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How much OCN reels were made for a big feature?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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Do you mean did they shoot more film in the past than they do on shows shot on film today, or compared to movies shot digitally today?

In general, yes, everyone shoots more footage today, film or digital, but especially digital.  More use of multiple cameras, more coverage, etc. and more directors coming from a digital background who have the habit of shooting more.

In the past, budgets and time determined a lot in terms of how much footage you could shoot.  If you only had 20 days to shoot a feature with only a single camera, then you might not shoot as much footage compared to a 40 day schedule with two cameras.

The range even in the past was huge.

I did plenty of low-budget features in the under 1-million dollar range where we always started out with a budget to shoot 100,000' of 4-perf 35mm (if we had shot 3-perf, then that's 25% less film than 4-perf for the same time.). When you think of it, if you considered a cut feature length movie in 4-perf 35mm to average 10,000' in length, or 10 1000' reels, if you shot 100,000', that would be a 10:1 ratio, which was not uncommon for small movies shot on film.  The average small movie shot digitally though is more likely to shoot 30:1 or 50:1 or higher.  I did do a small 35mm movie that managed a 7:1 ratio and I know someone who did one on a 5:1 ratio.  It's really hard to get much lower if you are talking about a typical dialogue-driven movie.

I think when I did a 35mm feature with a bigger budget, we managed to shoot nearly 200,000' of 35mm film. But much later, when I worked on "Westworld", we shot a lot of 35mm film everyday with multiple units at work.

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Thanks

I meant comparing amount of film shot for a movie in Hollywood's heyday to movies shot on film now. I was wondering since film was cheaper back then if they used more of it. Or if they had different techniques that required more use of film as compared to nowadays. 

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Today people generally shoot more footage, a higher shooting ratio, unless their budget simply precludes that.  But if you are talking about 35mm, then 3-perf and 2-perf save you a little over 4-perf, which today people only use for anamorphic.

Certainly there was no production technique of the past that required more film to be used other than the fact that 4-perf 35mm was the standard.

 

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I mean as David points out, it's really down to budget. I've worked on projects with a 5:1 shooting ratio and projects with a 50:1 shooting ratio. If they've got the money AND TIME to shoot a lot, then they generally do shoot a lot more coverage. If you watch the bigger movies, you will notice they have A LOT of coverage on scenes and even if they have high pay actors, they still can flub lines. 

I do think on digital shows, they generally shoot more than on film shows no matter what. Card's last longer than ANY roll of film does, in any format for that matter. So they can keep continuous takes, unlike film's limitations. I mean this helps movies shot on film be a bit more efficient because if you're shooting film, you for sure are going to be shooting more efficiently, even if your shooting ratio is the same.

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I don't spend a lot of time on set, but recently I did notice that the camera simply wasn't turned off between takes, nor were individual takes even slated- is this common?. They must have had 5 or 10 times as much material as on film, all junk. It does make me wonder how long it takes the editor just to find unslated takes.

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Yea on digital shows, we generally don't stop the camera between takes. On film shoots we do, especially if there is a full reset needed for whatever reason. It's just laziness on the part of the digital peeps, it has nothing to do with time savings, especially on a bigger show. You really do need to slate EVERY take, so why not stop the camera when something happens? 

As a professional editor, I can tell you how horribly annoying it is to have multiple unslated takes within a single clip. Sometimes there will be 5 - 10 takes in ONE CLIP! It's madness to sort them out, find out what's the best and then find them later when you need them. This means subclipping everything, this means labeling the subclips and of course, watching through all the in-between nonsense. It takes an editor way more time to do this sort of work and it's very inefficient. However, it saves the shooting crew around 30 seconds per start/stop. Add that up over the course of a day and you're looking at a few minutes of "saved time" WOW amazing! Good job guys! hahaha 

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As I suspected then, it's a pain in the neck for you. It does seem a little sloppy at times as well.

Fair enough, this was one crew on one day in a small set, but the clapper/loader was quite small, she could have ducked behind a flat in between slates. Just kidding. If you slate once, why not every time?

I haven't shot film for a long time, but the sound of money literally running through the camera was great discipline. You don't want to waste even a couple of feet.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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