Friday, February 4, 2011

Questions

My question is whether Nat and Dave are going to put a hit out on me for what I've done to their script, or whether they're going to want the satisfaction of doing the work themselves.

Mitch Gross on shooting in Log format. He says that the Arri Alexa can handle 14 stops at 800 ISO. Holy cats. Really? I thought the best negative color film could handle was only 12 stops or thereabouts.

Who is left alive in this robot war script?
Foxwell
Rathbone
Hammermill
Cage
Tango (killed on page 25)
Ponce (killed on page 32 which is, right now, the center point of the movie).

Normally Tango has the scanner. Hammermill doesn't pick it up until after Tango is killed by the blue-class marauder robot.

9 comments:

Chance Shirley said...

Oh, if only the Alexa was affordable. Of course, you folks in the civilized world can just rent 'em, I suppose.

Andrew Bellware said...

You can buy a tricked out Alexa for about $80K. Or rent for $2K a day.

Yeah, OK. We're not going to doing that anytime soon. But if you want to buy me one, that'd be cool.

Chance Shirley said...

Jeez... I can shoot 16mm for less than $2K / day!

But if you want to buy an Alexa, I'd like to borrow it sometime...

Andrew Bellware said...

Yeah you can but what do you estimate your costs at? I always think of 35mm being somewhere between $500 and $1000 for a thousand feet. In 2-perf that's 22 minutes for around $800.
In four cans you've spent your Alexa budget.
I shoot maybe the equivalent of er... lemme look...

I'll get back to you on what my shooting ratio is.

Besides, I'm waiting on the digital back for the Penelope. Actually, Aaton is all about super high resolution. I just don't care about high resolution. Shooting in ProRes and letting me edit right away sounds like a lot more fun.

Chance Shirley said...

Some very rough 16mm math... I'm estimating $320 per 400 ft of 16mm for stock, processing, and HD transfer. Shooting cautiously, as we are talking about 16mm here, I'd say I could keep the cost under $1,000 per shooting day. Not cheap, just cheaper than renting an Alexa.

If somebody makes an affordable camera that has no rolling shutter issues, no moire issues, and shoots straight to ProRes 422, I'll be thrilled. (It also needs to have a sensor at least as big as 16mm.)

Andrew Bellware said...

Isn't that camera the Panasonic AF100? http://www.abelcine.com/store/Panasonic-AG-AF100-Micro-Four-Thirds-Pro-HD-Camcorder-DEPOSIT/

I think I've been hearing that there aren't rolling shutter issues. Of course it shoots to a silly codec but other than that my only real complaint with it is where they put the viewfinder. All the way at the back of the camera is incredibly uncomfortable for handheld work.

Andrew Bellware said...

And you, Chance, can shoot at such a low shooting ratio because you're a much better director than I am.
I have to be shooting all the time just to make sure I have enough for the editor to work with/not yell at me. ;-)

Also, the $2K/day number is pure BS. because you know if you're using one of those cameras you're going to be all like "What about my lens set?" and "Well we should go ahead and spend $300/day on a good focus puller if we're spending that money anyway." You know how it goes! ;-)

Chance Shirley said...

Re: the AF100... the wonky codec kind of kills it for me. If I'm going to contend with that, I'd just as soon deal with the 7D's rolling shutter and aliasing while I'm at it.

Now, if I could buy an AF100 for $1K, I'd probably go for it.

The problem with my low shooting ratios is that it's hard for someone else to edit my stuff. And I don't really have any options in the cutting room myself. It either works like I planned it... or it don't.

My $1K/day number is BS, too. Because I have spent thousands of dollars over the years investing in 16mm gear.

Andrew Bellware said...

Wait, no, Chance! A producer... lied about the numbers?
Oh!
I have to sit down...

Just wait 'till they hack the AF100 and get those data rates up to 30Mb/s like they did with the GH1. (Although honestly, I can't say I see much difference in the quality of the image.

Just gimme an adapter which will plug a DSLR onto an Aaton instead of the magazine and I'm all set to go, baby.