Aaton XTR-J Camera Demonstration

Today, myself and two of my friends/partners went to Brian Fass' place for a Aaton XTR-J Camera Demonstration. It was our compensation for working for free on a low budget feature that he was DPing.

Since I come from a video background, I always imagined what it would be like to deal with actual film. Unfortunately, my film school experience wasn't glamorous enough to allow the gain of such hands on experience. That's why this demonstration meant so much to me. This is the starting block of gaining more experience on film cameras and possibly more job opportunities in the industry and hopefully Local 600.

Brian did a great job describing every piece of the camera starting with the body. First off, one of the best features of the camera is that it shoots Super 16mm as well as regular 16mm which eliminates the need for two different cameras. It's very basic, consisting of a PL mount (Positive Lock), a digital display which reads out the status of the magazine's roll, as well as battery information. On this specific version of the Aaton XTR, it takes 16v batteries instead of 12v, like on the normal XTR model. It has a film gate/aperture, registration pin, and shutter as well. The gate can be sealed off by a magnetic plate which is simply placed on top of it.

Batteries slide right into the back and are easy to mount and eject. Magazines are equally as user friendly, They just slide right in (you push until you hear a lock/click sound). Typically, you would want to check the film gate before loading any mags onto the body of the camera. This can be performed by simply shining a flashlight into it and checking for any artifacts such as hairs, dust, or oil (although no one should be touching the gate with their bare hands unless for reasons of repair). Using compressed air is a fast way to ensure that nothing stays there before mounting the magazine to the camera. Once the mag is secured on the body, you should turn the power on the camera which will activate the registration pin in the gate. That pin has to be synced with the perforations on the film (the holes on the side of the strip of film). You'll know it's synced correctly once you hear a click. Let the film role for a second to pass any flash frames (exposed film from loading and threading the mag) pass through the gate then turn the power off. You should wave a hand in front of the lens to notify the editor that those are just test frames which have no real use in the edit.

Lenses pop on very easy to the PL mount. It's pretty standard and self explanatory. Lucky I'm familiar with this mount because of working on the RED ONE recently.

Loading the magazine is very easy but would be too much to explain on this blog. Brian let all three of us practice on dummy rolls for now until a few weeks when we can practice using the changing bag and tent. You would normally put a fresh roll of 16mm film on the "feed" side of mag. This is where the film is fed through the film gate and then you have to thread the film through the "take" side of the mag where all the film goes once it's exposed. Threading the "take" side of the mag can be performed in light as these are going to be unusable "flash" frames. When a roll is finished, unloading the mag will obviously be performed in a changing tent to ensure that the film isn't further exposed beyond it's pass through the film gate.

We also briefly went over film stocks and ASA but more on that later. Again, a huge shout out and thank you to Brian Fass for allowing us to come to his house for two hours and listen to him discuss the camera. Also, shout outs to Kentrell and Agulo for making it out and making the demo more enjoyable.