I recently had my Arri SRII 16mm film camera modified and repaired and was eager to get some shots with it. Instead of just randomly capturing test footage, I thought it would be more interesting to do some short narrative to really test it out.
It’s one thing to test a camera’s technical capabilities in a controlled environment, but it’s another thing entirely to use it in the real world. The latter not only gives you insight into the camera’s technical capabilities, but also how it will impact your on-set process.
Both variables are important to me to know more about as I plan to use this camera in longer projects (i.e. features) in the future.
From a strictly technical standpoint, I wanted to test overall performance and image quality, as this is my first time shooting with this camera since it was converted to Over 16mm. I’ve shot many times with the camera in 4:3 mode, but now don’t quite know what will happen when the door gets wider.
Creatively, I wanted to see how possible it was to shoot a no-budget narrative project in 16mm. Some of my favorite digital projects in the past have been these little short films that I made with no money (and sometimes no crew) and wanted to see if I could accomplish something similar, even if it was shot on film.
I still have a can of 400ft 16mm 200T in the freezer from another shoot, and I purchased another from B&H for $150 – one of the only expenses from the shoot .
Each 400-foot roll will run for 11 minutes at 24 fps, which means I only have 22 minutes of “record time” in the digital presentation.
While this sounds absolutely useless, the script I wrote was just over 2 pages…so even though my stock of film was limited, I still had enough to shoot in 10:1 due to the short run time.
Going into this project, I wanted things to be as simple as possible to keep the cost as close to $0 as possible. This meant not only keeping the script extremely short, but also basing it on my resources – the entire story takes place in and around one location (my house) and has no dialogue.
The two decisions immediately made a world of difference. Shooting on location is usually my biggest expense, so shooting in my home instantly made things easier. Because there was no dialogue, I didn’t have to roll sound on the set. I created all the audio in post by mixing library music with custom sound effects that I recorded myself.
I’m also lucky enough to have some friends who help out on the set as well. In total, there were only four crew members besides myself (Andy Chinn/DP, Ryan Oksenberg/BTS, Michael Bachochin/AD, Jon Stanley/PD), and a few friends who served as background for one of the scenes.
I always want to respect everyone’s time on set, especially on a project like this where I need help.
For everyone’s convenience, I limit the shooting time to 6 hours a day.
Apart from a few hours spent earlier in the day setting up some practical lighting, the actual filming only took place from 4pm to 10pm. In just 6 hours we captured 6 scenes spanning 3 different locations inside and outside the house.
We were able to complete the work so quickly thanks not only to the short script, tight shot list, and great crew, but also to the technical obstacles we encountered earlier in the day.
About 15 minutes into shooting the first scene, we had a problem with one of our camera magazines. I pre-installed them the night before and took a few seconds of test footage to make sure both were running smoothly…and they were.
But after about three or four takes on the first set, things started to go wrong with the first magazine. It sounds like the film slipped and didn’t catch the sprocket properly, which is never a good thing. When this happens, instead of catching the perforation, the sprocket actually pinches the film itself, which of course damages the image.
We immediately stopped scrolling and popped the second magazine which worked perfectly.
I had to decide whether to rewear the faulty magazine so we could continue to use it in the future, or abandon it entirely. I chose the latter.
While it is easy to remove the exposed film from the magazine and reload it, there is no guarantee that the same problem will not occur again with the magazine. Maybe it wasn’t a problem with how it was loaded, but a problem with the mechanism of the magazine itself…in either case I didn’t have time to experiment since we were trying to get everything into the can so quickly.
Having only shot about 1 minute of raw footage so far, I decided to try and shoot the rest of the film using only a second functioning magazine. Doing this cuts my shooting rate in half. It’s not so much 10:1, but closer to 5:1…
This immediately forced me to rethink my coverage and essentially abandon my shot list. While I still use the shot list as a rough guide, I have to combine two or three shots into one, or in some cases scrap the shot entirely.
My biggest concern was our main party scene, which required quite a bit of coverage to pull off. While I could delete some specific shots, I knew that most of the film we had would be needed for the scene.
Knowing this, we shot most of the other scenes using just a single lens. As long as there are no obvious mistakes in the action on camera, we will never retake it. While working this way is a little nerve-wracking because there’s little room for error, it’s also a lot of fun.
We would do a few quick shot rehearsals for each shot and once everything looked good, we would shoot for real. It felt fun to move on so quickly, but in the end that’s all we really needed! I’m busy editing right now and don’t feel like we missed a thing…
By the time we shot the party scene at the end of the day, we had enough footage left on the roll to capture everything we needed, including a bunch of extra shots that weren’t even in the shot list.
If we were shooting digitally, this wouldn’t happen! With digital technology, you will almost always have more footage than you may already have of the scene.
Then at the end of the day, there’s no time to try out new ideas or capture additional material because you’ve exhausted all your time reshooting the now-redundant material.
When I look at my rough cut, there’s no indication that we shot such a limited amount of footage. If anything, the film looks more dynamic than many of my digital projects because we were forced to shoot a wider range of material rather than doing more takes of the same thing.
Not to mention, the film essentially edited itself since most of the work was done in camera and there was far less footage to sift through. As someone who edits most of my own projects, this is a dream.
The video was scanned in Full HD format to ProRes 422HQ, resulting in a 12-minute video file. That’s all I do in post, and it allows me to create a complete rough cut almost instantly. There’s no doubt that retouching/color correction work will be easier as well, since the 16mm film does a lot of the heavy lifting.
I should also mention that my total film/print/scan cost was less than $500. That’s literally the movie’s budget, not including pizza and a few Venmo payments. I tend to think of any project under $1,000 as a “no budget” project because there is always some cost – whether it’s food, gas, media, props, etc.
Regardless, I’m excited to get this movie out and share it with you all as soon as possible. Initially, I was going to submit to festivals, but since so many festivals are canceled or postponed indefinitely right now, I’ll probably post it online to get it out there sooner.
Once completed, I will share another blog post here about the film itself, along with a copy of my script and shot list. I think this will be helpful for those who want to understand how content translates from page to screen.
In the meantime, I’ll be sharing some screenshots from the movie below.
Almost everything you’ll see was shot using practical lighting and a single LED Litemat and/or Quasar Tube.
The 200T had a little more grain than usual because we pushed it to a stop in the lab. This means setting the light meter to ISO 400 (instead of 200) and developing the film longer to bring out more detail. Due to limited lighting that day, we did just that.
As far as lenses go, everything was shot with my Angenieux 12 – 120mm which served us well throughout the shoot.
The lab’s scan of the film was indeed a bit tighter than I’d like, which is why the image below has an aspect ratio of 1.66 instead of 1.85. Ultra 16mm is an unusual format that requires the scanner to be pulled back to view the entire negative, including the sprocket holes. This allows you to crop for a wider aspect ratio.
I’ll probably rescan the 1.85 shots, but I also kind of like the 1.66 shots, so will report back on that soon. Now, look at these images from the movie –
Be sure to check back soon for my follow-up post, which will include the finished film. If you have any questions about shooting in 16mm, please leave a comment below!
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