Jay Young

I shoot my own films. I'm in the process right now, after writing the script, doing all the other jobs; Casting, set design, script breakdown, scheduling... I wish I had someone to do all that and I could just Direct and do my Cinematography thing. The problem I always run into is that I can't find anyone in my area that has any sort of experience working ON a crew... they're all use to doing it themselves too so I find it difficult to find someone who really understands how to work with someone. Tyler is correct in that having two creative minds are better, and if I could afford to fly someone out for one of my long weekend shoots I certainly would! Do try to find others in your area you can work WITH, having someone to bounce ideas off of is an awesome way to discover another way to tell the same story.

Increasing the ISO decreases the lighting power you need to achieve the same image with the same settings. Roughly all things being equal, at 400asa you'll need about 100 foot candles to reach a lens aperture of 5.6. At 800, you'll need only 50 foot candles to stay at f/5.6. My calculations are based on a 180/degree shutter and 24fps giving an exposure of 1/48th s. Increasing the ISO basically makes the sensor "more sensitive" to light. That's not exactly technically how it works of course.

A 4k HMI will draw about 34 Amps, so one of those 6500w hondas SHOULD be able to power it. However I understand they get a bit of flicker depending on line voltage.

Most of this is too dark to see what is going on. Maybe I'll watch it tonight in a totally dark room so I can see what is actually happening. The music track is so loud it is covering up whatever dialogue is suppose to be happening at the beginning, at least I think there was dialogue. That might have something to do with Youtube, but I doubt it. I felt like the longest scene was that of the record spinning... that didn't really help tell the story. But, since I couldn't see anything, I don't know if it actually had anything to do with the story or not. If you're going to call something Noir, and I believe Noir covers or can be represented by a wide range of visuals, then perhaps taking a look at the original footage and finding a way to make contrast with lighting application happen without artificially darkening the picture in post. If this was the way it was shot originally, you need more light, OR you need better placement. Did you purposefully darken the image in post?

Continuing from above, as I think I ran out of time for typing - sorry for the double post. The next two are from Kodak VISION 200t 7274 (That is not a typo) from about year 1997. I forgot I had it, it sat outside in an unheated building for 5 years when I "discovered it". I though I might make a camera test to at least see if my equipment is actually working. This is rated at 200t and the print lights came back as 30-29-15. This was at f11/ASA200 From what I gather, there seems to be something like 1/2 a stop difference in the Red light, one full stop in the green light, and not much of a difference in the blue light at all. This is based on the 7-points=about 1 stop. I don't know that there is that much difference in being able to match between the Fuji and the Kodak stocks at this point, so that's good to know. Unfortunately I didn't have the sky in the Fuji roll to compare. This also tells me that 20 year old not taken care of film stock is "fine". I didn't tell the lab anything other than "this is 7274 vision 200t process normal". I told the person who called to make it look normal when they asked if I had a specific look. I LOVE the way the clouds were rendered, exactly as I imagined them. And of course these images are very much sharper when I'm not trying to focus my phone onto a subtly moving fabric screen. That said, I know that often people will advise "print high" for higher lights resulting in a more saturated look? Any advise or books to read on the subject of photochemical printing and print lights?

I just received my first camera test print back! I was super excited to project a thing I made, mostly as I'm a bit of a projection buff. Anyhow, I was reading about print light reports and trying to understand what I was seeing versus what numbers I saw on the page, and really without something else printed to judge how the numbers change the image, OR having a supervised session with a colorist I have nothing to compare. Hopefully someone can shed some light on how this all works in the end. This first grab is literally from my phone grabbing off the projected image from the thing that I had lying around at the time screen. This is Fuji 64D and the print lights came back 26-22-12. It looks quite more fantastic in person of course, and I have not gotten around to having any of this scanned. I read that the blue light for modern films prints usually low because the method of film manufacture changed but the normal print light values were kept somewhere in the 25-25-25 range average.

Things could have changed, but several years ago (2008 ish) the Dolby licensing wasn't that expensive. I would advise you call and ask your local Dolby rep. I'm pretty sure there are labs that do optical sound, and Dolby SR is just noise reduction anyhow. There use to be a thing where one could get Dolby Stereo ("4-track" analogue) for free if the project was less than 45 minutes, or something close to that. If you want Dolby Digital, I read that the source audio is sent somewhere (to Dolby Labs?) and then you receive an MO disk to make the encoding on the print. Digital Cinema Packs, as stated above do NOT have any licensing inherent as they use PCM uncompressed digital audio, and are 100% compatible with Broadcast Wave format. I don't think there has been another audio format since Todd-AO? Talk about monopoly. Anyhow I'd be more worried about theatre "projectionists" not understanding how sound works, thinking that louder is always better.

2001 was shot on 70mm - CInerama... So lens choice doesn't quite work the same as 35mm. Eyes Wide Shut was 35mm (best I can recall ), As for Tree of Life, the DoP states: "The picture was shot in standard 1.85:1, in 4-perf for maximum resolution and low grain. Lubezki explains, “Even though anamorphic has more resolution, we decided on 1.85 because the close focus was going to be extreme — we were so close to the kids, their faces, hands and feet. And we didn’t want the grain of Super 35." They used short focal lengths and got real close up. They make lenses that are "fisheye" and they make super-wide angle lenses that are "rectilinear" which don't distort as much.

I find it interesting that the majority of reworking that would need to be done is the hardware on the broadcast side. Current coaxial copper lines running throughout the US can sustain data (and energy for that matter) transfer rates far exceeding the current standards. If the consumer devices can support it, maybe its time for the broadcasters to upgrade their equipment.

With all that internet compression, who knows. But, most adult entertainment has moved over to shooting with DSLR's. I have seen a few videos being made with larger cameras such as the XDCAM from Sony.

I stumbled across an ebay auction this morning which lead me down a path of frustration. Sellers are now listing products that are more than 20 years old as BRAND NEW stock. They are not listing the storage conditions, and I personally feel they are misrepresenting the items and misleading buyers. I know there are several students that frequent this website, so I thought you should know - those that happen to read this. Reddit sellers seem to think that $200 for a 400' of 16mm is a "good deal" but don't seem to know that the current list price is $176. Please, if you are looking to buy film from the internet, do some research and know what you are purchasing.

After watching David's AbleCine presentation on lighting, AND after watching a bit of behind the scenes of this film, there are sets, (particularly some of the exterior sets) that were lit with many Spacelights. I never could figure out what they were called, but they looked exactly like the ones rigged in a few of the photographs during the presentation. I don't know much more, as by Blue-ray edition with the 174 minutes of extra has not arrived yet. It could be that he lit the whole interior as a built studio set with those spacelights. That would certainly give it that flat look.

Perhaps you could also make a video on how to deal with actual anamorphic footage, which pixel aspect ratio is best in certain situations, and why one would want to export squeezed footage opposed to un-suqeezed. Lots of people are shooting with real anamorphic glass these days.

Did you change the lighting setup for Act two? I feel like the unknown lightsource shifted towards the left from act one. Is it suppose to be daytime, and that light source the sun? Was there the possibility of shooting in that location when the sun was actually blasting through the door, which I assume is off screen behind the camera? What does the DP think about the setups? I rather like hard lit scenes, but I feel like at the end when the two characters are talking the lighting changed from a warm yellow to a cool white or blue color temperature and that was weird. You could try also posting on r/filmmakers or r/cinematography - they have lots of industry professionals also, but they are usually less kind than on this particular forum.

I'd love to have that xr-35, but I've not got that kind of funds laying around at the moment. Hopefully it will go to someone who can use it, rather than cannibalize or make a museum piece out of it.

I read that article the other day. Now I wanna go play in the back shelves at Panavision!

I think you need to NOT use the filter if you want blue. The daylight setting, best I can figure engages an orange/wratten filter which will make your tungesten film look correct in daylight. However, reading through the manual they don't even say which kind of filter is actually installed. Someone likely knows. You'll also want to overexpose a tad, as that camera I recall only reads up to ASA 160 or so.

No problem, tho I'm not thrilled with those choices. That Zeiss 85/1.8 might be useful.

That's awesome! I didn't mean to offend - commenting without reading again...

It COULD have sold for that, but more realistic is that the seller had a friend push the sale up.

Clapper/Loader - 2nd AC. They keep track of the number of feet of exposed film, and the amount of unexposed stock ready to go. Or at least they use to. They also load and unload the film, of course.

I recently watched Salo for the first time and I must say I fell in love with the look of the interiors. I know Pasolini used Arri, and maybe a mitchell cameras, and the only shot of the ceiling that I have seen looked like he used several giant chimeras - long cylindrical shaped suspended. It was circa 1975. But I would be interested in discussing how to achieve the same style of lighting. I have judiciously included some screenshots, that would be suitable given the nature of the film. And that's about all I can share as far as screenshots are concerned. It has a quiet, subdued look. Muted color palette. I wonder if there were other film stocks available in Italy that are no longer that might add to the specific color look. I am awating my Blue-ray version so that I can watch the 176min documentary footage which will hopefully shed some light on this... light. HA!

Its this kind of information that is invaluable to those of us that didn't grow up with the process! I'm starting camera tests now, and actually decided it would be best to process all of my current tests as normal, with slates marked for different rates. I never knew to ask to have it printed twice! Thanks for the info David, you're always a wellspring of awesome.

I have this exact same problem. Of course, I started shooting on film because digital cameras were not a common thing when I was young. I grabbed David's Book "Cinematography", Professional 16/35mm cameraman's handbook by Verne Carlson (Autographed!) and a host of other books. I studied still photography, read about the negative chemical process, development, and learned to develop my own film both color and monochrome. The major problem I see is that there are no excellent examples of "if you do this to Kodak 7219" then these effects will happen. If you do this when you tell the lab to print, then these effects will happen. Most of the books out there deal with the physical cinematography and lens/optical science. I don't know what Vision3 500t looks like when exposed and developed at 160 ASA. I bet it looks wonderful, but who knows. I was just the other day thinking that there should be just this sort of thing on youtube. There are very brief videos of how to setup some equipment (Arri S / BL, Eclare, CP cameras &c), how to load, and there are excellent examples of lighting styles. BUT, there are very few examples of FILM NEGATIVE being scanned and shown as an example. I've tried my best to search out examples so I can get a sense of what a camera is capable of raw, and I don't know that there has EVER been a video made of a color timer adjusting printer lights. David seems to be the one that might best chime in on that point. I've finally started doing test on 16mm, and watching every new 16mm film negative production I can find. In the end, asking old guys how to do a job is I think the best way. After all, we're all learning new things every day!

Self-Timer That is exactly what that is. May or may not work on that particular model given age. Repairable, repair manual available on line.