greg quinn

Looks great, nice reel

I'm looking to cost-out 16mm SR3 (or similar) package rental for a ulb film project later this year. I'm finding it difficult to source 16mm camera equipment in San Diego.

Can anyone recommend a 16mm rental source in SD or LA? Or do folks just buy a cam off eBay?

Thanks!

B&W processing doesn't allow a rem-jet backing.

The best you can do it to have a matte black film pressure plate in the camera. Bolex is fine; Aaton and Arri have shiny chrome and may reflect overexposed light back into the emulsion from behind. You can check this by removing the lens, with no film in the camera and looking at the pressure plate while the camera is running.

You will see circular flare around highlights, for example a car headlights at night. This is light penetrating the emulsion and being reflected back off the base back into the emulsion. On certain cameras with shiny chrome on the pressure plate, you will see a pattern on the negative that matches the shiny bars on the pressure plate.

If you keep the exposure to the low end you will avoid this problem except for the circular halo on point highlights.

If your printing lights are from 18 to 22 or so, it is unlikely to pose a problem. The gray base acts as a anti-halo layer.

I'm no expert, just picking this up - my understanding is that double-X 7222 has a pretty narrow exposure latitude anyway. I don't recall seeing halo'ing in CLERKS, that was shot on an SR1 I believe with Double-X. I'd planned to shoot on an SR3 or perhaps something newer.

GH5 footage looks amazing -

(watch it at 4k - wow!)

Not the look I'm after, but amazing nonetheless

I've seen some comments to the effect that because 7222 (or other B&W films) has no rem-jet backing (why, Kodak, why?) it has halo problems in some cameras like the SR3 because of reflections from the reflective gate backing plate. How to avoid? Best camera for using 7222?

Thanks

Greg

Hey Greg, there's a 'jobs' subforum right here on cinematography.com that you can use. And on many other filmmaking online forums - I'd say that'd be a better bet than going to something like Craigslist.

Thanks Mark! Do people really use Craigslist?

Please excuse my complete ignorance on this; I've produced a couple of documentaries and lensed them myself (HD video) but I'm now investigating the feasibility of a plan for an ultra low budget narrative project.

Is there an online location that DPs hang out to post such a role to? Or general film crew website? This first narrative effort will be a non-union production but if I remember correctly this isn't a problem for union DPs.

Only at Kodak Moscow. So if you decide to film in Russia, you welcome! :)

There's a number of Kodak distributors in US - makes sense to contact them all, I think, as they can all have different deals/discounts. Foma and ORWO you can contact directly I suppose.

Slavich, by the way, seems to have quit coating film. Tasma in Kazan still does but they don't offer motion picture gauges.

thanks Michael!

Not even remotely. Tabular-grain film is extremely diffucult to match texture-wise, old-style B&W like 7222 - plain impossible.

Kodak might give you a big discount if you're shooting a B&W feature, and there's ORWO, Foma and Slavich which are cheaper to begin with. Camera rental and offline-quality telecine cost close to nothing. You'll be able to negotiate processing costs as well.

Appreciate this. Do you have the name of someone at Kodak to contact?

Thanks for all the responses - I haven't been able to get back to the thread till now.

One reason for planning 16mm is to future-proof the project. I was at a MeetUp indie producer meeting in LA a few months ago, and unless I'm missing something, acquisition even for low budget projects seems to be ideally 4k. I'm not sure 16mm will scan that high, otherwise something as simple as the Blackmagic Pocket mentioned by Macks might conceivably work, notwithstanding artifacting.

I'm in the planning stages for shooting a suspense-genre feature film - probably around the 80 minute mark.

I'd like to shoot the thing on 16mm B&W Kodak Double-X, but my back of a napkin calculations are that it will close to double the acquisition cost.

Are we at a point where we can close-enough simulate a 16mm film look, especially texture/grain in video in post?

Another question: I plan to telecine the negative and post in video - folks do that, right?

Thanks