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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

So 16mm is dead...

What do you think is the best quality S16 film, in terms of picture quality? What is the movie that is shot on 16mm, which gives you the feeling of 35mm, if there's any?
 
if you are an expert then you can comment once its projected on a big screen that is, it tends to be grainier because you are enlarging an image size. It will tend to be softer than 35 mm when you project in 35 mm screen because you are again enlarging an image size. But as an audience i see 16mm or s16mm or 35 mm or s 35mm film as a film that entertains me and they all look the same. So it is the matter of feel and the budgets that decides what format should i shoot.
Can some more learned enlighten me as am also seeking why should i shoot in 16mm film.
Regards
 
Akoijam Veda said:
Can some more learned enlighten me as am also seeking why should i shoot in 16mm film.
Regards
Click to expand...

Err... because you like the way it looks? Because the look is appropriate for the project?

One of the best recent uses of 16mm was for Jan Troell's "Everlasting Moments". Troell wanted the feeling of an earlier color process like Autochromes or Agfacolor. There are some nice frame grabs here:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews51/everlasting_moments_blu-ray.htm
 
Gabor D. said:
Michael:
I just checked the credit section for the Casino Royale article in the 2006 december issue of American Cinematographer and it says
Super 35mm 2,35:1

nothing more.
Click to expand...

They did, all 6,000ft of it. Not sure why it wasn't mentioned in AC Mag -rather strange. I too thought it was a great inclusion to the opening sequence.
 
Thanx Sir for the link, it looks great though i have not seen the movie as yet and will make sure i see it soon in near future. Will 35mm give me the same outlook with today's post work like extra artificial grain or would it be totally a different feel or look? Just curious.(in case of smaller scene).
Regards
 
Sure, 35mm has the advantage of having more resolution than 16mm and it's easy to get more grain into the image... on the other hand, shooting 16mm is something like 1/3 of the costs of 35mm, so if you want that softer and grainier look, seems silly to spend 3X as much to get it.
 
Dear David,

I have a Nikon D5000 camera. It's sensor is 23.6 x 15.8 mm. It is similar size to a 35mm film camera, but larger than a Super 16 frame. So as I figure out there's no way I could use it to make test images for my intended S16 project? It wouldn't be a correct director's viewfinder... am I right? I thought maybe I could shoot some concept images, which I would Photoshop, color grade, give it some grain etc, you know just for my research process. Is there any way I could replicate the S16 characteristics with it?

Btw, I'm planning to buy a real Director's viewfinder for the shooting. I really like the Alan Gordon Mark Vb. Is it a good piece of equipment? Do professionals use it nowadays as much as earlier? I saw it many times with Michael Bay, but most of the times I see directors to have a more professional viewfinder which uses the actual camera lens. As I've never used a director's viewfinder before, could you tell me how exact information I will be able to get with this Mark Vb device? What I will see with it, is the same image my camera will shoot with the appropriete setups?

And one more question: can you name me a Super 16 movie, that has the cleanest image that is possible with this format, and/or gives the feeling of a 35mm negative. I would say it could be mistaken with a 35mm film.... Is it possible?

And David... one more really important question: with a Super 16 format, with today's technologies, and with one of the best DPs, is it possible to achieve the "look" and "picture quality" of Aliens (1986, James Cameron part... kinda grainy, bluish image, have you seen the blu ray? it's amazing), or Minority Report? or Blade Runner? Or a mix of these? :)

I appreciate your help,
Thank you very much,
Gabor
 
Last edited:
Gabor D. said:
Dear David,

I have a Nikon D5000 camera. It's sensor is 23.6 x 15.8 mm. It is similar size to a 35mm film camera, but larger than a Super 16 frame. So as I figure out there's no way I could use it to make test images for my intended S16 project? It wouldn't be a correct director's viewfinder... am I right? I thought maybe I could shoot some concept images, which I would Photoshop, color grade, give it some grain etc, you know just for my research process. Is there any way I could replicate the S16 characteristics with it?

Btw, I'm planning to buy a real Director's viewfinder for the shooting. I really like the Alan Gordon Mark Vb. Is it a good piece of equipment? Do professionals use it nowadays as much as earlier? I saw it many times with Michael Bay, but most of the times I see directors to have a more professional viewfinder which uses the actual camera lens. As I've never used a director's viewfinder before, could you tell me how exact information I will be able to get with this Mark Vb device? What I will see with it, is the same image my camera will shoot with the appropriete setups?

And one more question: can you name me a Super 16 movie, that has the cleanest image that is possible with this format, and/or gives the feeling of a 35mm negative. I would say it could be mistaken with a 35mm film.... Is it possible?

And David... one more really important question: with a Super 16 format, with today's technologies, and with one of the best DPs, is it possible to achieve the "look" and "picture quality" of Aliens (1986, James Cameron part... kinda grainy, bluish image, have you seen the blu ray? it's amazing), or Minority Report? or Blade Runner? Or a mix of these? :)

I appreciate your help,
Thank you very much,
Gabor
Click to expand...

As far as a great contemporary example of S16mm, watch The Hurt Locker. It won multiple Academy awards this year including best picture. Avatar won best cinematography and most of the live action and motion capture was shot on 2/3" format HD cameras. Don't let anyone tell you that the 16mm/ 2/3" image formats are not "cinematic".
 
Joe G. said:
David, while we're on the subject of film--

Can you enlighten me about the logarithmic properties of film? Does it more closely mimic the way the human eye sees than a linear sensor?
Click to expand...

It's a bit apples and oranges, since the human eye/brain can average or adjust levels so rapidly so as to give the impression of having a wider dynamic range... I don't think we see so much "logarithmically" but on the other hand, we don't clip detail off abruptly either.

In over and underexposed parts of the subject, less silver is created for the same amount of light compared to the midtones, so less density is created in those areas relative to exposure, causing a flattening out effect, it gets harder to achieve d-min and d-max (the gamma curve is S-shaped). In some ways, that could be seen as a failure of silver halide technology, except that it has the unintended advantage of causing detail to roll-off more slowly to black or white, so there isn't an abrupt clip or crush point.
 
Gabor D. said:
Dear David,

I have a Nikon D5000 camera. It's sensor is 23.6 x 15.8 mm. It is similar size to a 35mm film camera, but larger than a Super 16 frame. So as I figure out there's no way I could use it to make test images for my intended S16 project? It wouldn't be a correct director's viewfinder... am I right? I thought maybe I could shoot some concept images, which I would Photoshop, color grade, give it some grain etc, you know just for my research process. Is there any way I could replicate the S16 characteristics with it?

Btw, I'm planning to buy a real Director's viewfinder for the shooting. I really like the Alan Gordon Mark Vb. Is it a good piece of equipment? Do professionals use it nowadays as much as earlier? I saw it many times with Michael Bay, but most of the times I see directors to have a more professional viewfinder which uses the actual camera lens. As I've never used a director's viewfinder before, could you tell me how exact information I will be able to get with this Mark Vb device? What I will see with it, is the same image my camera will shoot with the appropriete setups?

And one more question: can you name me a Super 16 movie, that has the cleanest image that is possible with this format, and/or gives the feeling of a 35mm negative. I would say it could be mistaken with a 35mm film.... Is it possible?

And David... one more really important question: with a Super 16 format, with today's technologies, and with one of the best DPs, is it possible to achieve the "look" and "picture quality" of Aliens (1986, James Cameron part... kinda grainy, bluish image, have you seen the blu ray? it's amazing), or Minority Report? or Blade Runner? Or a mix of these? :)

I appreciate your help,
Thank you very much,
Gabor
Click to expand...

There are real limits to using one type of technology to "test" a completely different type of technology. It would be like testing your ideas about cooking roast beef on a piece of fish. You can certainly create artistic looks that you plan on emulating, but "testing" implies getting to know how a particular piece of technology responds in different situations, and you can't do that by testing something else instead.

Until recently, you could have at least gotten the movie film loaded into 35mm cassettes, shot still tests, and had them processed at an ECN2 lab and printed and/or scanned, and then you could have cropped those tests to the 16mm size to judge grain and resolution somewhat. But the few labs that offered ECN2 processing for movie film loaded into still cassettes all went out of business. You can't really send the movie film to a regular C41 color negative still film lab because it's not quite the same process, so the contrast and color would be off, plus movie film has a carbon remjet backing for anti-static and anti-halation purposes that needs a step to remove.

I don't have an opinion on directors finders but most of them work just fine for lining up shots.

I can't think of a specific Super-16 movie that is particularly fine-grained at 35mm levels, though I've seen some movies in theaters shot in Super-16 that looked pretty good, "Hurt Locker" being one of them. Dramas like "Hustle and Flow" and "Leaving Las Vegas" all looked pretty strong technically in the theaters. "Black Swan" too, of course. These days, some of the best-looking Super-16 is probably seen on HD channels for shows using that format, especially some of the European shows.
 
Gabor D. said:
Of course you can say things like it, that film is dead... Probably its true in the amateur and low budget independent world, but not in the studio system.

Here's a list I found somewhere for the 2010 fall season:
Tron Legacy - Sony CineAlta F35
Rabbit Hole – Red One
The Narnia movie - Sony CineAlta F23
The Tourist – 35mm
Harry Potter – 35mm
Unstoppable – 35mm
Black Swan – 16mm
Burlesque – 35mm
Love and Other Drugs – 35mm
Due Date – 35mm
The Tempest – 35mm
The Fighter – 35mm
The Garden of Eden – 35mm
All Good Things – 35mm
I Love You Phillip Morris – 35mm
Faster – 35mm
The King’s Speech – 35mm
The Next Three Days – 35mm
Morning Glory – 35mm
Hereafter – 35mm
Skyline – Red One
127 Hours – a whole bunch of different HD cameras
Fair Game – Red One
Saw 3D – HD

So how you figure that film is dead? I would say film is pretty much alive, digital tries to get its foot with more or less success...

And if you look seriously at what type of movies use digital in mainstream filmmaking, it can be said for sure, that they are in almost any case a 3D production. And frankly, for 3D there is hardly easier way for acqusition than digital. But you know, Spielberg made, makes Tintin with digital 3D, however his next movie War Horse is still 35mm. Scorsese makes Hugo Cabret in digital 3D with Arri Alexa, but I'm really curious to see what his next project will be shot on.... I'm pretty sure it will be 35mm....

So I understand that it seems that digital overtook and film is dead, because as I already mentioned earlier, on the digital side, especially on the RED side, there is a very serious marketing campaign for this format. On the film side there is very few marketing... But on there side there is 100+ years of history which is in my humble opinion more than enough proof for the future than any digital format offers.

Here's another interesting information I found on the internet in an article reporting from the Kodak "The Renaissance of the Techniscope format" seminar:
"The suggestion was made that our kids are more likely to be able to watch silent films of the 1920s than films produced digitally today"

On the video, digital side there are more than 40 formats came and gone, and most of them ara totally obsolete now. Isn't it funny that when George Lucas made Attack of the Clones in 1080p it was the absolute hightech format in public opinion, the way digital cinema should work, and now its seems terrible outdated. And it was just 4-5 years ago.... And his original 1977 Star Wars from its 35mm anamorphic print can look better and better thanks to the advancements in digital technologies. With the proper restoration, even on the dvd, its pretty terrific.

As a filmmaker I would like to invest in a format that is future proof. And right now I only see this in film stock. As I'm in the planning stage of my feature I have to consider many things, and although digital, and RED offers so much, at so little cost, I try to find the proper ways to shoot on film. Probably for the tech geeks 4K or 5K is far more than what could be gained from an S16 stock, which is rated at 2K, but man... look at those 2Ks... (Actually it seems to me like a very misleading marketing tool like in case of consumer compact cameras where the megapixels just grow and grow.... and people, often professionals as we see it, fall for the marketing and buy the highest megapixel cameras.)

You know, for me: less is more.

A few years from now when 8K and 10K or even more, RED and other cameras come out, the now hyped 4K will be really really outdated and old... And you can't go back to get more information out of the frame... It is what it is. But you can go back to film.

Right now I'm trying to find a solution how my Super 16 footage can look the best. How could I make it look like it was shot on a grainy 35mm, and not on S16. And it seems that with current lenses, post productions, cameras it can be done...
Click to expand...

I agree with much of what you say, but Red Raw is no XDCam. You CAN go back and see more, I just did with Redcolor 2 and RedGamma 2.
 
I once wrote a post on RedUser about how to get high-quality images, my point being that there was not one single thing, it was a series of things:

For example, there was a great article in an old American Cinematographer on getting "clear pictures" by Ken Richter (Oct. 1978 issue). This was a guy who went around the country showing 16mm nature and winter sports footage to audiences. He often got asked why his footage looked so good, particularly since most of it was shot in 16mm. He wrote this article to explain how, but the gist of it was that there was no single "trick" involved -- that sharp, clear, rich photography came down to the choice of camera, lenses, f-stop chosen, filters, exposure, film stock, processing, printing, color-correction, projection and projector lens, theater conditions, etc.

In other words, any single step had a minor effect on quality, but it was accumulative as you went through all the steps out to the end result.

A lot of it came down to contrast as well, since contrast affects our perception of sharpness, so he used contrasty lenses in stronger lighting contrast on higher contrast stock, etc. to compensate for the softness of 16mm.

Truth is that you may do any number of things right, but one step in the process done badly can reduce the quality of the final product. So to some extent, you have to be a quality-control freak.

On the other hand, to get back to the "big picture", a strong graphic image will survive any number of quality-reducing factors. Spielberg once wrote something similar, which I agree with -- if you create a particularly graphic image, like a dramatic silhouette, or someone in a dark room in a single shaft of light, then it tends to survive being mishandled in post or presentation -- it may even look cool if shot in Super-8.

Whereas an extremely subtle image, like a blooming pear blossom tree on an overcast day, all pastels and soft lighting... well, that may look great shot and projected in 70mm, but it may look too mushy if shot in Super-8 -- the "point" of the shot may be lost on the viewer.
Click to expand...
 
Dear David
If I was to shoot in 16mm or rather super16, is there a 4 k scan facility for them? If yes, will it be better in terms of its mid tones information if someone wants it to look somewhere near like 35mm film. Or will it be the same as 2k scan cause there is only 16mm size information available in the negative?
Is it better or equivalent or lesser or expensive in cost factor (leaving aside specific or creative look factors) to shoot in digital 35mm sensor camera or on a 16mm film camera, inclusive of work flow cost consideration? Though this is like orange and apple comparison but I feel the cost factor will come handy to knowledge seekers.
All this factors are essential for students,amateur,low budget producers and would be very glad if we could know.
Thanks
Regards
 
David Mullen ASC said:
There are real limits to using one type of technology to "test" a completely different type of technology. It would be like testing your ideas about cooking roast beef on a piece of fish. You can certainly create artistic looks that you plan on emulating, but "testing" implies getting to know how a particular piece of technology responds in different situations, and you can't do that by testing something else instead.

Until recently, you could have at least gotten the movie film loaded into 35mm cassettes, shot still tests, and had them processed at an ECN2 lab and printed and/or scanned, and then you could have cropped those tests to the 16mm size to judge grain and resolution somewhat. But the few labs that offered ECN2 processing for movie film loaded into still cassettes all went out of business. You can't really send the movie film to a regular C41 color negative still film lab because it's not quite the same process, so the contrast and color would be off, plus movie film has a carbon remjet backing for anti-static and anti-halation purposes that needs a step to remove.

I don't have an opinion on directors finders but most of them work just fine for lining up shots.

I can't think of a specific Super-16 movie that is particularly fine-grained at 35mm levels, though I've seen some movies in theaters shot in Super-16 that looked pretty good, "Hurt Locker" being one of them. Dramas like "Hustle and Flow" and "Leaving Las Vegas" all looked pretty strong technically in the theaters. "Black Swan" too, of course. These days, some of the best-looking Super-16 is probably seen on HD channels for shows using that format, especially some of the European shows.
Click to expand...

Thanks again David!
I meant the "test" not as a test for the technology itself, but for the "look", the intended look of the movie. Concept images, location scouts etc... I did not mean to test what the S16 film is capable with a DSLR :) I just would like to make some "concept" images.

I really liked the look of Harsh Times with Christian Bale. It's hard to tell it was shot on S16. I also liked how the Babel S16 scenes looked.

I start to think that for a quality S16 production, in order to avoid the "low budget" feeling you must approach this format with this 2 rule in your mind:
1, You must implement the "S16 look" into the films intended look. You know its grainy, so deal with it, go with the flow. Go with an intended picture look like Minority Report, War of the Worlds. Of course these were 35mm productions, but heavily grained. So plan for your S16 material a "War of the Worlds look". Which pretty much fits the S16 medium's capabilities. So go with the flow.
2, Shoot it as it were 35mm. Don't approach it as a low budget tool, approach it as it was a high end 35mm camera. Try to replicate the feeling of 35mm, with the use of lenses, compositons, camera movements, framing, and more importantly with lighting and editing.

So this is where I am right now in my thinking... :)
 
I don't have an opinion on directors finders but most of them work just fine for lining up shots.
Click to expand...
I use a Canon 2ti as a directors viewfinder, you can walk the locations, adjust the zoom to approximate the field of view of your primes, you must "calibrate" for this. Then you actually shoot your storyboards, with stand-ins, if you can find 'em.
 
Akoijam Veda said:
Dear David
If I was to shoot in 16mm or rather super16, is there a 4 k scan facility for them? If yes, will it be better in terms of its mid tones information if someone wants it to look somewhere near like 35mm film. Or will it be the same as 2k scan cause there is only 16mm size information available in the negative?
Is it better or equivalent or lesser or expensive in cost factor (leaving aside specific or creative look factors) to shoot in digital 35mm sensor camera or on a 16mm film camera, inclusive of work flow cost consideration? Though this is like orange and apple comparison but I feel the cost factor will come handy to knowledge seekers.
All this factors are essential for students,amateur,low budget producers and would be very glad if we could know.
Thanks
Regards
Click to expand...

35mm resolves around 3.2K so should be scanned ideally at twice that, 6K, but 4K works fine. So Super-16 should probably be scanned at 3K, but 2K is fine, 4K is a bit overkill.

In the "old" days when people were asking whether it was cheaper to shoot HD or Super-16, it was sort of a wash because if you finished the Super-16 photochemically, did an optical printer blow-up to 35mm, it was cheaper than going through a digital color-correction and laser recorder transfer of HD back to 35mm. So Super-16 was more expensive to shoot than HD but cheaper to finish to a print, so it was a wash overall. At that point, shooting ratio was the biggest factor because it was more expensive per minute to shoot film, thus the more footage you shot, the more that HD became the cheaper format overall.

Trouble is that today, everyone wants to finish Super-16 digitally just as with any digital camera's footage, so the costs of color-correction and laser recording are the same, but you've got the additional costs of scanning the Super-16 footage to digital. Plus you have the costs of shooting film, processing it, and transferring it to video for editing. And digital cameras keep coming down in cost -- nine years ago I would have been comparing the Sony F900 to a Super-16 camera, but now you've got cheaper digital options than that.

Plus fewer people these days needs to get to a 35mm print, but everyone needs a high-quality digital master. So even if you finished a Super-16 film photochemically, you'd still have the extra costs of doing a final transfer to HD.

So it's hard to think of a scenario where it would be cheaper to shoot Super-16 and get it into an editing system, if cost is your primary concern.
 
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