Tim Smyth

Are they still going to produce Super 8 stock as well?

I hate to be the nitpicker of the group, but the budget for Star Wars was 10M, with an additional 1M provided by George himself. Don't worry, he got the toy rights for that cool million. He originally did ask for 7M though.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0368226/?ref_=bo_se_r_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 As best that can be figured out. Why you get into these discussions? I don't know, but you brought it up, not me. I think the argument that as long as we make the worst films possible, but keep the budgets low so we can make a profit, will not have a long term life success for the industry. I would be happy I guess if I made a film that entertained everyone, even if it was for all the wrong reasons, but I would prefer to try and make something that is actually good. So I would suggest that we should all try to make the best film possible, with whatever means we can. In 1932 during the world wide depression all the American studios decided to not exceed $250,000.00 for any film, for the sake of their own future, as anything over that was likely to not make a profit. And they succeeded and lasted to this very day, well some of them. The business is not really run quite the same way today.

And I will disagree with you, as far as I know the film has yet to break even. It may be close, but no cigar yet. I am happy that folks are seeing his film, even if they're going to see how bad it actually is, like Birdemic.

Totally confused by what you are saying here. There is no theatrical profit at all to the Room. All movies are a gamble, some pay off, some don't.

I would have to see the storyboard, but it may be possible to film it, with the cat walking by, and do a split screen, replacing the cat part of the frame with an empty floor. Something like how they did that type of effect of shadows of the farm workers in the film Vampyr.

I have posted on the sites I mentioned, but have been ignored. Just a warning not to believe everything you read on the internet.

The problem is... when some misinformation appears, for whatever reason folks who put it out there don't want to correct it. This has happened on the Pete website listed. Another problem is with the first site David posted, is that it is just too simple, and left out important steps in the evolution of those trick shots. This is not unusual, mistakes have even appeared on the Cinefex website, and when pointed out, were just left on there for all eternity, and the comments for all of these places are useless, since many post, but few read. Though the Cinefex comments were turned off after my comments. Of course this misinformation happens in books as well, best to do as much research as possible, from multiple sources, and see where they align or don't, to discover the most probable truth on how a certain effect was achieved.

Not my first choice, as I would want to shoot the effects in camera, or on film, and anamorphic kind of changes that game, but I'm all for 65mm.

An allusion to an utterance of Jesus' in John 8:7, viz. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

You guys are crazy, digital is much cheaper... oh wait we are on another topic. Well then, I would shoot in IMAX, do the effects, as much as possible in camera. I myself would not be shooting, I would hire David for that, I would write, direct, supervise the effects, and editing. Editing would most likely be done digitally, as most of the presentation would also be digital. I would have film prints made to show in theaters that could accommodate 70mm.

Hi David, I may have been mistaken about the motion control rig, as that is what we used for commercials at that facility. How much work was done at the frame Shop I don't know, just that I was told that is where Ken Burns did the work. They have been long closed now, and the owner is not with us anymore, so I can't confirm anything at this point. If I ever run into the guy who ran the camera. I will be sure to ask him about it.

Today one can do it the digital editing stage. Hi David, Ken Burns used to use a motion control camera, like they used to film the effects scenes for Star Wars. Sounds crazy, but true. This was done around Boston, I think the name of the company was the Frame Shop.

But doesn't VistaVision have twice the frame size as 35MM? So that would make sense that it was sharper?

Hi Mark, I was driving the other day, and something Simon said about old cameras needing servicing struck a chord. After this film incident that day, I did indeed have my camera serviced, and the guy said he cleaned, and lubed the camera, and that it may have never seen service before. Now it is working perfectly, but... on the day of the shoot with the Foma film, it was incredibly hot out, and the camera stopped working, and I now think the camera had simply just had enough. If I had had Kodak stock in the camera that day, I would have thought "Shucks, my camera broke", but since I had film I had never used before, I had assumed (which is almost always a bad thing) that it must be the film making the camera all sluggish. Hence I thought the film was too wide. I was hand-crankng that day, so I could really feel it. After your comment above, on the width of film, and Simon's comment in another thread, it made me think that maybe it was not the film after all, so I put a piece of Foma film in the camera, and it did indeed work smoothly. So apologies if I insulted anyone on this board, and certainly apologies to Foma film. I still have 4 unused rolls from that old project, so I will try to make a new film with it this Summer.

As does B&H Photo.

The problem with this debate is that it did not define what digital is, or what film is for that matter, and became a blanket statement as Phil noted. When I shot my film last Summer, on Hi-Def, which is digital, it was between buying film, or buying costumes for the cast, so I went with costumes. Even if Kodak gave me the film, I still would not have been able to see a frame of the movie yet. Like Tyler, I own all the equipment used in all my films, whether it be 8MM, Super 8, 16MM, or Hi-Def, and no film stock was cheaper to shoot with than the Hi-def mini dv, I shot last year's movie on. What I would have wanted to shoot on may be another story.

I think also that the two articles were not totally fair. They compared top of the line Alexa camera with Super 16. Not exactly a fair comparison, and the Red cam they compared came in cheaper than the Super 16. The filmmaker article also said the total film cost was $16,000.00, when the camera equipment alone cost him just over $7,000.00, and failed to mention film to digital transfer. The other article mentioned that on a digital shoot you need technicians for color correction and all that, while if you shoot film you just need the camera and the cameraman. Whenever I see behind the scenes shots of big movies being made, the director is always watching a TV to see the shots, so they use them for films shoots as well. Again, a little unfair. Unless I missed something in the articles. As far as what the director wants to shoot on, that is a different story altogether.

I don't think that s quite true Tyler, I do believe they make film prints of all the films for long term storage, so that if anything bad should happen, they can always digitize the print later on. If film is to last, then at some point some company/ies will have to start producing new cameras. I think Bolex still may make cameras on demand, or I may have dreamed that.

I guess it depends really on the project. The articles talked about low budget productions, but if one did not even have those budgets, then film may not be an option. If one owns the film equipment, but must rent top of the line digital equipment, then digital may be more expensive. If one owned all the equipment they needed, film and digital, and wanted to make a 10 minute film, I think digital would be cheaper. Of course the real question is, what digital are we talking about? My last 3 films were shot in Hi-def, which is digital, and they were certainly cheaper to make than if I had shot film. If some younger person was just starting out, and had the equipment for any format, than again digital would be cheaper, maybe not better, but cheaper. 1 roll of B/W 8mm equaling 4 minutes and 10 seconds at 16 fps costs $73.99 1 roll of B/W Super 8 equaling 3 minutes and 20 seconds at 18fps costs $81.99 1 roll of B/W 16mm equaling 4 minutes and 10 seconds at 16fps costs $96.00 1 hour of digital say costs $10.00 I am talking micro-budget here, not extremely low budget like the film in the article. Again, if he did not raise that money, he would not have been able to shoot on film either. So a lot of equations must be factored into the final answer, and all films are different. In a high budget film, it is probably directors choice or workflow choice that will determine the format.

Let's see what does an animator do? (Pause) There's so many different ways one can approach that question. Primarily I guess and animator's job in a film is he's the actor. I mean, it just really comes down to, a film is a story and the animator, he's one of the characters in it. He crawls inside to the brain and the personality of that character. He is that character on the screen. Not unlike regular actors. The only difference is that an actor in theater, TV or in movies gets to use his own body; his hands and expressions. The animator feels those things but the audience doesn't look at him. They look at his drawing, so it's a matter of how well can you draw how you feel? That's really the gift of an animator, is taking his feelings and putting it through his hand and being able to project himself onto the paper. I guess the challenge that an animator has is mentally get past the point where he's drawing. He's no longer drawing on the paper. It's not an act of drawing. It's more of a crawling into that page and living in that space that is now a three-dimensional world. So then you can start to draw a character walking away in space and you're not thinking so much of perspectives and all those technical things. Instead you're thinking, how does it feel? How do I feel walking down this meadow and back behind that tree back there and then sliding along the trunk of the tree and resting, looking up at the leaves? How do I feel? Hopefully you get into it, otherwise the animation has a very technical and studied look and it doesn't ring true. But an animator that can really live in the character that he's drawing, his stuff sparks with life. People believe him. Not my words, but by someone who has a little experience in animation, Glen Keane. I suppose he really doesn't know what he's talking about though.

Okay, let's try this one more time. Is a author/screenwriter an actor too, yes sometimes. Both Sylvester Stallone, Woody Allen among others do both, but when they write, they are writing, they are not performing, when they are in movies they are performing, or acting. no, the DOP is not an actor, he is not performing a character in front of the camera. Production is not acting, acting is acting. being on location is not acting either. This is not a put down of the many talented folks it takes to make a motion picture, it just is not part of their job. The broomstick if alive, is acting, if being held by a character is not acting, but the character holding the broomstick is acting. Backgrounds are not characters, and folks who animate backgrounds I am sure are trying to move up to character animation, and have done character animation before, I mean they just don't pick folks off the streets to animate. No, animators do not call themselves actors, they call themselves animators, but acting is just part of the job, and accepted, in fact I don't see how one would do the job without acting. They take direction from the directors before doing a shot, many rehearse in the shadows, and they bring to life the characters they are animating, acting as it is through their creations. They do it in the thought process as actors, just they do it in fewer takes, like I said in a post above. If they did not act, then where would Gertie, Mickey, Bugs, Daffy, and many others be? How could Pinoccio move millions of folks? I just reread a previous post, and basically said the same thing, so hopefully you will read this post and understand that no, not everyone on a film set has the same job, they are not all actors. It is a pretty simple idea, I find it hard to believe folks can't grasp it. Anyways, since that seems to be the case, I suggest we agree to disagree, and just drop the matter. Yours respectfully, Tim Smyth

Oops, I meant straight ahead animation.

Hi Robin, I will say the one difference is animators have to do it in one take, if it is a straight forward type animation, then maybe they get another take, but either way, take one or two is going in the film. Try that with flesh and blood actors.

Why would I want to hire them? What they are doing in this reel is not all math. Anyway, this is going nowhere, I have stated more than enough examples. Live free.