Malachi Rempen’s “La Nina del Desierto”: 3-Perf Super 35mm Photography

Archive article, originally written March 10, 2009



March 1st marked the wrap of photography for Malachi Rempen’s “La Nina del Desierto,” a short film following a gravedigger in the desert. My seventh time around catching Malachi’s images, we’ve both been pleased seeing everything come through the one-light scan.

While our original plans were to make as high quality a product as possible, the possibility of 35mm photography opened to us only when Fotokem reviewed our pre-production work and gave our project a grant for processing & printing. With the format in reach, only raw stock prices remained an inhibition. While we generally considered “The Silver Lincoln” a success, one of Malachi’s major concerns in editing was the limited coverage we acquired: at only a 6:1 ratio, not many options were available during the edit. For “La Nina” Malachi wanted to be sure to have a 10:1 ratio, which in 4-Perf terms would have destroyed our budget. 3-Perf then came into the picture: with 3-Perf photography and a generous donation from Kodak, the 10:1 ratio on 35mm film was easy to obtain.

With 3-perf Super 35mm photography, the camera aperture records a 1.77:1 exposure. With a desired aspect ratio of 2.35:1, we lost no information in the process. We flirted with 2-Perf photography, but eventually decided against it: as 2-Perf yields a 2.66:1 exposure, extracting a 2.35:1 frame would require wasting the sides of the exposure, making our usable negative area only marginally larger than it might be with Super 16mm photography. Panavision provides a breakdown of the formats here.

The equipment came from Otto Nemenz: an Arri BL4 modified with a 3-Perf movement with Zeiss Standard Speed primes. With the gorgeous mountains to maintain the background of every daytime shot I avoided punishing my 1st Assistant Rachael Loftis with WFO apertures until our night photography, when my Gaffer Chris Richmond finally got the chance to bring out a generator to create nights with a natural minimum of moonlight. (of course, Rachael did an excellent job even with the faster apertures)

1:2.35
Arriflex 3-Perf 35BL 4-S
Zeiss Standard Speed Primes
Photographed on Kodak Vision2 5217, Vision2 5218, Vision3 5219
Rentals from Otto Nemenz International, Mole Richardson, Wooden Nickel Lighting



Dir Michael Malachi Rempen
Cam Op Michael Nie (additional operating by Daniel Schade)
1st AC Rachael Loftis
Gaffer Christopher Richmond
Key Grip Jorge Andres Moore Coco
Production Designer Daisy Robinson
Makeup Artist Jenny Hou