Feature film with Pro35
 

Wanted to introduce myself:

I wrote and directed a feature film called Hula Gods (hulagods.com) in which we used the Sony F900, the Pro35 adapter and a set of Zeiss Primes. The first five minutes of the film is downloadable on the website as well as the trailer. There are stills as well. The trailer features some "overcranking" of the F900 in which 60i was deinterlaced to 24p. I was very happy with the Pro35 adapter and had minimal problems using it during filming (this is coming from a director's view point!). The director of photography was Chris Wissinger.

Rob

Hi Rob,

Are you planning on going out to film, or digital projection/DVD release?

We are planning on shooting a feature, hopefully using some kind of 35mm adaptor, early next year and I'm aware that there are potential problems with taking the images to a film print - have you had any experience with these problems and if so did you solve them and how?

Any advice would be most gratefuly received!!

Going out to film
 

I am not planning to go out to film. I have an HD copy, as well as some other formats. The cost associated with transfering my 83 minute HD tape to film is 25,000-60,000 dollars when I last checked. That is about half the total budget! It didn't make sense for this project and how we are trying to sell it. I am premiering the film in a festival in Las Vegas this month and they want a beta SP tape which I think is a widely accepted format for a lot of festivals (other than film!). We are also planning on selling the DVD soon (month or two) and the picture quality is gorgeous.

I'm sure that you lose some image quality with the Pro35 adapter but we used high quality lenses which helped. My bet is that film transfers will still look good, though. If you have the money, going to film would be great. I think a lot of companies that do the transfers will do a minute or two to see how it looks relatively inexpensively. Any other opinions more experienced than mine?

Output to film
 

And it goes without saying that if you output to film, an HD transfer would be far superior to a transfer from a Standard Defintion tape. Since you're already losing image quality with the adapter, I would spend the money on an HD camera and good lenses to compenate for this. We rented the HDW F900 and lenses for two weeks for about $14,000. In my opinion, it was money well spent. I think this is great option versus using a Canon XL2 and the mini35. Not sure what the mini35 (or micro35) and Sony's HDR-FX1 would look like. The resolution in progressive mode of the HDR-FX1 is not as good as the HDW F900 even though it is still considered HD. You can solve a lot of problems by staying in the digital realm, though! I know actual film (versus tape) has more credibilty in the indy filmmaking world, but I think this is changing.

Thanks for your time Rob,

Yes, good lenses and an HD camera on the back are essentials, imho - I'm not going to shot in "progressive" mode on the Z1, but rather do a deinterlace in post which will lose me *less* of the vertical resolution, so hopefully the image will stand up...

The possibility of film out is necessary for me as we are wanting to chase theatrical distribution which I believe, certainly here in Europe, will be severely hampered by not having a film print - looks like we'll have to chat up some labs to do us a test of some kind!

Many thanks once again Rob, and good luck with pushing your film - I'll keep an eye out for it!

Robert have you tried to get distribution through any of the HD channels? They could certainly use some new/better material than their constant reruns of various travel commercials.

Distribution
 

We are working on selling the picture. Hula Gods will have its premiere here in Las Vegas at the NY International Indy Film Festival (they have a festival in Vegas, Miami and LA in addition to NY). We should be able to get some distributors to come see the movie. We are also probably going to a few festivals in LA soon and we may sell the DVD through our own site (either hulagods.com or dre5productions.com). We are exploring every avenue to get distribution, but I had not thought about going to the HD channels directly. Thank you for the idea!!!