Michael Collier

It starts well, but gets weak towards the end. Dont make a 5 minute demo if you dont have 5 minutes worth of good stuff. you can impress people with 2 minutes. also choose your end shot wisely. you have basicly ENG news-style video ending a reel that started with interesting film work. watch your pacing and sequencing. you have great shots there, but the editting confuses them.

Whats your camera budget? If low then I would go with the DVX-100(A or B) or if you can afford it, go with the HVX-200 (dont record to the DVCPRO-HD, just record to DVCPRO-50 if SD is the intended delivery) if you can afford more you would be well served by a better camera, if only for the better glass usually included with the rentals. The SDX mentioned by David is quite good, but obviously rentals are a bit more than the handheld 'prosumer' cameras.

Theoretically on interlaced footage you can slow dow to 50% without seeing any stutter (the software pulls the feilds out and makes new frames out of them, which for all intents and purposes is a progressive frame.) In SD when you do this up to 50% usually makes the image softer (resolution redux by 50% of the verticle lines) with HD you have extra resolution to burn, so the loss of resolution is negligable. Now if you reduce below 50% you will see image stutter. Also a good trick if you want super slow mo (without renting a highspeed digicam), if you shoot HD at say 1080i (at 30fps) and slow it to 50%, yeilding 720p (at 60fps), then have your software interperet the file as a 24p file (slowing it further to 40%, or a factor of 2.5) Then add a pulldown as the telecine would and you will have smooth overcranked-like motion. with stutter similar to any 24fps telecined footage.

As long as under capture settings you had DVCPRO50 selected. I am unfamiliar with final cut, but if your software is capturing DV25 or DVCPRO, then it might be dropping about 1/2 the info DVCPRO50 stores. otherwise it should be lossless (well at least you dont loose anything after the SDX compressed it in the first place.)

Not knowing the actuall condition or seeing photos, thats the best offer I can make. I am not trying to screw him, but I really have a lack of knowledge about pricing. I found a few LTRs around and think that at 1500 it is worth it to me. I dunno if he would feel the same way, but we shall see I suppose. suppose he wants to help a young filmmaker out.

my question is why do you want to do that? If its just to see in the monitor I guess I understand, but if you are shooting with the camera upsidedown (as I have done from time to time) why not just add a note to the editor to flip it the right direction.

I can offer $1500 for your LTR. I am shooting my first film movie and am looking to purchase my first camera. You say the GG has 4:3 markings? I assume this is in the center and there are still the 16x9 markings as well? I have theoretical understanding of film cameras, but have never put all my book research to use, so I will have to trust your judgement. Would this be an acceptable camera to run a feature movie set with (I will have 30 days shooting, and 5 days prep for every 2 days shot) What lenses will this camera accept? sounds like I can use a nikon lens, is this advisable? is it hard to get the appeture correct when there are no T-stops marked on those lenses? And how close are the barrel markings for focus with the adaptor? I know these may be generic questions, but I want the right camera to learn on. can i purchase an angneiux lens for this? Are there any that will cover the whole s16 frame? PM me, your mailbox seems to be full.

Bogens 501 head is pretty nice as far as smoothness goes. I think they are only like 3-400 dollars. I have them mounted on 3036 legs, but I dont really like those legs bc it doesnt have a ball level.

What if I manually set the timecodes to match the keycode numbers (they will be burned into the video)

Extra grain is one consideration. As I understand it, you would also have to do an optical to reframe it back onto the regular 16. I think that would introduce the most visible artifacts. I am sure there are people here who have done this, but I continually hear about how much distortion is introduced when you do a super16-35mm optical blow-up. I can only assume trying to project onto a smaller format would increase these problems. Check out colorlab they will probably be doing my proccessing and video dailies for my next feature film (unless someone has heard bad things about them?) They have deals on blowups to 35mm film that seemed pretty cheap. And the extra cost of the 35mm stock might be outweighed by the tighter grain structer and the ability to release to any theater.

or if anyone has opinions for converting a CP-16r, I am looking at a super16 conversion as well.

You said you can have the lab scan just the frames you need? I am planning on doing a spirit datacine transfer, would there be a fee taked on to selecting the right shots? My original plan included cutting the negatives and splicing together master reels, but of course to preserve the integrity of the negatives (and to help sell the film later) i dont want to cut actual scenes, so I would have to cut from head-slate to roll-out. Can I provide a premiere pro EDL and have the scanner automattically go through? What extra costs are involved in doing this. I assume that there will be more machine time, but what are there any hidden costs of doing this way as apposed to cutting master reels? I would put an emphasis on not splitting the negs, if both cost almost the same, I would deffinatley let the machine handle it. I am planning on having 40,000 foot reels, and would need about 100 minutes of that scanned.

I think thats exactly what is happening. I myself am doing my first feature film, and the reason I went with film (given that I have an HD camera at my disposal practically for free) is that I have investors who want to make money. Film is easier to sell. Hands down. A film origination will make distrabutors more eager to buy and more willing to pay top dollar. That is exactly what I tell all my investors when I pitch the movie to them. I say yes, we are spending a lot more than we would with video, but we can make our money back easier. (also the story is 100% a film story. It needs a strong sense of contrast that video just doesnt provide. The highlights will be hot, the shadows deep deep blacks. No way any video camera could replicate what film would do. That said I have shot many HD and video features and its a pain. I spend more time fooling with the backlighting to get it to look good, but not blow out. Spend all that time and work and it looks like video, because you couldnt take 2-3 months to find investors to put up the 30-40K it would take to make a comperable film on 16mm film.

I've been following that film school show. Its good. I like the guy who directed supernigger. Sounded like h actually had something to say, and is the most likely to be seen around in the comming years. The guy who wrote heart of spider is has his head too far up his....well you get the idea. After all the crap leah gave her crew, she doesnt want to make a film. How lame is that (best scene is where she makes her crew sit outside the house all morning while they rehearse, and one of the guys says 'so were not really making a movie....this is more like therapy) I think in the end it depends on where your at. I have been making films since I was 11. At least 2 a year since then and feel I have a grasp of most concepts that can be taught. Now its a matter of establishing my artistic patern. How I define the world in my movie, and how I represent that through the camera. That is experience thing in my opinion. Now if you have never shot anything in your life and need to know the facts about the proccesses in hand, then its useful. I went for 2 years until people started ripping off my work (they put it on their demo reels) and found in 2 years I had not learned anything from professors, just from the projects that I enterprised. Making it in film seems tough. I dont think film school or solid work would get you in. My plan is to throw myself against the gates until they break open. I get more and more production work these days, so I am getting experience and at the same time I am building a business that will work, Hollywood production budgets or not.

If only you were in alaska. At 7pm (this time of year) we have what looks like mid day sun for at least another 2 hours, then 2 hours of magic hour and maybe an hour or two you could do Day for night with.

You can go into after effects and rotoscope everything. I did that for a similar shot that lasted 40secs. It took forever and was just one person walking down the street. we shot with a locked down tripod (well we did a pull out from a clock tower to start the plate, but locked it once it got to its final position. We shot the crowd and then cleared the area and had the actor walk down the street. (with a lock on the camera our rotoscope didnt always have to be exact.)

I was doing a screening cut, and was running out of time (we got a DVD out about 30 minutes before the premiere) so top quality wasnt my concern. DVCPRO50 however is 4:2:2 (I believe) and so is most mPEG DVD compression, so in terms of colorspace, I didnt think I was loosing much (other than the cosine compression messing around with the MPEG compression) What was important is that I did not trust adobe MPEG exporter, because I had problems with it in the past, and to get to a 3d party program I needed a full rendered version (and didnt have an extra 150Gb to do another uncompressed render) DVCPRO50 to DVD seemed very high quality to me, but DV at 4:2:0 you would have some colorspace loss. As for how to downconvert, you cant actually import HD footage into an SD timeline. You need your cut on an HD timeline, but when you click file->export->movie select options and set the render codec from HDV to either DV or VFW (video for windows, basicly .AVI) and set your compression codec and other render settings. Actually come to think of it, I might have rendered the MPEG directly from the timeline. I dont remember. I had a 24 hour edit session then 6 hours of compression/export so I was a little loopy at the end. I might have done it both ways, after one or the other messed up.

your not likely to find one anyway. They have been on the market for what, 6 months? I doubt anybody is over their 5K purchase yet. I would save up the money, or find someone who has one and beg/borrow it to shoot your flick.

I havent gotten a hold of the camera yet to see it up close, but I know I want a follow focus. The complex blocking and camera work I have planned pretty much nessecitates a folowfocus. What options do I have for mounting some 15mm bars and a followfocus? I need a cheap follow, so I will probably buy one used, but the support is what I am worried about. From pictures I see no mounting point. Uness a box mounts between the camera and tripod plate. Anyone who know more than me feel free to chime in.

When I was burning my latest feature from HD, I downconverted to an uncompressed SD file (150 GB for 90mins) and did the color correction. the reason for this was the supersampling made the color space almost 4:4:4 (amost because MPEG artifacting obviously affects colorspace) and then converted that to MPEG.) once the color correction was done I rendered out to a DV file (18Gb) then I used Adobes DVD program to transcode it. If you dont need to do color correction you can render to a DV file, or better a DVCPRO50 codec if availible. then do your final MPEG compression.

I have never worked with the SDX-900, but I hear its good. I got to try out their SPD(?)-700, they P2 camera (the cheaper one without cine-gama) and found it was really quite good. Cheap for DVCPRO50 recording. I never liked the DVX-100 pulldown. I always shot in Advanced mode so I could do my own pull down.

How is the 24p encoded? Sometimes they add a 2:3 pulldown, sometimes they just duplicate every 4th frame. If they are duplicating you have to remove that frame and add the 3:2:2:3 pulldown. If it already has a pulldown, sometimes it is not the highest quality pull down. In this case you can pull the original frames from the pulldown with special software, and then add a higher quality pulldown. This can reduce the stutter effect after the fact. Atavist had some great sugesstions for reducing stutter while shooting.

I sat through half of that music video wondering just what you were talking about. But wow, given the time that was shot, it was pretty good. I wonder if they had that camera on the sidelines cranked up just for that slowmo shot when the lights come up after the lasers. I think I am going to add a new tradition to my filmmaking. Everytime we wrap on a movie, I am going to take the camera and smash it until it breaks. Sort of like symbology right? (sorry, I have been watching boondock saints back to back with bush's speaches.) eh, hopefully I remember to take the mag off before I do it.

Does the chip use dual or quad readout (I understand if you wont confirm in public) but one thing that wont fly is what the JVC did, useing 2 readouts and setups which for some reason, under the wrong conditions makes the response of each side up to 2% off, presenting with a visible line on screen that can only be corrected by reframing/compromising elements of the shots etc. I also understand that the problem they faced was pulling HD off a 1/3" chip without overheating. Perhaps with a full 35mm gate, the heat would be disapated and not cause this problem. I also like the idea of being modular. I dont like the should mount/gun stock thing. It doesnt seem ergonomical. I dont know, maybe I will be proven wrong, but I have gotten so used to an ENG type setup that I would rather see something ballanced like that. Dont get me wrong, I like the styeling, but it seems like you are supporting the weight on your arms, and the stock just stabalizes the camera. I would like to see a cage that holds a high speed RAID system and Anton Bauer power system behind your shoulder to counterbalance the front-end. And if its possible to adjust the position of the raid and batery to adjust to different lens weights, that would be cool too. I like the cage with the three handles. Integrate that into an ENG type cage, I would buy it. One accessory I would like to see as soon as possible is a monitor set up to show Waveform and vetroscope. Given that every pixel is essentially a light sensor, I would love to see what they say. Maybe you could even set up a waveform monitor that is more Cine-like rather than NTSC engeneer tool. Supose you have a line that indicates 18% greycard exposure, then have a logarythmic scale showing 1 stop overexposed, 2stops etc (presumably up to 6stop over I hope?) and then have the same scale below the line showing underexposure. (stops seem more useable than IRE to me) just a few thoughts.

It should be noted however that the resolution is probably refering to a one-chip design. So yes 4K resolution, but when you have contrasting colors with hard edges, apperent sharpness is reduced. I assume the bayer RGB data is pulled after the file is written in RAW, so I would assume they can apply a high quality processing regime without worry about FPGAs and heat disapation and battery life weight etc. This is the true value of what they are talking about. It is as close to a film workflow as possible. You maintain all possible quality until later. Yes its only in theory right now, but they are serious. They have serious cash and even got a guy from AJA to come on board, so tech wise, they may be capable of it. In theory its actually quite simple design. I bet they have everything down and working except the actual imaging sensor, that they will be fine-tuning before mass production. They have made several bold statements, given they dont have a working product. If they dont come out with what they claim, they will loose this gamble. Acording to most calculations, at 24fps, you would yeild about 300Mb/sec, or aprox 1TB per hour. A TB today costs somewhere between $1000 - $600, lower if you get a high capacity server. Assume a 10:1 shoot of a 2 hour feature. Thats 20 TBs of data. 16K for the server, maybe 5K for double tape backup. The 160GB drives they support presumably hold 6 minutes of footage, about the same as 200' in 16mm. If you need more you can hook up a Raid drive (more set up time of course, a downfall. hopefully they can support more space in the future?) Also its doubtfull that even a SATA could ingeste 300megs a second. I would imagine you would need more. Perhaps this camera can hold more than one drive, but each drive is limited to 160Gb. There are a lot of varibles to this project, but given the limited data they have released, it seems promising. No it wont change filmmaking, but it will put a dent in the super16 market. The idea is to spur higher quality productions. I doubt any 35mm film will turn to this camera, but maybe one that planned to shoot on an SDX-900 would trade up to this.