LOST TRIBES

[Alex]

You mean there would be five most useful.

Cool.

-Alex

[Bolex Bob]

You have many useful things to say. Your knowledge of S-8 (and I'm sure most other formats)far exceeds most.

It is the manner in which you dispense your information that can be bizarre, whacko and bloody immature!

Ever shoot a Rex-3?

[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bolex Bob:
Ever shoot a Rex-3?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


If I owned a gun I would....badabadum!

In college, some college buds worked with 16mm Bolex's....The "Rex something or other" was the one to get.

I couldn't stand the tiny lenses, and the wind-up spring was difficult to use, especially if I was trying not to move the tripod.

I also found the single-frame kind of unwieldly....but I saw some really sharp and very stable pictures come out of those suckers.

But for me, the lack of ergonomics in the design were enough for me not to want to own one.

Recently, I worked on someones student project. They used a Bolex 16mm.

Two of the roles came out completely black, two were fine.

I think two of the roles were either loaded in backwards, or the shutter angle lever on the side of the camera was inadvertently moved.

What was so upsetting for me, I spent the whole night moving really heavy batteries that were powering the lights that I also provided.

And yes, I was moving those also, outside, on a really cold night.

I even bought a polaroid camera so we could pull polaroids of every shot to verify exposure. I even had them rate the film a full stop slower than it normally was rated at to compensate for the extra fast shutter bolex uses..(I guess that also makes the picture look sharper)

In the end, after the "black" scene was discovered, some slight suspicion was cast my way, even though we had more light for the scene that did not come out versus the scene that did come out.

Great Reward for running around from 10 PM to 4AM.

But wait, this is thread is about Lost Tribes.

So Matt, which Super-8 Camera did you shoot Lost Tribes with ?

-Alex



[This message has been edited by Alex (edited August 10, 2001).]

[dogstarman]

He shot it with a Beaulieu 4008, didn't he?

[Matt Pacini]

To answer Alex, and others, here are some of my rebuttals, er, I mean answers:
I shot it on a Nikon R-10, which is optically a great camera, but much too noisy.
As far as slamming this board, I'm not slamming this board, nor do I remember specifically who gave what bad advice, since I was not keeping track, nor did I suspect I was getting bad advice until I actually had done some of these things, and found out how wrong they were!

Here are some things that I heard on this board and others, that I disagree with:

1. The Canon 1014XL-S is "virtually silent". (Fact: the Canon 1014XL-S is noisy as hell, and I ended up buying one at a premium price before finding out how freakin' noisy this camera is, as is every single S8 camera except the Nizo 6080!!!)

2. It doesn't matter what you shoot on, or technique, etc. as long as the story is good. (Sure, shoot The English Patient on a VHS camcorder, and see how many academy awards it wins. It matters greatly how a film looks, sounds, etc.. Just because if you do all this, and have a crappy story, it will still make a crappy movie, doesn't mean that it's all irrelevant.)

3. Pre-edit your film, to cut down on Telecine costs.
(BAD IDEA!! Not only are you going to be sorry that you don't have footage from outtakes, to use as cutaways, etc., but tape edits, when they go through the Rank, cause a virticle "jump" about 1/2 second before the splice. Really a huge problem. Nobody else ever mentions this.

4. You have to use faster speed stock for interiors, because K-40 won't expose in that low of light. (FALSE!!!! This was one of the biggest mistakes of my making LOST TRIBES, because by the time I figured out that I could get fantastic images indoors using K-40, I had already shot a bunch of scenes using Ektachrome 160 & 125, which looks like crap: way too grainy, and inferior color rendition. This goes for ProNeg stocks as well.... Underexposing K-40 means that you are rating it at ASA80, overexposing 200T Neg stock (as you should), means that you are rating it at ASA 100, which means that you only need slightly more light to shoot K-40 than you do for 200T neg stock).

I could go on and on, but this is getting boring for all of us.
Also, as far as underexposing Kodachrome 40 a stop, I never project anything. It's all for Rank transfer.
You definitely DON'T want to overexpose reversal film, unlike what you said. I am going to assume you mean for neg film, because if you have shot any reversal film, you would know this. The highlights blow out terribly on K-40 if you overexpose, making have that familiar "home movie look" (because when making home movies, everyone is shooting AT exposure), but if you underexpose a stop, you get better color saturation, and more detail in the highlights, yet because K-40 is such fantastic stock, you will not see an increase in grain (unlike ProNeg and Ektachrome), and you will still retain detail in the shadows.
I would be glad to email single frames digitized from my film to anyone who asks, of what it looked like when I underexposed a stop, and when I exposed AT exposure, on K-40. You be the judge. It's an obvious conclusion when you see the footage. That stuff in the forest towards the end of LOST TRIBES (for those of you who have the tape), was shot with the meter IN THE RED!!! It was at least a stop under, and it's some of the best quality footage in the whole movie. Beautiful saturated colors of the trees, fleshtones, etc.
And I certainly am not claiming to be the one and only authority on Super 8 shooting, but I get irritated maybe a little too much, that there are throngs of future S8 shooters acting on all this advice floating around out there, from people who sound very knowledgable, and probably are on some points, but I listened to all this, followed a lot of it, and it cost me dearly, not only in money, but in results on my film.
The problem is, that most people I hear giving advice, will give advice from personal experience, then they will throw in something that is right out of a Super 8 Sound advertisement, or whatever. Something that they have never tried, and just assume to be true, and I know from my personal experience, that a lot of this stuff is absolute BS, because it doesn't work!
I don't know everything, but one thing I promise, is that I will only give advice based on my personal experience.
If I heard something somewhere else, or in an article, I will make sure and mention that as my source, and say that I don't know if it's gonna work or not, etc.
Most others I hear, as I just mentioned, give advice based on what seems to me to be about 50% personal experience, andthe rest based on hearsay, ads in film & video magazines, and just repeating what they're read on posting boards, etc.
This obviously is just my opinion, but I keep hearing the same things repeated over and over, that from my experience are just not the way it is.
Feel free to disagree with me, it doesn't bother me at all, but to those who are planning out your filming strategy for your next project, I would ask those giving all this advice, exactly how much shooting they have done, have they actually finished a feature, etc., and then use that to base your trust in them.
Also, if I were posing as "Mr. Know-it-all", I would not admit that my film has shortcomings. I have been very open about it's weaknesses, about the Ektachrome footage looking like crap, for instance, and have been freely telling people what's wrong with my film, and how they can avoid the same mistakes. (Like NOT shooting with a noisy camera, for example).
The hallmark of a "know-it-all", is that they never admit their mistakes, and claim that their work is superior, and I have not done that.
Obviously, I want everyone on the planet to go on ebay and buy my film, but I think it is a good deal, and how many films do you get a month's free advice included? (I haven't cut anyone off after a month, incidentally....)
Anyway, I welcome all questions, arguments, and disagreements, still, and yeah, there are some pretty funny stories about stuff that happened while making my film. (Like one of my actors burning all the hair of one arm, while testing the Flame Throwing Bazooka!!!!).
And yeah, those girls are pretty hot. Good casting, eh?
Here's another one (not that funny, but I just remembered it):
The first girl-kisses-girl scene, I intentionally didn't tell my crew what was going to happen. They had no idea at all. So the first take, where Emily kisses Karen, and it's like a ten second kiss. Then I say cut. You could hear a pin drop, I mean everyone was speechless, absolutely dumbfounded, then my sound man, who was on his first day on the film, says, in a total deadpan voice "I just really want to thank you for asking me to be here today".
Everyone just busted up. It was pretty funny. We did about 6 takes, and there wasn't a flacid, er... I mean dry eye in the house!

LONG LIVE SUPER 8!!!!!
Matt Pacini

[Alex]

You definitely DON'T want to overexpose reversal film, unlike what you said. I am going to assume you mean for neg film, because if you have shot any reversal film, you would know this. The highlights blow out terribly on K-40 if you overexpose, making have that familiar "home movie look" (because when making home movies, everyone is shooting AT exposure), but if you underexpose a stop, you get better color saturation, and more detail in the highlights, yet because K-40 is
such fantastic stock, you will not see an increase in grain (unlike ProNeg and Ektachrome), and you will still retain detail in the shadows. I would be glad to email single frames digitized from my film to anyone who asks, of what it looked like when I underexposed a stop, and when I exposed AT exposure, on K-40. You be the judge. It's an obvious conclusion when you see the footage.

-Matt Pacini
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It also depends how you were metering...some people zoom in on an actors face, others use incidence meters, others do it in wide angle....

It would be really cool to see the stills, perhaps you can make a link to where it might be available as is sometimes done by the computer literate here....

Depth of field can have a significant effect on optimal exposure, as can if the shot is a wide, medium, or telephoto.

I supervised rank transfer for 4 months in the early 90's when Super-8 Sound used to go to the Post Group in Hollywood. Probably supervised around 40-50 films of varying lengths.

A lot of the films were underexposed more often than overexposed.

But each cameraperson definitely develops their own style of framing and lighting, and that will affect the issue of where to set your f-stop more than anything else.

Hope to see your stills online.

Or I just may have to buy the movie.


-Alex







[This message has been edited by Alex (edited August 10, 2001).]

[8th Man]

Matt,
What is this month of advice thing? I bought your film on ebay(weshould support these endevors) and I left the country before watching it all. Did the purchase come free advice on shooting etc.?

[mattias]

> It also depends how you were metering...some people zoom in on an actors face,
> others use incidence meters, others do it in wide angle....

no, it doesn't matter. overexposure is still overexposure and vice versa, since it's simply a physical phenomenon taking place in the emulsion of the film. for the sake of this discussion, we have to assume that a correct method for measuring light is used, right? if somebody uses a method that gives him a too low reading and then "underexposes", he's not underexposing.

[Matt Pacini]

Yeah, 8th man, anyone who buys my film, I will answer all questions they may have about it, or the making of it, (how did I light this particular scene, do sound, prepare for the Rank transfer, etc.), so feel free to bombard me with emails! I don't really keep track of how long it's been since you bought the film, so go ahead, I don't mind.

Well, on the exposure thing, both Alex & Matthias are correct, although it sounds like they are in disagreement. Yes, matthias, overexposure means overexposure, technically, no matter how you define it, but there are different ways that different cinematographers meter to get the desired result. And that's good, because that is part of the art of it.
The way I generally metered, was using an 18% gray card, held where the actors face was going to be in the scene, which technically, is the correct way to measure exposure.
Many prefer to meter an actors face, then set exposure for that reading. (Which is actually a good way to do it, which I would recommend).
The average caucasian face will read a stop under gray card, so Alex, if you meter this way, and set exposure accordingly, you ARE setting your exposure one stop under. (Again, according to the standard measurement of the 18% gray card).
This is a great way of metering, and in fact, I only figured this out late in my production, after using the gray card for everything. It's more important for your actor's face to be properly exposed, than it is for the entire average light of the scene to be properly exposed.
However, this is a problem in cases of say, shooting a car pulling up in front of a building outside. In those cases (using Kodachrome 40), you would want to take readings of important objects in the scene, the highlights and shadows, (determining the look you want for the entire scene, as well as those important objects that pertain to the story), and average them, then stop down one stop. Actually, I should be saying 1/2 to one stop, because it really depends on the look you want. I prefer a little deeper look, with saturated colors, because I hate that washed out "bright" look, like those British productions you see on PBS, where everything is washed out and gray-white looking. Also, your focus becomes very critical, because your depth of field gets very shallow.
Again, I prefer that look, because it focuses the audiences attention on exactly what you want them to see, and also, because it looks more like 35mm film, which has a shallower depth of feild at low apertures.
I am currently working on my website, and it's quite a way from being up and running, or I would post those frames from my film, but to anyone who wants to see them, feel free to email me, and I'll email them to you.
By the way, I would suggest doing what I do:
At the beginning of the first roll of a scene (under a particular lighting setup), I shoot a few seconds of a close-up of a PA holding an 18% gray card up next to their face, as well as a focus chart.
This is a good reference for the colorist when doing your transfer, to assure that they can dial in the exposure, color and focus. This saves you money, because then they don't have to run through your scene, trying to see the fleshtones, etc. on the fly, and having to roll back to the beginning to start the transfer. It's much quicker this way, and so far, they have thanked me for it.
Matt Pacini

[mattias]

> there are different ways that different cinematographers meter to get the desired result

no shit. we don't even have to become new cinematographers to change ways actually. ;-) and i too use the word "overexpose" when i actually just expose over a meter reading that isn't universally "correct." but in the discussion about whether k40 should be over or underexposed, we're surely talking about what's happening in the emulsion, no matter any creative descicion the dp happens to make?

/matt