Sam Javor

The thing about silks is not that they are heavy, but that they catch the wind :) So be prepared to tie those stands down. But options can include light stands, an assistant to hold the item (the term is "to hollywood it"), rope to tie to structures... and I've even used micrphone stands to hold LEDs. I've also drilled holes in heavy duty clamps from a hardware store and put rapidadapters and studs on them for clamping things to other things... like doors, tables, and chairs.... sometimes the handle on vice-grip pliers is the same size as the stud on C-stands of course vice-grips can seriously damage what they clamp to.... Wander through a couple hardware stores and keep an open mind as to what will mount to what.

Keep -12db to -24db in the back of your mind but I would suggest listening to movies on your mixing system and then sort of mentally calibrate what a pleasing audio level is.... and then review it on other systems... like your friend and parents TVs. Having just finished being a juror for the student section of a local film festival I can attest that we have the ability to change the volume when we review them. :) ... and unless it's wayyy off and geting into compression related noise it probably wont take much of a hit. as long as dialog isn't coved by music... and otherwise understandable. (aka subtitles are readable - big problem) .. and sound effects are in sync and sound appropriate. We're going to be focusing on story telling and cohesion of the entire piece.... and length (for public screening) for example we had one submitted by a prestigious film school that looked and sounded amazing and is (I think) the only honorable mention not being screened because it's 30 minutes long.

Right now I'm loading it with Kodak 5248 from some expired short ends and processing in Caffenol with a warm water +liquid dish soap prebath to remove the remjet. Lomo contacted me friday and was really excited about this mod so I'm getting more footage at different frame rates to test vertical smear because of the lack of registration. So lots more footage coming soon. Also, I opened it up saturday because the shutter became out of sync with the transport ... so it was taking the picture while the film was moving... easy repair however. And the the crank handle needed to be removed because otherwise the nut wouldn't sit flat ... however if you want to maintain the hand crank it can be completely removed and you can attach to the mechanism inside the camera.

I motorized mine with a cordless drill and ran it about 18fps. here's the demo and how to... it's really easy :)

I know this threads a bit old but I figured I'd add my thoughts. I got a Lomokino and superglued a nut to the drive shaft and run it with a cordless drill. Here's my demo clip and howto: anyway... this camera is fun. and considering that you can respool wastage (let alone short ends) from your other cameras makes it dirt cheap to operate... and you can be reckless with it. Want to shoot in the rain? not a problem. ... well not a serious problem... As far as processing, it will freak out the lab... obviously cinefilm at your local photolab is a good way to get a tech to murder you and the aspect ratio has gotten me a couple "what the hell are you shooting on?" when I shot still film ... so a daylight tank and whatever chemicals fit your fancy and you can go to town... (process with caffenol if you're 'po ' like me) In the above video I scanned the film on an old flat bed scanner and manually stabilized in kdenlive ... a motion tracker should be able to cope with it and a better film scanner should help as well. Also be aware that that film was poorly taken care of... and was god knows how old...

though it's still short 100 feet... making the short rolls 40 meters and 55meters... damn you metric users! why can't you use Imperial units like the rest of the Free World! :)

actually that's exactly what it's doing. I'm an idiot.

...actually I'm wondering if the mags are measuring meters... as that would make sense... except it seemed really fast...

They arn't selling it in seconds... I'm measuring it in 'seconds remaining' off the magazine... so I load it and the mag says 55 seconds... I run over to the kodak film calculators and 55 seconds comes out as 82.5ft... on what was supposed to be a 200ft roll... which they estimated as being around 200ft long by weighing it... but I 'think' it had a bag for the 1000' roll which threw off their weight as it 'should' have had a bag for a 400ft roll... or maybe something else threw off the weight.

the third roll was close to full on the 200' mag but the meter on it doesn't go past 60 seconds and the meter on the 400' mag (which goes to 140) is not something I would describe as reliable... so I can't get an accurate measure ... I'll have a good measure once it hits the lab. ...and then I'll figure out a more accurate way to measure it after ordering and factor any shortness into the budget... reel diameter with a micrometer/caliper should get me most of the way there ...they measure them by weight. adding 120secs to the 95sec so it's probably about 250' short... so just one more 200ft roll puts the total back at a reasonable price range. I think the culprit was rather large bags for the two rolls that were off... memory's not clear as the room was a bit dark :) My main goal right now was to make sure the camera moved without exploding... develop the film and test out scanning it with a flatbed scanner (yes I have lots of free time) and then test out the workflow on my linux workstation. this arri 2B is an almost completely alien device for me... such as the expanding core on the take up side of the 400' mag... do I just leave the film coreless for the lab? There's so much voodoo in running this stuff it's worse that audio recording :) ...and I would have never suspected wooden gears in this thing... do I still oil it with bacon grease? j/k :)

I will admit I did miss measure... being a newb I thought the mag readings were in feet but they are in seconds... making that 40ft roll a 40sec roll... still significantly short but about twice as much ... so I think I'm around 400ft out of 600ft. basically a 40sec, a 55sec and one that was good enough. ...and I just got a call back and explained that to the guy and he said he'll run it past the boss and call back but mentioned it 'shouldn't be a problem' to ship out the difference.

It was through Film Emporium So just to be clear - if I ordered 600ft of short ends I should have gotten about 600ft... not around 120ft total in 3x 200ft cans.

shooting my first film film today with 35mm short ends... silly me thought that when you ordered 600 feet you would get somewhere close to 600ft... not three 200ft cans with 40ft left inside... which makes the cost savings of shortends decidedly 'not worth it'. ... I'm not even going to have the 400ft minimum for the lab! :) DOH!

erm...actually it's a CRA-6 motor ...with the Cine60 charger...

I bought a cinema products cine60 24fps crystal motor for a IIB last summer and am now getting ready to try to use it. :) It has a male 3pin miniXLR plug (looking from outside to inside) left pin is red+white middle pin is orange right pin is black if you can tell me which one is what I would appreciate it as I will be jerry rigging 18V power tool batteries to run it....

Needs to be good (for golf swing), fast (needed in 3 weeks), and cheap (sub $1K)... Basically my sister is a golf instructor and she would like me to do a couple instructional videos... the problem is that I'm gearing up to shoot an indie film so I have nothing saved up... and my best non film camera is a Panasonic WV-F250... I wasn't planning on grabbing an HD camera until march for another indie 'non-film' film... So I was wondering what folks would suggest as a good match for golf in the sub $1K range and yet HD and not embarrassing to sell. :) Intended distribution is DVD right now... but it'd be nice if it didn't fall to pieces if broadcast ... but that might be asking a bit much :) right now my train for thought is the Canon HV30...because it's so freak'n cheap and apparently a number of you guys like it. I was wondering however how it would handle a golf swing... also if the HDMI output is a significantly better mechanism to capture the video then the HDV tape? ... I wouldn't mind grabbing a HDMI capture card and lugging around a computer if it was a worth while gain... but any other cameras I should consider?

I suppose the really important issue here is ... does it really matter why it's called MOS? :) The difference between a sync and MOS camera is that the frame rate is locked by a accurate 'clock' which aids in the syncing of sound. If the camera motor runs 'wild' there is slightly more difficulty in syncing the sound... I'm sure in the old days of analog audio editing it would be much tougher... but basically on a long shot the image and the sound will get more and more off...so ninja editing of audio is needed to maintain lipsync. Crystal isn't perfect... but I don't think any of us will go the couple hours necessary for the either camera or audio recorder crystal to noticeably lag. MOS and Crystal cameras can be equally loud and useless for capturing usable location sound,... however... a lot of times you just go into a recording studio and redo it and use the location sound as a reference 'scratch track.' As far as using a loud camera... talent might get distracted by the 'thing that sounds like a blender with rocks in it' being a foot away from their face.

I'm getting set to direct my first low budget feature... and it's the second feature I produced on... So coming from the perspective of a 'beginner': Raw or rehersed is a creative choice... you have to actually know what you want. I think a lot of us young directors don't know what we really want and choose either Raw because it's 'cool' or rehearsed because it's 'professional.' ...and we don't make the distinction based on what the script or scene calls for. example - my first feature I was the camera operator/ "Technical Director" (aka geek that owned everything :) ) Most of our shots were on a heavy tripod or garden wagon...err.. dolly... and sometimes we would take 3 hours shooting a page just to rehearse the camera movements ... On another shot we wanted to emulate a handycam (shooting on basically a betacam attached to AD/DA converter and an iMac) ...so we handed the camera to the writer and took away the viewfinder (actually it was an old camera (WV-F250) and the viewfinder fell off) ... we took 3 takes in 5 minutes and it was awesome... So _I_ think... as an unskooled newbie... that the problem is that these students may be not breaking into their own "style"...because they're either focused on following the rules or breaking them... and not expressing their own feeling. In other words, I guess they're trying to impress other filmmakers... not captivate the 'civilian' audience.

...if you know a place that does the reflex conversion I'd probably jump on it :)

I hooked a 12V motor cycle battery to it because 8V batteries are hard to come by here (apparently golf carts use them though) but yeah, the motor spins, the external mag motor spins ...theres some dings on the edges of the lenses but the glass is still good, it holds its RPMs well (didn't run it very long because of the extra voltage) and I'm really looking forward to running some film though it once I get this video project out of the way this weekend. All in all it was actually fairly clean. Buying it was sort of funny, my dad just said "Hey sam did you look at this?" I walked over and saw the case marked "Antique Camera $40" saw "Arri" and about died... then I noticed the other box marked "Camera Parts $30" which was the external mags and a 100mm lens and I calmly checked my wallet and found $20...where I asked my dad if I could borrow $50. He pulls out a $100 ...and I as calmly as I could told the vendor I'd take both... I could bairly wait through him giving me the change... I quickly stuff the change in my pocket and beeline to the door... I get back to the car and my dad asks what I 'haggled him down to' I laughed.

I'm getting ready for mine... well... actualy I'm getting ready for my first paid video gig ...but AFTER THAT... I stumbled upon an Arri 16S kit for $70 at a flea market two weeks ago (5 lenses, 2 ext mags,2 cases, and 'stuff') ... I'm even relativly sure it's not stolen! :) So I'm going to be doing a short and then I've been essentially 'told' to do a crapload of G rated family movies. ...actually my dad found the camera in a "pile-o-tools." The vendor was so focused on tools he must have origionally bought it as an unopened toolbox...

Hi! I just got sucked into my first event videography project (bat mitzvah) and I need some help picking an on camera light. My budget is reletivly small...definatly less than $1K (preferably less than $300) but I have until march 24th to get everything. I need a versital on-camera light but I'm not exactly sure which one to look at. I tpyically use 500w incandescent bulbs in scoops. But I have to be reletivly mobile on this. Are there reliable 400-500w on camera lights that can run off batteries? Or maybe have a less than 5amp requirement so I can run an inverter (7amp max) I can haul around an awful lot in batteries because I'll probably have a pedistal... It'd be nice if it was something that could have a fairly wide dispersal to use as an off axis key for interviews (have reflectors for fill). The camera system is currently based around an old as dirt Panasonic WV-F250 (with some creative modifications - basically a studio config) ... don't know the ISO of the camera yet but it's dark... any suggestions?

maybe it's just me but useing a rocket seems risky because you don't exactly have control of the return... perticularly next to a large body of water... why not use a kite or even a lot of baloons?

I would import the audio and video into SONAR, plat it back for talent a coupl times and then have them say it... usually a couple words at a time... it's fairly straightt forward... just time consuming.

I think after all of Pixars pestering to get Photoshop ported it's unlikely Adobe will do anything linux related. As far as turnkey systems there's a company called Linux Media Arts selling systems http://www.lmahd.com/ They will have a booth a NAB this year so if you happen to go you can take a look at what they have. Most Open Source projects arn't going to compete with commercial projects feature wise... however most of us don't really push our software to it's limits... and have probably paid for less in the past. Audio wise DeMuDi isn't as feature rich as SONAR 5 but it beats SONAR 2... and the price is much more appealing. :)