kyledroid
08-31-2005, 10:39 AM
An australian based company furnishes a 2 perf film that would considerably reduce film costs. This is their website: http://www.multivision235.com.au/
Roughly, its 20 minutes of film time for every 1 thousand feet of film. I was wondering if anyone has used this film or knows anything about it.
dop16mm
08-31-2005, 11:21 AM
It is not a special film, it is a camera system that utilizes half as much film as standard 35mm in the creation of a 2.35:1 widescreen image. Known as 2-perf pulldown, this process in the past was called techniscope. It was used in the 60's and early 70's when there were not many anamorphic lenses available for production. Famous films that used the process include the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leoni and geoge lucas' THX-1138. As far as I know the only company that supports the process end to end with modified cameras as well as the lab work. It has attractive economies if you want to shoot in austrailia. But dealing with them stateside could get costly when you figure shipping costs.
Barry_Green
08-31-2005, 11:36 AM
It's a resurrection of TechniScope, which was used quite a bit in the70's ("American Graffiti", "The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly", etc.) James Cameron used 2-perf for underwater scenes in "Titanic", as it doubled the amount of time he could shoot before needing to surface and reload.
Nobody really seems to use it anymore, and finding cameras that shoot 2-perf, or that can be converted, seems nigh impossible. The Eclair Cameflex can do it, but those are even noisier than the Konvas... the IIC can do it, but it's just as noisy and non-sync too. I believe old Mitchells can be converted, and they can be quiet, but they're *MASSIVE*.
The drawbacks to 2-perf are mainly that a) the frame size is a little smaller than Super35, so it's a bit grainier; b) your post-production chain has to be compatible; and c) you really only ever shoot 2.39:1; trying to get to 1.85 is way too compromised as compared to actual academy-gate 1.85; and d) if you want to make a film print you *have* to go through a blowup or D.I. (but then again, that's the same as with regular Super35.)
I wrote to multivision a couple of times with some questions and never heard back from 'em...
Barry_Green
08-31-2005, 11:37 AM
DOH! I guess that's what I get for taking too long to type... dop16mm beat me to it!
dop16mm
08-31-2005, 04:04 PM
If I had bothered to check my grammer I might not have gotten the first response.