I've been looking into moving into using Super 16mm and had some price questions. These are all general so any information would be helpful, even averages.

1. How much does the film neg. usually cost per 400', on average?

2. How much does transfer, et al. so that I can edit it on a NLE?

That's pretty much all I have for now, although any extra info would be welcome. Thanks in advance.

Super-16 film is the same cost as regular 16mm. Fuji is around $105/roll and Kodak is $125/roll. A good way to save money on film is to consider short ends. Here's a link to an article I wrote about them, Buying Short Ends (http://scottspears.net/shortendsarticle.htm)

Places to buy:
Kodak: 800-821-3456
Fujifilm: (888)424-3854
Media Distributors (http://www.mediadistributors.com)
Dr. Raw Stock (http://www.raw-stock.com)

Transfer runs anywhere from $160/hr for Beta SP and $700/hr going to HD. That is for machine time not for finished hour of footage. Plan on laying down no more than 20 min. of footage per hour of work time. Then dub the footage down to DV to import into your NLE. An indie friendly transfer house is: Indie-Post (http://www.indie-post.com/) Mention my name.

Scott

1. How much does the film neg. usually cost per 400', on average?


It varies, but you can get 16mm for around $.20 to $.45 per foot (so shop around for best prices).

Shop around for the best price of fresh stock. But also consider Recans and Short Ends that was mentioned above. Another good place is Raw Stock. (http://www.raw-stock.com) I got my 100' of B&W 16mm from them for 10 dollars. Check there specials page. Right now on there they got this that might intrest you...

Kodak 16mm 7250 400T color reversal 400' loads... $70.00
That's if you were going to shoot some reversal of course. :)

Make friends with a good DP that can point the way to best deals on film stock, labs, etc. He might even have a spare 400' roll of 16mm laying around.. It's fun to learn this stuff on your own but the process will be faster if you work with a good DP.

Make friends with a good DP that can point the way to best deals.

The DP for the "Hooligan's Valley" shoot last week did that for the Other Side Cinema (http://www.othersidecinema.com) people.

He asked them who they had lined up so far for processing & 'cine (and the prices), then got on his cellphone between setups and must have called a half-dozen places looking for better prices.

They ended up getting a better deal, thanks to a few phonecalls and a DP (Aaron Platt (http://www.aaronplatt.com)) that was looking out for them.

how many minutes would you get on 400' ? Is 400 foot the standard amount of film to buy?

400' = 11 min. approx.

You can get film in 100' and 200' loads, but they usually come on daylight spools. 400' loads are the norm for most shoots.

Scott

Direct from Kodak is around .35 a foot for 16mm film.

The same film you would record 16mm on today you can record s16 on - one perf.

See, there is only one side with perf unlike the old film. Instead of recording a sound track there or having perf there, the image is recorded to nearly the edge. This makes sense for so many reasons I'm not even going to explain all of them. Suffice to say, s16 makes sense for all cinema, with the exception being of course those who simply want to project their raw footage the reason being that there are no projectors that can project the full s16 image.

One additional consideration is that not all 16mm cine lenses cover s16, so make sure you check that out before shooting.

PLEASE REMEMBER: when ordering film, request SINGLE PERF!!! Nothing will ruin your day than seeing a big perf whole on the side of your footage. I don't think Fuji even makes double perf anymore.

Scott

I dont know what its like in usa but today i rang around for pricing on converting 400' of 16mm film to minidv. The first place i called charged $220aus (approx $170usd) and the next place i called charged $50 (minimum charge because 400' is under 30 mins). Im sure you guys know where to go, just something to look out for.

Regarding transfers: You get what you pay for. Some cheap places use cheap telecines or some use way outdated film chains. Ask about the telecine: Rank III turbo is a decent low end telecine. What's the color correction system? DaVinci is the standard.

Scott

Does colour correction matter all that much when transfering since you would be doing it yourself during editing? Interesting about the cheaper places possibly using outdated film chains etc, I never really thought about that.

Color correctionin NLE systems have gotten mighty powerful, but I'll still go for a machine that was built to do color correction only. Also, I recommend that you transfer to the highest quality and do dubs down to mini-DV to edit, that way you if you need to make a high quality master using the time code numbers from, say DigiBeta, you can and you don't have to re-transfer.

Scott

Scott or anyone: Have you noticed a lack of sharpness when telecineing to Mini-DV?

Mini-DV has lower resolution than DigiBeta, so that could the problem.

Scott

When I had my Super8 'cined earlier this week the guy at Yale Labs said that it would not be so crisp, if Rank transferring to mini-DV.

He suggested I get the Film Chain instead... sharper on mini-DV, but without colour correction.

_______

I wish all this had been posted before the week started. :)

Thanks for the words guys. I had my test footage TK'd to mini-DV with just the grey card set, the rest left alone so I could test everything - Aperature, internal LM vs. my sekonic LM, the Vision2 stock, etc, plus I had torn the camera apart when it first got here so I was testing everything, and just wanted to see what I got. What I got back looks beautiful but is a little less than crisp - just making sure the fault is in the TK not the lens.