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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I don't understand what's so horribly wrong with calling it HD? I've never seen anyone get as much enjoyment from that as you just did.

I wanted to do it in 16mm because I like 16mm character studies.

You're right. I've never shot film. That's why I'm doing it.

And no, Kill Bill was shot on film. 35mm.
 
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If I went out tomorrow, having never made a film before, and in 9 months time turned up with 'The Social Network' would that not be a film? And if it is (which it surely is, right?) then am I not a filmmaker?

Semantics aside: I would love to shoot on film if it was a practical medium for people shooting on a budget or if there was anyway of really getting to grips with it that didn't take either three years of film school or several years of work in the industry.

The film look can definitely be recreated with the RED to a degree where only the most finely tuned eye would stand a chance of noticing the difference.

You should also bare in mind the fact that independent movies usually get fairly limited distribution deals (if any at all) and these will all be digitally projected with the resulting loss of quality, regardless of whether you shot digitally or on 16mm.
 
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omarzamora said:
I don't understand what's so horribly wrong with calling it HD? I've never seen anyone get as much enjoyment from that as you just did.

I wanted to do it in 16mm because I like 16mm character studies.

You're right. I've never shot film. That's why I'm doing it.

And no, Kill Bill was shot on film. 35mm.
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i think its hard for people to get my humor over the internet with out the inflections in my voice...

HD is a size... yes kill bill is in HD... go look it up... go buy it on blueray... Thats what HD is

HD is not the digital or film format... hd is nothing more than defining the quality as High... its not a format

you keep saying you shoot in HD... that can mean anything... take a look ... its in a book

just trust me man... im giving you a hard time ... thats all

i am getting a kick out of it because you are making a distinction of the names of things and that "filmmakers" means they shoot film... but your misunderstanding the name of HD hahahahaah

its ironic... dont you think

wow i have just joking qouted 2 songs in this post ... man im bored


ok


to be honest... i wish i could have this conversation at a table with you because there is so much to say... i hate forums for this reason...

you have to understand more than anything else i have said... i respect you for wanting to try both ... but you basically wrote digital off as crap and said film is better before you have even tried film...

yet you cant tell in a movie which shots were done int digital and which were done in film...

what i am getting at is that it is you who is biased and it is us who are open minded to try ...

i have done both film and digital in photography for 15 years... and if i could afford it... i would love to have a dark room... but not for film... hahahahah i want a dark room to cross platform my work... i love the effects from a dark room... but i dont like how sensitve negatives are... so using digital to take pictures...and develope with pojectors... thats what i want...

i am by no means biased... i love them all... because i have tried both... because they both have there ups and downs... but you seem to not like one over the other with out even trying both


that again is why i cant believe this is legitimate... but the more you argue back... the more i am beginning to feel bad for saying it wasn't legit
 
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omarzamora said:
the $15k is for the camera, raw stock, and processing.
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Sorry that so few want to actually answer your question, omarzamora. Film is the bomb. It's what I started on back in the 1970's, and I'd still be shooting it if I could afford to.

That said, I'll tell you I shot a 90-minute feature on 16mm back in 1994. I had only a 4-to-1 shooting ratio, which is very low - basically one take per setup; two if absolutely necessary. At that time, film stock, processing and work printing cost me a total of $6,000 in 1994 dollars. My guess is that prices have not come down any in the intervening 17 years. If you transfer the negative straight to video for editing you can forgo the work print, but that process isn't free either.

Food for thought. Good luck.
 
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licenseless said:
i think its hard for people to get my humor over the internet with out the inflections in my voice...

HD is a size... yes kill bill is in HD... go look it up... go buy it on blueray... Thats what HD is

HD is not the digital or film format... hd is nothing more than defining the quality as High... its not a format

you keep saying you shoot in HD... that can mean anything... take a look ... its in a book
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Allowing for your sense of humor, omarzamora is talking about the
shooting format, not the home video format. "Kill Bill" was shot on
film. And "HD" is a shooting format. "HD" cannot mean "anything"
even if you look it up in a book. "SD" is not "HD", film in not "HD",
super 8 in not "HD", VHS is not "HD" but all of those shooting
formats can be transfered to Blueray.

I believe omarzamora is sincere in his questions about shooting 16mm.
 
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I don't consider myself a filmmaker eventhough I have completed a digital movie.

RED doesn't make sense to me. $150,000 for a digital camera that creates a look ALMOST like film? Making an authentic film would cost waaaayyyyyy less than that.

Okay. With the HD movie, I shot 37 hours. I shot that much with the mentality that digital doesn't cost anything, keep shooting. I think I can do the film in 20 hours. I looked around and every 10 minutes of film is roughly $80 for 16. Is this a fair price? Also, it was about $2,500 for 10 hours of developed film, is that right? And I'm looking at Bolex cameras but Arriflexes (or however it's spelled) looks interesting too. I know nothing of these cameras other than the films that were shot on them and the look they create.
 
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directorik said:
Allowing for your sense of humor, omarzamora is talking about the
shooting format, not the home video format. "Kill Bill" was shot on
film. And "HD" is a shooting format. "HD" cannot mean "anything"
even if you look it up in a book. "SD" is not "HD", film in not "HD",
super 8 in not "HD", VHS is not "HD" but all of those shooting
formats can be transfered to Blueray.

I believe omarzamora is sincere in his questions about shooting 16mm.
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yeah but digital doesnt mean its HD... thats what i am getting at

and the look it up in a book was pretty funny to me cause i just saw that damn community episode... donald glover is still running threw my head...


hd is a size... and nothing more... it is not a format... you your self said that...

what i was getting at is that he was so stuck on the word "filmaker" yet he didnt care for the fact that HD doesnt mean anything other than the size of the image...

749px-Vector_Video_Standards2.svg.png

hd is a size... it is not a format... i can not stress this enough... and like i said before... i think he should just got get some cheap equipment... (or borrow some) shoot a small test with it... and see if he is willing to spend the money on it... i believe that would help him in deciding weither or not he should even spend the 15 large... because thats a lot of money to drop on something you have never done before...

that is another reason i had trouble believing it was a real question... i am just being honest

i know for a fact that everyone on here thinks im at home right now ranting and screaming at the wall while im typing... because none of you no me in person... i have a smile on my face 99 percent of the time... its who i am... i tell jokes in everything i do... so i dont expect any of you to get it... not till ya get to know me...

besides im not at home... at work hahahahaha best job ever hahahahaha
 
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omarzamora said:
I don't consider myself a filmmaker eventhough I have completed a digital movie.

RED doesn't make sense to me. $150,000 for a digital camera that creates a look ALMOST like film? Making an authentic film would cost waaaayyyyyy less than that.

Okay. With the HD movie, I shot 37 hours. I shot that much with the mentality that digital doesn't cost anything, keep shooting. I think I can do the film in 20 hours. I looked around and every 10 minutes of film is roughly $80 for 16. Is this a fair price? Also, it was about $2,500 for 10 hours of developed film, is that right? And I'm looking at Bolex cameras but Arriflexes (or however it's spelled) looks interesting too. I know nothing of these cameras other than the films that were shot on them and the look they create.
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again man i cant stress this enough...

try borrowing some gear or find some one who has film equipment for rent... and do some test shots... because dropping the money on stuff you admittedly know nothing about can come back to haunt you...

i honestly dont know of anyone who shoots film... so i couldnt advise you on who to borrow it from...

because all the AFN guys i know all shoot digital... and a lot of them are going away from minidv also and shooting with dslr stuff...
 
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$150,000 for the RED is something of an over exaggeration...

All the same I would never recommend buying a camera like that unless, like Nate North is another thread, you have a concurrent rental business plan in mind. You can rent the RED avec lenses (in the UK at least) for about £250. It's still expensive, especially if your shoot is a couple of months, but a decent 16mm camera will set you back the same sort of price on rental.

The only differences, for me, are that film DOPs tend to be more expensive because very few people are still learning on film. Not just DOPs though, the whole crew, if you are working off a budget, are more comfortable with digital. Film seems scary to a lot of us young guns.

And there's more that can go wrong with film. It's a tricky thing to get right. Brilliant, but tricky.
 
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omarzamora said:
I think I can do the film in 20 hours. I looked around and every 10 minutes of film is roughly $80 for 16. Is this a fair price? Also, it was about $2,500 for 10 hours of developed film, is that right? And I'm looking at Bolex cameras but Arriflexes (or however it's spelled) looks interesting too.
Click to expand...

Using your numbers, I come up with a film stock and processing cost of $14,600. That's before equipment rental and telecine, right? So it sounds like you've pretty much answered your own question.

Looking at my own figures from 1994, I shot roughly 6 hours at $6,000, so it cost me about $1,000 per hour of film. That being the case, if your numbers are accurate you're getting a much better rate than I did 17 years ago.
 
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NickClapper. Congratulations. You're the first guy that's offered any real advice. Haha.

I don't know where I heard 150k for the RED. I think it was on here.

And that's what I've noticed too, young people don't want to deal with film. It is scary to them. And there's not that much of an appreciation towards it.

I think I got what I'm gonna get from this thread, haha.
 
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licenseless said:
yeah but digital doesnt mean its HD... thats what i am getting at
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Everyone of us understands that - so does omarzamora. SD is digital
and not HD. Digibeta is digital and not HD. "Kill Bill" was not shot HD
as you said. It was shot on film. It was delivered to the home video
format on HD but is wasn't shot on HD

licenseless said:
hd is a size... it is not a format... i can not stress this enough...
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Fine. Stress it all you want. HD is also a format that cameras
capture. Shooting in SD is different than shooting in HD which is
different than shooting on film. Just like PAL is a different
format than NTSC.


licenseless said:
and like i said before... i think he should just got get some cheap equipment... (or borrow some) shoot a small test with it... and see if he is willing to spend the money on it... i believe that would help him in deciding weither or not he should even spend the 15 large... because thats a lot of money to drop on something you have never done before...

that is another reason i had trouble believing it was a real question... i am just being honest
Click to expand...
Fine. Your opinion is he shouldn’t use film. And you can keep
stressing that to him all you like. That’s the great thing about
this forum. I was just being honest when I said I believed it
is a real question.

Many times people want to explore the possibility of moving from
digital to film so they ask questions about doing that. I shoot film
even though it's a lot of money and I can (and have) shot digital.

And you can relax. None of us are picturing you at all. Smile or
no smile, rant or no rant, home or at work. We're just having a
discussion.

You aren't picturing me are you?
 
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You helped too, 2001. Haha. And I'm not surprised that I'm getting a better deal than you are because most of the warehouses I called said they're film is getting cheaper because people are moving towards digital. It's silly, isn't it? Digital got big because it finally started looking like film and was affordable, and now because it's so widely used, the price of film goes down.
 
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omarzamora said:
NickClapper. Congratulations. You're the first guy that's offered any real advice. Haha.
Click to expand...

What do you call this?

Cracker Funk said:
I think you'd be surprised by just how many Hollywood movies are being shot with digital equipment, and you'd never notice if nobody told you.

The reason to shoot digital is pretty straight-forward -- $.

Now, you may think that hey, if you can raise the money to shoot on film, why not? If I'm producing a feature, and I'm able to raise a limited amount of dollars, then I need to make difficult decisions on what to spend money on.

Things I would spend money on, sooner than spending it on film:

Maximizing my cast/crew
craft services
an awesome soundtrack
promotion

That's the short list. Unless your pockets are bottomless, I think you're guilty of having your priorities out of whack, if you think film is more important than any of those 4 things I mentioned.

A kick-ass cinematographer (one which will require money to hire), given the right tools (like a 5 ton grip truck, which costs money) will make digital look way better than an amateur playing with amateur light-kit and 16mm film.

Have you seen Black Swan? Could you tell which scenes were shot on the 5D?
Click to expand...
 
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directorik said:
Everyone of us understands that - so does omarzamora. SD is digital
and not HD. Digibeta is digital and not HD. "Kill Bill" was not shot HD
as you said. It was shot on film. It was delivered to the home video
format on HD but is wasn't shot on HD


Fine. Stress it all you want. HD is also a format that cameras
capture. Shooting in SD is different than shooting in HD which is
different than shooting on film. Just like PAL is a different
format than NTSC.



Fine. Your opinion is he shouldn’t use film. And you can keep
stressing that to him all you like. That’s the great thing about
this forum. I was just being honest when I said I believed it
is a real question.

Many times people want to explore the possibility of moving from
digital to film so they ask questions about doing that. I shoot film
even though it's a lot of money and I can (and have) shot digital.

And you can relax. None of us are picturing you at all. Smile or
no smile, rant or no rant, home or at work. We're just having a
discussion.

You aren't picturing me are you?
Click to expand...

eh... it would be a discussion if you understood what i was saying...

i never once said DONT SHOOT FILM... i said dont spend the money on it with out checking it out... i mean if your going to tell him to just go buy something he knows nothing about thats not good... but you can always start giving him good advice on were to check some gear out...maybe a cheap place to rent the gear... i know that no one here on island in okinawa uses it... as a matter of fact... the only camera shop here that deals with anything other than digital cameras is a good guy who actually stopped buying stuff to fix slr cameras more less anything else that does film... because its going away... so i have no clue what to tell this man other than giving him advice on how to step into something he has never done before hahahahaha

and of course give him a hard time because he said you need to shoot film to be a filmaker hahahahahaha

so... if you would stop trying to have an argument with me because you feel the need too... and please stay on topic here... so we can help this guy out... thank you
 
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