Jon O'Brien

Exactly put. I sort of rebel against the modern style of 'film' production. Just too cruisy and glib and 'cool' or something. Always with a damn monitor and a free camera, cruising around. Something's not right about it. There's little meat in a lot of video production. Everything has to look plastic and super super cruisy and smooth. Why? Life often isn't cruisy or smooth. In fact usually not.

That sounds really cool Uli. Best of luck with it. I'd love to get filming work like that, here in Australia. I'm totally surrounded by complete digital heads where I am. Film is a dinosaur that's dead to them. It's superceded and defunct. I think they need to look a bit closer at how good film really is 🙂

A manufacturer of DSLR-style mirrorless cameras could of course just shift the lens mount around to one side on the DSLR body shape. Then you've instantly got a camcorder configuration. So really they're just a small video camera and end of story. The bigger cameras have more stuff inside and bigger fans for cooling them down.

By the way, for those interested, this film has a wonderful look in my opinion. Oh how I wish we could go to the movies and see new feature films shot in this way ... on film, the traditional way. It often has a very earthy and impromptu style of cinematography. It's not an amazing film in terms of plot etc, in my opinion, but I like the look of it very much.

Yes, loud like a coffee grinder. I watched 'The French Connection II' last night and I think quite a bit of it was shot on a 2C. For those who don't know, this is an MOS camera. In a couple of exterior scenes with dialogue in the movie you can very clearly hear the camera. I actually liked hearing it myself in FCII, as I smiled to myself straight away, realising these at least were 2C scenes. I wonder with modern lavalier mics hidden from view if you could get away with an MOS camera for some outdoor scenes with lots of ambient noise, especially with a sligthly telephoto lens keeping the camera away from the actors. This is something I plan to try soon with a 2C.

Yes as Martin said, my commiserations. Having dismantled only two non-running Super 8 cameras and examined how they work, and having afterward decided to abandon any plans I might have had for repairing old Super 8 cameras because of how complicated they are ..... Could it be a small fragment of ND filter, that's become dislodged/degraded, and broken off near the the corner of the film gate? These cameras apparently have a tiny bit of ND gel filter in them, for when changing between 9fps and 18fps. See this video: At about the 4:20 mark. If it was a simple fix like this you might be able to see the edge of the filter if you look into the gate as Martin described. It should be on the right hand side of the gate. But I second what everyone else said. If you can't fix it easily, give up and buy another camera. Best of luck.

Haha! Yeah, they used to say everyone can now be a filmmaker when the DSLR revolution hit. Once, only the rare few could make films. Well, that's fair enough I guess. They forged for themselves a new film style ... and they are very welcome to it. May they long revel in it.

Master this style in 6 months and you too can be a pro.

The DSLR/mirrorless revolution led to the current style of video we see again and again everywhere. The cinematographers now love a top-mounted monitor and virtually no one, and I mean no one, now uses a viewfinder. Is it because their faces are clearly visible at all times and they love that? I don't understand how any DP could be happy staring at a monitor screen. That's something directors do. To me I have to have a very clear view of the image that you can only get with your eye stuck in the eyecup. How they focus is beyond me. The DSLR video style that is now so common means a lot of super-slow hand held slow mo shots that the camera dude swings from side to side while filming. So the camera is always moving to the side or in and out, whether it adds any meaning to the shot or not (almost always not). So, slow mo and lot of drone shots too. Then little gimbal shots. Not too much of that because even that's now a bit old hat. No fluid head tripod anywhere. Too heavy and too old fashioned or something. Strictly monitor only, as I said. Glitz and slickness. Superficiality in brilliant 4K. Smooth glides all round. Then a machine gun editing style. Quick impressions. Fast shots. Brief attention span and that's understandable because substance isn't there. Welcome to the contemporary glib videography style.

Canon brought out new DSLRs years ago that had really good video capability. People started to buy one camera that could do everything -- stills and video. A generation grew up that associated high definition video with the stills camera body shape/design. I don't like the DSLR design most of the time in filmmaking, but yes the bodies do seem to be generally less costly. That may already be changing. For filmmaking the stills camera design has to be kitted out with extra do-dads, cages and big batteries and the cameras themselves don't seem to produce images as good as the larger, dedicated video cameras. In my experience, stills-body type cameras can sometimes produce more of a chintzy video look to the footage compared to bigger, dedicated video cameras. The small DSLR/mirrorless cameras have small batteries, can tend to overheat when worked hard, and are too light. The DSLR side-holding style worked well for a 35mm SLR that needed to be compact for travelling photojournalists but for filmmaking it doesn't seem to me to be the most stable way to hold a camera for shooting moving images. A heavier video camera gives more stable footage when hand held or shoulder mounted. But the DSLR design is nevertheless a fully legititmate video camera. To each their own. I avoid them myself. I started with film cameras too and to me a movie camera has to look like one. Professionally, too, I think some clients can feel a little less satisfied if they want some kind of 'film' made of their event or project and the DP turns up with a consumer DSLR or mirrorless on a little gimbal.

I did ask Bruce about a year ago if he still had that Pan-Arri 2C as I was thinking of buying it back as I must admit it was a cool camera, even if somewhat impractical for an independent filmmaker. He'd already sold it on. So I'd say there's a fair chance someone else in Australia has it.

Thanks Doyle. Interesting information. That camera is long gone -- I traded it in on another 2C to Bruce McNaughton some years ago. Yes it had the flat base underneath. It felt pretty cool owing a panavised Arri for a little while but was impractical in the end as I contacted Panavision Gold Coast to see if I could rent a lens to go on the thing so I could film some tests and basically got told something along the lines of 'well we only hire gear to top directors' or was just too expensive which of course was fair enough. I also got the 'no one films on film in Australia anymore' smirky kind of line so gave up. Actually I was told the mount was PL when I bought it on Ebay but it turned out to be a PV mount. Live and learn. So no point having a camera that could only have Panavision lenses fitted to it since I wasn't Chris Nolan or Russell Crowe. The second 2C I got has a Nikon F mount on it. Bruce McNaughton did the work on it. Actually Dom currently has it and hopefully I can get this camera fully up and running later this year, ready to shoot a short film which I'm currently pinning down locations for and sorting out the basic synopsis for a screenplay. 35mm motion picture film still exists in Australia. I'm it as far as I know.

Looks a cool and interesting camera, Pav. I second what Uli says.

They sell it with double perfs too?

Doing my best. Sometimes I get smirks at rental houses. But who cares, they obviously are ignorant.

I agree. Film projection is ideal in my opinion and I now try to limit my cinema going as much as I can to 35mm and 70mm film prints, which is not easy in Queensland. sometimes I go to see screenings in other states. In Australia I'm not sure if we have many surviving film projectors. If a movie is shot on film I'm happy with the compromise of digital projection. I've carefully compared digital to film projection and I find no or hardly any reduction in viewing pleasure and satisfaction if a movie is shot on film and then projected digitally. Actually sometimes I see a slight flicker when watching a movie shown on a film projector. So, it's not always a technically perfect experience. Perhaps that's something to do with the timing of the shutter. Just sometimes I notice some flicker with film prints in the cinema, but after a while my eyes get used to it. Went to see a French film recently (about a famous cook and his new apprentice) and it was nicely shot but filmed on digital (Sony Venice). Would have been somewhat more entertaining I feel if it had been shot on film. Video is lacking in a certain, impossible-to-define 'vibe' that you get from a movie shot on celluloid that always makes a film look more solid and down to earth and more like a traditional 'movie' and not 'video'. It's a real thing in my view but it can't be argued with words. You've got to see it and feel it yourself. But in my opinion the digital projector can faithfully recreate that film vibe on the big screen in a cinema. It was an arty-looking period picture with great art direction and this genre is tailor-made for film. But still, I agree. Film projection of a good print is the best cinema experience there is. It's worth the price of the ticket and you feel it was a satisfying occasion if you see actual film.

A lot of cinematographers of the old school fell in love with digital cinematography because they suffered too many sleepless nights wondering if their shots worked out and they wouldn't know until they got the dailies back. A lot of producers, too. Still, if your industry is going down the gurgler maybe filmmakers should be motivated to look again at the old ways of making movies. The mobile phone or cell phone is responsible for a lot of the move away from digital in people's hearts. Deep down people are truly a bit sick of digital because it's literally in our faces all the time. People want something different -- especially if you've gotta pay extra for it.

I wonder if that's so. As you say only time will tell but wouldn't that be a surprise if more and more people felt they wanted to see and hear real physical things again if they're going to shell out their hard-earned for a ticket. Up to the level so that major film industries start to listen. I've felt that way for years. The older generations are in love with digital everything because it's so easy but younger people seem more interested in real physical things because it just brings more meaning to an increasingly glib and ephemeral world.

I like "Shoot film...you know you want to" and "Anyhow... shoot a roll of film" (or maybe just "Anyhow... shoot film") I could imagine a 70s or 80s TV or cinema ad where Paul Hogan is holding a Bolex to his eye atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge, with Strop next to him. He lowers the camera and says to Strop, "Anyhow... shoot a roll of film!" Strop holds up a box of Kodak film, smiles straight at camera and says, "...yeah ..mate ...ya just can't lose with film" then the ad closes with the rousing theme of Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony as Hoges goes back to filming and the camera zooms out.

This new film looks great. Exciting times. Here's some slogans I came up with, for film fans (one just adds to an already well-known slogan, about art): "Film has heart, because film is art" "Shoot film ... because life is better with art"

Makes me wish more feature projects would choose Super 8. Would make going to the cinema more interesting. As I keep saying to anyone who listens, story alone isn't enough, the medium itself is important. There's a reason people like looking at Renoir, Monet, Rembrandt etc works over other artists featuring the same type of subjects. It's not just the light, either, or the composition. It's the medium, too. Some things are just more arty. Arty means interesting. A lot of people just don't get that. We went through a whole decade where young filmmakers again and again were saying camera isn't important only story is important. That's wrong advice. These days with ever-better scanning and projection technology Super 8 and 16mm are a great choice for a feature-length movie.

I'd say in any relevant section, Bill. A phone camera is a legitimate tool in filmmaking.

It looks so good! Love it.

That lens is long and heavy and you'd be well advised to use lens support for it I'd say.

I don't know about a non-Canon made adapter that you could buy, but I doubt it would be available. What is certainly possible is that Canon themselves make a PL mount for the C300 Mark III. It comes with shims. With this PL mount you could use the Canon 8-64. The C300III can be changed to Super 16 sensor size I believe. I'm contemplating using this camera and lens myself.