Hand crank 35mm "Man on fire" look

Glenn Hanns · June 2, 2007

Hi,

Just did some shooting with an Arri 3 that had its motor removed and modified for hand cranking like the look in "man on fire". Unfortunately the gear ratio used made turning the handle fast enoungh to reach 25fps near impossible so I ended up using an electric drill attatched to the drive shaft and by altering the speeds forward and reverse I was able to get some amazing footage of our hero bashing up a victum who was tied to a chair. When I get the DI done ill get some QT clips to show.

Cheers G.

John Sprung · June 4, 2007

The informal standard back in the early silent days was 8 frames per turn of the crank. That's quite comfortable at 16 - 18 fps, and somewhat difficult to get up to 24 - 25.

-- J.S.

Kenny N Suleimanagich · June 5, 2007

I'm sure I speak for many when I say you should put up some pics/screenshots. I'd love to see what the powerdrill setup looked like.

Phil Savoie · June 5, 2007

Arri Media in London had a 3C fitted with a hand crank, I was told it saw a good bit of action. I'm not sure of the gearing ratio or set-up. As it was only a few years back I'd bet they still have it - both Andy Subratte or John Duclos are good chaps, it may be useful to have a chat with them for operating tips.

Glenn Hanns · June 10, 2007

Hi,
Just did some shooting with an Arri 3 that had its motor removed and modified for hand cranking like the look in "man on fire". Unfortunately the gear ratio used made turning the handle fast enoungh to reach 25fps near impossible so I ended up using an electric drill attatched to the drive shaft and by altering the speeds forward and reverse I was able to get some amazing footage of our hero bashing up a victum who was tied to a chair. When I get the DI done ill get some QT clips to show.

Cheers G.

Heres some stills from the shoot, ill get some footage soon after the 2K divinci grade. The drill is attached to a cog that has a rubber belt to the main mechanism that the motor was connected to.

Cheers G.

Glenn Hanns · June 23, 2007

Hi,

Heres a link to some footage I shot with the Arri 35-3 with the handcrank option. This was removed and a standard electric drill was attached and run at various speeds 0-70FPS to create this effect. Note: No grading or sound post done.

Cheers

http://web.mac.com/cinematographer_/iWeb/G.../Handcrank.html

Stephen Williams · June 23, 2007

Hi,

It's very easy to hand crank a Mitchell GC, hand cranks were standard equipment to use when the battery was flat.

Stephen

Adam Butterworth · June 23, 2007

sweet looking stuff

Kieran Scannell · June 23, 2007

Great look for the scene! was it all hand cranked? or spliced into the master shot?

Kieran.

Olex Kalynychenko · June 23, 2007

Hi,
Just did some shooting with an Arri 3 that had its motor removed and modified for hand cranking like the look in "man on fire". Unfortunately the gear ratio used made turning the handle fast enoungh to reach 25fps near impossible so

If you need hand crank 35 mm cine camera, i can recommend russian Konvas-1 ( KSR-1M ) camera.

Konvas-1 can have a few versions of drives, this can be electrical motor with rheostat speed control,

hand crank with speeds up to 32 fps, hand crank for single shooting and rare, clock spring motor.

The design of Konvas-1 included of mechanical devices for control of speed.

This is device use for control of speed with all type of drivers.

This is inertia brake and you can adjust of volume of speed, or, if you need, you can disconnect of speed control.

If you modify of cine camera on the hand crank version, you not need forget about mechanical speed stabilization system.

Glenn Hanns · June 24, 2007

Great look for the scene! was it all hand cranked? or spliced into the master shot?

Kieran.

All hand cranked, each shot/setup is straight from the camera no effects added.

Cheers

Glenn Hanns · June 24, 2007

sweet looking stuff

Thanks, amazing what you get straight out of the box with handcrank.

thomas-english · June 24, 2007

could I achieve the same look with my plugin varispeed unit on my arri sr2? Are you just correcting the over exposure and under exposure in TK with dynamics?

Brad Grimmett · June 24, 2007

The problem (in my opinion) with using a drill instead of actually cranking is that you don't get the exposure and speed shifts you get when hand cranking. Don't get me wrong, the stuff you shot looks very nice, but it doesn't have the classic hand crank look. I understand why you used the drill since I've done a bit of hand cranking myself. 24fps is quite hard to achieve with a hand crank without having a very sore arm.

Glenn Hanns · June 27, 2007

The problem (in my opinion) with using a drill instead of actually cranking is that you don't get the exposure and speed shifts you get when hand cranking. Don't get me wrong, the stuff you shot looks very nice, but it doesn't have the classic hand crank look. I understand why you used the drill since I've done a bit of hand cranking myself. 24fps is quite hard to achieve with a hand crank without having a very sore arm.

It was possible to vary the speed easily just by grabbing onto the drill head and slowing it down and then giving it a quick burst again to ramp into slowmo.

Brad Grimmett · June 27, 2007

It was possible to vary the speed easily just by grabbing onto the drill head and slowing it down and then giving it a quick burst again to ramp into slowmo.

You know, after I made my post I thought just that. But did you do that much? The motion and exposure just seemed more consistent than that.

Glenn Hanns · June 29, 2007

You know, after I made my post I thought just that. But did you do that much? The motion and exposure just seemed more consistent than that.

The director did want some parts to be consistent, so I had someone yelling out the frame rates from the LED readout. I could keep it at a certain speed if I wanted, One jib shot was done on an LT just to make it easier.