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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: here

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Leader is cheap. There is no excuse.

You'll be happy to know the last time I ran an archival print at the Library of Congress (silent film) that there was something on the order of 3-miles of protective leader on each reel. Talk about a kid glove treatment. It took 2-days just to pull the print from storage so it could come up to ambiant temperture VERY slowly.

Steve

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Steve

I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. West was supposed to be quite fast, though. The film is a send-up of American slapstick and chase comedies from the mid-late teens, a kind of putting into practice the arguments Lev Kuleshov put forward in his famous essay 'Americanitis', which looked at why Soviet cinema audiences loved American films so much. Anyone who thinks that Soviet propagandists were incapable of humour is in for quite a surprise when they see this film! The American slapsticks were often deliberately shown faster than they were shot in order to heighten the comic effect.

But there is a downside of the Kinoton E at slow speed. The film is not transported at a constant speed anymore. The projector is duplicating frames to match the constant shutter speed.
Slow movements in the movies appear discontinuous (similiar to the 2/3 pulldown for 24 fps movies in NTSC television).
At certain film speeds I find this effect to be annoying.

I guess what you might not like is the relationship of the number of flashes (shutter dependant) to the number of fame updates (fps).

While the speed of the projector slows down, the number of flashes per frame goes up...the flicker is a constant one and rapid enough as to not be any worse than normal sound speed of 24 fps.

With a conventional set up...everything slows down together. It certainly is a different look and to some, perhaps, a more pleasing one. I, for one, prefer the look of the faster rate shutter. I can honestly say I have never had one single complaint about the look of the "E" series Kinoton running silent speeds and I have a bunch of them out there...in fact...most are simply awe-struck and have never seen silent look better.

Bear in mind, Kinoton, like other companies, updates their firmware to "improve" the operation of the projectors so perhaps there may have been a glitch in the version that was on your machine(s). I know I had one that when the speed was below 20fps, the shutter would loose sync. Apparantly, the firmware was updated and someone forgot to check all of the ramifications of the change.

Steve