In a fit of madness I bought an Arriflex BL 35 from a seller on eBay. I can’t afford it, but I got it for half of what it should have sold for. And it came with accessories. A good number of accessories. Fortunately I have an ‘emergency’ credit card. The studio just called. It’s here. There’s still another box coming, but 4 out of 5 isn’t bad and they weren’t due until tomorrow.
So what are we going to do with it? Shooting a movie on 35mm is very expensive. But now we have the only silent 35mm motion picture camera in the area. There’s a good chance we can let it out. (Of course they’ll need an operator as well. ) If all else fails I can ‘flip’ the camera and make a profit, and sell the accessories for a profit too. But I don’t want to. It may take a year (or two, or three or…?) to pay off. Or our current project may sell and I’ll be able to pay it off sooner.
So… Does anyone want to buy my 2-year-old, 14-foot Mercury ‘zodiac’, 25hp 4-stroke outboard and trailer; and my 1963 Triumph Herald 1200 Convertible?
A BL, man! The Arri BL 35 is said to have been Stanley Kubric’s favourite camera. George Romero used one to shoot Dawn Of The Dead. A 35 BL was used to shoot Léon: The Professional. The BL series has been a workhorse for the past 30 years. Jerry ran the camera with the phone near the open door. Sounded like a projector. He closed the door and I couldn’t hear it.
I can’t wait to see it! But I’ll have to. I would drive to the studio, only they’re coming out this way. Rather than have them pack up a couple hundred pounds of stuff and then take it back to the studio, I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow. They’re bringing the wooden Arriflex tripod and the massive Ronford head out though to whet my appetite. I’ll meet them at a friend’s house in about an hour.
You’ll be receiving a much smaller package tomorrow, and don’t worry about the postage, it was barely over a dollar. Be very careful opening it, I love tape, the stickier the better, if any got stuck on the solder it could be a problem if you just ripped it off. Also, the paint on the nose and eye should cure for about a month so don’t get it wet.
Not to bust your bubble Johnny, but there’s this new movie technology that lets you make movies with sound! They’re called “talkies” & look to be pretty popular.
By ‘silent camera’ I mean that the camera itself is quiet, so that audio may be recorded by the sound guy.
A camera that is used for shots that do not require audio can be ‘MOS’ (Mit Out Sprechen or ‘Mit out sound’). These cameras can be very noisy. For example, my Arri 16S sounds a bit like a blender on low. (As opposed to my Éclair NPR, which is a silent camera and can be used with dialog.)
Incidentally, ‘BL’ is Arri-ese for ‘blimped’. That is, the camera’s mechanism is muffled – or ‘blimped’ – so as to make it silent. The Éclair NPR and ACL, the Arri SR-series, and the Aaton LTR/XTR-series use quiet mechanisms to make silent cameras. Older cameras, such as the Arri 2-series and old Mitchels had large, heavy accessory blimps. Sound can also be muffled with a ‘barney’, which is a soft cover and which is most effective on silent cameras. (Silent cameras still make noise, which can be a problem in a small and/or reflective space.)
I meant to include that I used a Bolex 16mm and later had the lab add effects, background music and commentary for documentaries. This was before zoom lenses, but once they came out, what a difference they made, even though the definition was not as good.
Bolexes are good. I have an H16 in a Paillard underwater housing, an H16-M5 with two 400’ mags a Som Berthiot dog-leg reflex zoom and a Tobin crystal motor, an H16 Rex-1 with a Tobin crystal motor and zoom, and another old H16.
Hell, as long as I’m listing them… I have the Éclair NPR, two Krasnogorsk 3s, and an Arri 16S.
Just looked at the 35 BL. (He brought the camera and head instead of the head and sticks.) Looks in good condition, but it needs to be cleaned. I’ll call a rental house in Seattle to see how much they charge for cleaning, lubrication, and inspection. Runs quiet. I don’t know what kind of Ronford head it is, but it’s massive.
I’ve found a rental house in Seattle that can clean and service the 35 BL. Don’t know how much it will cost. (Not much, I hope!) I know that Optical Electro House in Culver City, CA charges $100-$200 for servicing an NPR.
And your alternate would be what? Going at it with a paint brush and can of 3-in-1 oil? I can’t imagine that’d be a good way to save money.
Curious about KlondikeGeoff’s comment on how the Arri looks like a proper camera should, I poked its name into Google and found something interesting - someone’s dinked up what appears to be a Steadicam-like rig for it and/or a Betacam.
Cripes, I’m getting absent-minded in my old age. :smack: I meant to comment on this in my last post…
One day in Vermont was filming with the Bolex near a stream, and decided to cross over, stepping on stones above the surface. One was quite wet, and my feet shot out from under me. As I was falling on my ass, instinctively I raised my arm holding the camera up, so it would not get wet.
As luck would have it, when I came down, my elbow smashed against the rock,and as I lay there in the water, I watched, in what seemed like slow motion, the camera making a lazy arc through the air and landing, where else, in the water.
The side opened, and the film started flowing down river. I grabbed the camera, and remembering what I’d read, shook out as much water as possible, and put it in a ziplock bag and sealed it.
Shipped the thing, still in it’s bag to a NYC shop where it was repaired and worked as good as new afterward. The cost was horrendous, but whatcha’ going to do?
All I’m saying, you did the right thing getting it to a service shop. I like taking things apart and fixing them, but a camera? No thanks.
I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I’m going to sell the camera. As much as I want to shoot on 35mm, it doesn’t make business sense. But the real reason is that there is one thing I like even more than filmmaking: flying.
For what I paid for the camera, I could have about 40 hours in a helicopter. And if I make as much by selling it as I think I can, then I can get so many more hours.
Mr. beckwall (green with jealousy) wants to know if you chop your footage old-style with a Steenbeck or transfer to digital. Either way, he has read all your posts and says (begrudgingly) “Hmm, that guy knows his stuff”. HUGE props from him.
Next time you’re in L.A., we gotta get together and talk trade. Our people will contact your people .
Ha! I was just in L.A.! Went to the Farewell Rico and cadolphon DopeFest at Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica on Saturday.
We’re shooting on DV, so we’re editing on a Mac G5 with dual 2.5 gHz liquid-cooled processors using Final Cut Pro. Cut Up, which was shot on film, was transferred to video and edited on BetaSP. Any footage we shoot with the Arri (and the footage we’re shooting with the Éclair) will be transfered to DV for editing on the computer. I do have 16mm editing gear (cranks, viewer, synchroniser), but it’s much easier to do it digitally.
I take it Mr. Beckwall is in the industry? If we do wind up relocating to L.A. we’ll be looking for gigs.
Right now we’re concentrating on the film. Afterward we have decisions to make. We want to go after commercial jobs. Unfortunately our website guy hasn’t worked on the site in a while, so our FOX News footage, industrial footage, and other commercial projects aren’t online. We look like a wedding site. (Weddings are fairly lucrative.) So other studios who are marketing more aggressively are getting jobs that we can do better. And everyone up here is getting hi-def. At this stage of broadcasting it’s not really necessary. But it’s a selling point, and it will be advantageous to shoot in hi-def in the future.
So we’re planning to sell some equipment and get another 24p DV and a hi-def DV and go after the commercial jobs. We may stay here since we have a name for ourselves. Or we may relocate to L.A. where in addition to more competition there are also 100 times the potential customers. Either way, I need income. If we’re not making money then I’ll have to get a job somewhere else. If that job is in filmmaking, so much the better. And whether we move or not, I want to keep my house up here. So I’ll need to make enough to pay my mortgage (which is less than I paid for my apartment in L.A.) as well as enough to live on. It would be nice to have some flying money too.
I hate to sell the Arri, since I haven’t even had a chance to shoot with it yet and I was so excited to get it. But if I can make a profit by selling it, I’m perfectly happy shooting on something else. And I can get current in the Robbo.
) If all else fails I can ‘flip’ the camera and make a profit, and sell the accessories for a profit too. But I don’t want to. It may take a year (or two, or three or…?) to pay off. Or our current project may sell and I’ll be able to pay it off sooner.
The Arri BL 35 is said to have been Stanley Kubric’s favourite camera. George Romero used one to shoot Dawn Of The Dead. A 35 BL was used to shoot Léon: The Professional. The BL series has been a workhorse for the past 30 years. Jerry ran the camera with the phone near the open door. Sounded like a projector. He closed the door and I couldn’t hear it.
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