Shawn Sagady

This kind of bull headed statement is really not helpful at all. I can only assume your information is incredibly dated. I work in a multi OS environment with both Mac and Windows, and have had no issues with either platform in regards to content creation, editing, grading etc. At no point has either offered me something remarkably better than the other to cause me to want to stick primarily with one platform or the other. In this day and age Windows machines (Properly built) are more than capable of supporting a post production environment. So it really just comes down to preference, and that is fine, everyone uses what they like and what they are comfortable with.

You could look into 1.33x anamorphic lenses which will give you the 2.4:1 ratio on a 16x9 sensor. I have done this and loved it, but it will not be as pronounced as if shot with a 2x anamorphic lens. You can still use 2x Anamorphic lenses on 16x9 sensors but you will have to crop off the sides and throw away some resolution. That might be alright if you are starting with a high enough resolution.

I am in the development phase of short film project (approximately 20m running time based on the current script) and I really want to shoot film, for the process and longevity and the look. But doing research I am frankly very worried about the final quality of the film. A lot of samples of Super 16mm tend to have washed out or bad colors, the grain is huge and very visible and registration seems to not quite be tight, but then you look at a high budget film like Carol which has just beautiful images, and honestly (possibly due to internet compression) I can not tell it was shot on 16, for all I can tell it could be 35. Did they do a lot of processing to remove grain and get the colors right, or am I just unfortunate enough to see a lot of really bad examples of super 16mm. I have shot with BMPCC's primarily, and I love the camera. It gives me amazing colors and motion and even though it can exhibit some grain/noise the patterns feel more organic than digital. If I rent cameras and lenses, purchase media and hard drives it will probably break about even with film if I get a good deal from Kodak shooting 6:1. If I shoot with my own camera (which is always riskier if there is a problem) I obviously could save quite a bit there but hate the idea of not having a backup etc. So does it come down to finding a DP who is a real artist with film and light to get the quality you want out of Super 16mm? I'm quite happy with my abilities to DP with a digital sensor, but that's because I have the security blanket of the monitor and scopes. I will also be directing the project so would like to find a DP instead of wearing all the hats myself.

I feel like the discussion here should not be what camera he should try to buy instead of the one he owns, or how to get his cinema setup on one grand, especially if his computer can not even handle basic editing. I feel like at this phase the encouragement should be to just get out there and keep shooting. Use the camera and mic you have, find other friends with equipment to help, but shoot shoot shoot. Make little movies even if you are using a phone for the camera. There is a lot to be gained from practice, both in your ability to pick angles and lighting and setups to story telling and editing and script writing. You do not need a big fancy camera for that, and I feel like you might be stuck on the quality of the image and not the story, which as film makers, cinematographers and more is our primary responsibility. It has been demonstrated many times that if you are telling a compelling story, and you know your craft, it doesn't matter what camera you shoot with.

JD your link doesn't work :( Tyler when you bring in the argument of all the footage recorded for the film etc its a much more compelling argument for sure. And resolution agnostic is great up to a point. But obviously scanning all your footage shot digitally out to 35mm is not going to be any more reasonable a solution, so its just something in favor of getting it in the can on celluloid the first time. Very interesting discussion.

As said you can find 5Ds and BMPCC around that price used, you have to look for them though they arnt always there. Also no, you are not going to find a full frame sensor camera for that price outside of the 5D.

Little addendum, the SSDs would only last for that amount of time if powered occasionally or constantly. Actual cold storage a magnetic drive would be better. Proper optical drives would be the best but they do not exist in reasonable sizes. Also keep an eye out for sales. At one point BM reduced the cost of BMPCC by half to get it into more peoples hands.

Luckily before all those films stored digitally go bad we will be moving into new areas of digital storage including crystaline based binary storage. You will be able to store all your films in a completely uncompressed format byte for byte created in a crystaline matrix that will be nearly impossible to destroy and suffer no decay or data loss over geological time spans. In the meantime its important to take great care with your storage methods, and always have backups. As for the copy of copies, that only really comes into play if you are re-compressing every time. A checksummed or CRC32 copy checking will ensure data integrity, and you'd fare much better working with raw data as apposed to compressed since a messed up byte in a raw file will change the color of a pixel vs risking serious damage in a compressed format. That of course requires more space but well get there. Fun facts, storing a two hour 4K 24fps film in uncompressed RGB 16bit will take just over 9.1 terabytes of data. A 1080p film stored the same way is about 2.1 Terabytes so you could partition the film across multiple SSD drives which are more reliable than magnetic storage and good for 100+ years with careful storage and no use. Intel is actually about to release a 10 Terabyte SSD so you could store your feature films on that.

With your price range you need to look for used cameras to get into the BMPCC or 5D market. But as long as they were taken care of they should be fine. BMPCCs have a couple faults that can happen, mainly with the crappy hdmi port dying or being damaged no matter how careful you are, but its rare and Black Magic can fix with an RMA pretty cheaply if it does happen. Right now is probably a great time to buy a used BMPCC with the BMMCC's coming out (which are good cameras in their own right at the exact same price point, but require more rig to run right). The thing BMPCC does not do that you want is shoot sub 24fps except in timelapse mode. (unless something changed in firmware I dont know about). 5DMKII is a work horse of a camera, and magic lantern still works and will continue to work on them. These days Magic Lantern is much more stable and reliable. I would never ever bring it to a professional shoot due to some quirkiness but if you are just shooting for yourself then you can get away with it as long as you don't mind an occasional restart etc. Havnt heard of it corrupting files in a very long time as long as you are using the stable version and not a beta. Your question of 720 raw vs 1080 compressed, 1080 would still win out even not being shot raw, thats a lot of resolution to throw away to have more data per pixel.

I see what you are referring to now. That is either a video projector or something like a Roscoe Effects Machine. Something like this turned on its side would give you that effect. Roscoe X24 X

Guessing you are referring to the Anamorphic lens flares which look like they were added in post using a flare plugin since nothing else looks like it was actually shot anamorphic.

Technology is out there using RFID tracking or range finding. I know Redrock Micro has been developing a technology based on some of the sensors they are using for self driving cars that recognizes people in the scene and will auto focus pull for that target, and you can switch targets. You can read more about it here, but no I don't think any high level cinema cameras will have auto-focus built in any time soon. http://store.redrockmicro.com/halo.html

Also worth note that the method of using the 45 degree 50% mirror was also used to do the original light saber effects in the first star wars before they rotoscoped over them, and also used quite a bit for effects in the Superman Films by coating a miniature in 3M reflective materials and then fading up a red light above the mirror to make objects glow with "heat".

When you are dealing with higher end projectors they, like cameras, have a wide variety of lenses to handle various distances. The widest reasonable lens used for those types of projectors is typically around 0.8:1 ratio. Which indicates every 0.8 units from the lens the image becomes 1 unit wider. You can apply this to meters or feet or what ever. The wider lenses like 0.8:1 often have a bit of fish eye effect to them in the corners so your millage may vary, its not usually to extreme though. Keep in mind the effectiveness of a 15k Lumen projector is variable based on the size of the image you are projecting, just like with any kind of light there is exponential fall off based on area. So if we know that David was using a 15k projector on a 12'x8' screen his foot candles were (15000 / 96) = 156.25 or (Lumens / Sqft) = fc. So to achieve a similar level of light you would simply solve based on that equation, once you know the size of the surface you can do Sqft * fc = Lumens. There are always other variables like the gain of the screen and its transmission properties or color etc, but this should get you in the ball park. David DLP projectors tend to be fixed to 60i/p due to the nature of the mechanism and to avoid color flickering, especially with single chip systems that use color wheels. LCD projectors are much more flexible but tend to have more washed out colors and much lower contrast. Hope some of this information was helpful, but like with any project I really recommend doing some camera tests.

It sounds like an awesome camera, but sadly I have just never been a huge fan of the image from Red, but Im interested to see what panavision has going here, since its just the red chip, I wonder if Panavision is doing their own color science etc.

I think its all about texture and style, it gives a very unique quality to footage. I did a project with 1.3x animorphic and we were forced to shoot one angle without the anamorphic due to mechanical issues, and no matter how hard I tried I was never able to make that angle feel like it fit with the rest of the shots, it just felt sharp and boring.

Chris Hall does a great little series on grading, where he touches on multiple techniques, talks about the whats and whys and you can really see how he takes footage (both good and bad) and works with it in Resolve, though the techniques should work in any grading program.. Check it out. http://chrishallcolor.blogspot.com/

Legendary lens that was used a ton of movies.

Glad it worked out! Sounds like a harrowing but good experience to have.

The 4.6k has a unique set of issues specific it its new sensor and color science. In particular SOME sensors are shipping with bad magenta tint in the corners of the frame that show up mostly with wide angle lenses. It has something to do with the angle the light is hitting the sensor at or some sort of sciency thing. It seems to be really hit or miss between cameras. Some have it, some don't. Otherwise from everything i've read its a beautiful camera with amazing DR and ergonomics. I would def rent one, and if you decide to buy you just need to carefully test it once you receive it and be ready to RMA if it has any of the bad Magenta or FPN issues (though the FPN issues are only ever an issue if you have no idea how to shoot/grade/light and show up in cases of pushed blacks which happen with any camera sub 20k)

I'm pretty sure I just watched this on a giant imax screen with a 2k projector. Pixels were the size of my fist.

Short or flipped polarity. Probably fried things on the first connection and then had a hot short on the second.

That's super helpful information Dave and a good tip.

I usually get some rough marks for the various extremes and common positions of the Jib. Depending on how much the subject will be moving that will at least give you some quick marks to reference while eyeballing the camera. I would certainly see if you can get a little time with some stand ins and the Jib operator to just get a feel for it before you are filming.

Sounds amazing! I am actually incredibly curious about the logistics of the shoot. Obviously you could not rent locally, so what kind of transportation/shipping was in place to get everything out to the island? I imagine you guys were showing the locals some vehicles and equipment they have never seen like you mentioned for the Helicopter.