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Black and White Film?
- Thread starter SDBenassi
- Start date
I love the look of black and white films. I wish more films were shot that way.
Fotokem, Cinelab and Alphacine still process black and white 16mm (and 35 frankly, but even shooting 2 or 3 perf the price is very prohibitive) and likely can provide a digital out in a variety of flavors.
If you poke around a bit you can get rough idea of the pricing:
http://www.google.com/search?q=16mm...pw.r_qf.&fp=ed37b7f9496e4d03&biw=1244&bih=865
400' for about $100 unprocessed at the high end of the price spectrum. Figure ~10 minutes per magazine of footage. The minimum you could use to pull off a 90 minute feature is about 10 magazines, or 4000 feet (~100 minutes usable stock) and that's allowing for time to slate each take and pretty much using ever last bit of it in the final film. (~$1000 before discounts and processing costs)
2:1 shooting ratio (2 takes per finished shot in the film) doubles that to 8000 feet and so on. (~$2000)
There used to be ways to get "short ends," which are essentially unexposed left overs, partial loads. More common in 35mm, and probably much harder to find these days, especially in B/W. Both Kodak and Fuji have discount programs for students and various regional "film society" type groups.
There are also places like this:
http://www.spectrafilmandvideo.com/Film.html
... that sell stock with included processing, but I don't know anything about their work. In college there was a lab local to me (now defunct), so I never used the first two I mentioned, but they have both been around forever.
Also found, and bookmarked for future use, this page:
http://www.certifiedfilm.com/
I know nothing about it, only just discovered it while writing this post.
Just had the opportunity to shoot a short film in s16. Some B/W for the "stuff the main character shot," because of course - as a graduate film student's film, there obviously has to be someone using a camera in the story.
Meh, if shooting anything and everything that came his way worked for Janusz Kaminski, I figure trying that approach for myself couldn't hurt.
Well, we have a day of pickups to do, but I digress. A rare thing these days to get to play with 16mm, I had forgotten how much more challenging it is to craft and expose an image without all the waveforms and false color displays. Hopefully it turns out to be rewarding in the end, but got to wait till it comes back.
I have these rather silly notions that I'd love to convince a production that is considering a very high end camera rental with subsequent "telecine" costs (RAW codecs) to shoot on s16 or 3-perf 35 because it's just better for the script. Granting for a moment, that the script would actually be better served by the organic look. There's a lot of street cred to be had by shooting on film, and for the right film that's easy to parlay into marketing capital. Similarly, for cast and crew types (and crew types who are aspiring DPs llike myself) there's definite appeal and resume value as well.
Depending on the parameters, anyone shooting Alexa/Epic with a rental package for a feature could probably budget an s16 feature and not be terribly apart on the costs. Both have extensive post production costs, but the s16 camera package and lenses will be dramatically cheaper. For example, I think a prominent rental house here would probably let their 16mm Zeiss prime set (for cams like ARRI SR2, 416, etc) 2 weeks for on the order of $450-$900 depending on what else you were renting, how busy they were, lunar phase, and so on. Also, since you have to shoot tight ratios, your shooting schedule compresses while your rehearsal schedule expands. This means less time that you you are paying a full crew, though more time paying your actors and key crew in pre-production. Of course this is only a factor for those folks getting paid. But a shorter production schedule and longer pre-production schedule will definitely save money. Frankly, it saves money in the digital world too, but that is a subject for another thread.
There are also grant programs from Kodak/Panavision and others, but they are extremely competitive to get and something that is more of a bonus/reward than a business plan.
If you poke around a bit you can get rough idea of the pricing:
http://www.google.com/search?q=16mm...pw.r_qf.&fp=ed37b7f9496e4d03&biw=1244&bih=865
400' for about $100 unprocessed at the high end of the price spectrum. Figure ~10 minutes per magazine of footage. The minimum you could use to pull off a 90 minute feature is about 10 magazines, or 4000 feet (~100 minutes usable stock) and that's allowing for time to slate each take and pretty much using ever last bit of it in the final film. (~$1000 before discounts and processing costs)
2:1 shooting ratio (2 takes per finished shot in the film) doubles that to 8000 feet and so on. (~$2000)
There used to be ways to get "short ends," which are essentially unexposed left overs, partial loads. More common in 35mm, and probably much harder to find these days, especially in B/W. Both Kodak and Fuji have discount programs for students and various regional "film society" type groups.
There are also places like this:
http://www.spectrafilmandvideo.com/Film.html
... that sell stock with included processing, but I don't know anything about their work. In college there was a lab local to me (now defunct), so I never used the first two I mentioned, but they have both been around forever.
Also found, and bookmarked for future use, this page:
http://www.certifiedfilm.com/
I know nothing about it, only just discovered it while writing this post.
Just had the opportunity to shoot a short film in s16. Some B/W for the "stuff the main character shot," because of course - as a graduate film student's film, there obviously has to be someone using a camera in the story.
Meh, if shooting anything and everything that came his way worked for Janusz Kaminski, I figure trying that approach for myself couldn't hurt.Well, we have a day of pickups to do, but I digress. A rare thing these days to get to play with 16mm, I had forgotten how much more challenging it is to craft and expose an image without all the waveforms and false color displays. Hopefully it turns out to be rewarding in the end, but got to wait till it comes back.
I have these rather silly notions that I'd love to convince a production that is considering a very high end camera rental with subsequent "telecine" costs (RAW codecs) to shoot on s16 or 3-perf 35 because it's just better for the script. Granting for a moment, that the script would actually be better served by the organic look. There's a lot of street cred to be had by shooting on film, and for the right film that's easy to parlay into marketing capital. Similarly, for cast and crew types (and crew types who are aspiring DPs llike myself) there's definite appeal and resume value as well.
Depending on the parameters, anyone shooting Alexa/Epic with a rental package for a feature could probably budget an s16 feature and not be terribly apart on the costs. Both have extensive post production costs, but the s16 camera package and lenses will be dramatically cheaper. For example, I think a prominent rental house here would probably let their 16mm Zeiss prime set (for cams like ARRI SR2, 416, etc) 2 weeks for on the order of $450-$900 depending on what else you were renting, how busy they were, lunar phase, and so on. Also, since you have to shoot tight ratios, your shooting schedule compresses while your rehearsal schedule expands. This means less time that you you are paying a full crew, though more time paying your actors and key crew in pre-production. Of course this is only a factor for those folks getting paid. But a shorter production schedule and longer pre-production schedule will definitely save money. Frankly, it saves money in the digital world too, but that is a subject for another thread.
There are also grant programs from Kodak/Panavision and others, but they are extremely competitive to get and something that is more of a bonus/reward than a business plan.
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Of course.
You also don't have to shoot on 16mm if you have a small budget...I have seen decent black and white films on super 8. However, if you were planning on shooting a color film, I would recommend 16mm, as color film for super 8 tends to not look as sharp as it should.
You also don't have to shoot on 16mm if you have a small budget...I have seen decent black and white films on super 8. However, if you were planning on shooting a color film, I would recommend 16mm, as color film for super 8 tends to not look as sharp as it should.