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Andrew Skalak

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  • Occupation
    Cinematographer
  • Location
    Chicago
  • Specialties
    Celluloid capture, sensitometry, film scanning, film prints.

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  • Website URL
    https://www.instagram.com/skaliwagify/

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  1. I tried to search the topics here for a similar topic, but I have not been able to dig anything up. I want to do a zoom that starts as a wide of a dining room from the next room over. As the scene plays out, I would like to zoom in very, very slowly, until I can end the scene in CU on a glass sitting on the table. I would like to have this move go for over five minutes, maybe even longer up to ten minutes. The only film I know of that has a zoom this slow is Michael Snow's "Wavelength," but from the version I have seen, that seems to have been shot on an older video camera with a sort of modified zoom rocker? I will go in and do tests at a rental shop, but I cannot find any specs on the Preston site of what the slowest possible speed is for a microforce or similar. I am looking for a formula that tells me the minimum speed for degrees of rotation on a standard .8 pitch zoom gear, so I can then calculate how long a zoom could possibly go for on different lenses. I may also need the circumference of a given lens as well, as larger lenses with a fast stop are thicker and have many more teeth? I am also wondering if there is a way to add an additional gear in between the zoom motor and the lens gear to "trick" the motor into spinning much longer while making less progress on the actual zoom, like a sort of transmission or how bike pedal gearing works. Does a product like this already exist? Thank you!
  2. For me, it is a bit too quirky and YouTuber-style. I suppose for a director reel something in this direction could work, but if the test is still "grab people in first few seconds" this would put a lot of clients off. It feels to me more like he is telling me about what kind of filmmaker he thinks of himself being rather than simply showing the results. Not to harp further, but it is also a rather extreme example of a someone being a jack of all trades, as after watching I can't really see what work he is really trying to get (or what he is really good at), just that he has "done it all" before.
  3. Andrew Skalak

    Y16

    Yes, I'd also love to see what you have cooked up!
  4. I think this is really incredible! I have been watching the CRLS system for quite some time, and in some of the changing partnerships it seems the parabolic HMI got lost, though to me it seems like a really essential ingredient to the process. I am going to play around with making one of these with a small sized dish. DIY perks is an amazing channel. I really wanted to copy some of his LED builds in the past. The larger LEDs he works with is really an insight into what Aputure will be releasing in the near future. His last build with a 1.5k LED COB looks like it will eventually filter down to a HMI killer of a fixture eventually. His "sky reflectance" panel seems very cool as well. Would having a "blue sky scattering panel" also help our process of trying to replicate the quality of daylight? Making a similar device in a 4x4 frame to be used with our standard grip gear?
  5. Andrew Skalak

    Y16

    I'm very serious about this 100' magazine idea. If anyone thinks they could make one, or modify one from an existing mag, please contact me. If anyone would want one or two and be willing to put up the money to preorder a batch with a group of others, also message me and I will start to put a list together. DM on here or andrew dot skalak at gmail.
  6. Andrew Skalak

    Y16

    My interest is less in having a very small camera for regular shooting, but more so to make it viable to travel, putting the camera in a backpack, with an extremely small sync-quiet camera. I'd really love that one off prototype ?
  7. Andrew Skalak

    Y16

    David, your work seems extremely exciting and I wish you the best of luck. My personal dream for making an ultra compact camera: making a modified XTR magazine. I want an XTR magazine to basically be chopped in half, and the spool repositioned and bands shortened. Basically, an XTR mag a little bigger than an A-Minima mag that can only take a 100' load. I think this body would be very, very close to the size of a Minima, while being much more versatile in that it has an orientable eyepiece and could use 400' mags if the shoot called for it. I am not sure when I would be able to make good on this promise, but if this is something you think you could custom make/modify for me, I would pay for two. For me, 200' daylight spools begin to introduce additional annoyances that are Minima specific. They are not sold directly from Kodak, and so one needs to do some extra work to even get the film ready to shoot. Too much trouble for me. I'd rather have a couple of mags that are easy to load and just purchase factory sealed 100' loads.
  8. What an incredible deal! Wish I saw this earlier.
  9. "Dogville" This site seems to list a few others: https://www.nextwavefilms.com/ulbp/bullfront.html
  10. Very entertaining video! Did you do a control test and see what the ambient sound was in the room? And is that lead material flexible or almost like a foil?
  11. Christian, thanks for this. I am definitely guilty of a lot of the suggestions here. I disagree on the level of music, in that I actually do think it is important to create a rhythm and energy. I see a lot of DP reels that can be downright boring/too slow, often due to music. Then again, I am not a big time agent or producer.
  12. The Terrorizers Horse Money The Seventh Seal Paths of Glory Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters Silent Light
  13. David, thank you for this. I only recently started to post on this site, but your contributions to conversations online has been unbelievably helpful for me over the years. Fair point regarding grain. I did not mean that I felt the look of those movies to be similar, but that there would be no way to tell a difference between a 35mm print and a 70mm blow up at that screen size. One interesting aspect of the Nolan and Tarantino effect has been that a lot of theaters now have the ability to project 70mm, but not 35mm. I know that some projectors are combined 35/70, so I am not sure if this is completely accurate. I am quite passionate about this, and this thought is correct as film is the only format we can be certain to last 100 years. There is a migration and file type problem in all digital archiving as the storage format, cable connections, and file compatibility is changing every few years. If I could afford it, I would love to make a 35mm negative and print of much of my work, even those projects shot digitally. This is quite expensive, but as of recently Colorlab has a Cinevator machine that can make quite cheap 35mm prints, which is how just a few prints were made for films like "Marriage Story" and "Uncut Gems." I have concerns that these prints are of much lesser quality that what you would get from an Arrilaser workflow. Disney archives all their films on 35mm, and their process is quite interesting. They seperate each frame out to a Red, Green, and Blue channel, then record each one sequentially on a piece of black and white film. Black and white film is very robust and can stand up better to fading than any color stock. If they ever had to reconstruct a film if digital assets were lost, they could scan this film back in, and recolor and recombine these frames to make a new digital master. Article on this process: https://www.disneydigitalstudio.com/preserving-our-movies/
  14. If anyone is looking for an example of a film that was shot on Alexa, printed, and scanned, check out Albert Serra's "Death of Louis the XIV." When I saw that movie on a DCP I constantly felt like halation and highlight quality wasn't there for film capture, but the grain looked nice. After the screening I looked up what the process had been. My two cents, I am a bit annoyed by some of the marketing that goes into the 70mm prints, but I occasionally enjoy it and do go out of my way to support it. I felt "Roma" looked quite rich in 70mm, but I don't have a DCP experience to compare to. When I saw the "Joker" 70mm print, I constantly felt like it was so perfect that it was essentially a DCP. If I was going to shoot digital and print to film, I would consider making an internegative on the Arrilaser, with a correction to be underexposed, and a 70mm contact print that would then exaggerate that grain on the release print. Maybe it doesn't work like that. What I am getting at is that I wish "Joker" would have had more grain, and some of the halation and highlight blooming of film. "Phantom Thread" was nice and true 35mm capture, but they made some deal about it being a 70mm print at my theater in Chicago, but it was a blow up shown on the same size screen as 35mm prints are usually shown, so I didn't feel there was any way to tell a difference there.
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