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I shoot with expired film quite a lot. As a matter of fact, I would say that it's my go to. My favorite stock I've ever shot with is hands down Kodak EXR 5245 50D. I have lately realized, however, that there are a few realities about shooting on expired that I need to come to terms with quickly. It’s unreliable, it’s in short supply, it’s going extinct, and no professional production wants their investment shot on expired film. I need to move on, but frankly, I have always had a visual distaste for VISION3. I want to further pursue something I've only ever experimented with but never fully committed to in the past: emulating the photochemical characteristics of older Eastman fine grain film stocks by experimenting with exposure, density, and processing using modern Kodak film. For reference, I most often shoot on 2-Perf Techniscope with the original line of Basuch & Lomb Baltar lenses dated at the 1940s. The two Eastmancolor stocks I am most interested in trying to emulate are ECN 5248 25T (1952-1959) and ECN 5250 50T (1959-1962). About a year ago I did a short experiment on 35mm with Baltar lenses where I shot a few short reels of footage on VISION3 500T using ND filters in direct sunlight outside and had them exposed and processed in different ways. I then had them scanned in 12-bit HDR and brought them into DaVinci to level out all the footage and see how my end products differed. The four types of footage I got were underexposed one stop and developed at box speed, underexposed two stops and developed at box speed, exposed at box speed and underdeveloped one stop, and exposed at box speed and underdeveloped two stops. After leveling out all my footage in Resolve, I was extremely disappointed in the results. Once normalized with HDR tools in DaVinci, all the underdeveloped footage looked nearly identical to a standard exposure and development. And the underexposed footage just had crushed blacks with very little discernable differences other than that. I considered it a failed endeavor and steered clear of these kinds of experiments again after that. Top visual inspirations: 5248: Rear Window (1954) The Ten Commandments (1956) Vertigo (1958) Ben-Hur (1959) Rio Bravo (1959) 5250: Spartacus (1960) The Magnificent Seven (1960) West Side Story (1961) Lawrence of Arabia (1962) It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) Assuming that the 4k and 1080p blu-rays of the previous film were scanned from the negatives themselves and not the print, I will take it that what I've seen is a quality representation of the stocks in question. My eyes often roll when people talk about footage looking "vintage" "old" or "film-like". Mostly because this could refer to over a dozen different visual aspects in one's footage, and what invokes the feeling of "filmlike" to one person may differ from another. For the sake of this experiment let’s ignore aspects such as lens choice, format size, granularity, lighting contrast, production design, and (for the most part) color scheme. Let’s instead talk about the photochemical qualities of the negative itself. I mostly associate the Eastmancolor look from the mid 50s to the early 60s with neutral to muted highlights, rich and deep blacks, with the density and dynamic range that was available with those stocks at the time. I'm young and an amateur in this field, so I don't understand film on a more in-depth level like so many others hear. But firstly, I'm curious to know what the distinction between film density and dynamic range is, cause I can't quite make heads or tails of it. I am hoping someone with lots of (or any) experience with celluloid, the photochemical process, and the visual evolution of film over the decades can chime and and possibly steer my ventures in the right direction. THE 2383 QUESTION: Small update. During my writing of this post a friend of mine found an interesting video and vimeo and shared it with me. He suggested it as a possibility for me to shoot with 2383 in camera with lots of sunlight and that if developed using ECN-2 and given a simple color correction, the end result may be something close to what I am after. It is difficult for me to discern whether what I like so much about this clip is due to the 2383 stock or if it is just the hard tungsten lighting. I don’t currently have the time or funds to properly run a test myself but I’m putting some consideration into shooting some footage with 2383 in camera rated at 6 ASA in the cloudless sunlight and having it cross-processed using ECN-2. I can get a good 12-bit HDR scan and see if what I’m left with retains the photochemical qualities I have in mind. This clip does remind me very much of the 5250 stock—more so than most other emulations of vintage film do. But as I said, it could just be the hard tungsten lighting. I'm not certain.

Looking into shooting 2 perf with the Panaflex because there maybe many old gold panaflex camera's available for rent for low budget film productions. Along with the fact the camera runs the cleanest and is so quiet not to mention its simply the best system in the world with the best support. And with going to a DI its most likely a cost effective way to shoot film vs digital capture. Also if anyone is a friend of Vittorio Storaro, Aic, Asc it would be great to get his take on this. I understand he has shot 2 perf