Shooting 16mm

[Ezequiel Romero]

Hi people!

I guess this is not the perfect place to talk about this, being a Red forum, but I´m kind of used to read the posts here and I wanted to ask.

I´m a (very proud) Red One MX owner, but for my next short I´m taking the film route! The prices seem pretty competitive, and I have always loved the look and feel of it, despite the current lack of film stock options: its Kodak Vision3 or forget it. I would love some Eastman EXR or the original Vision stock.

I have never worked on film, with a couple of exceptions as AC on 16mm shorts nearly ten years ago. So: does anyone here have any tips they want to share?

I´m more concerned about exposing everything right, being used to work on digital and mostly Red (I rarely use the light meter, I rely on histogram and my guts most of the time, which I know are bad habits).

For a 14 minute short I´m getting five 400ft rolls: a 50D, a 500T and three 250D. Maybe its pushing my luck with so little stock, but we need to make it as cheap as possible.
I´m getting a SR3 and some 1.2 Zeiss lenses.

Thanks everybody!

 

[jordan levy]

honestly if youve never used a light meter then first you need to get a nice new modern one, like the sekonic cine, and probably get a manual still camera and a Polaroid back and practice, practice, practice. nothing you learned in digital is relevant in exposing film. especially with big setups and varying light figure on taking about the twice the time you would to work out the best exposure. we commonly used those Polaroid back cameras on set to double check all the exposure in the scene before shooting. you will not be able to judge any exposure on a monitor. further more i think youll need about 3 times the amount of film stock you mentioned.

 

[Ezequiel Romero]

I actually have a film still camera, and a polaroid! Never liked shooting digital stills, even on jobs. I just finished an album cover shot on film. For this last one, actually, I shot digital as well, same settings as the film camera (the client was very skeptical). I ended up using the film ones anyway, but it was an interesting experiment. The lighting setup was the same and, aside from less detail in the shadows on film, I found them both to be very well lit.

I´m concerned about the amount of film too, but...! Let´s see I can squeeze a few extra rolls into the budget but I doubt it.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Exposing film isn't some mystery. Light it how you want it to look, stick your meter where the talents face is going to be and set the stop on the lens. You'll make a few mistakes and learn a few things, but it's much easier to expose film right than digital.

16mm is harder to light for in my opinion because you see so much more of the background. You need to shape the BG light much more to create the separation between the fore ground and draw attention to what you want. Unless you don't care if the back ground looks like crap, then it's easy ;-)

Nick

 

[Ezequiel Romero]

Nice one, Nick! I´m thinking of pushing it to 1.2 all the time to loose as much background as I can, but I don´t like that because I would like to fight the softness of the 16mm as well. I guess you can´t have everything

 

[dio Zafi]

...it's easy...just be prepared and board everything like a commercial.... if you find 35mm short ends ..you can also shoot on 35mm if you want..

 

[Ezequiel Romero]

I´ve considered that, but it is also more expensive in post! Also, the camera is more expensive, even if, using 35mm, I can use most of the gear and lenses of my Red.

 

[dio Zafi]

...i don't know if this would work for you but there is a lab in Romania(kodak)...and they're giving deals on post processing..just in case you go with 35mm

 

[Ignacio Aguilar]

Ezequiel, try to contact José Luis Aguilar (he is not related to me ), maybe he still has some film rolls left (16 or 35mm) of Fuji Film and can offer you a good deal.
We still have some 16mm & 35mm gear (cameras and lenses) here in Madrid, in case you need them.

If you end up using 16mm film stock, just give it healthy exposures (rate 500T at 320 ASA, or 250D at 160, etc). Zeiss 1.3 primes performance at T/2.0 is pretty good and will help you to reduce the depth of field while still retaining decept sharpness. And if you're not used to use your light meter, a DSLR will help you, because you'll be able to previsualize your exposures if you use the same settings.

 

[Ezequiel Romero]

...i don't know if this would work for you but there is a lab in Romania(kodak)...and they're giving deals on post processing..just in case you go with 35mm

Yes! Im in talks with cinelab Romania for the lab, and their prices are very good!

In any case, 35mm is always more expensive to develop/transfer/scan. If we decide that we have the money for that maybe its best to just add a few more rolls of film instead. The 16mm look can actually fit the project very well.

 

[Ezequiel Romero]

Ezequiel, try to contact José Luis Aguilar (he is not related to me ), maybe he still has some film rolls left (16 or 35mm) of Fuji Film and can offer you a good deal.
We still have some 16mm & 35mm gear (cameras and lenses) here in Madrid, in case you need them.

If you end up using 16mm film stock, just give it healthy exposures (rate 500T at 320 ASA, or 250D at 160, etc). Zeiss 1.3 primes performance at T/2.0 is pretty good and will help you to reduce the depth of field while still retaining decept sharpness. And if you're not used to use your light meter, a DSLR will help you, because you'll be able to previsualize your exposures if you use the same settings.

¡Hola Nacho! Jaja, que pequeño es el mundo. Uno de los primeros cortos en 16 en los que participe de ayudante fue justamente L'amour.

I didnt know that you guys had film cameras. I talked with a few rental houses and and EPC gave me the best deal. We could talk if you want! If those fuji rolls are still fresh that could be interesting. Im not particulary fan of Vision3.

I was planning on taking a dslr with me, sure. Its the modern equivalent of bringing a polaroid to the set. And the f2 option makes the most sense, as we both said, to deal with sharpness and depth of field as best as possible.
I know my way around my light meter, but I am used to fast and low cost shoots where the AD looks at me with resentment every time I take it out of the pouch Dealing with film feels like a serious matter!

And I dont actually understand what you say about underexposing the film

 

[Tony Mac]

¡Hola Nacho! Jaja, que pequeño es el mundo. Uno de los primeros cortos en 16 en los que participe de ayudante fue justamente L'amour.

I didnt know that you guys had film cameras. I talked with a few rental houses and and EPC gave me the best deal. We could talk if you want! If those fuji rolls are still fresh that could be interesting. Im not particulary fan of Vision3.

I was planning on taking a dslr with me, sure. Its the modern equivalent of bringing a polaroid to the set. And the f2 option makes the most sense, as we both said, to deal with sharpness and depth of field as best as possible.
I know my way around my light meter, but I am used to fast and low cost shoots where the AD looks at me with resentment every time I take it out of the pouch Dealing with film feels like a serious matter!

And I dont actually understand what you say about underexposing the film

By rating your film at a lower ASA, you are erring on the side of overexposure, which in general is good for color negative film. You end up with a denser negative, which means more detail in the shadows and finer grain, without losing much of anything in the highlights.

 

[Ignacio Aguilar]

Yes, as Tony says, overexposure (and not underexposure) makes your negative denser, so you'll have less grain, better blacks and richer colors. By printing it down later, you'll retain your desired brightness level. You just need to rate your meter a bit slower than your actual film stock (in ASA), and then expose it accordingly, as if it were a lower ASA film stock. You can also set your meter to the ASA of your film stock and compensate your T/stop each time.

I'll speak with my partner tomorrow to see if we can offer you a deal on 35mm or 16mm gear and let you know.

 

[Ezequiel Romero]

Yes, overexposure, sorry, I thought it backwards. I knew that pushing it one stop over or under is a pretty common practice, but I thought you lost something in the process. Underexposing gives you a bit more grain and doesnt over exposing it mess up the whites? And it is a bit more expensive to process and lit as well, so I have to take that into account.

Let me know, Nacho! Im aiming for a 3 day shoot and a mere 3:1/4:1 ratio on the film, just to keep the budget as tight as possible. Four days and more film would be better but...! I will be shooting by late september, so I am just doing some early research before scouting the locations in a week or two.

Thank you everybody for the answers, by the way. Its been pretty interesting so far!

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The density of a processed negative is controlled by two things: exposure and development time and/or temperature. If you expose the film correctly at the recommended rating and process normally, you should end up with a negative of average, normal density.

If you underexposed by one stop and processed normally, you'd end up with a "thin" negative of lower density (more of the silver halides were left unexposed and were washed away in processing, leaving a clearer negative).

If you underexposed by one stop and push-processed by one stop to compensate, you'd end up with a negative of normal density, more or less (it's not an exact process).

If you overexposed by one stop and processed normally, you'd end up with a "thick" negative of higher density (more of the silver halides were exposed and could be converted to silver and color dyes during development, leaving a darker negative).

If you overexposed by one stop and pull-processed by one stop to compensate, you'd end up with a negative of normal density, more or less.

If you exposed normally but push-processed by one stop, you'd end up with a denser negative. If you exposed normally and pull-processed by one stop, you'd end up with a thinner negative.

But keep in mind that push-processing increases contrast, and pull-processing reduces contrast. And overexposure reduces graininess (actually what it does is expose the slower, tinier grains in between the larger faster grains, making the grain structure tighter and smoother, but the size of the larger grains is determined by the speed of the film stock) and underexposure increases graininess because only the larger, faster grains got exposed and the rest get washed away in processing.

So underexposure combined with push-processing (often done to shoot in lower light) will increase grain and contrast.

I mention one-stop under and over exposure just because you can order the lab to either process NORMAL, or PUSH or PULL by one-stop increments. But you can under or overexpose the film by any fraction of a stop.

A slightly denser than normal negative will have better blacks and thus richer colors and better contrast in the print, and it will be a slightly less grainy-looking. The benefits are more obvious when making a print of the negative where the extra density allows you to use higher printer light numbers. But for scanning and digital color-correction from the camera negative, the benefits are still there because a negative with more exposure generally has more shadow information recorded, and with the extended highlight range of negative, generally the high end holds up even with some overexposure. Exposure = information.

However, go too far with overexposure and you do get some muddiness in the whites, some loss of extremely bright highlight detail, and with some scanners and telecine, some noise in the whites, which are the darkest parts of the negative and thus need the most light pumped through them. This is more of a concern if the subject is nothing but light tones, like a person in a white wedding dress against a snowy field.

It has been traditional with film to often rate it a little slower than recommended by the manufacturer so that you are consistently overexposing everything a little, and then processing normal so that you don't counteract this increase in density. People often rate a stock either 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop slower (so 500 ASA at 400 or 320 ASA). It doesn't cost you any more to do this except for the 1/3 or 2/3-stop of extra lighting. The simplest thing is to just set your meter to the slightly lower rating and forget about it, just treat the 500 ASA stock as if it were 400 or 320 ASA.

But shoot a grey card and a face next to it at this new rating, preferably in a boring flat light so that the image cannot be misinterpreted creatively, so that the colorist corrects for the slight overexposure and gives you an image of normal brightness. Also it's good when the first thing at the head of the footage is something easy to interpret like a grey card in flat light, something that no one is going to argue about how it should look, unlike a creatively-lit scene. And use whatever you consider to be a neutral "white" light for the card so that the following scene shot under gels and filters for creative color effects is not accidentally corrected out.

From this basic approach, you can start to experiment with how you shoot your grey card in order to get dailies back that are biased for effect, like white-balancing on a video camera to a colored card -- you could shoot the grey card under a light with a quarter blue gel on it so that the colorist has to warm up the image to get the card to look neutral grey, so that the footage following the card has a warm bias to it. And of course, if shooting under uncorrected greenish fluorescents that you wanted corrected to neutral in dailies, you can shoot the grey card under that light.

I often make up signs that I shoot after the grey card with big letters that say simple things like COLOR: BLUE MOONLIGHT / KEEP DARK or COLOR: WARM GOLDEN SUNSET or COLOR: SLIGHTLY COOL (BLUE) CAST so that the colorist knows the creative intent of the footage. You can also put that on the camera report.

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

Definitely hire an experienced 1st AC and 2nd AC/film loader who are familiar with the film workflow and give them time to prep the camera package for you. Things like flange depth, registration, ground glass, mag scratching and light tightness all should be tested before shooting.

To save film during production, I would recommend doing blocking, marking, and camera rehearsals before rolling a take. If you are recording sync sound, roll sound first, call the slate, roll camera, and then clap sticks, gtfo and call action. Don't forget to check the gate for hairs before moving on.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I don't have very much to say, as I am not a DP. But I have seen scans of 7219 pushed one stop, and it looks wonderful. Yes, it's grainy, but not stupidly so.

I will add a personal thought - possibly a naive one: I am surprised that any production (film or TV) with a decent budget would shoot digital. I mean, really? Everything to do with cine film is standardized and is quite efficient, especially scanning.

RED footage is the best footage to come out of a digital camera, IMO. But that's another matter altogether.

 

[Ezequiel Romero]

The density of a processed negative is controlled by two things: exposure and development time and/or temperature. (...) You can also put that on the camera report.

Great breakdown David! So if I understand you correctly, for you it is equally correct to under or over expose film and correct it back when grading than to actually doing it on the lab? It just gives you a slightly different feel?

I will add a personal thought - possibly a naive one: I am surprised that any production (film or TV) with a decent budget would shoot digital. I mean, really? Everything to do with cine film is standardized and is quite efficient, especially scanning.

RED footage is the best footage to come out of a digital camera, IMO. But that's another matter altogether.

I agree with you but, sadly, it is not an easy option anymore, as labs keep closing (in Spain there are none anymore) and rental houses with the film option become less and less abundant. As I said before, Kodak being the only player with only one type of film stock is also a huge setback. The "film look" is now just one flavour, and not as diverse as before.

Also, there is now a generation (myself included) that never had the option to learn film and use in a professional shoot. Us "millenials" are the 5D generation, and the vast majority have little to zero sensitivity towards the quality of film. They compare it to shooting canon and blackmagic and they consider it expensive and clunky. In Spain the last film school to practice on film ceased to do so a few years ago.

And you just wait until those born this century get to rule the show, producing and photographing stuff. The youtube generation is going to impose (already is) an aesthetic that is the absolute opposite.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

This is the 101 of film exposure:

Exposing film isn't some mystery. Light it how you want it to look, stick your meter where the talents face is going to be and set the stop on the lens. You'll make a few mistakes and learn a few things, but it's much easier to expose film right than digital.

Nick

I add:

Expose half a stop thicker, meaning open the iris half a stop. With film it's easier to ruin the footage by underexposing than by overexposing.

Don't push the footage later, or do any other fancy lab stuff.

Get good stock, and be prepared that S-16mm is hardly resolving 1080p.

The telecine is the bottle neck. Don't try so take there the cheap route.

Lenses: Classic S-16mm zoom is the sharp and wide Canon 8-64, avoid anything longer than 45mm, the 8-64 tend to become soft in the long end. The lens is prone to diffraction. Zeiss 16mm Super Speeds are great with S-16mm but tend to flare considerably when pointed to a bright light source such as windows, etc.... Bokeh is triangular but nice. The Zeiss 10-100/11-110 are less desirably in my opinion.


Hans

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Great breakdown David! So if I understand you correctly, for you it is equally correct to under or over expose film and correct it back when grading than to actually doing it on the lab? It just gives you a slightly different feel?

You can push or pull-process by one-stop increments in order to counteract under or over-exposure but the labs charge more for it compared to normal processing, it can delay your turnaround time since push and pull processing are saved for the end of the day, and some labs don't even offer pull-processing for 16mm, just push-processing.

The overexposure of the film negative helps make the grain look smoother and tighter by filling in the gaps between the large fast grains with the small slow grains (the sensitivity of the grain is mainly a function of its size, similar to a photosite in a sensor, it is always helpful to have a larger surface area to collect photons).

A denser negative printed "down" will use higher printer light values and give you deeper blacks in the print, which gives you better contrast and thus richer color saturation. So if that's what you want, you'd generally overexpose a little but process NORMAL to end up with a denser negative, rather than PULL process to reduce density back down to normal. But some people will overexpose and pull-process for the reduced contrast. Today, however, Vision-3 negative is already a little on the flat side so pull-processing is less common except for a look, and if you are color-correcting digitally, it is easy to just color-correct the image for a low-contrast and pastel look without resorting to pull-processing.

Besides increasing contrast and grain, push-processing can cause some minor color shift to the image.

If you are shooting film for the first time, I wouldn't mess with unusual processing techniques until you understand the normal process better. But it would be a good idea to shoot some tests.