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65mm B&W Motion Picture Film


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My problem getting mine done, is I don't really have the connections to get my story out there to find interest in producing it. My friend works in the Vancouver film industry, and even he has problems getting his film out there.

 

You can do it. Reach out to investors that are sensitive to the arts. Spend some time at local museums in Vancouver. There are events held at the mueseums that are populated by people with deep pockets and sometimes similar visual interests. Go to those events and mingle. Rent an ARRI 765 camera, get some 65mm film stock and shoot a 5 minute short. Rent an auditorium at the local museum and host a ''screening"/pitch session to an RSVP audience of potential investors. I say start with 5 perf 65mm, because it will give them a taste of where you are heading with B&W Large Format imagery. Contact GIGABIT film (if they are still around), see if you can get them to make you about 20,000ft of 65mm mopic film. The money is out there.

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Mr. Gigabitfilm, Detlef Ludwig, and I still have regular contact.

 

He has just explained to me that he is open to everybody and everything but, due to a nursing case in the family, can’t always answer the telephone right away. He is reachable by E-Mail, though, and will reply.

 

The company is dissolved, the Gigabitfilm brand is being kept up for years to come.

 

I think that I can answer quite a lot of questions regarding Gigabitfilm or Gigabit film, as obviously preferred in the Anglo-Saxon world.

 

Basically, nothing speaks against G-40 as wide film. Both 65mm and 70mm widths and ISO 3023 perforation can be had, a minimal mileage given. The figure of 20,000 feet might be too small. It hurts to say that we’ll be more in the region of 180'000 ft, either 70mm or 65mm.

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Mr. Gigabitfilm, Detlef Ludwig, and I still have regular contact.

 

He has just explained to me that he is open to everybody and everything but, due to a nursing case in the family, can’t always answer the telephone right away. He is reachable by E-Mail, though, and will reply.

 

The company is dissolved, the Gigabitfilm brand is being kept up for years to come.

 

Basically, nothing speaks against G-40 as wide film. Both 65mm and 70mm widths and ISO 3023 perforation can be had, a minimal mileage given. The figure of 20,000 feet might be too small. It hurts to say that we’ll be more in the region of 180'000 ft, either 70mm or 65mm.

 

Simon,

 

That is great news. Would the proprietary developer also be available in large amounts?

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If not, I’ll go to help Ludwig prepare. We live five hours apart (by car).

 

I still have the last batch of liquid concentrate in glass bottles in the cellar.

It was meant to be used with the machine we had set up in 2008 but I went

out of business before a trial.

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Just an update in my research, Arri will be discontinuing service of their 765 later this year. Evidently they have three working camera's left and will be discontinuing service sometime this year. I'll have more information and numbers next week.

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Just an update in my research, Arri will be discontinuing service of their 765 later this year. Evidently they have three working camera's left and will be discontinuing service sometime this year. I'll have more information and numbers next week.

 

What does it mean, to "discontinue service," of a camera.

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Actually, I asked the rep at Arri Rental NY and he said they weren't going to sell what they have. I'd assume they'll either destroy what they have OR send it back to Germany for their museum or something. He said there were only 10 cameras made and only 3 exist in the whole world that work.

 

On a side note, I asked him about rental pricing between the 765 and the new Alexa 65 and it sounded like both were very similar in price due to the workflow necessary on set to deal with the Alexa 65. At least with film all ya gotta do is load the mags… no digital village necessary.

 

Ohh and I had a brief conversation with Panavision who kinda said the 65mm camera's are all rented and will be for a long time. I'm looking for some price quotes, but she couldn't even give me that! I have absolutely no idea if it costs a billion dollars to shoot on 65, or just double 35mm.

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The way you guys talk about MP cameras, I thought they didn't wear out, at all, especially big German ones - how do you break an Arri 765?

 

Good question and I asked that!

 

He said electronics are the biggest weakness. They can't take extreme temp's and I gather moisture can build up within the camera because it's so sealed up. This causes the electrics to fail and henceforth no turn-over. Also, he mentioned one thing that disturbed me, which is making me re-think everything. Because 70mm film has to be moved through such a small area, the potential for jamming is huge. He said a technician is required when working in 65mm because of these jam's. You've gotta take that into account when shooting. You could get a great shot and then all of a sudden the camera looses the loop and jams.

 

These are some of the reasons why Hateful Eight has almost every 65mm camera you can find in the country.

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I assume that a lot of that electronics is to control the transport to mitigate the jamming problem.

THere just hasn't been enough 65mm. production to develop a bombproof system. 35mm. had it beaten by about 1910.

IMAX cracked it with a quite different transport mechanism.

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I remembered reading this about them shooting IMAX on The Dark Knight

 

"One of three Imax technicians — Wayne Baker, Doug Lavender or Stuart MacFarlane — was always on set to assist Pfister’s camera crew with troubleshooting and occasional repairs. “The MSM is like any other camera in terms of the threading and operation,” says Hall, “but a lot of things can happen during a reload that will result in a jam, and if the jam is severe enough, it will slip the timing belt. When that happens, you have to strip the camera down on a bench to reset the belt. The MSM tolerances are so tight that a single snowflake can cause the film to swell and jam the camera, and at the end of the shoot, we had to film on location on Wall Street with an enormous number of extras in the middle of a snowstorm. People were holding bags over the camera while I reloaded, but every once in a while, a flake would get on the film. On that day, all three bodies were in constant rotation! Wayne would be replacing the timing belt on one, and another would be waiting for repairs while we were shooting with the third, hoping a backup would be ready before we needed it. Fortunately, our crew was so prepared we were able to shoot 65mm as fast as we shot 35mm.”

http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/August2012/DarkKnightRises/page1.php

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A friend who used to work at Arri told me a story (unverified) about how in the 90s several 765s were destroyed in a set fire.

 

 

The thought of that makes me cry! I heard a rumor PT Anderson's crew dropped one of Panavision's remaining 65 cameras into a river making The Master.

 

Since Panavision made those cameras in-house, I wonder if they plan on supporting them indefinitely.

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The Panavision system is far simpler, since the design pre-dates sophisticated computer electronics and is therefore easier to keep in service. My guess is they're Mitchell-based (similar to the Fries conversions) which would make most of the complexity in servicing rest on the movement.

 

Arri makes great use of top-of-the-line hardware and unfortunately that stuff can go obsolete. They no longer offer support of the 416 OBB-2 chipset, for example, so I'm currently re-celling mine to bypass the "smart" circuitry per a tech's recommendation.

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If the electronics are a problem it shouldn't be difficult to come up with a scheme to update and redesign/replace (well except for the cash and time.....) but I expect that would only happen as a private venture as I expect Arri and Panavision wouldn't be able to mount an internal business case for such work. As to any mechanism and chassis reworking well I expect that's another ball game.

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Just an aside to this, we have just added Vista-Vision 6K RGB scanning to the list of capabilities at Cinelab.

 

Our Imagica ImagerXE can scan Vista at 6144 x 4096

 

You might also want to see if FotoKem can do a Vista to 65mm blowup on an optical printer.

 

There are several Fries 65mm cameras on eBay right now too.

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