You could technically get away with shooting on Super 16 and blow it up to 35mm and make it look pretty darn close. It's a lot cheaper than 35mm but still a big money eater. Personally working with film I've found color stock to run about $60 for 100 feet of super 16 film. 100 feet of film equals approx. 3 minutes of run time. No multiply that by 30 for your feature, then multiply that by 3 for your extra takes that you filmed on a 3:1 ratio.
There's your film budget!
No but seriously, if you are looking to make it more than a hobby and actually do stuff like this as a profession I would suggest getting to know the right people and find yourself a producer (especially one who'll be totally invested in your film). The better the producer, the better he or she will be at wrangling you some cash for your production.
I've filmed a 5 minute short on color 16mm before, and my budget ended up being around $400 for the film and equipment. That's not including the camera. Luckily I knew someone with one of those.
K-Murphey wrote:You could technically get away with shooting on Super 16 and blow it up to 35mm and make it look pretty darn close.
Only if the 35mm print you're comparing it to was shot on incredibly fast film, has a shitty 2K DI and is color graded to hell. 16mm is way too grainy for my tastes, whereas even a properly done 35mm 2K DI can avoid the kind of grain you get with 16mm (i.e. Black Swan, Chuck, Psych, Monk)
K-Murphey wrote:You could technically get away with shooting on Super 16 and blow it up to 35mm and make it look pretty darn close.
Only if the 35mm print you're comparing it to was shot on incredibly fast film, has a shitty 2K DI and is color graded to hell. 16mm is way too grainy for my tastes, whereas even a properly done 35mm 2K DI can avoid the kind of grain you get with 16mm (i.e. Black Swan, Chuck, Psych, Monk)
I've actually seen this done. We're talking independent film here. People who, if they shot with 35mm, wouldn't have access to all of the necessary color corrections and digital intermediates that go through a standard Hollywood, or "Sundance Independent" film.
Of course it's no where near perfect, but I've seen the comparisons, and it's not bad. Now this is just me talking about film not digital so much. I still think it's hilarious that digital is just now starting to compare with film as far as quality, and that digital is actually attempting to imitate film rather than become a median of its own.
Oh I'm not objecting to shooting on 16mm. If that's what you want go ahead, and I'm told that with slow film stock you can capture an image with decent grain structure. But if you compare 35mm at 200T and 16mm at 200T, it's obvious which will have the finer grain structure and better clarity.
About your digital comments; 35mm is the standard. So of course the goal is to be able to capture images just as good, if not better than 35mm, while maintaining the look people have grown accustomed to over the last hundred or so years.
Crazy Eight wrote:Oh I'm not objecting to shooting on 16mm. If that's what you want go ahead, and I'm told that with slow film stock you can capture an image with decent grain structure. But if you compare 35mm at 200T and 16mm at 200T, it's obvious which will have the finer grain structure and better clarity.
About your digital comments; 35mm is the standard. So of course the goal is to be able to capture images just as good, if not better than 35mm, while maintaining the look people have grown accustomed to over the last hundred or so years.
No, I understand what you're saying now. And yes, you are right about which one has better grain structure and clarity. There's now way around that when blowing up film stock. It's the same when you shoot true Imax and blow up 35mm to Imax format. They both look good, but one just looks a lot better.
Yeah, I understand 35mm is the standard. I just thought digital would try to be its own thing and let film be. But tis the way of life I suppose.
Crazy Eight wrote:Yeah, I understand 35mm is the standard. I just thought digital would try to be its own thing and let film be. But tis the way of life I suppose.
Well digital has a stylistic look of it's own, it's just not drastically different from film unless you go crazy with the shutter speed (Cough*Michael Mann*Cough). The Social Network definitely didn't look like it was shot on film, but it still looked damn good in my opinion.
The real thing you need to keep in mind with digital comes down to color space and how the image is captured-- the type of sensor system, etc. A lot of people talk about lines of resolution (2k, 4k, etc) but at the end of the day 4k "resolution" means absolutely nothing if the sensors aren't capturing the full gamut of the image, and are instead interpolating via chroma sub sampling-- 2 pixels of green for every pixel of red and blue. And guess what-- RED and any DSLRs using a CMOS sensor are doing just that. They have one sensor capturing the red, green, and blue color spaces which ends up equating to an 8.3 megapixel image, as opposed to a 36 megapixel image (which is what a piece of 35mm film scanned at the same resolution yields). That's a HUGE difference.
Take a look at this article if you want a really good breakdown, from the Senior VP of Advanced Digital Imaging at Panavision:
Kyle Higgins wrote:The real thing you need to keep in mind with digital comes down to color space and how the image is captured-- the type of sensor system, etc. A lot of people talk about lines of resolution (2k, 4k, etc) but at the end of the day 4k "resolution" means absolutely nothing if the sensors aren't capturing the full gamut of the image, and are instead interpolating via chroma sub sampling-- 2 pixels of green for every pixel of red and blue. And guess what-- RED and any DSLRs using a CMOS sensor are doing just that. They have one sensor capturing the red, green, and blue color spaces which ends up equating to an 8.3 megapixel image, as opposed to a 36 megapixel image (which is what a piece of 35mm film scanned at the same resolution yields). That's a HUGE difference.
Take a look at this article if you want a really good breakdown, from the Senior VP of Advanced Digital Imaging at Panavision:
