I'm so tempted....

JAWflyer3

JAWflyer3

Well-known member
to sell my t2i and accessories and buy a 16mm film camera. Am I crazy?

Found a couple arriflex for $1000, damn
 
Sounds pretty crazy to me. I never knew 16mm were so expensive, I always see them for extremely cheap. The processing adds up though I think.
EDIT: Your setup is amazing, don't get rid of it!
 
skatethrasher said:
Sounds pretty crazy to me. I never knew 16mm were so expensive, I always see them for extremely cheap. The processing adds up though I think.
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I thought they were way more expensive. But damn one with a variable speed motor for shooting action would make me a happy man
 
JAWflyer3 said:
I thought they were way more expensive. But damn one with a variable speed motor for shooting action would make me a happy man
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It's certainly tempting. Until you add up the fact that shooting 10 minutes of 16mm to get it bought, shot, developed, printed, and scanned will cost over $1k. The first time you film a short with it, you could have paid for a RED.

That's sobering.

Shooting 35mm is working out to about $300 a MINUTE or so.
 
PerroneFord said:
Shooting 35mm is working out to about $300 a MINUTE or so.
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Ouch. A very sobering thought.

I can now see why everyone is excited over digital imaging because it's not just something new (as in the past 10 years or whatever), but a major cost cutter in the film industry (especially for the indie filmmaker) as well.
 
PerroneFord said:
It's certainly tempting. Until you add up the fact that shooting 10 minutes of 16mm to get it bought, shot, developed, printed, and scanned will cost over $1k. The first time you film a short with it, you could have paid for a RED.

That's sobering.

Shooting 35mm is working out to about $300 a MINUTE or so.
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Though if you get a 35mm camera that can take 2-perf film, it gets rly cheap. Though the cameras themselves are pretty expensive, 35mm 2-perf film is like way cheap compared to 16mm.
 
Timbit said:
Ouch. A very sobering thought.

I can now see why everyone is excited over digital imaging because it's not just something new (as in the past 10 years or whatever), but a major cost cutter in the film industry (especially for the indie filmmaker) as well.
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Yeah, but you aren't talking about 35mm film. if you get a used S16mm cam, you can shoot some great footage for a fraction of that $300/min cost. The footage looks great, like The Hurt Locker which was shot on 16, and its a great way to learn the craft.
 
JAWflyer3 said:
to sell my t2i and accessories and buy a 16mm film camera. Am I crazy?

Found a couple arriflex for $1000, damn
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I'm pretty sure if you got an Arri for $1000 it is either older than dirt or doesn't work. Just be careful if you decide to buy.

As much as I love digital for it's ease or use and speed, if I could get my clients to do it, I'd still shoot with my Kinor. You gotta love film! :smile:
 
Paul Nordin said:
Yeah, but you aren't talking about 35mm film. if you get a used S16mm cam, you can shoot some great footage for a fraction of that $300/min cost. The footage looks great, like The Hurt Locker which was shot on 16, and its a great way to learn the craft.
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Is that right?

Ok let's work the math.

1 roll of Kodak 500T 16mm film = $162 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/627294-USA/Kodak_823_2530_Vision3_500T_5219_7219_16mm.html)

Lets say we are going to shoot a 20 minute short. With pre-post roll per take, that $162, 400ft roll is about 10 minutes. And let's assume the comon 20:1 shoot ratio. So we need (162 * 2 rolls for 20 minutes * 20 (shoot ratio)) = 40 * $162 = $6480 to buy the film.

Going rate seems to be about $0.25 per foot to develop/print the film. You've got 40, 400ft rolls, so .25 * 40 * 400. So that's $4k in development costs. Transfer to hard drive is about $150/hr right now, and 40 rolls of 10 minute film and you've got about 6.5 hours so that's another $975 to get it onto your drives. (http://www.yalefilmandvideo.com/pdf/Yale%20Video%20Price%20List.pdf)


Let's lets add it up.

Film cost: $6480
Develop: $4000
Transfer: $ 950

Congrats, you just shot your 20 minute short for only $11, 430. Assuming you already own the camera and glass. That works out to $571 a finished minute.

Hey, maybe you find a bunch of deals, decide you can shoot 10:1 instead of 20:1, etc. Maybe you get out of there for $5k. Awesome. You could have bought a 7D and outfit it nicely for the same money.

Guess what happens when you decide to make ANOTHER short? With the 7D, you don't have to buy a thing. You're all set. With the 16mm, you buy all your film again, all your developing and transfer....

I got out of film years ago because it was going to bankrupt me. Unless someone else is paying, I am not ABOUT to shoot film again. No way.
 
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Clearly you are passionate about your hate for the economics of shooting film. And it all depends on what your financial situation, and ultimate goals are. I've shot a lot of film too, for me I loved the result.

I won't argue your numbers, but I've shot plenty of indie projects with better than 10:1. We tend to take more care and rehearse more fully. That can be good or bad. But it is possible. And the quality of a S16 projection in a festival screening is better than what they typically use for digital projection. Also film projects still hold a higher cache in some circles. That said, Its unlikely that I'd ever use film on a personal project either. I've got an Epic in my sights.
 
Paul, it's tough. I'm conflicted. I L-O-V-E film. Grew up with it. Shot it all my early life. But even if my economic situation were pretty good, it's hard to think about putting $5k-20k into personal projects.

Yes, an experienced cast, and crew can shoot tighter than 10:1. But EVERYONE is aware that when the man says action, the dollars are rolling. People tend to stick to the script, the feeling like the actors can go off page and maybe "find something" is squashed, and it's a lot less fun than it should be. And to be honest, not a lot of newer crews and casts are going to shoot tighter than 10:1. Even getting coverage or exploring some angles cuts a lot of that out.

Yes, film still holds a certain cache. But it's the cache of deep pockets, not quality work. I would certainly HOPE that by the time someone is shooting on film these days, they've gotten most of the production kinks worked out. They aren't asking how to light, or where the boom op should stand, or those kinds of things.

I almost wish I could put a S16 camera in the hands of ever newbie that asks about zebras, histograms, waveform monitors, XLR inputs, etc. Just as a reminder what it's really like to shoot film. I miss it, and truly wish I could afford it.
 
I think you should do it. Give it a go !
Otherwise you will spend the rest of your life wondering 'what if ...?'

I am think you should watch the 'Behind the Scenes' for el Mariachi.
This is a pretty interesting read although I don't know how accurate the figures on film costs are.
As far as I remember from the BTS, Rodriguez said something about not paying for the 35mm transfer.
He kept the feature at 16mm until it sold then the big studios could pay for that.

source of quoted text:
http://www.nextwavefilms.com/ulbp/abc.html

El Mariachi

Previous No-Budget Experience: Robert Rodriguez had made numerous no-budget video shorts, and the award-winning16mm Bedhead. "I knew after Bedhead that I could make El Mariachi."

Financing: He tried to raise $12,000 but was only able to come up with $9,000. He made $3,000 by checking himself into a medical research facility which was testing a cholesterol lowering drug. Rodriguez also used some money he had saved. Also, his longtime friend Carlos Gallardo (who playsEl Mariachi ) sold some land to raise money.

Planning and Scripting: "Before I wrote the script, Carlos and I sat down and listed our assets. We had access to a school bus, two bars, a jail, motorcycle, a ranch, and a pitbull. So I wrote the film around these elements. "He had plenty of time to write while he was a "lab rat" in the research facility, and emerged 30 days later with a script. The script has a minimal amount of dialogue. Rodriguez planned to shoot MOS without slates. "I didn't want a lot of talking because I knew I'd be syncing the film by hand."

Casting: Gallardo was set to play El Mariachi although he had never acted before, and could neither sing nor play the guitar. Another non-actor, Peter Marquardt, who Rodriguez met in the research facility, convinced him to cast him as the mafioso, even though he didn't speak Spanish, the language of the film.

Equipment: Camera - Arri 16S, which was not designed for sound. It was so noisy that it sounded like "it was eating the film, which made us even more careful." Because the camera was old and out of use, Rodriguez was afraid that it might break down, so he had another reason for shooting as little film as possible.

Stock: Kodak 16mm 7292 and 7248 16mm film. Most shots were done in a single take, since he planned to re-shoot whatever didn't come out. When "everything came out, no re-shoots were necessary. "I did a lot of cutting in the camera." Since he wasn't shooting sound, he didn't have to waste film getting up to speed or with slates, and no takes were NG because of sound. They only had a single 400ft magazine with a counter that stopped working after 350 feet. Since he didn't know how much film he had left when the counter stopped, he'd "shoot cutaways, dream sequence stuff, and other things that didn’t really matter."

Sound: Marantz tape recorder and Radio Shack mike. Rodriguez usually records two or three sound takes of each line. If he couldn't sync them with the picture takes later, "I would just do a cutaway to a dog or something else."

"I recorded everything at the same level so the background sound would match." He moved the mike closer or further away depending on how far the character talking was from the camera.

Crew: Rodriguez did almost everything himself, including the cinematography and the sound (which was possible because the sound takes were recorded after the picture takes). Gallardo would push him in a wheel chair for dolly shots and explode the squibs when there was any shooting. Rodriguez had one sometime assistant, who Gallardo nicknamed Mission Impossible "because he couldn't do anything right." The credit "A Two-Man Presentation" is no exaggeration.

Locations: El Mariachi was shot in Acuna, Mexico, (Gallardo's home town) which is just across the Texas border. The film was designed to be filmed on locations they could get for free. For meals they would go to Gallardo's house and eat his mom's home cooking.

Schedule: Fourteen days. "I intended to shoot longer. We might have been there three or four weeks but after one-and-a-half weeks of shooting, Rodriguez was told that the camera he had borrowed had been sold and must be returned. "We had four days to finish everything, so it got really hectic at the end'.

Working with Actors: "My actors never saw the script since I didn’t want them to sound rehearsed. I would act out the scene for them, and give them their lines just before we shot the scene. I gave them a few lines at a time". In the case of Marquardt, he had to give him a line at a time phonetically, and sometimes just as part of a line. Because the film was shot MOS, he could feed actors their lines and direct the action while shooting.

El Mariachi Budget (provided by Robert Rodriguez)

Stock

12 400 ft rolls-Kodak 7292 (indoor):
$1,140
13 400 ft roll-Kodak 7248 (outdoor):
$1,170
1 100 ft test roll (B+W): $19
sub-total: $2,329

Processing

25 400 ft roll, (13c per foot): $1,300
1 100 ft test roll: $23
sub-total: $323

Equipment

2 clip-on modeling lamps: $60
7 bulbs: $67
sub-total: $127

Miscellaneous

Acting fees: $225
Used guitar case: $16
3 sheets diffuser gels: $15
25 squibs: $50
Blanks (machine gun): $50
Fake blood. condoms (for squibs), gaffer tape. knick knacks, lens cleaner kit, extra bulb: $122
4 rolls 35mm production still film: $18
10 Maxell 11 audio cassettes: $23
6 197 Ampex 3/4" BLA 60s: $103
sub-total: $622



Post Production

Video transfer with overall
color correction (28c per foot)*

$2,824
Grand Total: $7,225

*This is a service where they do a sort of 'overall correction’ when transferring to video. It's not the best color correction you can get, but they can fix over and under exposures, and keep faces from turning green. It's a hell of a bargain and all you really need."

(Total spent on film and developing, not including test roll: $3610) - almost half the budget. So if you’re measuring negative costs (not including video transfer), the movie cost less than $5,000. But my budget represents the cost from conception to finished product.

Action Sequences: For the film's gunfights, Rodriguez filled condoms with fake blood (food coloring and Karo syrup). They were attached to a weight-lifting belt worn under the shirt of the character to be shot, and wires were run from squibs inside condoms to a D-cell battery. Since the belt could only be worn around the upper body, people in the film only get shot in the chest.

Total Cost of Getting the Film in Can: $2,975 (without developing)

Post- production: Because he had no slates and hadn't recorded sync sound, it took Rodriguez as long to sync the dialogue as it took to cut picture - two and a half weeks. The film was edited on video. After a rough edit on 1/2" tape, Rodriguez borrowed two old Sony 3/4" machines and a switcher. He edited the film off-line since he had no time code to keep precise track of his cuts. "Once I cut a section during the final edit, I couldn't go back and fix it later." He just had to live with it. The sound mix was also difficult because the 3/4" machines were so primitive. He edited the sound effects at home on his 1/2" RCA camcorder (which had a flying erase head) and then transferred them to his 3/4" cassette that contained picture and dialogue. Then he added the music. He subtitled the entire film using a character generator that he got access to through his local cable system. Without incurring the costs of making prints or cutting negative, he created a master that was a 3/4"' videocassette that could be used to make 3/4" and 1/2" copies. Because El Mariachi had been shot on film, the copies looked like cassettes of a film.

Music: Rodriguez asked five different friends to write music simultaneously and didn't show any of them the film. I got two or three songs from each one. My brother and cousin wrote the El Mariachi music. I had a different style for each character."

No-Budget Approach: "The key is having a low shooting ratio. By shooting one take of every shot, I saved a tremendous amount considering extra takes mean not only extra time filming and editing, but added film costs, developing costs, and in my case, video transfer costs. "Note: Shooting two takes instead of one would have made the final budget over $13,000." "Careful planning and avoiding the temptation of shooting a second take just in case" saves tremendous dinero.

"Where I really saved was in shooting the movie silent. A lot of takes would have been blown due to unexpected drive-bys, noises, and all the things that usually blow a sound take, which I noticed more when it came time to record the sound. Since I was only using cassette tape for the sound, we could afford three of four audio takes to get a good clean audio recording.

"Had I shot sync sound, I would have wasted a ton of film on simply running the camera to speed and slating the shot with a sync clapper, especially since a lot of my actors had never seen their lines. We would only shoot one or two lines at a time, so to have to run up to speed and clap each shot would have used up more film, and driven the cost up considerably.

"How I shot this film may not be the best way but it is a unique approach. We only had $9,000 to spend, and necessity is the mother of invention, so that's how I came up with this method."



Written, shot, directed, and edited by Robert Rodriguez.

Producers: Robert Rodriguez and Carlos Gallardo.

Cast: Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, Peter Marquardt.

Distribution: Columbia Pictures.

Conclusion

While these films are very different, the no-budget approach methods used to produce them have much in common. The scripts for Laws of Gravity and El Mariachi were written to fit the budgets available, by maximizing the use of available resources and avoiding things that were unaffordable. On all three films, ways were found to get essentials for free (e.g. camera equipment, crew) to minimize the cost of those things that had to be paid for (stock and processing costs were kept down via low shooting ratios) and to postpone expenditures whenever possible. Lighting requirements were reduced by using natural light and day exteriors extensively.

Limited amounts of time and energy were spent raising money. The emphasis was placed on making the money available go as far as possible. Each of the three films used a two-part strategy to do this: they figured out ways to get the film in the can for as little cash as possible, and then to only make the post-production expenditures that were essential to getting a showable copy of the film. In the cases of Laws of Gravity and The Living End, this was a single print that could go to festivals and attract a distributor. Once a distribution deal was signed, other expenditures necessary for distribution could be made. All three films used festivals skillfully.

These three writer-directors also have much in common. They all had learned a great deal from their previous filmmaking experiences and mistakes. They all had a realistic idea of how they could make a film on a tiny budget, and were determined to do it. They were each able to assemble and get the most out of a dedicated cast and crew. Laws of Gravity used a larger crew and more rented equipment and thus had to shoot on the shortest, most intense schedule. El Mariachi and The Living End had smaller crews and fewer rentals and planned more leisurely shooting schedules. El Mariachi would have been shot over three or four weeks if the camera hadn't been reclaimed. The Living End shot on and off over four months, allowing the actors with jobs to keep working (since the film couldn't afford to pay them).

In the end the careful planning, ingenuity, and determination of these three groups of filmmakers paid off beyond their expectations. Their legacy for other independent filmmakers - the inspiration to JUST DO IT!

Filmmaker would like to thank Andrea Sperling, Gregg Araki, Nick Gomez, Jean de Segonzac, Bob Gosse, and Robert Rodriguez for their generous help in supplying budgets and answering questions.
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edit:

Of note.
Chris Nolan (Inception, Memento, Batman Begins Dark Knight) started out his career by trying to recreate what el Mariachi did.
He talks about it in the Behind the Scenes for 'Following'. He shot the feature on 16mm film stock with a 2 or 3 man crew in London
for about £5000 - £6000 (figures quoted from memory but you can easily look this up)

... and even if you don't go film and decide to stay with digital. Keep your story telling dreams alive brother !
 
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I have never, in MY NATRUAL LIFE, worked with, or seen a crew that can shoot a movie (or even a scene) in 1 take, every time. But, it does show that it can be done, with a professional crew working for free, talented actors, working for free, a free camera, some bargain basement developing and printing, etc.

The problem I have with this, is people will look at these numbers and say, "well *I* can do it for that if he did it for that." That's a pipe dream. You can certianly get one of these done, but doing it for that amount of money.... probably not.

Maybe I'll get together with some folks on a DVXFest, and we'll shoot film. Pool resources, each person buys one piece of the puzzle, and we shoot.
 
Haha! Say TODAY to Robert Rodriguez that you are planning to sell your T2i equipment to get an old 16mm camera... I guess he could even slap you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1QVRyN_3SM and this video is OLD.

I think that if you have the urge to shoot film you should script a very short short film and shoot it with rented equipment for fun...

El Mariachi is an action film with guys running around guerilla style, there's nothing overly complicated and that's why RR had a one or two takes average, not forgetting of course he's a great director.
 
PerroneFord said:
I have never, in MY NATRUAL LIFE, worked with, or seen a crew that can shoot a movie (or even a scene) in 1 take, every time. But, it does show that it can be done, with a professional crew working for free,
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Right on Perrone. It doesn't ever happen. At least I've never seen it either. However, I'm still looking for that genius budding Director with a kick-ass script, a mountain of passion and energy, enough charisma to charm great actors to work for free, and enough balls to keep it real and not go to la la land when it comes to the reality of how to make shots happen. When I do, I'll shoot that person's film for peanuts and for points on film. (haha, shi* did i just write that in public)

After many years, I've only found people that can bring 2 or -maybe- 3 out of four attributes. Still looking for the next Rodriguez.

But we're definately off track here. Dude, shoot a project or two on film! You can get deals like you would not believe on S16 rigs. Probably rent one on a -whenever you want to use it- deal from someone for a few tacos. You'll be surprised at how forgiving film is, and at the discipline running dollars through a magazine imparts.
 
Crew-Free
Gear-Free
Actors-Free+$225
Locations-Free
Meals-Free (Cinch your belt guys.)
Transportation-Free
Young Rodriguez was clearly a great producer as was Kevin Smith who made clerks for 27k which was the cost of the music rights so he might be an even better producer because he also got film and processing for free.

For the OP film is great but if you're going to go back to film go 35mm. The processing costs are only marginally more expensive, 16mm VS HD isn't even a hot topic for debate. There's a reason all those 16mm cams are going for 20% of what they were going for 5 years ago. Good Luck.
 
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