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Topic: emulsionside???

Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 04-11-2015 01:32 AM

quote: Jim Cassedy
...platters, devices which I have no more affection for than that which I hold for tax collectors or child molesters.

Well if you're going to make a comment about platters insinuating that they are horrible, don't forget other horrible things from the film days such as Brenkerts, Simplexes, CFS lamphouses, and so forth.

Some of the most worn prints I've seen were uncut prints ran only reel to reel.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 04-11-2015 01:48 PM

Having spent pretty much my entire working life in projection in arthouse/rep venues, I have to disagree with Brad here. I have very rarely seen prints that have no splices at the starts and ends but still show evidence of poor handling (you do get them, but very rarely). The killer is prints that are repeatedly made up and broken down for platter/tower/double MUT use, with only a small number of passes each time. If you're showing a print four times a day in a 20-plex for six weeks, then of course a well-maintained and operated platter installation is the way to go. But if you're only showing the movie once, the wear, risk of accidental damage and the fact that tape splices will fail over time all points to a changeover installation being preferable.

Getting back to subtitles, it's ironic, isn't it? They are a technology that couldn't be got right in either the analog or the digital worlds. With laser subtitling of film prints, we had the base side and focus problem, and the only way of fixing it involved taking an audio hit (though I would be interested to know if Dolby digital, DTS or SDDS works reliably on a DIN print: if so, problem solved, sorta). In the digital world, we had the series 1/SMPTE subtitles saga, with all the reliability issued that involved.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 04-11-2015 02:06 PM

I've always knew which side was which by the shiny/sheen look of each side, along with seeing the contours on the surface of the printed image by reflected light on the emulsion side.

This is how I taught booth operators, when doing wet splices, that soundtrack always faced you with the supply reel mounted on the right hand crank.

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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"

Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 04-11-2015 03:28 PM

Monte - we've moved on from that! LOL

Now, while I agree with Brad that plattering doesn't NECESSARILY doom a print, I support Leo's claim that the most horribly battered prints are pretty much always the ones that show signs of having been built - i.e. head/tail leaders have been cut.

And, because "builders" are prone to cut frames (rather than peel away leftover tape from an old splice) the changeover folks end up needing to reapply cues.

On the other hand, there are evidently a bunch of short-sighted changeover projectionists who insist on using a cue scriber to etch permanent cues into the print. And then the builders cut more frames. Pretty soon THOSE cues don't work anymore. Lather, rinse, repeat... and now there's a "parade of cues" on every reel.

And, of course, this also means there's a bunch of missing footage at heads and tails.

So, in my opinion, there's plenty of stupidity and incompetence on both sides of this argument.

And that's one more reason why film is dead now.

</rant>

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Stephan Shelley
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 854
From: castro valley, CA, usa
Registered: Nov 2014

posted 04-11-2015 05:33 PM

Back in the day when I was building up prints if I got a print that had already been automated I would take the time to peel off the tape and not make a new cut. I used high quality splicing tape such as film-tech tape and it would be relatively easy to pull apart the splices I made. I never cut out the splices I made when shipping out.

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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"

Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 04-11-2015 10:25 PM

Not doubting you personally, but I guarantee that the very ones who f**k up the prints also say this.

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Steve Matz
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 672
From: Billings, Montana, USA
Registered: Sep 2003

posted 04-11-2015 11:55 PM

I have to agree with Leo; What New release Prints looked like after you sent them back to the exchange wasn't the fault of a Simplex, Brenkert, etc. It was the Projectionist running the Equipment. I always adjusted Gate Pressure to the absolute minimum just enough to avoid Flutter. Some of these Guys had their Gate Pressure to the Max which is going to wear a print exceeding Fast. What did they care, it wasn't like it was their own print from a Private collection. I always treated every Print like it was my own; and keeping hygienic maintainence of the Film path and Projector itself was top priority....

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Louis Bornwasser
Film God

Posts: 4441
From: prospect ky usa
Registered: Mar 2005

posted 04-12-2015 10:16 AM

We are all "preachin' to the choir."

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 04-12-2015 11:26 AM

Can I get an Amen!

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 04-12-2015 01:02 PM

Amen. But wait.

Leo sez,

quote: Leo Enticknap
Oh, that's clever! Because laser subtitles are burnt into the base

Subtitles are burned into the BASE? I have run enough subtitled features to question that. Besides, how is that even possible. The base doesn't contain the image so how etching into it produce subtitles, unless the laser burns THRU the base which I have never seen.

First they used chemicals to remove the emulsion to form the text, then they used a laser to scribe the text. I have never seen the machine that used chemicals, but I have seen a laser subtitler in action -- quite fascinating. It ran slower than projection speed, maybe 3 or 4 fps. The operator had to make sure the positioning of the text was in the right place (framing) and of course that he had the right reel on the machine to match the text file. He told me more than once someone had mismatched the reel to the file and ruined the entire reel, although no problem selling those reels to collectors if they were Hollywood titles, i.e., English language being subtitled for the foreign market, which is mostly what this company in NYC dealt with. The company, of course was just another ancillary film related service that was killed in digital's mass murder spree.

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Jack Theakston
Master Film Handler

Posts: 411
From: New York, USA
Registered: Sep 2007

posted 04-13-2015 02:14 PM

The old-fashioned way was to coat the film in paraffin, then use a plate to hot-press letters (preset) into the wax, then the film was run through bleach and rewashed to removed the paraffin.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 04-13-2015 05:51 PM

Burnt into the base as in, they indent it. Yes, the lasering is done from the emulsion side, but if you look at the base side where the subtitles are under a microscope (even a cheap 40x toy one of the sort phonograph buffs use to check styli for chipping), you'll see that the lasering has deformed the base a little. Someone from LTC once told me that that during the '80s and '90s, they spent a hell of a lot on R & D to try to perfect the system so that it didn't do this, and thus the letters would be on the exact same focal plane as the image emulsion, but they could never get it right.

So the only time you'll ever see razor sharp subtitles and image on a film print is when they're matted on in duplication, which is only economic for a large run of prints (e.g. the scene in a Bond movie where the bad guys speak a few lines of Russian - that sort of thing).

By flipping the image around to a DIN print, the theory is, I guess, that you're going to get the picture closer to the indented subtitles, and therefore that the focusing "sweet spot" for the two will be a lot closer. The problem is that you want the same focus sweet spot for three components: the image, the subtitles and the optical audio, and no-one ever figured out a way of making the print such that it was the same for all three on the same print.

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 04-14-2015 01:20 AM

quote: Scott Norwood
The focus on the sound lens would be off, since it would have been set up for the normal print orientation (emulsion toward lamp). This would reduce HF response and would probably lower the overall level.

This known variant in the 16mm realm was so common that the really high end projectors, like the Lamborgini of 16mm projectors -- the magnificent Eastman 25B designed in the abilitly to focus the sound slit to either position -- Emulsion toward the Lamphouse (EL)or Emulsion toward the Screen (ES). And in 16mm where the resolution of the soundtrack is hurting to begin with (compaired to 35mm), even that fraction of a milimeter difference on where you focus the slit will whack the hell out of playback high frequency response. A 16mm track with its already limited frequency response, every Hz of audio is precious. The lesser 16mm projector designs simply focused the slit in the middle, splitting the difference between the two locations. In other words, half-assed, and not getting the best audio available from the 16mm soundtrack.

If you ever want to hear how much of a difference that focusing position actually makes, all you need do is play an Emulsion L(amp) print on a 25B and set the slit focus to the Emulsion S(creen) position. Play the film and then move the focus knob to the correct position -- oooh, listen...high fidelity! (well nearly). The improvement is like another whole octave or more.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 04-14-2015 03:55 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
Burnt into the base as in, they indent it. Yes, the lasering is done from the emulsion side, but if you look at the base side where the subtitles are under a microscope (even a cheap 40x toy one of the sort phonograph buffs use to check styli for chipping), you'll see that the lasering has deformed the base a little. Someone from LTC once told me that that during the '80s and '90s, they spent a hell of a lot on R & D to try to perfect the system so that it didn't do this, and thus the letters would be on the exact same focal plane as the image emulsion, but they could never get it right.

In all the years I've never seen razor sharp lasered-in subtitling and practically all foreign films did have them around here. I guess besides burning away the emulsion exactly back to the base, there is also the added difficulty of the emulsion itself being "burned" around the edges of the "cut", creating a somewhat blurry, dark edge around the subtitle. I never minded this effect, because it created the necessary contrast required for light scenes.

Sometimes you also got reels where they seemingly misjudged the intensity, because those subtitles ended up being blueish, so the burning didn't make it all the way trough to the base.

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 04-16-2015 04:53 AM

quote: Manny Knowles
Not doubting you personally, but I guarantee that the very ones who f**k up the prints also say this.

Hell, I know guys who aren't even embarrassed enough about their sorry piss-poor work ethic that they don't even bother lying about it -- they'll outright brag right to your face about how they don't peel no stinkin tape and will tell you that they just lop off a whatever frames they feel like...2, 3, 4 -- whatever number their muse inspires them to -- so, they will tell you, they DON'T have to "waste time on stupid stuff like peeling tape or cleaning off adhesive residue."

Kind of makes you wanna spit in their coffee cup.

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