The Long Take

    This was my first time using the Bolex, and I have to say it was awesome.  Learning how to load the film, shoot, and expose it was intimidating, but everything seemed to have worked out just fine.

    We started off by gathering with our groups of four and headed off to shoot in the Wildflower Preserve.  After helping another group with their shoot, we prepped a segment of the trail for our long take.  The most time-consuming part of our shoot was the blocking, considering the 54 sec. time requirement and the focal length of the lens on the Bolex.

    Including a masked shaman, a diver, and an oversized frog, our plot was based a man's date gone wrong  after eating a mysterious fruit.  We were even able to include our favorite reoccurring character, Fatty Patty.  

 

     After the shoot, we headed back over to the darkroom to expose our footage.  Taping the doors and setting up the chemicals, we were ready to unload the camera.  We followed the list of instructions closely, making sure we didn't ruin our film.  When we checked out our film after we fixed it, we were worried, thinking it had been either overexposed or pushed too far in the dektol. 

    We looped our film and loaded into the projector to do our HD video transfer.  Accounting for the inversion and rotation that will happen in post, we were pleasantly surprised by the outcome of our footage.  There was nice contrast, and the framing on our all hand-held shoot looked good.