Lucian

Read my post, I didn't say crap work, music lifts up any type of work, good or bad. It's a huge part of the cinematic experience and of equal value.
 
And checkout the history of David Lynch- whom you mentioned, and his composer Angelo Badalamentii, they started working together on blue velvet when Angelo was essentially an unknown. That collaboration has produced some of the greatest and most original cinematic moments ever.
 
Likewise Clint Mansell had never written a score when he first began working with Arronfkski, they've been together ever since.
 
Maybe I worded it poorly, but working with people who are accessible to you isn't a derogatory suggestion, just because Angelo was fairly unknown, doesn't diminish his amazing talents! Somewhere on soundcloud there is the next Badalamenti looking for his/her lynch to partner up with and make something new, hope I find him/her first  :)

Hello Everyone!
 
I'm a huge fan of this forum and I'd really like what Andrew has done for the Indie Filmmaking community. Anyway, here is a video I'd like to share with you all about my trip to Yosemite with the GH4. It was raining, snowing, and sunny in one weekend so I was very fortunate to catch all of those elements in such a short span of time!
 
As for the GH4, it was completely drenched in rain and snow and it still survived! I absolutely love this camera and I found it to be much more practical and enjoyable to shoot on than my BMCC and Pocket Cinema Camera. I can't wait to post my video review on this camera. I'll be comparing this to the 5D Mk. III Raw, BMCC, and Pocket Cinema Camera.
 
I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it, and any questions and feedback is welcomed! Thanks!
 

The music can almost always be licensed, it's not that hard. But for the most part record companies don't really give a shit about the odd few hundred dollars from some student filmmaker who wants a festival licence so there is no point building some huge infrastructure to make it easy for someone who for the most part they cannot afford the music they want to licence. You have to play with toys that are in your league.
 
If you are working on a big budgeted film there are people who handle getting quotes, even if you aren't you can just contact the publisher. I've done it and gotten fair quotes, but mostly they are outrageous.
 
Sites like music bed are there to fill the gap, music that is affordable and easy to licence, the downside is the quality is hit or miss.
 
But I think to say fast, cheap licencing is always win win is missing a crucial point. Successful music artists don't necessarily want you piggy backing off their work and a small licencing fee may not worth having their art and reputation likely devalued. I don't want adverts on my shorts and it bothers me when they pop up with new scores without my permission. It devalues the original
 
The attitude that other peoples art should be yours to mix and mangle lift up your own work with for free or cheap, on a public platform, is outrageous. There are lots of up coming artists who are happy to collaborate with you if you ask though! Like Andrew said, search bandcamp or soundcloud, you might find a future collaborator. 

exactly .....
thats why you need a sync license to use a track
My publisher has a whole department assigned JUST for syncs
they also actively push my work to adverts and films
I've had tracks Ive produced or remixed on the Hollywood films First Wives Club, My Best Friends Wedding , Studio 54 and Sliding Doors (Aqua - Turn Back Time , no1 on the UK chart ) all properly done with sync licenses , contracts and royalty payments.
 
Ive also turned down films I dont want to be associated with ....it works both ways.

Consider also that each time an artist's music is used on a project that is not in line with their artistic goals, and then shared with the public, it's value is diminished.
 
Radiohead or whoever likley want their music being the theme for every art school video project, or worse a car ad. Of course there is a price for everything.
 
I want to have the worlds best actors and best musician's work in my films but I can't afford either so gotta make do with what I can!

Finally saw this at the cinema last night, did anyone else notice how soft (and soft edges) and at times almost out of focus the anamorphic sections of the film were? 
 
It looked excellent, it was just interesting to see these traits are not specific to the enthusiast/pro-sumer end of the anamorphic spectrum.
 
Some of the 4:3 stuff looked almost like video at times. Very strange, but totally worked.

Finally saw this at the cinema last night, did anyone else notice how soft (and soft edges) and at times almost out of focus the anamorphic sections of the film were? 
 
It looked excellent, it was just interesting to see these traits are not specific to the enthusiast/pro-sumer end of the anamorphic spectrum.
 
Some of the 4:3 stuff looked almost like video at times. Very strange, but totally worked.

What blows is in most cases the rights to music doesn't belong to the artist and if you want to licence it you will pay massive fees and have restricted usage and all the money goes to universal or some other company that had no hand in creating the art.
 
I hope the current trend of self made musician's by meritocracy on the internet continues and the relevance of big music record companies for distribution dies completely. It would be wonderful to negotiate with the artists management directly and know the fees you pay are going directly to person who actually made the art.
 
I feel like the $200 for personal use without strings attached that music bed and such do is very reasonable and I've had no bones about paying it since I know the artist is getting a good portion of the money.
 
Ultimately though, whoever owns the art should be able to say to whom and how it's distributed, I don't understand the entitlement attitude in the digital age. If you don't like it you should try making your own, peoples art in all mediums has value!

but it's all copyright theft if you use it without permission - that's why we have copyright laws
people on the web seem to forget that !
 
it's not free - it's someone/s career and livelyhood , how they pay the mortgage - so respest that.

PREFACE: I have been doing some testing with this lens for a while now, but lately I have been swamped with work. Also, there has been some sadness surrounding the girl who appears in the demo video (and several other anamorphic tests of mine), so anamorphic shooting has been on the back burner for a while now. But I'm seeing now that someone else has had the same idea, and is trying to make an unrealistic profit from it. And so I feel that I must post this write up, because this isn't a $1400 lens.
 
The search for the perfect anamorphic lens is over (at least for me).
 

 
Some months ago, I saw a post here from a member named frerichs. He claimed to have purchased a Bell & Howell 2x 16mm Anamorphic Projection lens (not the excellent Kowa model) for cheap and discovered that it was single focus, like the coveted Iscorama. I was skeptical, but since they can often be had for between $75 and $150 on eBay, I bought one to try out for myself.
 
At first glance this lens does not look like a winner. It has neither the steam punk appeal of the Lomo square fronts, nor the timeless curves of the Iscorama. The impossibly long and narrow build of the lens suggests that this would never be viable match for anything but the longest taking lenses.
 

 
And yet it works. The front element is a -7 diopter that focuses the other two elements in the housing as the head is turned, similar to the Iscorama. Unlike the Iscorama, the lens takes about five full rotations to go from infinity to close focus, which is limiting for practical use. But I have been working with a CNC machinist to resolve this, and I now have a prototype that allows me to do a full range rack focus in a one and a half turns:
 

 
(Want to do this yourself? Ask a machinist to design a new front housing with a "multi-start thread" that will house the front diopter and screw directly onto the existing thread on the tube; this could also conceivably be done for Iscoramas to the same effect). 
 
We have also added a standard 58mm threading for easier filter mounting, and I've since installed a custom seamless ultra-wide delrin focus gear to add just a little torque for even easier focusing (not pictured).
 
The Bell & Howell projection lenses that originally shipped with this lens were f/1.2 and f/1.4, so it is designed to be sharp at faster apertures -- and I find that it is. Perhaps not razor sharp, but as sharp as I'd ever want an anamorphic lens to be. And once you've removed the two limiting screws from the "head" of the lens, you can focus as close as two feet without diopters. Too much closer than that and the head will screw right off, but it's just as easy to screw right back on.
 
Flaring is nice:
 

 
The lens is not without its drawbacks. For one, it focuses to about 40 feet, not true infinity. That's not an issue for me, but it might be for some shooters. It's all-metal construction makes it a bit heavy which combined with its length will benefit from a lens support (which eliminates the shake that appears in my rack focus test). It vignettes when paired with wider lenses, so it is a better fit for smaller sensor cameras or Canon DSLRs with Magic Lantern raw crop mode enabled. For instance, I can shoot 1600x1200 with a Pentax Takumar 105mm f2.8 lens on my 5D Mark III and I don't see any vignetting before f/8. I also tested it with a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AI-S on my GH2, and it was vignette-free so long as I cropped my 2x image down to 1.5x.
 

 
So how does the footage look? Here's something that I shot with it: 
 

 
I am excited to add a sharp, easily rack-focusable, short minimum-focusing anamorphic to my arsenal. It won't be the right lens for every anamorphic user, especially those who want to be able to shoot as wide as possible, but for the price, it could make single-focus anamorphics more accessible to those who have not had a chance to work with them yet. 
 
Happy shooting!

maxotics - this weekend I was out filming in the glorious UK sunshine (quite rare!! it usually is raining)
 
I've been using a very good f2.8 constant aperture zoom.
 
The Bourne Lens - the Nikon 28-70mm f2.8 IF-ED, this was used to shoot a large part of THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
its a steller lens - razor sharp very little focus breathing (less than the Carl Zeiss Compact Zoom CZ.2 28-80mm T2.9 which $19,000 lens)
I can see why they used this lens for the movie ...it is superb! it covers a big useable range so you can shoot quickly without changing lenses , its fast so bokeh heaven cinematic narrow DOF , also can close focus to about 30cm which is useful .
 
It is heavy so I have made a new Tecoir shoulder rig for it with an Arri matte box.
it is constant apperture through out the zoom range.
 
now with a Lens Turbo speedbooster on my G6 it becomes a monster lens
approx f1.8 20-50mm
 
So I have been shooting outside at f1.8 in full bright sunlight with staked Tiffen NDs (20) and its looks amazing!
 
I have read about this lens for awhile especially in American Cinematographer Magazine , Paul Greengrass /Barry Ackroyd have  used it on the movie Captain Philips too as its small and light.
 
 

If you have watched Malick's films it's pretty hard/impossible to argue they are not predominantly shot on short focal lengths.... sure there is some shallower focus stuff but the style is overwhelmingly built around short focal lengths. I'm not saying its better, but saying full frame is better would be just as silly.
 
Aren't most motion pictures are mostly shot on super 35mm size sensors which are closer in size to aps-c not full frame? Regardless neither is or has to be "better" than the other so cool ya jets.
 
And for the record I don't shoot on an "iphone", nor am I some kid with a 5D who thinks more out of focus the background is the more "filmic" and "cinematic" my shot is.

The negativity is just jealousy.
 
Hats of to kendy to playing his one camera and lens like a guitar, instead of doing endless lens tests and upgrades. Love all his work and look forward to him digging into meatier things in the future!

If you couldn't follow the story you might want to try something simpler. Thor 2 might be more ya speed! Great film, the consistency on Thor's hammer throughout the film is flawless and leaves you feeling satisfied at the end of the film. I thought about his hammer for days afterwards....

A lot has been questioned about this subject since it first showed up in >a> couple pictures uploaded to Redstan's flickr, or (four days later) in Andrew's first post about them, in late July, 2011. Almost three years have passed and still we don't have enough objective reviews and facts about this mod. I'm gonna try to achieve this goal here. I'm starting with a bit of history (which involves some guessing), but feel free to skip it. :)

At first, it seemed that Alan (Redstan) was the one responsible for the whole thing, but now I believe he was the one who presented the the job to Van Diemen, and made a whole bunch of them at a huge cost and time. I don't think he sold any of these from the first batch, since we never heard of anyone reselling them, or using anything like that, but I might be wrong (Tony, feel free to chime in and correct me if this is wrong information). Then, time passed and a year and a half later comes Andrew Wonder, who was also featured on another EOSHD post involving a tuned iscorama, he called his "Wonderscope" and explained how he linked the pictures to Christopher Smith's machining job at Van Diemen.
 
I come to believe it was only after this "indirect" advertising and lots of emails and questions from anamorphic shooters over the world that Van Diemen realised this "thing" could be a regular service they were the only ones able to provide. Partly thanks to Tony's many inputs on the original design and partly thanks to the sudden interest in the subject. If I'm not mistaken, early 2013 was the moment when other shooters from this forum started sending their lenses over, and we had all the fuss regarding HUGE delays in delivery and processing orders. People had their lenses trapped there for over six months, etc. Just search the forum for "Van Diemen" and some of these will be listed, followed by multiple users asking various questions about the mod. Mainly "is it worthy?", which is a VERY subjective question.
 
I've sent my pre-36 Iscorama lens from Brazil in early December, 2013, after extensive emails with Christopher, at Van Diemen. My main concern was the time it would take to complete the job. He assured me I would have the lens back in 90 days. Recently, other forum members have reported they're >speeding the process to only a week, which is amazing (of course, this doesn't take into account the time spent during shipping).
 
The mod is listed on Van Diemen's website, and costs £850.00 + shipping (and another £95.00 if you want special engraving). That rounds to about US$1500, which, we all should agree, is a big amount of cash. It's important to remember that not all Iscoramas are eligible for the conversion as well. Tony has pointed out that the inner workings of the anamorphot are kept intact, so if you have defective glass or bad internal mechanisms, these will be passed onto the mod. Christopher confirmed this by informing that all lenses are verified once arriving at VD's, and every single defect is reported back to the owner, as you're asked if you want to proceed with the conversion (mine has some faint markings on the rear glass). 
 
Now, what does the mod do, EXACTLY?
 
The original Iscorama 36 weighs about 400g, has a fully plastic housing (which is pretty fragile) and focuses down to 2m without diopters (or >closer, through a hardcore mod). Rear thread is 49mm and you need some spacers to avoid hitting its rear glass onto the taking lens' front glass. Goes as wide as 50mm on a full-frame sensor and has a simple button feature for alignment. Focus throw is long (around 8mm), and if you modded yours for close focus, you need special attention so you don't drop the front element to the ground.
 
The VD conversion weighs 680g (220g lighter than an Iscorama 54, and still much smaller than the 54 beast), because the housing is solid metal. Also, it has standard 0.8 pitch focus gears. At some point during assembly, Christopher sends you an email, confirming if focus engravings should be in feet or meters, and it focuses down to 1.1m (or 3' 7") without diopters (it's twists a little over 360 degrees, and that impresses me every time I do it), even though the closest focus engraving is 1.2m (the 1.1m mark would overlap with the infinity mark). Focus throw is 1cm long, beating the close focus mod and making your life really hard if you want a follow focus that is able to spin from infinity focus down to 1.1m.
 
Rear threads are 58mm, and it does increase vignetting a little. It shows very slight vignetting on a Helios 44 (58mm) if stopped down, on a full-frame sensor. Aligning is still very simple, much like 1.33x lenses, where you have a rotating part with a small screw that locks the lens into position. Mine had the alignment buttons in really bad shape, so this new housing made aligning really simple, and I don't have to worry about breaking the lens apart in the process. They're also kind enough to include front and rear lens caps for safer transport.
 
I also read - after my conversion was done - that Van Diemen redesigned the rear (clamp-like) part of the housing to avoid this extra vignetting. I couldn't find the link pointing to where I read that. If someone knows what I'm talking about, please comment below and I'll update the post! Also, if you want to improve it even more, you can follow >jaquet's tips and stuck it into a lens support so you don't even need to align it ever again.
 
There's a recurring comparison between VD and a 54, and they are, indeed, different lenses. First of all, VD isn't necessarily multicoated, like all 54's, it's still a "medium" lens (not as small as the original 36 nor as big as the 54), but it doesn't draw so much attention, so you still have the stealth factor. Front thread is 72mm, which is a blessing for finding and using diopters, quite the opposite of the 95mm filter threads on the Isco 54. Please consider that I've owned (and used) an Isco 54 for over a year, so these aspects aren't guesses at all.
 
The full metal body is very nice too, since many Iscoramas have had rough times since they left Isco's factory, 30-40 years ago. Mine had its filter thread broken to smaller chunks of plastic and was held together by an empty UV ring. This, added to the almost-stuck alignment mechanism, and close-focus mod made sure that I could not EVER rent the lens as it was. Damn, it's a $4000 lens, it would be nice to make some money out of it, right? VD's conversion lets you rest assured that your Iscorama will work like any regular professional lens should work: without any special information required (specially regarding quirks).
 
Also, some other useful information not entirely related to the conversion: You should check in your country's customs office if there's a special form or procedure for items that are being sent out for servicing abroad and will return later. This will avoid paying extra taxes over the conversion costs. I know Brazil offers this option, and it's particularly useful, since I would pay a 60% tax over the declared value + shipping cost if it wasn't through this method. Plus Christopher is a really nice guy, who replies all messages and addresses every question you might have about the service. A good seller makes a hell of a difference for me.

No, you need a "gogo gadget-o arm" for pulling near to far!

 

The negativity is just jealousy.
 
Hats of to kendy to playing his one camera and lens like a guitar, instead of doing endless lens tests and upgrades. Love all his work and look forward to him digging into meatier things in the future!

If you couldn't follow the story you might want to try something simpler. Thor 2 might be more ya speed! Great film, the consistency on Thor's hammer throughout the film is flawless and leaves you feeling satisfied at the end of the film. I thought about his hammer for days afterwards....

Test audience aside,  it's surprising it got past the director, editor and producer . I can only assume it was blindness caused by editing such an enormous amount of footage as mentioned above.  imagine what the actual rough cut was like, probably 7hrs long :P
 
I don't mean to poop on the film entirely though, it's a must see and one of the most interesting films so far this year..

Interesting, this may have had something to do with it.
 
I was so impressed and affected by a lot of elements of it,  it was original and like an accessible art film.
 
but the edit was like a bloated rough cut, like nails on a blackboard after a while. Every shot lingering two, three, four times as long as necessary. I'm not a low attention span blockbuster viewer either, I predominately watch older films and art films so I am all for lingering moments, but if its every shot it just gets grating. People were squirming all through the second half in the cinema I was in.
 
I hope some day a leaner version of the film gets cut as it could be a classic.

Rollei qbm is an easy remount - you can do it yourself.  the leitax mounts are stainless steel and take 5 mins to fit.  infinity with no problems

Lets stop talking modern lenses and talk real lenses.  
 
 
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CARL-ZEISS-Distagon-for-ROLLEI-HFT-35-1-4-35mm-F1-4-lens-/171312671882?pt=UK_Lenses_Filters_Lenses&hash=item27e307ec8a
 
build up a complete set of these.  35, 50 and 85, remount with Leitax, and you have optics made in West Germany, of the same quality as those used on real Hollywood films in the 70's.  With still phototgraphy capabilities yet to be bettered by modern lenses.

Got mine today. Will be working on a review on the next days. It's pretty impressive! :P

The sports car test that i posted was pretty much the same sharpness with & without.
& there have been people saying that with the Metabones SB moire etc... rears its ugly head a lot more than without - so sharper doesn't mean better.
As far as the other FRs, i think they are much of a muchness & getting anal about which is better isn't really worth it.
I'll just be happy to use my Russain & Super Takumar lenses again, with the added bonus of them being that little bit wider & faster!

The only attempt so far, that I can find, of a comprehensive look at these adapters relative to the more expensive MB offerings:
 
http://***URL removed***/forums/thread/3627547#forum-post-53156458
 
...of course, charts don't tell the whole story.  Just ask the Helios 44.