Scot McPhie

I've written a film calculator called Filmulator - it's better than Kodak's becasue you can calculate development and telecine costs, and how much hard drive space you'd need. You can download it here: http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/show/show.htm - I managed to get around 4:1 for my feature In My Image although admittedly our camera set ups/shot selections weren't overly ambitious! :D Scot

Here's mine I normally operate it with a follow focus and rod mounted matte box but I took them off for a bit of quick run-and-gun work. I dispensed with a viewfinder and was going to add an LCD video split but decided I liked the parallax method better. I've had my forearm crystal synched so synching the audio with the phonogram playback isn't a problem. The camera doesn't give too much sound either when operating - the natural wood body work tends to act as a barney fairly well. As you can see from the following photograph I've purposely kept the inner mechanics fairly simple to be easy to repair. In fact the whole thing only cost me $9.85 to build - and $3 of that was for the coke bottle I ground down to make the lense. My next step is to make 50,000 feet of film for it - I've developed a method where I can reconstitue laundry soap to make the cellulose base for the film - it has the added bonus of cleaning the camera as it runs. I should be able to make the film for about a quarter of a cent per foot this way. My overall aim is to make a feature for $23.95. At the moment I'm feeling pretty confident about it. I've just got to make a boom mike out of my old paint roller and I'm set. Scot

Give his some examples to work with first (you don't even have to have film loaded in the camera - just run it for the noise) - because frankly I don't thnk he's done it before - I think he'll find it's imposible to get a satisfactory result. In my experience you can definitely improve it but it will always be there - and the quality of the dialogue itself will suffer as a result of the filtering too. Post some examples though - I'm open minded - just bitterl!! I don't know if you could get a 30 second clip in synch though - haven't tried it with my R16 - my gut reaction is no though. You could try audio resolving sofware too - to adjsut the audio wav to the vagaries of the camera (by virtue of a synch pulse) - do a search at http://www.filmshooting.com./scripts/forum/viewforum.php?f=1 for more on this - two members there have written such software. The advantage with syching your R16 though would be you could shoot music film clips where the singers are miming to a recording of their song and have their lip synching remain in synch (providing they did it in synch to begin with - if you know what I mean) - and the noise of the caemra wouldn't matter. Why not ask on the sound forum here what they think abot removing the camera sound. Scot

The Film Group will be able to do it for you - but have you got a barney/sound deadening device because the camera sound will be quite loud and may make your synched live audio unuseable. Scot

I think the thing is Mark if people are watching your film and worrying about if it was colour corrected in a digital intermediate or purely in film then you've got other major issues you've overlooked. I've sat on the fence here but now I've decided I don't understand what your point is?? There's alot of different post production routes you can take, done properly they will all be fine - splitting hairs over them ultimately becomes unproductive and a distraction from actual film making. Scot

I'm just finishing up a short on HDV - my experience of it has been the extra resolution is great and adds alot, however the colours really suck. I think it really is a transitional format though as the low cost HD becomes more and more accesable - eg the Panasonic HVX Scot

I once worked some of this out - see this thread Scot

Have you got the gear to do that test yourself Santo? Scot

Going back to the original question - why are you looking at HDV as your NLE format to transfer to? I know there are codecs for it, and a certain amount of support for it, but it has huge colour compression. I've never done it but I've heard there are transfer houses that will do still image captures direct to hard drive. that way you could have a numbered sequence of stills at uncompressed HD quality- you could render them out to SD size clips for editing and then (once edited) run all those settings over the originals and get an HD master to print back to film on. This is all with in the realms of current consumer PC technology and would probably save you money over the normal HD workflows, as well as avoiding most (if not all) of the digital artefacts many referred of the posters to here. Once the HD DVD burners are out you could probably even master to your own HD DVD. Scot

http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/inmyimage/imishort.wmv Scot

I don't think kind of approach will yield high production values - why not use Super 16 - which is alot cheaper and can be blown up to 35 if needed. He's a thread that might be of interest too" http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=10714 Scot Thanks

I was reading in this article on anamorphic lenses the following Now I'm wanting to do some shots with the Panasonic 16:9 anamorphic lense (for the DVX100) on my Beaulieu R16 on the Angeniux 10-120 zoom. Just wondering how many of these observations would apply to this set up. It's probably reasonable to assume that the Panasonic 16:9 is designed also as a "non zoom through" and would also suffer from astigmatism at hese extremes. I'm going to do a number of tests to look at this - but has anyone already tried this and what are your experiences? The zoom function is useful in helping get the shallow dof - but there's got to be a point where it's a trade off between that and the astigmatism becoming prevalent. I'd like to know at what focal length that becomes apparent, and what f stop for the low light close ups it becomes a problem. Any experiences anyone could share would be useful. Thanks Scot

Thanks for your reply Marty - but I'm still a bit unclear - does the socket on the side of the camera emmit an electrical pulse - or is it a mechanical socket with the electrical pulse being generated by the pilot tone device? thanks Scot

Does anyone know what the level coming out of the sych pulse socket on the side of the R16 is - what I mean is - do you need the pilottone converter to make it a safe or useable level to plug it into an audio recording device - or can you just plug it straight into a recording device as is? -- I'm trying to get my "super rig" going - I've got the video split going into a miniDV camcorder - both as a view finder and to record the split as well - but I'm thinking of running audio into it too - one channel for the sych pulse and one channel for the live audio. I'm going to mount a shot gun mic on the shoulder rig as well to record the audio. Of course the camera will be as noisy as hell - but once I resolve the live audio I will have a frame accurate reference version for the over dubs. As far as over dubs go - I'm thinking two things - one is to record the actors doing the scene again directly after we've filmed it - this will go straight onto the minidv tape (with out the r16 running) and will be used for over dubs (hopefully preserving performance qualities and ambient sound/acoustic properties) - I've found through experience alot of the time the synch on these can be made to match reasonable well. The other is the convential overdub process - in a studio - but once I've cut a scene together it'd be interesting to try and worldise it as Lucas refers to it - ie taking the recording outside and playing it through a set of speakers in the environment it was meant to come from and then recording that. The good thing about the minidv tape too is that capturing it wuold be a breeze - I'd have every take as seen through the video split with the audio for reference and then I'd have it followed the actual noise free audio for the overdubs - it'd all be in sequential order which would make working with it all and finding what you need fairly easy. Anyway any tips on the pulse socket on the R16 would be appreciated thanks Scot

We did our final filming on Hold Me Tight last weekend - this included a fairly big set we built. Frame grabs are here (this is all HDV): http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/hold/stills3.htm and pics of the set building are here: http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/hold/bts4.htm Now for the editing :-) Scot

Hi guys - first of all the site is fixed and virus free - the short film Hold Me Tight is the one where we switched from 16mm to HDV - we just had our last shoot on that on the weekend - I'll post some pics soon - on In My Image we used about 230 rolls :wacko: but we were learning :lol: the running time of the film is 1 hour and 32 mins I agree too - good results on film are alot more staisfying than video Scot

There are some screen shots from my film In My Image here http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/inmyimage/stillphot.htm the main page is here: http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/inmyimage/image.htm - don't go to the very main page http://www.mango-a-gogo.com for another a few hours after the time I posted this - someone has hacked that page and put a virus on it - my web host admin is removing it and lookng into it now - the pages I've linked to there though are safe Scot

Thanks David, asparaco and John for your replies - it shows me that essentially the effect is easily possible today with out having to go to the lengths that Kubrick went to - which is good news - I'm going to try it one day! I agree David re Dangerous Liaisons - it is a more heightened kind of a story and you would need a more heightened style of lighting for it - the style Barry Lyndon was lit in wouldn't suit it - so it's an unfair comparison in that sense - although it does illustrate the different lighting styles well, though with out regard to their purpose. Scot

I watched Barry Lyndon the other night - it's an absolute land mark in it's lighting - for everyone who hasn't seen it - and it's shot composition was beautiful too - but man I thought the camera work sucked - all those zooms and pans - a couple I thought were okay but overall I found that too obvious or contrived -- I also found the voice over didn't work for me - made me feel I was watching something rather than experiencing it. But anyway back to the lighting (as everyone probably knows) it was shot with virtually no artifical light at all - virtually all natural light - and the candle shots were amazing and created so much mood - really giving us an idea of what things would have been like back then -- like nothing I've ever seen on film before. I think he used a lense made for NASA that worked at f0.7 I think at the time there were only 10 in the world. The effect was so great I wanted to compare it to something else (with similar settings etc) so I put on Dangerous Liaisons (and as much as I love that film) I almost couldn't watch it - it looked so fake in comaparison - the candle lit scenes there were essentially wahsed out with artificial fill and had none of the mood that Lyndon had - I truly won't be able to look at another period film in the same way again. Does anyone know more about these candlelight shots and what asa the film was -- also what are the fastest lenses generally availalbe now - anything like the lense he used but easier to get hold of?

I've done it - it works alright - there's a few demo clips of how it works here: http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/show/show.htm and a discussion on it here: http://www.filmshooting.com./scripts/forum...opic.php?t=8776 Scot

I think the Widescreen centre in London are offering processing check this thread Scot

The colour probably had more to do with the stock (not the format) than the lense. The lense wasn't your average lense anyway: Source Try this too I haven't given it too much thought but I'm sure certain parts of the look could be replicated. Good luck Scot

Hey Lav you're in Bris Vegas - same here :-) -- glad the prog is of help -- what are you working on at the moment? - my projects are here www.mango-a-gogo.com Scot

Sorry no Mac version - my programmnig skills are about 20 years behind the current state! (hence the simple interface on the prog) -- aren't there ways you canrun DOS programmes on Macs -- if you have got a simple basic complier I could send you the source code and you could compile it I guess Scot

I've written a programme to calculate running times and lengths for various film stocks - it's much like the Kodak Film Calculator except you can also factor in cost of purchase, development and telecine. You can also estimate file sizes for capture to PC with various codecs - which would be useful for people shooting only video as well as those telecining film. Anyway it's in a beta release now - if anyone would like to give it a go and give me some feedback. I think the results should be accurate (but can't be guaranteed yet) they seem to tally pretty well with what's on the kodak site - except some of the metre results are slightly out as the Kodak site doesn't quite have the conversion rate right (1 foot = 0.3048 metres not 0.3). For Super 8 the programme will also allow you to work in cartridges rather than just feet or metres. I'll put some screen shots up etc later - any feedback or errors please let me know -- BTW it's got a very simple interface (intentionally!) http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/filmulator.zip - it's only 26Kb - it'a a dos executable - I should mention too the save function doesn't work yet