How many stii shoot motion picture film?

[oldfart 0]

Curious here.How many motion picture shooters have either completely abandoned film in favor of video and how many still shoot 16 mm, S-16mm,35mm and even some super 8 still out there.In spite of the expense and the lab hassle,film still has the edge in look and versatility.Yet we can't deny that electronic digital imaging has taken a bite out of celluloid.Kodak recently announced that they have laid off aboout 1500 employees from their Rochester plant.

[freeflir29 0]

UUUmmmmmmmmm..Yeah.........

[oldfart 0]

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UUUmmmmmmmmm..Yeah.........

What's your prefference on cameras?Film stock?Who do you shoot for?

[quade 3]

I, uh, think the point Clay was trying to get across was that very, very few people shoot motion picture film these days. Usually only for a film or television commercial. There's maybe a half dozen people in the U.S. that would even consider it and even then they'd be either working on highly paid for a job or their reel in order to get that highly paid job.

Film is expensive and motion picture cameras, even the smallest and lightest ones suitable for professional work are simply too heavy and far too expensive for personal flying.

If you really want to get into it, you might try poking around over at http://joejennings.com/. Hell of a good camera flyer and way into the commercial scene. Shoots film a lot for those purposes but I think for every day stuff you'll still see him using video.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[freeflir29 0]

Yeah...sorry if I was being a smart ass but....What Quade said.

[davelepka 4]

film still has the edge in look and versatility


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It does look better than video, but how is it more versatile?

[Deuce 1]

Both Brent Finley and Greg Gasson talked about film at the Holiday Boogie, and showed us some.

Apparently the film puts one frame down on each video frame. The clarity and depth were very noticeably better on the film clips.

[oldfart 0]

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film still has the edge in look and versatility


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It does look better than video, but how is it more versatile?

First of all, you have a much broader color pallette and quite a bit more of a contrast range and exposure latitude.
For example, if you shoot tungsten balanced film with an 85 filter in daylight and your shoot takes you into the early evening and you start to loose the sunlight, you have the option of yanking out the 85 and having your colorist correct it.Try that in any video format and you'll get blue video.Yes, you can re white balance, but it will never match your other footage you shot on the number 2 or 3 in cam filter.
Engineers have tried to preach to me since the onset of the video revolution that today's CCD's have an 8 stop range.I've pushed Betacam SP,Digi Beta,DVC and everything else to it's limits and I count roughly 4, maybe 5 at best.
For skydiving, overcranking to 48 fps,64 fps and even higher will give you some awesome slow motion you just won't get by slowing down video original in the post.
Yes, I am aware film origination is dying due to the cost.I was just curious to see how many of us are still around.As for film cameras, there are some that are cheaper and can be had for next to nothing.A Bell and Howell GSAP can be picked up for near nothing and it's very lightweight.It's downside is that it only holds 50 feet ( a little over a minute of useable footage in 16mm at 24 fps),but for freefall why would you need hours of tape?Of course this is not something you shoot students and tandems on.Yet if you're doing a commercial or other broadcast project.Film can't be beat.

[oldfart 0]

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Yeah...sorry if I was being a smart ass but....What Quade said.

No problem, I should've aimed this post for the professional cinematographer that shoots MP film for clients.I am quite painfully aware that film,processing and TK transfer is very expensive,I'm a proefssional cinematographer myself,though more on the ground.I'm just curious to hear from you guys that shoot the commercials and movies.Film is dying in that arena as well.
I'm sure you're faced with some challenges working with DP's who want a film to be shot with such and such stock for a particular look,yet if the script calls for a twilight ,slow motion freefall shot and the rest of the film is shot very tight grained, say 5245,what do you do?
Terminal Velocity comes to mind.The twilight slow motion shots of Nastasia Kinski's and Charlie Sheen's characters jump into the power plant.

[quade 3]

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Engineers have tried to preach to me since the onset of the video revolution that today's CCD's have an 8 stop range.I've pushed Betacam SP,Digi Beta,DVC and everything else to it's limits and I count roughly 4, maybe 5 at best.

Back when I worked for Disney, we did a shootout between film and HDTV. We wanted to see what the economic tradeoffs were vs. the creative tradeoffs. This came about as a result of observing the results from and talking with the folks at LucasFilm and what they had accomplished with the last two Star Wars films.

When it comes to post-production effects, HDTV wins hands down as there are no worries about pin registration or other gate weave issues.

We fooled around with several cameras and several setups, lighting conditions and under and over cranks.

Our interest was solely in the application as it pertains to broadcast television in standard def and HDTV. We didn't care at all what the results looked like when transfered to film, since that was outside the scope of our needs.

Let me put one question to rest immediately with the following statment -- film does NOT look "better" than the current state of the art HDTV cameras. It may look ever so slightly "different" but in our side-by-side shootout, "better" was something that could only be applied in the most subjective evaluations and even at that, it was often times a matter of exactly what it was you thought you were seeing in the finished product.

A HUGE part of the process was the post processing of the film (color correction et al). While this may seem to give the advantage to HDTV, in reality, we saw no economic advantage there because of the extra engineering setups and labor on site during the HDTV shoots. Essentially, it was a wash, you could either play around with perfect setups on location or do it in post.

Film does have a creative advantage in the wider range of under and over cranking variations, but for most normal 1/2 speed slo-mo "beauty" shots, again, there simply was no real advantage to either format.

ALL of that said, The HDTV setups are a much bigger hassle when it comes to attaching the cameras to vehicles (think cars, airplanes, rollercoasters) and you sure as hell wouldn't want to even think about taking the HDTV camera we were testing on a skydive.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[oldfart 0]

Our interest was solely in the application as it pertains to broadcast television in standard def and HDTV.
Your comparison was between film and HDTV video.My comparison is SD video and film.For broadcast,the differences are subjective and subtle in what I've seen.
For theatrical work and other creative endeavors, cinematographers are still debating film vs. HDTV.It seems to be more of a subjective argument like you say.