Mark Dunn

The blades are lightly lubricated where they are in contact; I can see the oil in one of my lenses. It's not a problem. In still camera lenses meant for viewing at full aperture and stopping-down only during exposure, they might gum up, but cine lenses stay stopped-down, so they're fine.

ND3 or N3 is the correct designation, meaning point 3 or absorbing one stop. So, ND6 for 2stops, ND9 for three. If an ND really had a density of 3.0 (I suppose the designation would be ND30) it would absorb ten stops. Maybe handy for the surface of Mercury, but not needed anywhere on this planet.

By way of demonstration, here's the engraving on a Tiffen 85N6.

Horizontal scratching can happen on a roll. IIRC it's called cinching. But if it's white, that implies a print from neg, which is a bit suspicious, since all the lunar surface cine was reversal.

I've just taken the unusual step of reading your post properly.

Sorry, for some reason I got 'some PARTS' rather than some PRINTS into my brain. Your explanation is perfectly clear.

I do know my printing pathways but my reading needs some work. Thanks for your patience.

PS Can't wait for series 2 of 'Big Love' to cross the pond.

If the fogging was at the beginning of the roll then you have your culprit- it happened during loading. How much film did you run off? IIRC 5' or so is enough, but there's plenty spare- in the case of 8mm, the roll is 8' over length so I assume 16mm loads have at least as much.

Interpositive stock is a "negative" stock, print stock is a "negative" stock -- all stocks are... except for "reversal" stocks. A negative of a negative is a positive. Interpositive and internegative is the same stock. If you make a negative of a negative, you get a positive. And if you make a negative of that positive, you get another negative.

I'm aware of that which is why I chose my terms carefully. Perhaps 'negative-working' is an unfamiliar term to you.

I'll rephrase the question.

Presumably the scene printed on sound stock had to go to interpos first, then to be printed again to yield a neg for the neg cut.

Surely sound stock is negative-working- or did they go to interpos first?

Correct me if I'm wrong but surely the only reason to use double perf is for high-speed. (Although we would have saved some money if we'd used it at film school and been able to flop a shot instead of paying for an optical).

I think you will find that the 65mm Panaflex used weighs about 25/30 lbs with a 500' mag .

Most of the production stills I've seen show an unblimped Mitchell. But I can't gainsay you.

I was lucky enough to see it on January 1st., 2001 in 70mm. at the NFT with two Kubricks in the audience. Marvellous.

>1. How were those handheld shots onboard the Jupiter-bound space ship done, given the weight and size of >the 65mm camera? There's one that follows Bowman out of the pod bay and tilts up 90 degrees as he >climbs a ladder -- that Panaflex camera must have weighed a ton! I can't imagine holding that on my >shoulder and then tilting straight up, I think most camera operators' backs would go out doing that

The classic hand-held shot is the descent of the astronauts into the TMA-1 crater. Kubrick operated that himself, with the crew backstopping him so he didn't fall backwards. So your answer is, very carefully. I believe the BFC weighed 70lb.

Hal's lens in not an optical. There weren't any in 2001. Every composite was shot by multiple exposure. Jerome Agel explains it in 'The Making of 2001'.

I remember the earlier Dr. Who using 16mm for outdoor scenes and video for indoors... always thought that was strange but maybe UK audiences are more open to the differences in asthetics.

That was standard practice here for drama until the 80's. I could always tell the difference- stuck out like a sore thumb.

Perhaps I'm more of an editor than a lighting cameraman at heart, then. Cutting on film is more important to me.

If you're not going to show on film, why bother to shoot on it? You can fake the film look in post. Make a film, or make a video show.

[quote name='Jon Boguslaw' date='Sep 22 2007, 09:28 PM' post='19502

Also, if I were to edit on a Steinbeck, could I simply get a reel-to-reel recorder that accepts the magnetic 16mm film with frame numbers on it that occasionally appears on ebay? Of course it would be much more difficult than the FCP thing, but I'm just looking at the different options right now.

Thanks again.

You don't record direct onto mag film. (That was done in the 50's but the machines were BIG. I don't think they ran off batteries). You record on reel-to-reel (most likely a Nagra) with a sync pulse from the camera, then transfer that onto mag film on a recorder which decodes the sync pulse. You then have a frame-by-frame match between sound and picture. I doubt it's much more difficult, just difficult in different ways.

I wonder if you're confusing synchronisers (which run picture and magnetic sound together in sync) with mag film recorders If you biy one of the latter, of course (I saw one go for £175 recently) you can do your own transfers, although professional transfer isn't that expensive.

>this is 2007 and cutting on a moviola or steenbeck, while nostalgic, is a waste of time, energy, and looses >quality. Magnetic sound sucks and sounds like garbage

I'd take issue with the assertion that magnetic sound 'sucks'. The running speed is very near the 7 1/2 ips of reel-to-reel. It may be 2007 but the technology which the industry used for 40 years hasn't suddenly got worse. For the price of a few reels of telecine you could buy all the sound kit second-hand. Spielberg doesn't cut on film for nostalgia. He does it because it works better.

Have all your sound transferred to magnetic film-dialogue, music, effects and so on. You can then cut frame-by-frame alongside the picture- each different sound element stays on its own reel, in sync with the picture. Then mix all your different soundtracks down onto one reel of mag film ready for transfer to a print- or it can be shown in interlock on a double-head projector.

Staying with film keeps things more under your control. For my money, you're also still making a proper movie, rather than a video show. Spielberg still edits on film.

This info will help you. http://www.wrslabs.com/practices.html

If you shot reversal, the real money saver would be in cutting the original, but at great risk of damage. Reversal is only really for personal work; making prints from it is more problematic than from negative, and the extra cost cancels out most of the savings. So, shoot neg, and cut the workprint. When you're done, the neg is matched to the workprint, and then a graded answer print is made.

I don't know the economics, but I reckon that digital editing would eat up all the money you saved on workprinting, and then some. Old 16mm editing kit is very cheap now- I recently got a Steenbeck, splicer and pic-sync for about £125 all in. That wouldn't buy much transfer time.

As to the sound, that depends on the sort of project it is. Trying to recreate lip-sync afterwards is a whole lot of work; you'd be better recording it at the time. Then it's transferred to magnetic film, synced to the picture, and you can cut it alongside the picture, along with music, effects and so on. It's very flexible. Up to answer print, I'm sure that would still be cheaper- or at least not much more. In any case, you only edit digitally- the neg still has to be matched to the edit, and a print made in the usual way. You're not Hollywood, paying thousands of pounds a minute for a digital intermediate. (The workprint you 'work' on, the answer print is colour graded. If that's okay, you then have release prints. Or, if the money's tight, you show the answer print). The answer print might also have your soundtrack (on magnetic stripe or optical).

I imagine you're talking about the shot of the Saturn 5 first stage separation, filmed from the base of the second stage. How they got that back has been a hobby-horse of mine for years; people said 'Well, of course, it's transmitted TV', but I knew the look of film. However, no-one believes a 9-year-old.

The first and second stages were sub-orbital, however, so they must have fished the cameras out of the ocean. They certainly weren't recovered by the astronauts.

My researches indicate that 16mm. Ektachrome was used in space (either SO-368, Ektachrome MS, 64D), the same stock as used for most stills, although they also had High Speed Ektachrome for those. Presumably NASA satisfied the minimum order requirement.

Actually he IS talking about somewhere else. The UK, like he said. It's not the same place as the US.

D-76 would be fine. You could load some into a cassette and shoot it in an SLR, but after all that time the base fog will be terrible.

Incidentally, there hasn't been any nitrate base since the 30s.

>don't think those of us who are actually in "this country" need to be reminded where we are.

Actually we may do. I'm not in the US and neither are many people.

From what I see on eBay discussion boards, many US buyers act as if they are unaware of the existence of the UK. Many pay in dollars instead of pounds and complain about excessive postage because they apparently don't know the UK is not a US state!

>I still think this is a non-issue. Films have been getting shipped to theaters all over the world for many >decades now.

Not unexposed film. It's much more susceptible.

You can get an adapter if your tripod only has a 1/4" screw. My K-3 has one in and I'd be quite happy using it.

Here's one http://www.morrisphoto.co.uk/ProductDetail...goryid~149.html

Well, my main use of it was on a science-fiction film, so weirdness didn't hurt. There was a LOT of jarring in that picture, some of it intentional. Sound stripe doesn't much like four-frame jump cuts; the projector's not that keen, either. Still, it was good fun and it got me into film school ;)

I did manage a fade-in and -out for the superimposed white titles, though, accomplished, in the absence of aperture control, with a Heath Robinson strip of plastic, spray-paint graduated from clear to black, drawn through a matte box while the camera ran.

That's unlucky. I used to be able to backwind 200 frames or so and never had a jam- I even did a four-way split-screen once. That's three lots of rewinding. But that was K40, of course.

Alessandro, sorry for not paying attention. Being British of course I went for the Craven backwinder. It was cheaper and, being a light-trapped box which completely enclosed the cartridge, it seemed a better bet than the Ewa which was open at the back. One always suspected that the Ewa might leak light.