35mm negative from a size/resolution standpoint short of moving to vistavision? I can understand why this wasn't done back when release prints and soundtrack space mattered but why didn't this kind of option come up as a possibility once super35 came around and became popular?

It's 'expensive' if you want to shoot 10+ takes of each setup, but it's certainly affordable if you're careful and keep your ratio reasonable. And with 35mm there's 2 or 3 perf options for further price and stock savings. I'll also add that Kodak is very nice to independent filmmakers and will readily offer discounts on stock, just call them with what you need.

I second this. It really stood out to me as not being night, moreso than perhaps any day-for-night I've seen in a long time. John Seale has a funny anecdote in American Cinematographer on his method that tells you how others reacted. John Seale says: "During production, a couple of American cameramen rang me and said, 'Johnny, we hear you're doing day-for-night on digital. How are you doing it?' When I replied, 'I'm overexposing it,' all I heard was the dial tone." Nice experiment for Mad Max, but I don't think it's going to become the new benchmark method for day-for-night by any means.

If there's a choice between standard 16mm and super16, of course super16 is the way to go, but if you're asking whether or not you'll get good footage using standard 16mm, absolutely you can. You could scan it at high resolution in 1.37:1 and extract a 16:9 portion with the ability to reposition the frame and have plenty of visible resolution and sharpness. Granted, the grain will be larger and it really depends on your final distribution format, but it's certainly an option. Or, instead embrace the 1.37:1 ratio and overscan the edges of the frameline to really show that it's 16mm you're shooting on, similar to what's done now for many super8 videos.

Where it gets interesting is the jump from 24fps to 25fps though. I've watched some PAL movies on DVD in Europe and it does noticeably look different when played back at 25fps when it was originally shot at 24fps. In many cases the dialogue doesn't even perfectly match up with the lips and it was really messing with me. The same goes for those televisions that have that motion smoothing feature. I personally hate it, as it makes movies look like soap operas.

I'm unfamiliar with the operation of the K3, but is the lens permanently affixed to the body? Couldn't you simply take off the lens and look for film in gate to see if you've run out or not?

I recently received the below response from the Pacific Science Center in Seattle with regards to my question as to why they removed their 15/70 Imax film projector in favor of a digital system. What do you guys think about this new Imax laser projection? Has anyone seen it? Dear Jeff, First, thanks for traveling all the way from Vancouver, B.C. to see Interstellar at Pacific Science Center. We value people like you who care about quality, and we appreciate you sharing your concerns. I, too, am a fan of film and saw Intersteller several times in our theater. Recently, I saw some Interstellar "footage" projected with our new laser digital system. I found it more stunning than in film, particularly in the space shots, because of the blacker blacks. For a long time, we waited to convert to digital because there was no digital system that could provide an image of quality comparable to 15/70 film projection. But IMAX just rebuilt its projection system from the ground up and custom designed it for IMAX's largest screens. There are only four of these projection systems now in use in the world — that is how new they are — the most advanced cinema technology currently available. Our new IMAX with laser surpasses the image quality of our prior projection system in these ways specifically: • The image is now brighter • The contrast levels are substantially higher than with film: blacker blacks and whiter whites • Wider color gamut • It also boasts a new, custom-designed immersive 12-channel sound system Please do not confuse our new IMAX with laser system with the "Lie-max" theaters to which you refer. Our aspect ratio is 1.43:1 — that is it is taller for width of the screen than traditional cinemas. The screens you refer to as "Lie-max" are not of that aspect ratio. And they do not have this new projection system. Last week, we opened our first feature film with the 12-channel audio that is available only for the IMAX with laser system: Avengers: Age of Ultron. I invite you to take the new system for a test ride. Warm regards.

It's certainly not your fault overall, unless it was a deliberate mistake with loading the mag, but it's an unfortunate risk that's taken when shooting film. It's not necessarily a double exposure that you see so much as if the film were moving in the gate as it is exposed, it would create a ghosting/smear effect similar to if you held the shutter open on a still camera and whip-panned around quickly. Nicholas' post above with the video is exactly the effect I got on my small 16mm camera on one roll that wasn't running through the gate properly. The likely culprit is that instead of the frame locked in place when the shutter came around to expose, for whatever reason it was already in motion towards the next frame, which causes the vertical smearing.

This tends to be caused by a problem with the perfs not lining up properly on the registration pin between frames, or the film was shaky in the gate somehow. It's strange that it would happen on an SR3 though, as I've only had this happen on smaller hobby 16mm cameras. I don't think it's the lenses though, and there's not much that can be done with this problem, unfortunately.

It definitely looks like 16mm, but digitally graded. The telltale sign is the way 16mm reacts to a static framed image. If you go frame by frame on 16mm there will be ever so subtle stretches and compressions of different areas of the frame depending on how exactly the negative was oriented when it was in the gate. Whereas digital would just reproduce the static frame like a still over and over. Part of the magic of film that digital's 1 and 0's can't replicate. They may have added additional digital grain in post, but some of that is real, like the occasional tiny white dots. The motion blur, general depth of field, and the grain all point to this being shot on 16mm.

If they're any good with DaVinci Resolve and power windows it's likely they could've done most of that 'warm' light shining in post rather than on the set. I'm inclined to believe it's done in post since in the last screenshot if they actually did gel the window that would've cast the same color on the interior wall. It looks like a color grade to orange when it was likely a bright blue daylight out of camera, at least for that shot.

I'm not currently interested in buying, but I do have a question that would be pertinent if I was to look into a 35mm camera. How difficult is it to convert that camera to 3-perf and what would the approximate cost be if there is one?

I borrowed a DSLR once to shoot some video from a friend who only used it for stills. This happened all the time while I had it, but the owner never noticed or cared since he only shot stills and his SD cards were just ordinary, cheap ones. I learned the main cause of this error is the write speed of the SD card in the camera. The slower it is, the more likely the video will fill up the camera's buffer as its bottlenecking to get onto the card and that will stop the recording. Get an SD card with a higher write speed. Even ones that are "class 10" still vary greatly in their actual write speeds. See this video for an explanation:

I'm unfamiliar with speedgrade, but I assume like most color grading software it has scopes. If you're unfamiliar with them, you should look up some tutorials on youtube on how to monitor the scopes for color grading, as it's better than simply eyeballing it. If you understand what you see on the scopes you can tell when your shadows, midtones, and highlights are in the proper range, then play around with actually grading the image. DaVinci Resolve Lite is free software if you're working with a resolution of 1080p or below. Here's a link to an explanation of the scopes in Resolve. This would apply to any color grading program that has them. I personally pay most attention to the waveform monitor.

From American Cinematographer's article on that scene: ---Collateral’s big interior scenes, which comprise about 20 percent of the picture, were shot on 35mm, according to Beebe. “It was decided early on that night-exterior scenes would be shot on HD and controlled interior scenes would be shot on film,” he says. “That made sense, as we were not relying upon available light levels to set our parameters. We did, however, need to create a look on film that worked seamlessly with the look of HD. I decided to switch from the Vision [500T] 5279 that had been used before I started to [Vision2 500T] 5218, which I found integrated with the HD footage a little more easily. “Shooting film also allowed us to shoot at variable frame rates and expand our camera package to include things such as the Frazier lenses and modified Eyemos,” he continues. One such scene, set in a nightclub, is a shootout involving Vincent, the L.A.P.D. and members of the drug cartel that has hired Vincent to commit the murders. Beebe shot the sequence on 5218, which he pushed one and sometimes two stops. “There’s another sequence in a Korean bar that was all lit with black lights,” says the cinematographer. “We tested HD and film cameras in that environment and found that although the HD cameras were more sensitive than the film, the overall image was far too saturated under the black lights. It was too crisp and colorful and the feeling was distracting, so we went with 5218.”--- Also, still the early days of digital in major features, as there is a stark difference in motion blur and depth of field between the film and the video. Beginning at 5:57 it switches from film to digital capture, and Jamie Foxx's closeup at 6:15 shows the more flat depth of field as the background is very nearly in focus with him. This is in big contrast to the film closeups inside the club.

I would focus on that great look you're already getting on the K3, grain and all, and embrace that it doesn't look digital. I'd even keep in some of the flash frames when the camera started and stopped for a montage like that. The footage has a retro look to it that the best digital camera couldn't emulate without adding heavy filter modifications in post, and even then you can tell when something just looks digital. Whereas you can make footage look like the 1970's just by hitting the run button on your camera. Great work!