John Travis

No one knows of a good place to look for discontinued stock?

I am shooting a short film that will probably end up being expanded. We decided to use the discontinued Kodak 800T (5289) stock, which I found a bunch of here in LA from The DR Group (used to be Dr. Raw Stock). I ended up buying them out of all their 800T and am now looking for more of it. Any suggestions of where to start? I tried media distributors and real good film stock, but they both had none. I've also looked on ebay. I was just wondering if there are any places that specialize in selling discontinued film stocks or if I just have to scrounch around and hope I get lucky.

You mean had the emulsion side facing away from the shutter? Hopefully, I would be smart enough to catch that, but I guess I won't rule it out if I loaded the film too quickly and wasn't paying attention. I didn't even know you could get an image with the film facing the wrong way. But if it's possible, maybe that's what I did, shoot.... There are many shots that are underexposed. Would that cause problems with the transfer?

That's the thing, I didn't shoot a color chart like I should have (especially since this was a test). Never thought about shooting stills before, but that's a good idea, thanks. I'll probably do that on future shoots. I guess I just didn't realize the color could get that screwed up. But since the night footage came out fine, I'm not really worried about a problem with the camera. How about the artifacting on the miniDV tape? Is that to be expected when transferring 35mm footage to miniDV?

I shot some test footage (using a Russian Kinor) on Kodak Vision 2. One 400ft roll of 250D and one 400ft roll of 500T. I shot exteriors at night with the 500T and some exteriors late in the day as the sun was going down with the 250D. I sent the film to be processed and transfered to MiniDV tape so I could view it. It was processed normal and a straight unsupervised transfer to MiniDV tape was done. When I got the tape back it there were alot of artifacts on it (is this normal, I know it's MiniDV so the quality will be poor). But the real problem was the day footage shot on the 250D. It has a red cast throughout and I don't just mean a slight shift, I mean red seems to be the only color present. Is this a problem with the way I shot it, the film, the Camera, or was it something that probably happened in telecine? Any thoughts on this you could give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, John

I already slid the ground glass out (which I think did more harm than good), but I put it back in place, hopefully. Is the eye piece meant to rotate 360 degrees with no problem? I've been rotating it to see if it helps (unfortunately it doesn't) and sometimes it sticks and I'm worried I'm rotating it too far or too much. I did a search for threads on the viewfinder, but didn't find too much. Do know of any specific tutorials dealing with it? I guess at this point I don't want to take it apart anymore without instructions or a guide, I think that I've already caused the frame to look slightly kanted through the viewfinder and can't seem to get it to straighten out.

I've had my Kinor for about a week and everything's working fine on it. The only problem is the viewfinder, which seems to be clipping off part of the frame. Since this was taken through the viewfinder and it's hard to get the camera close enough it looks a little more clipped than it actually is but it gives you an idea. Here (above) I've tried moving the glass the shutter reflects onto, but it ultimately doesn't help that much. Here I started to take apart the elbow that connects the viewfinder to the body and found a chip in the prism, but I don't think it's the reason part of the frame is being clipped. Has anyone had this problem before?

Just wanted to know what those of you who shoot with DV thought about using an audio recorder in the field vs. just plugging into the camera. Is there any point to using a seperate audio recorder if you're shooting with DV?

I live in Las Vegas which is devoid of a motion picture film processing lab. Can anyone reccomend a lab that I can send it to to have it developed? I know people are going to reccomend going to L.A., but it's kind of a pain to do that. In any case, though, can you reccomend good labs in L.A. for indie filmmakers. Thanks.

I second hiring people to help you. You won't regret it. Just make sure you interview a number of people for each position. Some first time filmmakers tend to grab whoever's available to them and this can cause problems on the set. It might go without saying but make sure you get along with the people you hire. Also, be open that you're a novice, but be firm in the fact that you want to make YOUR film. If they're true professionals (most of the time anyway) they won't step all over you just because you're new. They might try to steer you in a certain direction to help you, but that's what you want. Lastly, were you planning on making a feature screenplay you wrote? I would highly reccomend doing a short film first. One around five minutes should be more than enough for a first time director. Good luck with your work!