Mark Wilson

Now that the very sad news of John's much too soon death has reached us.

 

I would propose that we begin to discuss the idea of a film fund named in his honour. The fund would receive donations from working forum members each year, all voluntary of course, and then at the end of the year we would nominate 3-4 forum members who are students enrolled full time in a post secondary film school.

 

From these nominees we would vote on the best candidate to receieve the John Pytlak Award for use in furthering their studies of film. Voting might be a bit complicated so we could just have 3-5 senior forum members to make the call.

 

The award would be open to any forum member from around the globe of course.

 

Since John contributed so much to this forum it would seem appropriate that we could use the forum to help the next generation of filmmakers.

 

Tim would you support this idea as forum "boss"?

 

Any others like this idea?

 

Thanks,

R,

In the meantime, may I make a suggestion?

When I was making a blood donation a few days ago, I was given a pamphlet of ideas for encouraging friends and acquaintances to become blood donors.

One of the biggest users of blood products are cancer patients, and simply becoming a regular donor is an excellent way of remembering someone who has succumed to cancer, or to show solidarity with someone who is still battling the disease.

This is particualrly relevant to John, because New York traditionally faces severe blood shortages at this time of year.

Contrary to popular opinion, unpaid volunteers provide the vast bulk of the blood used in hospitals. In the US, most hospitals will only use paid donations as a last resort, and in many countries they are illegal. The sad fact is that a person seeking payment for a pint of their own blood is probably the last person you'd want to buy it from!

Making a donation costs you nothing but a bit of time, and the best thing is, no matter who you are or how much money you have, you all donate the same amount!

bash. bang. bash. bang.... now where did i leave those bandages. oh sod it i'll just rap my head with toilet paper, i'm sure it's almost as good and it's definately cheaper... my head...it's... still... bleading... feeling drousy...

You did open a fresh packet did you?

Don't use the one that's already on the roll holder, you don't know where it's been. :lol:

I haven't visited this forum for some time, and it's interesting reading some of the threads from 18 months to two years back. People are still making the same predictions, most of which seem remarkably reluctant to come to pass.

Come Monday I will be shooting a scene for a fake documentary on 16mm with a fixed 180 degree shutter.

 

Let me know if yo have some tips or answers.

 

Nathan

Basically, if you shoot NTSC video at 24fps you will get one or two thin, slightly flickery horizontal lines slowly creeping down the screen. It's not terribly noticeable, and lots of movies and TV shows have been released with images like that, and nobody seems to notice.

However if you want perfect results you need to have the camera running at the same frame rate as the video. One cheap workaround is to have the video transferred to 25 fps PAL and run the camera at crystal 25fps if this is available . Note: You still have to move the framing bar off the viewfinder screen before the action starts.

The main problem with this technique is that you can't do sync-sound since the 4% pitch change will be very noticeable when you slow the film (and sync tape) back to 24 fps.

The usual workaround for that was to always have the actor's back to the camera when he/she is supposed to be speaking with the TV in shot, and then dub their dialogue in later. That avoids the need for lip-syncing.

In the past this still tended to a fairly pricey undertaking if you didn't live in a PAL country, but nowadays this can be done economically by making an NTSC recording on DVD and playing it back with a "international" model DVD player (ie the ones you buy in department stores for $29.95), with the output set to PAL.

Most of these are designed to work anywhere in the world and the signal output can usually be set to either PAL or NTSC, (but check this) with very little difference in the image quality.

I'm a bit puzzled.

On the CML site they say: "As usual click on a frame for the full res version, they're 74Mb each!!"

But, a 4K 16 x 9 sensor would have about 9 megapixels. If it had 16-bit analog to digital conversion that would mean a raw data rate of 18 megabytes per frame with no compression at all.

Even if it had separate red green and blue pickups for each of the 4K pixels, (which it doesn't) that would still only a mean a file size of 54 megabytes for 16 bit RGB uncompressed.

So where do they get 74 megabytes from, and what possible use is such a massive file size anyway? (No I don't feel particularly inclined to download the file to find out!)

The cinema pays the distributor a pecentage of the box office takings. That percentage varies through the course of a run - it's generally higher for the first couple of weeks, arguably because the cinema gets the benefit fo the distributor's publicity. Figures around 60% going down to 50% or 40%may be typical, I think.

 

Your exhibitor friend is quite correct to say that a print is paid for in the first few rows of seats in the first couple of screenings. But the flow of cash isn't quite as straightforward, and it will get even more complex for digital distribution and exhibition.

So basically, changing from film to electronic projection is of no real benefit at all to the exhibitor. At premium adult pricing levels he still pockets at at least $8 - $9 for each bum on each seat, and that's before any sales of overpriced popcorn, ice cream, sweets and bulk soda pop.

When you put it that way I can see why there are new multiplexes popping up everywhere, and also why they can make money even when there's hardly anybody in them most of the time.

I can appreciate that the above cash flow description is probably a little bit simplistic, but nonetheless, you can't get away from the fact that 60 less patrons is still $1,000 less money changing hands, no matter how you slice it.

I heard the same thing 10 years ago.

Actually 2006 marks the 50th anniversary of the famous Banner Headline in Variety "Film is Dead!"

This prediction was prompted by the introduction of the first Ampex "2 inch quad" videotape recorder, the size of two refrigerators sitting side-by-side, which was really only good for time-shifting network programs. Editing was only possible by cutting up the tape the way you would with film, except that unlike film, you couldn't actually see what you were cutting!

Strangely enough, 50 years on, film is not only not dead, it hasn't even applied for its free bus pass yet :D

Last night overheard an interesting conversation between (I presume) the owner of a cinema and one of his customers, who was wondering when the theatre was going to be "converted to digital". The customer seemed rather taken aback to hear that the cinema owner had no immediate plans to do this, although he said he might consider installing a small projector for the pre-program ads.

When the customer brought up the subject of print manufacturing costs, apparently around A$2,000 to $3000 for the average feature, the owner somewhat tiredly and stroppily said:

Look, you see those rows of seats? There's sixty seats in each row, at $17 per adult bum on each seat that's a thousand bucks a row. Three rows tops, there's your print cost. And that's not counting the money they spend on popcorn, ice cream and post-mix soft drink, which is where the real money is.

You've only got to lose three rows worth of customers OVER THE ENTIRE SCREENING RUN because your competitor is still showing film which they think is better, and that's the end of that advantage, plus, you're still making payments on a digital projector that you've got bugger-all chance of fixing yourself if it breaks down, while your competition is using a projector he's most likely paid off several years ago.

He suddenly dashed off before I could ask him any questions myself, but what I wanted to know is, how exactly is the cinema owner charged for a film print. Do they pay a fixed fee, a percentage of the takings, or both? And what happens to the prints once the run is ended?

The "Other Bolyn Girl" is currently in production in the UK as this is written October 2006

Is that all, or just what's going in the UK? I didn't find the French site very download-friendly.

And do you know if everybody has been paying the standard rates for the Genesis, or did Panavision make some sort of introductory discount?

This year in quick sucession we saw three films shot with the Genesis released in cinemas

Scary Movie IV, Superman Returns and Click!

There are also Apocalypto and Flyboys, apparently not yet ready for general release.

Are there any other Genesis features currently in production? Information about this seems to be very hard to come by.

I've recently been looking at the new Sony X-series "Bravia" LCD TVs which feature (for the first time) true 1920 x 1080 full-HD displays. The 52" model in particular produces stunning images, and I was wondering how practical it would be to use one of those in conjunction with a standard 35mm movie camera as an inexpensive video-to film transfer device.

While I don't imagine it would ever be up to Arrilaser standard, generally if the project can't afford to use the Arrilaser, chances are it would be shot on a lower-cost format where the image quality probably wouldn't justify it anyway. But in any case, if there did turn out to be investor interest, there would be nothing to stop the producers going back and getting it re-done with the Arrilaser.

Apart from that, a 52" Bravia would make an extremely impressive and cost-effective 1920 x 1080 on-set monitor, and if all else failed, you could still watch broadcast HDTV programs with its in-built tuner!

l nearly finished composing an answer to this, when my thumb hit the wrong key, and the entire message was deleted. Unlike most test editing software, there is no "undo" button. So I have to start again.

Don't you HATE that! With me it usually happens with cheap keyboards with a very narrow surround such as you often find in Internet Kiosks. My worst experience of that kind was when I was holidaying in Vanuatu, when I was paying a fortune for Internet access and either the generator would cough and splutter and crash the computer, or I'd accidentally delete everything the way you have. I have an original IBM PC keyboard, and that never used to happen with those; IBM put an enormous amount of R&D into their keyboard designs. Unfortunately, it won't work properly on a modern PC.

Anyway, thanks for the information. This is starting to sound like one of those never-ending "Yes, but what actual PROBLEM does this SOLVE?" issues :)

Just one other question if you don't mind:

Do the negative matchers make any use of the key/timecodes at all, or do they still do that the traditional way as well?

I had always been under the impression that fully computerized off-line editing of film was a similar procedure to off-line editing of videotape.

That is, after the edit decisions has made on the computer screen, an automated machine would find the relevant frames by reading the timecode or keycode information on the negative, and then do the cut and splice automatically. At least, that was what a Kodak rep told me back when keycode was launched. Admittedly, he did go to some trouble to emphasize that keycode had something to offer even to diehard traditionalists, since reading the keycode numbers was likely to be faster and more accurate than traditional negative matching. I still have the free magnifying glasses they were handing out!

But I have been told that this is not the case, that all editing is still done by hand, although it does make use of the frame codes, but only in the form of an edit decision list printed out by the editing computer.

I find it hard to believe that nobody has been able to come up with a machine that could do this, or is it more a "horses for courses" situation.

Also, when editing film, is it normal to overlap frames, or do they make a butt splice?

PV buys Plus8

If you remember, Plus8Digital provided the cameras and lenses for Star Wars Episode 3 in Sydney a few years back.

As for neg, I am looking at offering super8 vision colour neg, but I am also looking at offering Ektachrome 64t processed as a low contrast colour neg. The benefit here would be that it would be easier (and hence cheaper) to telecine as it wouldn't have the orange colour masking.

Cheers,

Richard

 

nano lab :D

Hi Richard,

Do you have any plans to offer telecine? I actually raised this subject on this thread.

I think it would be great if there was somewhere you could get 8mm negative stock processed and then telecine'd onto DVD as a DV-avi file.

I've been doing some experiments using a personal MP3 player that has line input for recording sound, in conjunction with Windows Movie Maker, and it really works well. The one I'm using produces standard stereo MP3 recordings which you can import into Movie Maker through the USB port. For something that costs less than A$100, the sound quality is truly astounding.

One of the advantages of this sytem would be that film students could get some real-world experience using similar film stocks to the ones the big boys are using, but for a small fraction of the cost.

So while this method is very cost effective and fits into the desktop editing workflow, it certainly has its drawbacks. Of course I just saw a film I gaffed transferred to DVcam, and it looked significantly better... on a 13" monitor!

Surely this will be a function of the actual editing technique. With Windows Movie Maker, if you just make simple cuts for editing, there should be no generation loss, since the output file is made simply by copying parts of the original DV-AVI import file, which is itself a direct copy of what is on th e miniDV tape. I've seen really excellent DVDs made from images originally shot on better quality miniDV camcorders.

These are just some ideas I have been kicking around for some time.

Most of the current generation miniDV (or Digital-8) consumer digital camcorders produce very impressive results compared to what was available just a few years ago, and for a fraction of the price.

Windows XP comes with a program called Windows Movie Maker, which, if you keep your video files in the DV-AVI format throughout the editing process, eventually results in a DVD with image quality very close to that the original digital camera tapes.

(Windows Movie Maker doesn't support DVD burning directly, and so you have to turn the final edited .avi file into a DVD with a DVD "authoring" program in a separate step, but this is usually quite straightforward. Suitable software often comes bundled with DVD burners).

It has occured to me that this could be an excellent way for beginning cinematographers to get some high quality output without spending too much money. If there was some way to get your 16mm (or whatever) footage transferred onto the same tape format as a consumer digital camcorder, the rest of the process from raw footage to "presentation" DVD could be done for little more than the cost of a blank DVD. "Bulk" distribution via recordable DVD is dirt cheap and you can even make impressive-looking DVD labels for next to nothing.

If you have access to any sort of crystal-sync camera, the audio could be recorded on a standard cassette deck, or even better, one of the new personal MP3 players that have line record inputs. Windows Movie Maker lets you import separate audio files onto the video timeline, and you could sync these up by using a variation of the old-fashioned clapper board technique, simply sliding the audio clips along the timeline until the spike on the Audio waveform lines up with the frame where the clapper closes. Most consumer cassette decks have quite good record/playback speed stability as long as the tapes are played back on the same machine they were recorded on. For short takes they would be more than adequate.

The next step would be to let WMM convert all that to an "intermediate" avi output file, which would consist of a continuous a collection of wild takes but with the sound and image locked into sync. You'd then re-import that into WMM and then do your non-linear editing in the normal manner. You can also add music and titles and quite a good range of special effects.

Windows Movie Maker may not be the be-all and end-all, but it is a surprisingly sophisticated program for a piece of freeware. About the real deficiency is that it doesn't allow you you do insert editing (well not easily).

Apart from those limitations, there's little to distinguish a DVD made using Movie Maker from one made with a much more expensive editing program.

The question is, how readily available is telecine transfer to MiniDV or Digital-8? Or can you get it supplied as an AVI file on a DVD? MiniDV AVI chews up 1 Gigibyte every five minutes, so you'd only get about 20 minutes per disc, but that would be OK, considering the low cost of discs these days.

On my last feature which was on 35, one of my camera assistants was extremely excited about his next project which was going to be his first on HD.

 

AJB

Yes but what exactly was he excited ABOUT?

When you say "his next project" do mean that it is actually "His" or just his next job?

Then again, if my current job was a 35mm chewing gum commercial and my next job was another Star Wars or Superman film on HD, well I'd probably be excited too.

His excitement may simply be that he will at last get some HD experience under his belt, or from simple ignorance. I certainly know enough people who were extremely excited when they got to work on their first film job (of any gauge). B)

Actually David, I aspire to work with a IIC wrapped in a sound blanket. I'm doing this shoot with a Konvas 1M inside a padded fruit crate :D

 

But it's still 35mm!!

Actually this is something I have often wondered about.

I can imagine that on a sound stage using boom microphones obviously you'd need an extremely quiet camera. But outdoors using wireless mics, how much of a problem is the noise from the average MOS camera such as an Arri 3? Do people get away with it? I suppose it all depends on the sort of lens you use.

I've heard that most "Bollywood" films are shot silent with any old clunker they have to hand and the dialogue is dubbed in later.

Would it be practical to record just the sound of the camera itself and then use that to cancel it out of the main sound recording in post-production?

Mark, yes, I am aware of the physical equipment limitations of 70mm and Anamorphic, but that wasn't the crux of the point. Practicality aside, if the issue of 35mm vs HD is truly one of quality, why isn't there popular outcry for more 70mm in general by audiences, by exhibitors, by distributors, and by DPs and Directors if the highest quality is what everyone wants?

 

In terms of archiving, which you bring up, I'm not sure that that argument holds much anymore with the wider appeal of the DI step in the process. Inevitably, whether image acquisition occurred on film or with HD, it all heads to a harddrive anyway then gets scanned back onto film if it's going to distribution.

My point was that in practical terms, the improvement of 70mm over 35mm film is likely to be perceived to be considerably less than the improvement of 35mm film over 1920 x 1080 HD. Anamorphic production has very little to do with picture quality, and everything to do with the way the Producer/director wants to tell the story.

As far as archiving goes, where a Digital Intermediate is used, the big studios still archive the original negative, not the distribution master. This will give them the option to re-edit the movie (or TV show) if and when new technologies become available. At present, there is still more information on most negatives than can be extracted with current generation scanning equipment. However if you shoot something on videotape, whatever information you are able to get of the tape now, is all there ever will be.

If that's the case, why isn't there universal scorn for 35mm when 70mm is available and is clearly "better?" Why don't people mock anything that isn't shot in the clearly more advanced Anamorphic format?

This is making the common assumption that the preference for 35mm film over HD video starts and stops with resolution. ANY sort of film, (16, 35 or 70mm) is going to have better highlight handling than HD, which is one of the things contributing to the film "look". Unless you are going to project in 70mm (pretty rare these days) most of the benefits of originating in 70mm (as against 35mm) would be lost in the 35mm post/distribution/ projection chain.

70mm cameras are harder to get, the range of available accessories and lenses is much smaller, and there will be less crew familiarity. There will also be greater stock and equipment costs, although that is not usually an issue with bigger productions.

Shooting anamorphic introduces its own compromises, and creatively, the majority of productions wouldn't benefit from it anyway. It also becomes a liability when the movie is released on home video.

If nothing else, the main reason larger production companies prefer film origination is that is has the greatest chance of remaining viable, whatever advanced projection or display technologies appear in the future.

While it's easy enough to comply with your "housekeeping' directives, I'm not sure why lurkers who have never posted need to be so concerned, since you can easily "read the mail" without logging in, unlike forums such as CML where you MUST log in even just to browse.

I would hope that anyone with any information on such a thing would have the good sense and taste not to share it on a public internet forum, one that can be accessed through a Google search.

Huh?

The facts that he was a flamboyant homosexual and that he was brutally murdered are surely not in dispute. Even if you happen to think his sexual orientation was his own business, what's your problem with someone wondering if the case was ever solved or not? Bob's dead; and his homosexuality was widely known, so I'm not sure who you think this is going to hurt now.

I've always wondered what the true story was behind the murder of Panavision Founder Robert Gottschalk.

The story I heard from one of Bob's contemporaries was that his taste for rough-trade Paramours-dujour eventually backfired and he was beaten and stabbed to death in a frenzied attack in his home.

Anybody got any info? Did they ever catch the guy?

I put a kodak sticker on the side of my K3 - I've since removed but the area still has gooey residue on the surface (surface has tiny bubbley relief). What solvent can I use to remove all residue? Thanks.

Pure peppermint oil is excellent and doesn't normally attack paint, smells pretty good, and a couple of drops on a handkerchief will do wonders for a blocked nose too :)

This is particularly recommended for getting adhesive goo off Perspex (Lucite) and similar shiny plastic surfaces.

Eucalyptus oil is cheaper but it isn't as fast-acting, although it will also do the job.

And finally, IP's are generally made on stocks that are more fine grained than camera stocks. The telecine picks up on this and generally yields a "quieter" picture from IP's than from negatives.

Errrr... but surely the grain from the original neg is going to be faithfully copied onto the IP. It's not going to make any difference to the telecine whether the grain is inherent in the stock or is simply a "photograph" of the camera neg's grain!

However, the IP stock can be very fine grained so that it doesn't add any more grain than necessary, since sensitivity is not an issue.

In terms of getting more noise if you create a low-contrast image with an HD camera, it sort of depends on how you create that low-contrast image. For example, if you do it by using more fill light, you don't add more noise to the image. Nor by using Low Contrast filters.

I don't get it. If for example your camera has a 10-bit luminance output and the maximum output possible for each pixel was 700 millivolts, that means each digital "step" represents about .7 millivolts. If by one means or another you restricted the output signal to a limited output voltage range, say between 550 and 700 millivolts by lowering the contrast by some means, the output voltage would only be changing over a 150 millivolt range, which is about 210 x .7 milivolt digital "steps", meaning the luminance would only be encoded with somewhat less than eight bits! Wouldn't that introduce quantitization noise when that was "expanded" to the full 10 bits, regardless of where the 210-step "window" lies on the exposure curve?