Joseph White

yes there are 50mm and 85mm zeiss primes available in B-mount for 16mm. you can also use the long end of a zoom as well - many 16mm zoom lenses go to 100mm or 120mm. a nice all-purpose zoom from my experience is the canon 8-64mm t2.2. people are often very hesitant to use zooms with 16mm, but i would frankly rather have the right lens size than anything. it's generally best to stay longer than 12mm with 16mm to give you a really sharp look - but i just shot a film on super 16mm with 7217 using only a canon 8-64mm on a modified sr-II and it looked damn close to 35mm. and there really aren't "35mm only" mounts these days for the most part. most cameras you rent that are non-panavision in the US are all PL-mount, whether it's 16mm or 35mm. and you can get adapters to fit almost any lens to any mount. you can also use PL-mount 35mm primes on your 16mm camera as well; i've used zeiss super speeds and cooke s4's on 16mm with nice results.

i would imagine that the stocks one would want to push 2 stops today would probably be either the kodak 5218 or 5229 or the fuji eterna. these stocks have lower contrast and saturation than 5279 (especially 5229 and eterna) and have finer grain than the original vision 500t counterpart. 5298 was a wonderful stock (as was 5293) but sadly has gone the way of the buffalo. i'd say 5229 would probably be a fair bet as i've pushed it one stop and still found that it still wasn't too grainy and that the saturation started to resemble 5279 as pushing it gave it a little more color. this was also for a video finish, so chances are if one was doing a photochemical finish, you'd certainly have to factor in print stock as well when considering this process. i for one would love to see 5229 pushed 2 stops, rated at 1600 asa, then printed on premiere...

there's also no law saying that all the light in frame has to be of the same color temperature. if you're working with daylight coming in windows, try using half CTB on your units if you're worried about stop-loss. newer stocks like vision2 250D handle mixed lighting really well with day interiors. if you don't see the windows you can also put half CTO on them, and that combined with the half CTB on your units will bring everything to "normal" (although not 100% correcting anything, if you catch my drift). but yeah i'd say avoid using the 80A and try and treat everything with gels - as you can adjust individual sources with gels, yet with a filter you change everything across the board.

in essence, the lab does nothing special or different unless you instruct them to. if you want to overexpose a bit by rating 500 asa film at say 400 asa, you're simply diong just that - overexposing - if the lab corrected for it, it wouldn't be overexposing. the same rule applies to underexposing, when you rate a film at a higher than intended iso - say rating 500 asa film at 800 asa. now if you want to push process or pull process, this changes things. pushing or pulling doesn't "change" the asa of the film stock - 500 asa film is 500 asa film - but you rate it differently to compensate for the different time used in processing the film. typically, the normal compensation for pushing a film one stop is a one stop difference in how you rate the film. so if you're shooting 500t film and you push it a stop (for more grain, contrast, and saturation) if you were rating normally you would then rate your film at 1000 asa. a lot of people like to underexpose slightly when doing this, hence why you hear people say they rate 500 asa film pushed one stop at something like 800 asa (to print down later to get richer blacks). the same principle applies to pull processing (to reduce contrast, grain, and saturation) where you would rate 500 asa film pulled one stop normally at 250 asa. the iso rating on the can is a guideline, it's what the manufacturer reccomends you rate your film at in order to shoot "normally"; rating differently is simply a matter of taste - there's no right or wrong to it - it's just what you enjoy and what's appropriate for the piece. hope this helps - happy shooting!

i've always found that a small china ball with a 75 watt bulb on a dimmer right over lens is a great eyelight. and its very easy to move around and control. the kino flo kamio ringlite can give you an interesting eyelight, but it pretty much always looks like a kamio ringlite (you can often see the actual ring of light in a person's eyes) which can be a neat effect but not for everyone.

yeah there's been a lot of talk about this very subject lately. the consensus is that pushing any 16mm stock will increase grain. with film there is always some grain, with a 500 speed 16mm stock there is typically more, and pushing doesn't necessarily help your cause. rating at 800 asa and pushing a stop will help you print down later on and get richer blacks. it will also help you do the same in telecine if you aren't making a print. of all the 500asa films out there, 7218 is definitely the finest grain stock yet. the best thing pushing a stop does for you though, in my opinion, is it allows you to potentially not shoot wide open. so you can look at it this way - you might not necessarily need less light, but you can work with lower light at a healthier stop and give your first ac a fighting chance. as i posted about this somewhere else, 500 asa is fast to begin with, pushing a stop just buys you a little insurance. pushing will add contrast and will increase your saturation, but again it really depends on what you're shooting (ie how wide, whether or not you have practical lights you can suppliment, what your lighting package is, any slow-mo, etc). grain is truly relative - it's always there, it just depends on how much of it really bothers you and what's apropriate for the story. hope this helps.

a lot of it will have to do with lighting/sculpting as well. i don't know if on-camera filtration is the way to go as with all filters, it generally effects everything as mr. mullen is saying. depending on the size of your locations and how much grip equipment you have available to you, try creating this look to eye. use much softer light and more fill in your backgrounds to your eye, then use harder light on your subjects. it's all about seperation - the further your subjects are away from the walls or limits of your environments, the more capacity there is to create significantly different looks in your elements. for day exteriors, try shooting later in the day when there isn't as much hard sunlight bouncing around in your backgrounds and perhaps use an overhead silk behind your actors and use smaller hmis on the talent to give a different look. with night work just simply splash your backgrounds with softer light and use harder tungsten units on your actors. it's all about proportion, really. also, perhaps try using longer lenses for your close-ups and over's than maybe you normally would as obscuring the background with selective focus might help you create more distinction between foreground and background elements. good luck and happy shooting.

1k or 2k xenopro's are really good too - really sharp looking beam lights, just depends on how much punch you need and how large the holes are. fog will help for sure, but yeah definitely be careful you don't wash out your image. depending on your format, if you're shooting 35mm, i'd reccomend getting really super sharp lenses, like ultra primes or primos, as you'll be able to get the most definition in your image while using fog.

although i'm often an advocate for pushing, there's definitely something to be said for the fact that 500 asa is pretty darn fast to begin with. especially if you're working with somewhat faster lenses. i think one of the most frequent problems with night exterior photography is that there's usually too much light as opposed to to little. like we've been saying more or less, if you aren't trying to get a big soft blanket of exposure and you selectively use harder light (getting the most out of your units as well by not cutting their strength with lots of diffusion) i think you'll find that getting a t2.0 or so isn't really all that hard. again of course it depends a lot on what kind of space you're lighting, but 7218 rated normally at 500 asa, coupled with decent lenses (not shooting all the way open if you can avoid it) and lights in the right places will eliminate the NEED to push, although you might like the aesthetic qualities of such a move.

i'd say if you are looking for richer colors i'd push one stop as opposed to pulling. pulling generally reduces contrast, color, and grain slightly. pushing will add some grain, contrast, and color typically - but not too much more so i wouldn't rely on it to give you the saturation you look for. i'd suggest pushing 7218 one stop and rating at 800asa - this will allow you to work with a slightly smaller lighting package (or not have to necessarily shoot all the way open) and will probably give you the look you're after. pushing a stop is something i like doing a lot, but by no means is it for everyone. if you're looking for a finer grain image, definitely don't push unless you're shooting 5218 where you can pretty much get away with it. a lot of this will depend on your colorist and your post workflow. in telecine, you can do so much manipulation to contrast, saturation, and noise that you might find that you'll be able to get the rich colors you're after much easier than you think. not trying to answer your question to mr. mullen, but there's a kind of boring tendency to light night exteriors with big soft sources that throw cool light everywhere, and while it's by no means always a bad thing, you might benefit from using harder light overall. like a nice hard backlight faking a streetlamp, or a hard flickering light from an off-camera store sign or something. i have no idea what you're shooting, but if you want bolder colors and a more stark image, i'd say use harder light and experiment with colored gels to find the right look you're going for - scenes at night don't always have to be lit by this enormous soft "moon" that's hovering a couple feet away from the camera.

i think this is an interesting point, because with the advent of new technologies in every aspect of cinematography i don't know if easier is necessarily the right word, but we're definitely finding more ways to have more overall control. line up an arri 2-c with an old s-mount zeiss lens and a 235 with the lens data system, cine-tape, and a cooke s4/i and the differences are pretty darn clear. but in the end, i don't think it's necessarily the tricks and tools of the trade that make a cinematographer great, it's his or her instincts, their style, how they play with light and composition, how they tell stories, that makes them truly great. in terms of making things "worse", you're seeing a lot of people playing around with the limitations of the medium with awesome results. take harris savides' work on "birth", malik sayeed's work on "clockers", rodrigo prieto's work on "21 grams", and paul cameron's work on "man on fire" just to name a few. here are all examples of people playing around with pushing, cross-processing, severe underexposure, hand-cranking - using simple tools to do things outside of standard beauty lighting (although this can mean a number of things as well) and more conventional cinematography. there have always been pioneers in terms of breaking away from conventional, technically "proficient" cinematography, and it took people like raoul coutard, vittorio storaro, and gordon willis just to name a few to break free from the conventions of their time. "worse" is a really subjective term, i'd say it's always hard to find the "approproate" look. 5218 is great in a lot of ways in that you can potentially work with less light, but you still need the right light no matter how you rate something. it's getting easier i'd say for beginners working with film to simply get exposure and to get something in focus, but i don't think these advents necessarily have anything to do with the overall quality of your work. they're just tools that allow you to express yourself in different ways, but it all has to come from within you i think, whether it's for "better" or "worse".

yes indeed, kodak has discontinued the 16mm versions of 74 and 79. the 35mm versions are still in production. i do like the 17 quite a bit and will definitely be upping the contrast a bit in telecine to more closely approximate the look of 7274.

well thats certainly good news as i tried ordering some 7274 for a short i just shot last week and they said it was no longer being made (they had a bunch of a-minima loads around but nothing in 400' cans). we ended up shooting on the 7217 which is nice, but i would have liked the pop of 7274 on this particular show.

didn't kodak discontinue the 16mm versions of the 79 and the 74? i love 5279 very much and have had great results with it in the past even in its 16mm incarnation, but i believe it's gone now. maybe you can find short ends of it somewhere, but i don't believe those stocks are being made anymore.

i have generally found that 5218 handles mixed color temperatures very nicely, as do many of the vision2 films. 5279 is generally more saturated, has slightly more grain, and more contrast - it's a gorgeous stock in my opinion, but it sounds like 5218 might work well for what you're trying to do. when using a tungsten film outdoors with an 85 filter, i'd generally go with the reccomended ISO indicated on the can (generally 2/3 of a stop). if you're shooting 5218 outdoors, you'd rate it at 320 if you were rating the film normally. the daylight rating on the can assumes the use of an 85 filter, so thats the correct number. in terms of the home movie look, are you finishing on film or video? if you're finishing to tape, i'd shoot a faster 16mm stock - or even super8mm like the new ektachrome 64t - and play around in telecine. if going to print, the optical blowup alone will add grain if you're doing a photochemical finish as opposed to a DI. I'd say go super 8mm, but if you want to go 16mm try and find some old short ends of 7279 or fuji f-500 (both have been discontinued in 16mm sadly, but you might be able to find recans or shortends somewhere like Dr. Rawstock or Media Distributors). generally the faster 16mm stocks will give you a lot of grain and contrast - you can also experiment with flashing or push processing to give it a different look as well.

i've had experience doing handheld with both (and much worse - like a moviecam superamerica or a bl-3 with a 1000' mag and a cooke zoom). of the two i'd choose the 535b as i'm sure it's lighter and its generally a better camera overall; newer, more sophisticated in general. also don't necessarily run towards using 400' mags either. to me it's not as much about weight as its about weight distrubution, and often times i find using a 1000' mag for handheld felt more comfortable even though it was heavier. simply because all of the weight wasn't on my forearms. and make sure your buddies are there to take the camera from you as soon as you hear "thats a cut!" and you'll be fine.

you don't necessarily need to change your meter settings to work in this scenario. what you are talking about is mixing color temperatures, which while an important aspect of cinematography, is not necessarily a part of the exposure chain. if you use filters to compensate for mixed lighting conditions (say, using daylight film indoors under tungsten lighting or using tungsten film outside in sunlight) then yes, you'll need to adjust the ISO setting in your meter according to how much light is cut by that particular filter. what will happen is that the tungsten lights will read as warm if using daylight film and daylight will read as cool if using tungsten film. there's no right or wrong with any of this - figure out the look you want and then go from there. but it won't effect your exposure. hope this helps!

yeah another way of looking at it is that it enhances the "autumnal tones" the reds but also browns and golder yellows. you can check out www.tiffen.com and look for the enhancing filter examples they have there. its not a filter i've used a lot, but when shooting a lot of the colors in this spectrum, i've found it to give a lovely effect.

really nice stuff there indeed - great sampling of different types of lighting, movement, composition, everything. the underwater shot is lovely, as are a lot of the day exterior bicycling shots - perhaps there are too many of these as they got slightly repetetive for a 60-second reel, but overall it's very strong. well done. what stock was the underwater shot filmed on?

there's a switch on the handle of my canon s8mm camera that goes between a sun and a lightbulb - sadly its really goddamn lodged in the lightbulb hence my desire to grab a filter instead of breaking the camera. we're renting from Hollywood Camera and they're trying to get me an 85A and 85B filter for my canon though, so we'll see. thanks for your insights, though, i'll probably end up rating it at 100asa without the filter and 64asa with just to be safe. and considering how we're finishing to tape, i'll hopefully have some wiggle room in post

So I'm shooting a short next week and we're shooting the main bit of the film on Super 16mm (on 7217) and the director wants some other shots to intercut with a really colorful, bold, contrasty look. He suggested shooting these on super 8mm (this is a finish to video project so I don't have to worry about blowups/printing ever). We had talked about some of the more recent Tony Scott stuff (Man on Fire, Domino) and we both really love their use of cross-processing. I've shot a bunch of 5285 cross-processed, but there's no budget to even do this on s16mm with 7285, so we're thinking we'll cross-process the only color reversal film made for s8mm - the new Ektachrome 64t. It's such a new stock that nobody at Kodak, Pro8MM, or really anywhere has any idea what it'll look like - which I kinda find exciting - but I'm worried slightly about rating it. I usually rate 5285 at 200asa when cross-processing it, so logically I'm thinking about rating this stock at 125asa - the real question is I have no access to an 85 filter for the s8mm camera I own, nor does the director have one for the one he owns - so essentially I'm cross-processing un-corrected-for-daylight reversal film since we're shooting everythign in the desert. Yikes! Let alone how we're shooting 2.35:1 in super 16mm (with a taped ground glass as nobody on earth has a 2.35:1 GG for an arri sr-II, sadly) and i'll just have to estimate with the s8mm camera. So beyond just stating what I'm doing, I'm really interested in any feedback any of you might have in terms of ways of approaching this ("proper" rating, contrast, tips, etc). 5285 is the only stock I've ever cross-processed so anyone out there with tons of cross-processing experience - come to my aid please!

i think maybe a combination of a few small units peppering the streets as mr. mullen is suggesting is a great idea - have you also considered using a kamio ringlight? kino-flo makes them (although other companies do too) and they're battery powered so you don't need to run cable (or you can power them off your camera's accessory block). it's nowhere near as spotty as an hmi sungun - even if you diffuse the hell out of it it's going to be a very strong spot. also are there any practical lights in your location? (ie mercury or sodium lights) if so you can gel small-medium size tungsten units to match the streetlights, and in doing so be creative with where you throw them (maybe make some nice hard backlight with some gelled par cans). also - are you shooting video or film? i shot a music video about a year ago where we did the hand-held sungun flanking the steadicam as a singer wandered through the woods at night but it was an effect - a strong choice - not really motivated by anything in reality. it was a music video, so you can usually get away with this a little more. it's an interesting look, but people will immediately say "hey there's a light on the camera". although ellen kuras got AMAZING results with this on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which was the primary influence for the music video i shot), but again that was a bold stylistic choice not for every project.

Roger Deakins just shot all of "Jarhead" on 5218 - desert day exteriors and all - for a uniformity of grain throughout the picture and for presumably lower contrast. And it looks fantastic - but mainly because it's apropriate for the film. Mr. Mullen is correct - its subjective - there's really no right or wrong way to do it. If shooting allows you to get your hands on some more equipment that will benefit your ability to control whats in front of the camera, it might not be a bad idea. But yeah post some stills of your results of the 01 as it seems like we're all dying to see something! I'm shooting a short film starting next week on super 16mm and super 8mm, and all of the 16mm portions will be shot on fuji f-500t to maximize grain - we're even going to push a stop here and there. Is it what I'd normally do? Hell no. But its the look the director wants, so its right for the movie. Yeah operating that one is going to be a REAL treat - even though we're only shooting during "nice" light times of day (thank you production) i anticipate not being able to see a damn thing for a week. Great :) We'll be cross-processing 8mm color reversal though - the new 64t - so that should be fun at least. Except for, of course, estimating 1.85:1 on the GG the entire time. Always a good time :)

three good friends of mine went to Full Sail - one is my First AC that i rarely work without as he's incredibly talented and a hell of a great guy who works a lot, another is one of the lead editors on "The Shield", and the other, a director I've shot commercials and shorts for, just wrote/directed "Saw 2" which topped the boxoffice by a hell of a lot last weekend. Like any film school, the programs evolve generally at the pace of the success of their alumni. I got my bachelor's from NYU and my master's from USC, have a ton of debt, but have been working steadily ever since graduation. Does this have anythying to do with where I went to school? Maybe, who knows, but it didn't hurt coming out and already having a nice stream of contacts/relationships. The film school/no film school argument has no real concrete answer/solution. I found it really valuable, but others I know are really frustrated. I can't even count the number of times I've heard the phrase "if I had just directed a movie with the money I spent in film school I could have done a freaking feature" but at the same time who knows what it would have been like? This isn't to say it would have been bad or good, but in film school you have the oppurtunity to meet and work with a variety of people who could potentially be future collaborators. Plus in film school you get the chance to make mistakes not on someone else's dime, which can be a frustrating but ultimately liberating and valuable experience. You also start to learn what you like - not just about watching and appreciating movies, but about making them. Something I'd rather learn in the context of school rather than out in the real world where the consequences can be more severe. Just remember that film degrees don't get you "movie deals", they give you the ability to teach when you're out of work :)

more than anything i think it's a matter of taste. most labs (i've only ever done skip-bleach on the neg at fotokem and they said to underexpose one stop) will advise you on the best way to "normally" rate your film when doing skip bleach, but in a way somewhat similar to cross-processing, you don't know 100% what you're getting until you do tests with that particular batch, with whatever degree of it you're doing, or once you sit down with the neg and your colorist. are you planning on doing a 100% process or something more gradual like DeLuxe or Technicolor's processes? sounds like in your situation your darker tones are going to go way black/dark, i guess it depends on the quality and level of the light that you're keying with. also depends on what 500t stock you're using - 5218 will be more forgiving in this type of situation in terms of latitude than 5279, but I have to say I LOVE the look of 5279 with skip bleach processing. also depends on whether you're finishing to print or to tape in terms of flexability in grading. the rating suggestions made by labs are guidelines not laws - hell overexpose a stop if you like, its not like the film won't "come out" it'll just be even less saturated, the whites will go even hotter, and you might lose a little grain if you pull it a stop or just print it down. hope this helps. happy shooting!