Teach me what I need to know, guys.

O

omarzamora

So, I'm in post production of my first HD movie. It went well, shot 37 hours and it looks like we're gonna end up with a 105 min running time. It was a comedy and we changed up diologue a lot, added new jokes and all that shiz. There was one scene which took two hours to shoot but ended up being 27 seconds on screen because we did so many different versions of the joke. HD worked for me here because I went for a mumblecore mood and used non-professional actors and shot in Central California where I would not be able to find a true film crew.

I'm wanting to shoot my next on 16mm. I want it to be a FILM not a digital movie. There's many reasons that I want to do this. It feels like a natural progression, I did HD and that felt like practice and now I'm moving to Los Angeles for school and it seems that I can be a little more serious and I want my next thing to be a drama or romance and while I appreciate digital, I don't think it's very romantic. I can use proffesional actors there, find crews and everything is just more available.

What, other than the look, is the advantage of film?

Btw; I shot the HD comedy on $8,500. I'm expecting to get about $15,000 for the 16mm film. Is this a realistic amount for raw stock & lab processing?
 
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Today, I learned that instead of telling a woman, "There's something different about your hair", even if you're planning on following it up with, "I like it", it's much better to just cut straight to "I like your new hair."
 
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Owen said:
Would anyone mind explaining shooting ratios for me?

Owen
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Cracker Funk explained it well.

Here is an easier scenario to stomach. Lets' say you picked up a 16mm Bolex, K3 etc... on eBay for a few hundred dollars and now you want to shoot a 5 minute short with it. At a 3:1 ratio you will need 15 minutes of film. The camera only shoots 100' rolls of film which is about 2:40 run-time. So you will need 6 rolls of film(16 minutes).

Film pricing (100' roll)
Kodak color - 42.00
Fujifilm color - 38.00
Kodak B&W - 26.00

- Film cost, Kodak color - 252.00 plus 15.00 shipping.
- Negative developing and prep for telecine @ .20ft - 120.00
- Telecine(UpRes to HD, 125.00 minimum) @.23ft - 138.00
- download charge - 25.00
- roundtrip shipping for processing and telecine - 30.00

Total - 580.00
 
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Thanks hepabst. I can quite happily say I will never shoot film. Way too much for my brain to cope with and my pockets to handle. I say embrace technology. And I will happily call myself a filmmaker not even knowing what film is.

Owen
 
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I have yet to shoot on film, and my projects thus far haven't had a budget necessary for it, but as soon as I'm on a project with a big enough budget I'm using film.

Something magical about it.
 
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My first short film was shot Super16 and I had a 35mm blow-up print.

Films 2 and 3 were shot on MiniDV and I never finished either one because I hated how they looked.

Shot a short in 1080p24 via Canon 7D in January. Some of it looks amazing. Some of it looks like hell an needs to be reshoot.

Shot a short on Super8 last month, but it's for the Straight8 and I have no idea how it looks yet (read the contest rules and you will understand why).

I've got another Straight8 I want to shoot the 19th. A one take wonder. Hopefully I will get it right the first time.

Next month I want to shoot a 5 minute short on Super8 and am trying to get the budget in line. It's way more expensive than shooting HD but because the film will be R rated in tone with lots of nudity, the actors are much more comfortable doing what needs to be done on grainy 8mm vs pristine HD.

Shoot what feels right to you. It's as simple as that.
 
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omarzamora said:
I'm wanting to shoot my next on 16mm. I want it to be a FILM not a digital movie. There's many reasons that I want to do this. It feels like a natural progression, I did HD and that felt like practice and now I'm moving to Los Angeles for school and it seems that I can be a little more serious and I want my next thing to be a drama or romance and while I appreciate digital, I don't think it's very romantic. I can use proffesional actors there, find crews and everything is just more available.

What, other than the look, is the advantage of film?

Btw; I shot the HD comedy on $8,500. I'm expecting to get about $15,000 for the 16mm film. Is this a realistic amount for raw stock & lab processing?
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There's always a lot of smoke and noise about the film vs digital argument, and now we have a situation where experience with film is limited among new film makers, which adds to the confusion.

If you are determined to learn more about film and have a workable total budget then you can just go ahead and do it. But if this is a feature length drama and you are the dirctor/cinematographer then your risks are high and it sounds like your budget is tiny. A really sensible thing would be to make a short project first where the risks are reduced.

I think that the passion for learning about the medium, whether film or digital, is a legitimate axis for growth. People begin by learning competencey over the working process. But equally legitimate, or maybe more so, but more rare, is where someone has an amazing idea that they utterly commit to and learn during the intensive development and execution of that.

On the issue of film vs digital you can read the opinions of many working DoPs, on cinematography.com.
A common idea is that digital, with less lattitude, is normally considered to require more care with the lighting. Maybe the latest Alexa or Red will have the lattitude. This assumes one is trying to control the image.

Are you planning to buy, borrow or rent camera(s) and lenses. Or do you have them available at "School"?

Someone mentioned Black Swan. The DSLR scenes were shot on the Subway I think. They intercut fine, but we don't know anything about the post prodn for that. Thinking of the S16mm, I did see some big differences in grain and apparent sharpness that I thought may just be due to faster stock, and I don't think this helped the film at all. I think he could have done this film on 35mm and been more powerful with a consistent look.

Cheers
Gregg.
 
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viz said:
A common idea is that digital, with less lattitude, is normally considered to require more care with the lighting. Maybe the latest Alexa or Red will have the lattitude. This assumes one is trying to control the image.
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As someone who has shot features on both 16mm and HD video, here's my two bits, fwiw:

While it's true that video has less exposure latitude than film, video does have an advantage lighting-wise in that you can see on the monitor exactly what the exposure looks like as you're lighting the shot. I think a lot of people who have never lit for film think you can just throw up however much light you want and the lab will time it out, but that hasn't been my experience. Film is more theoretical because, unless you've been shooting it for a long time, you won't really know what you've got until it's developed. That can be intimidating; at least it was for me.
 
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