Sean Cunningham

Well, they can't control what folks put out there really.  There are plenty of unfortunately bad demonstrations of the GH2 and months of consistently bad examples for pretty much any model of Blackmagic camera that has come out.  Let's not forget the well-meaning but face-palm inducing fellows uploading un-graded LOG footage.  That's just Bad Idea Jeans.
 
1.33x adapters can have great character relative to spherical but getting there maybe isn't as "gimme" as with higher compression lenses.  At the end of the day there is still great value in being able to avoid cropping for a "scope" aspect ratio.  It maintains maximum use of your sensor, has some resolving benefits and, in the case of AVCHD or 422, reduces artifacts of both compression and color sub-sampling.  If it did nothing more that would still be an advantage but there are aesthetic benefits if you shoot to play these up.  In the case of this video the shooter just didn't, for whatever reason.  The Letus does seem to make some of them a lot harder to do.
 
I'm not getting rid of my Century Optics when I make a permanent acquisition of the Anamorphot, because the CE works well on my 14-42mm Lumix @18mm and can even auto-focus just fine.  But the CO smears at the edges, like the LA7200 and like the Letus seems to in several examples.  There might be times where this is useful as part of the aesthetic.  That might shock a lot of VIMEO all-stars but it happens in the selection of cine anamorphics all the time.

Fairly regularly I see posts on here (and have on similar sites too) asking whether there's a forum that focuses more on the creative side of filmmaking rather than tech/gear. Because I've wondered about something similar myself for a while now I've decided to have a crack at setting one up. Nothing ambitious - just a bare-bones forum that is weighted toward the creative in a very open-ended way.
 
Obviously for a forum to work it needs a reasonable number of enthusiastic members to begin with, so of course it's possible this won't even get off the ground. I think it's worth giving it a good try though as I think there is a gap online in this area, and it could be very useful to a lot of people.
 
Let me know your thoughts please. I want to start a few threads on the forum before I direct people toward it. Does anyone have any suggestions for topics you might find useful/interesting? Threads similar to this one perhaps, or threads focused more on creative issues within your own work. Like I say, the idea is that the forum's agenda is very open ended. Thanks.  :)
 
P.S. If anyone is very keen on the idea and would like to talk about being involved with setting up the forum, let me know (perhaps send me a personal message). The more it's a collaborative thing the better IMO.
 
EDIT: I ran this past Andrew and he's fine with this being discussed here. It seemed polite to ask ...

Thanks Maxotics and Julian. These insider tips are always the best. Same with music. Mainstream is often too predictable.
 
 
A propos POV. Don't miss Enter The Void. It's a film with very many flaws and I wouldn't call it influential (at least not for me, who a least twice a year opens his 'doors of perception' as a recreative vacation).
 
But that's imo what most interesting films have in common: They have something that makes them stand out for the individual, in this sense:
 
 
Art is not so much about perfection than about bold exclusivity. The meanest and lowest mainstream movies can be more perfect (technically or in the closeness of narration and narrational form) than the masterpieces. Those tend to have some very strong aspects, but also flaws. Leonardo didn't know about materials, his Mona Lisa had the 500.000 crackles the moment the paint had dried (which took months though). Same with his Last Supper: The wall sucked the colors off, it weren't the farts of admirers over 500 years (source: Donald Sassoon, Mona Lisa). The numerous fakers know better than the master. Beethoven chose improper instruments for his symphonies (Bernstein said, none of his students would have gotten away with such an orchestration). Shakespeare had so many logic flaws in his (predominantly adapted) plays that a modern script doctor would despair.

They offer their lens with a few different coatings.  The most liberal coating, offering the most flare is still pretty subdued I think.  This fellow might have got one with the really suppressed coating.

That's correct.  It was produced by Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension) and the best film he's been involved with since coming to America, IMO.
 
 
 
 
Yeah, Alan Ormsby (My Bodyguard, The Substitute, Popcorn) wrote the screenplay.  His son Ethan died of cancer a few years ago, tragically.  He and I hit it off pretty quick when he got his first job at DD and was assigned to my team on Strange Days.  We both loved a lot of the same '70s and '80s horror and working late at night he'd entertain us with stories of his childhood as a Hollywood kid, his dad putting him in Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and the like.  
 
He hadn't had the same life as a Corey Feldman or anything but his experience growing up and the jobs he had were definitely a different world from most kids, stuff like being Alan Funt's personal assistant for a while, working for Charles Band at Full Moon, etc.  
 
Every year we'd gather at Ethan's come Oscar season because his dad would just give him the stack of screeners the Academy would send every year.  I miss the guy.

Hmmmm...the Letus is basically invisible here.  You don't get any anamorphic aesthetic just "scope" aspect ratio without cropping, which is to be expected more or less in the daylight exteriors but curious for the night stuff and interiors at the train station.  I don't like the highlights at all compared to your better GH1/GH2 or maybe even GH3 videos.  It's videos like these that would prevent me from ever considering a GH4.
 
That sounds awful.  Maybe it's just bad encoding.

Hello,
 
I've been traveling since may 2013, and making travel videos with my gh3 and a ts3cine highspeed camera. I was inspired by EOSHD to try out an anamorphic lens. Having blown my budget on gear before i left, I was looking for something on the cheap. I managed to grab a Bell & Howell Kowa 2x from ebay for $340. I had it sent to my mom and she met me in Bangkok.
 
So here is the first stuff I have shot with a anamorphic. Run and gun with a dual focus anamorphic, not the easiest.....
 

 
If you like please check out my vimeo page for lots of other travel videos....
 
Thanks, James

Have you seen Drive? A NWR film that's definitely not slow ...

I would think there's a lot of crossover between favorite films and influential films but I can say in my case there would be specific shots or sequences from each that I would say are my touchstones for specific types of photography or shots, color and composition.  These would represent personal taste so folks should refrain from projecting their's onto others or questioning why their own personal taste isn't represented by other's choices.  It's not a contest.  You don't win anything coming up with the most predictable AFI selection.  Deviations from the norm are a lot more interesting and revealing than some list that could be created with a statistical algorithm.

Well, I checked out "Only God Forgives" based not the fact I too like Ryan Gosling. It was certainly an interesting film and I can definitely see how the craft could definitely inspire. It was beautifully shot, and the acting was an interesting exercise in restraint. The whole film felt like that. It seemed to linger forever... to the point I almost thought it'd got stuck on freeze frame ;). Not sure how I felt about it overall though. Great poetic violence that's expertly executed. But also had to wake up and back up a few times to get through it. ;)
 
That reminds me, I would add most of Wong Kar Wai's work to my list. 

I would think there's a lot of crossover between favorite films and influential films but I can say in my case there would be specific shots or sequences from each that I would say are my touchstones for specific types of photography or shots, color and composition.  These would represent personal taste so folks should refrain from projecting their's onto others or questioning why their own personal taste isn't represented by other's choices.  It's not a contest.  You don't win anything coming up with the most predictable AFI selection.  Deviations from the norm are a lot more interesting and revealing than some list that could be created with a statistical algorithm.

I would think there's a lot of crossover between favorite films and influential films but I can say in my case there would be specific shots or sequences from each that I would say are my touchstones for specific types of photography or shots, color and composition.  These would represent personal taste so folks should refrain from projecting their's onto others or questioning why their own personal taste isn't represented by other's choices.  It's not a contest.  You don't win anything coming up with the most predictable AFI selection.  Deviations from the norm are a lot more interesting and revealing than some list that could be created with a statistical algorithm.

I saw it in at least one persons list already ;) I haven't completely watched it yet, but saw some of the low light scenes.
 
There's always this talk about the famous f/0.7 lens used for Barry Lyndon. Yeah, of course that's special, but come on, it was shot at asa 100 pushed to 200! (at least, that's what I can find about it) So that would be the same as shooting nowadays digital at iso 800 f/1.4... whoohoo!
 
That's peanuts for a $500 dslr and a cheap manual focus lens. Of course, this doesn't make the film bad and it is more of a testimony to what possibilities we have within reach now. But I kinda fail to be impressed with the technical side of it. Also they really used a shitload of candles and special ones that burn a lot faster and brighter than the usual ones.
 
/rant ;)

I saw the explanation video too, it sounded more like an infomercial for canon because I don't know how anyone with eyeballs could advocate the c500 over the alexa for a theatrical release with a straight face. Esp considering the footage shown in the tests looked like a wedding video.
 
I love Shane's posts though, full of insights.

Except that most of that work isn't actually enhancing the footage, it's getting to a reasonable place to start.  You can't intelligently grade your footage until you see it for what it is.  That's not what you really start out with most of the time when shooting raw or if you've shot linear with a baked in LOG curve.  
 
If I was a client and I'd shot film and I got rushes back that were different every time or, worse, I was at a lab timing my film and having to sit there and watch the colorist poke around and try this or that to get my footage to simply look as filmed and as good as I would expect from rushes with house lights I would take my film and go someplace else.  But somehow this is how folks are expected to work with the digital equivalent to a film negative.  It's awful.
 
Once you're really grading, I wholeheartedly agree, methodical, logical order.  But it's easy enough to see in upload after upload that most folks aren't starting their grade from a good place before trying to get to their look.  Just look at Shane Hurlbut's BMD tests.  They're no better looking than Joe Six Pack bought himself a BMCC's uploads to Youtube.
 
I've got this fellow's entire short shot on an Epic sitting on a drive.  I look at the footage as-is in After Effects it looks just as bad as it does in Redcine-X.  Just awful.  Unusable for my purposes.  So I'm having to linearize it all to a meaningful place to work that's appropriate for display on an sRGB monitor.  That extra work is eating into time that might otherwise be spent doing my actual job on this fellow's film and it's going to be the same waste when he goes to do his final grade in Chicago because the colorist is dealing with it like everyone has always had to deal with it.
 
At least most of these cameras seem to have decent monitoring now, even if you're going to have to work to get it back to looking like what you remember from set once it's shot.  One of the most said phrases by Brian Singer on the set of Superman Returns, the first motion picture shot on the first model Sony Genesis, "it's not going to look like that, right?"  We have come at least that far.

This advice makes the assumption that you're doing things wrong, or at least, not as well as you should.  It's also making the assumption you're applying some bull-shitted "film curve" that applies a uniform transformation without respect for the digital file's origination.  It's like good advice for doing things wrong which I don't get if it's coming from that Australian colorist.  Resolve doesn't clamp or integer-ize intermediate results at the output of a modification node.  It makes no sense.
 
You will lose information if you read in 8-bit footage, apply a LUT and then save it back to an 8-bit file.  Don't do that.  That's bad.
 
You will lose information if you think because you shot 8-bit footage you can grade in an 8-bit project.  Don't do that.  That's bad. (I don't even like working 16bit any more)
 
If you are working in a floating point project. there is nothing lost after applying a LUT.  There is no removal of anything.  Nothing destructive is happening.  I can crush an image down to practically nothing and expand it back out to its original form and everything is still there.  That's true in After Effects so I would be really, really surprised if Resolve did something boneheaded like clamp or integer-ize all intermediate steps between nodes.   You should really be operating in a floating point project and saving both intermediate and final imagery to a high quality, un-compressed format with enough precision to not be destructive.   edit: he's also referring to "print LUT" which, while highly anachronistic and a dubious proposition at best in any case, is very different than what FC is.  A "print LUT", if you were going to do such a thing, would definitely be the last step, if you were really after an old telecine look (but if you work without having it on most of the time you are in for headache and heartache doing your grade, being happy with it and then applying something like this).  It's analogous to AE's View->Simulate Output->Kodak 5218 to Kodak 2383 (which would only really look right if you were working with scanned 5218 negative though they also have a "universal camera film" to 2383 as well).     When you watch a movie on TV or BD or DVD or LD, ideally, you're not seeing the influence of a print stock.  Likewise with commercials shot on film.  They scan or otherwise transfer from negative.  If a movie has had a DI odds are no video representation you have or will ever see has any printing influence.     Ideally you're always wanting to be looking at some representation of the IP and not something that's been "stepped on" because, yeah, you don't grade/time a film once you've printed it.  Maybe a "print LUT" would be useful if you were wanting to simulate the very specific look of old (like '80s and earlier) telecine (transfers from print rather than negative material) or something like Technicolor's ENR or other silver retention process applied to the printing of a film, creating an image that you would only ever see in a theater from select, expensive prints and not your typical release prints.  This is a look that you would not get seeing the same movie digitally projected or on a home video release.  

Wow did I make that mistake with the wrong dude! :lol:
 
Yes I must have been getting it mixed up with The Keep. The soundtrack for that film is so insanely 80's it makes Manhunter sound like its from the future. It is the Manhunter soundtrack that I think insanely brilliant though (and just a little, tastefully 80's).
 
Yeah I've read critics describe Mann as a glorified music video director but I don't get it - he's the whole package.

I really like the camera work and lighting in Only God Forgives , loads of dolly shots, nothing hand held,  you can watch it with the sound turned off as there is so little dialogue, there is a very good article in American Cinematographer on how Nicholas and Larry Smith did it very economically , lots of praticals ,no built sets, all on location

Irreversible is one crazy film.
 
 
Good to see some more Michael Mann representation along with Heat :)

Ha!  Have you ever seen "Big Business"?  It's about as unpretentious of a broad simple comedy as you can get, and it's awesome.  That shit ain't highfalutin', it's just damn funny and one of the most popular films of its era.  And, seriously, MWAMC is nutso-crazy innovative.  They pulled off that stuff over 80 years ago.
 
But I get the point.  So it is: late 20th century to present day.

Just to explain my motives, I had a couple of reasons for suggesting keeping it mainstream:
 
1. So that we might get an idea of what each other's tastes/interests are like through well-known cultural reference points.
2. To avoid complete descent into a "who can be the most highbrow/obscure/indie/arty/leftfield/knowledgeable" type thread (easily done).
 
Tarkovsky has probably been one of my biggest creative reference points for many years, but I overdosed in art school and I'm pretty much allergic to slow cinema now. I'd take Star Trek (2009) over Stalker every time. :)
 
That's just me though. I won't complain if somebody feels the need to put Warhol's Empire, Michael Snow's Wavelength, Brakhage's Dog Star Man or Jarman's Blue on their list. Others might though!

Wow, it's tiny!

3d-kraft.com managed to shoot 35mm f/2.8 on the A7R FF sensor with the Anamorphot 1,33x - 50
 
http://3d-kraft.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=152:anamorphic-project-slr-magic-anamorphot&catid=40:camerasandlenses&Itemid=2
 
Please note not all 35mm lens combo works on FF.

I would think twice before shooting with this or any device resembling a gun, especially on the streets of Philadelphia.

Hurlbut explained that he liked the C500's response to electric light at night.  In his tests it just looked more video-like to me than the Alexa but that's what they responded to.