David MacNutt Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 I'm curious if anyone here has experience shooting on digital and then transferring the footage to film. I've heard that Harmony Korine did this for Julien Donkey Boy (shot on mini DV, transferred to 16mm, then blew it up to 35mm). Every time I try to do search on this topic, I only get results of people wanting to (of course) transfer film to digital. Since I'm green when it comes to this kind of post processing, I'm hoping someone here could point me in the right direction. Thanks for reading- this is my first post in the forums and I'm glad to be a part of the community. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Mullen ASC Posted May 24, 2018 Premium Member Share Posted May 24, 2018 Back before the age of the digital intermediate, this was a specialty field but once most movies shot on film were scanned, color-corrected, and laser recorded back to film, it didn't really matter what the source material was, it just had to go through the D.I. pipeline. So talk to someone that still has a laser recorder, maybe at FotoKem for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Frank Wylie Posted May 24, 2018 Premium Member Share Posted May 24, 2018 From Glenn Kennel; it's a bit more film->DI->Film https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Digital-Cinema-Industry-Handbook/dp/0240808746 And from Jack James... https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Intermediates-Film-Video-James/dp/0240807022/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527175092&sr=1-1&keywords=digital+intermediate+film&dpID=51lpo-ZBUSL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch Had some 1"C format video transferred to 35mm by Southwest Film Lab in Dallas, Texas in the late 1980's... would not recommend that approach! ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Frank Wylie Posted May 24, 2018 Premium Member Share Posted May 24, 2018 I'm curious if anyone here has experience shooting on digital and then transferring the footage to film. I've heard that Harmony Korine did this for Julien Donkey Boy (shot on mini DV, transferred to 16mm, then blew it up to 35mm). OK, I just watched the trailer for this film and I can save you a LOT of expense if you want this same look... Back in the 1990's, I worked for Ohio State University's Department of Photography and Cinema as their Motion Picture Lab Supervisor in support of student film production. The University invited the filmmaker Peter Watkins (of "War Games" fame) to teach cinema production for a semester as an Visiting Adjunct. Problem was, they failed to budget ANY money to support his curriculum and I was suddenly put in the position of trying to scrounge-up a way to facilitate the production of a 90 minute documentary that would finish on film. The only solution I could formulate within the scant resources I had was to have the students shoot on Hi8mm video, BUT finish on color neg. The raw footage was video edited into selected takes or complete scenes and I then transferred these sections in one pass to 16mm color negative stock by shooting a Sony Color Monitor with an Auricon Pro 1200 with TVT shutter while recording the audio to magnetic fullcoat and to 1/4 inch magnetic tape on a old Nagra III synchronized to the same mains AC reference. The negative was processed, work printed and the magnetic fullcoat was used to cut the mix tracks (we had a Magnasync 8 track "rock-and-roll" mixing system). The process continued from there "as normal" for a standard 16mm production. The results were very akin to what I saw on the trailer on Youtube. Yes, I've done some strange stuff in my life... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Will Montgomery Posted May 24, 2018 Premium Member Share Posted May 24, 2018 Tommy at VideoFilmSolutions in Maryland can do film outs, including 16mm with optical sound. He has a hybrid system that he developed that gives excellent results at a reasonable rate. http://www.videofilmsolutions.com/main 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webster Colcord Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 Cinelab Boston does it as well, 35 and 16mm: http://www.cinelab.com/suite-Digital_to_Film.html 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Burke Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 so do these people http://www.dvfilm.com/zoomla/index.php/services Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David MacNutt Posted May 25, 2018 Author Share Posted May 25, 2018 Thank you to everyone who replied. Relieved to know about some of the options that are out there. I'll do some more research and will update here once I figure out a way forward with this project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Burke Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 Cinelab does great work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Will Montgomery Posted May 25, 2018 Premium Member Share Posted May 25, 2018 so do these people http://www.dvfilm.com/zoomla/index.php/services Great to find someone in Texas! Too bad their prices are 3x Tommy's...$300/minute vs. $110/minute (silent 16mm). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted May 25, 2018 Site Sponsor Share Posted May 25, 2018 We charge $100/min (student/indie rate) for silent 16mm on a 2K recorder I built, $150/min for sound. We also have two (4K license) Arrilaser 35mm recorders, the "industry standard" for 35mm film recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Bull Posted June 15, 2018 Share Posted June 15, 2018 Hi David Shot out extensive amount of DV footage to 35mm for a Grace Jones documentary Bloodlight and Bami (On Netflix now) dir. Sophie Fiennes, which needed to cut in with new 16mm concert footage. Results were really surprising, but certainly moved it away from looking like video. Process was a rec709 grade on all of the DV footage that was then shot out to Fuji4503 35mm intermediate stock using an Arrilaser2 and then scanned back to 2K using Arriscan. We do this a lot for commercials where they have shot digital or are heavy on VFX and then want a more authentic film look - shoot back to film, often print (sometimes bleach by-pass) and then scan back to data for final grade. Cheers Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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