LOW BUDGET 16mm FILM MAKING by Alan Van Wijgerden

Where to start? It’s like a walk on part in a war. If low/no budget video is like doing up the house then film is like doing up a badly derelict house. I clearly remember the first day on my first and only (so far) 16mm sound sync film. Roll sound! roll camera! mark it! Action! and, of course, cut. A film that was instrumental in hospitalising me for a month and draining the working capital out of a perfectly good, if increasingly boring, small business. But the cost focuses the mind, shots are worked out and rehearsed all the way through. One of the problems with video is that people say we can get this bit out of that take and this bit out of that take and the last bit out of the other take. But when they come to fit it all together in the edit suite they find there are subtle differences and it doesn’t work. I’ve shot documentaries on film and you’re always thinking where am I going to use this bit? Because if you’re not going to use it you’re wasting money. Film people using video will sometimes say it’s tape let it roll, but this leads to the beginner documentary problem of having tens of hours of footage for a half hour video. One of the fascinations of film is that you talk about look, film look. And the first thing to say about film look is that there is no one film look. Film can look like lots of different things. From the grainy black and white archival look of Kodak 200ASA 7222 to the brightly coloured home movie look of K40 (25ASA daylight) Kodachrome. And then again to the modern negative colour emulsions 7245 (50D) to 7289 (800T). You work in shots and in the case of the latest film I planned to make in 16mm you plan shot lengths down to the frame. The Bolex the camera I’ve shot most on is capable of extreme time lapse and slo mo. It’s still more portable and rugged than any broadcast video camera and you just wind it up, no batteries to charge! Technically one of the key differences between film and video is that film can record ten doublings of brightness and video only five. With video if it’s not there on the monitor when you’re shooting you won’t see it in post. With film the telecine operator (colourist) can often reach into the murk and pull something out. Costs, eighteen months ago black and white developing was 10.5 pence per foot plus vat from Henderson’s for the Bolex 100 foot camera spool (daylight loader). That’s £12.34. Plus postage of course. For colour (Film Lab North) it was 9 pence per foot, but with a minimum charge of £40. This means that you really have to shoot at least 400 foot. Film costs, about £28 for a100 foot reel on colour negative. Kodachrome K40 around £35 for a reel, but this includes processing. Black and white about £15 for a reel of negative (7222/7231). It’s telecine that’s the killer costing from £180 plus VAT per hour to £400 plus VAT per hour. Another very good reason to make every shot count! Sixteen millimetre cameras, now there’s a whole techy area to get distinctly anoraky about. From the simple Bell and Howell cassette loaders to the Aaton XTR there’s a camera for every purpose. The Bolex has much to recommend it to beginners, although the clockwork camera, generally, is not much good for sound sync. The Aaton XTR and Arriflex SRIII are the sort of cameras the BBC would use to film expensive costume dramas. If you're buying a used camera it’s much like buying a second hand car, but with very few dealers to choose from. Hundred foot load cameras can cost anything from £20 to £1000. My last half hour 16mm originated film cost £5300 in all, I had to sell the cameras and lenses to finish it (and if you’ve got a Bolex for sale let me know). But it’s really good fun walking around with a film camera looking at shots and talking about drama. How I wish I was there now on this cold October night. Alan Van Wijgerden is a film-maker based in Coventry.