|
|
This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
|
|
Author
|
Topic: non-theatrical 35mm
|
|
|
William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 11-10-2003 12:46 AM
Getting titles on 16mm unexpectedly is due to:
1)Folks in management who book the films don't know the difference, & don't know to specify 35mm or at least to find out if it's not in 35mm, it's all video to them
2)Folks (not mentioning names) who have a history of saying they have a title in 35mm, knowlingly holding & shipping only 16mm, & when you get it the day of show & call them they say "I'm sorry, but that title is only available in 16mm".
3)Sometimes those folks don't even KNOW they've got only 16mm, but when they find out ship it anyway.
To remove the 16mm projector is impossible, a lot of titles are available only in 16mm. You'll get bookings for films that are only in 16mm & you'll need to run them. You need a good 16mm theatrical projector, & if you can't find a functional, reliable Eastman or something, Steve's advice to get the Kinoton is the best & the theater needs to start the process for budgeting & acquisition to remain a functional & useful rep house.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
|
posted 11-10-2003 03:48 AM
Leo,
I am trying to get hold of a film for a private screening for a few people. If possible, I would rather have it on 16mm, but 35mm or video would be acceptable if that is not possible.
The film is 'The Proud Valley', with Paul Robeson, from either 1939 or 1940, I have seen both dates for it.
The film is listed on the BFI web site, in a section headed something like: Films available in 16mm, some are also available in 35mm. It would therefore seem that they still have a 16mm print of it, and as it is not likely to get a great deal of use, it may still be in reasonable condition.
The question is, can I, as an individual, rent a film from the BFI? If so, how do I go about it?
I know that a very good 35mm print exists, but it is very unlikely that I could get my hands on that. The film is available on VHS, but only on NTSC, which my machine doesn't handle. I've also been told that the quality of the transfer isn't that good. Perhaps surprisingly, there never seems to have been a NTSC Laserdisc release of it, which I would be able to play.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 11-10-2003 06:28 AM
quote:
The question is, can I, as an individual, rent a film from the BFI? If so, how do I go about it?
To be honest I don't know. If it's a National Film and Television Archive print, you'd need to speak to Bryony Dixon. If it's BFI Films Distribution, the person in charge of print circulation is Andrew Youdell. The 'phone number for both is 020 7255 1444. I can't see any logical reason why a private individual couldn't sign a non-theatrical screening agreement (I guess they might ask for full payment in advance, though), but like all public sector bureaucracies some of the BFI's rules aren't always that logical. Bryony is pretty cagey about letting prints out to venues she isn't familiar with for fear of damage (the archive's print budget is pitifully low), so I suspect you'll stand a better chance if it's a distribution print.
If it's an archive print you will probably need to clear the copyright separately, and provide a clearance letter for the BFI to release the print. If memory serves me correctly The Proud Valley is an Ealing film; if so it would be a case of asking Canal Plus.
If the screening is for a small group you might be able to book a screening in the BFI's own preview theatre, in the Stephen St. basement. That way you'd be guaranteed the 35mm print and if you'd otherwise have to pay for an NTD licence or third-party clearance to get the print yourself, it might not be that much more expensive to do it that way. Private viewings on BFI premises count as research viewings and thus would not attract a clearance/licence fee, though the licence does charge a £10 per hour access charge for research viewing.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
|
posted 11-10-2003 06:55 AM
Thanks Leo.
The 35mm print I have seen, some yars ago now, is very good, but it is an archieve print, and there's no way I would ever be able to get my hands on that. I don't know if any 35mm distribution prints exist. 16mm would be more convienient if I can get hold of a reasonable print. I could run it on a pair of 666s, which give reasonable picture and sound. Or I might even fish out my 609s, and run it with carbon. The 666s are much easier to move though.
There is a 'New on 16mm/VHS/DVD' section, I thought they gave up 16mm some years ago, unless they have taken over prints and rights from 16mm distributors that have closed down, or something.
Doing a title search for 'The Proud Valley' brings up the following:
---------------------------------------------------------
The Proud Valley
Directed by Penrose Tennyson
UK / 1939 / 16mm / b&w / 77 mins
The second of three films made for Ealing by Tennyson, 'The Proud Valley' is also the last of Paul Robeson's British films. He plays David Goliath, a black collier in South Wales pit, who becomes part of the community by singing in the choir. After a miners march into London singing to raise funds, and shame the owners into reopening it. The film has multiple resonance, including Robeson's subsequent run-in with Mc Carthy's comittee for UnAmerican activities.
See other films in the Black British Film & Black Representation in British Cinema category
---------------------------------------------------------------
It obviously wasn't produced in 16mm, so I assume that 'UK / 1939 / 16mm / b&w / 77 mins', means that they distribute it in that form. I have very little experience of booking films, and what I do have was years ago, I normally leave that side of things to others, and just stick to projecting them, and watching them, myself.
I know Andrew, I'll give him a call and see what he says.
I posted a message asking Darren the times of the November 70mm shows, but he hasn't replied. there were a lot of posts at that time, and it very quickly moved down the list, so he may have missed it. The only way I can afford a ticket to York at the moment is to book in advance, and that means deciding on train times before I book. Do you know the show times yet?
| IP: Logged
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 11-10-2003 08:02 AM
quote:
I thought they gave up 16mm some years ago, unless they have taken over prints and rights from 16mm distributors that have closed down, or something.
Me too: in fact, there was a massive hoo-hah when the BFI announced it would no longer be striking new 16mm prints in the mid '90s. The Federation of Film Societies mieowed and hissed like mad, among others. I remember at the time thinking that a move like it was inevitable, because (as Mark points out) most of the 16mm prints still doing the rounds were pretty well knackered and by that point it was only a matter of time before a better-than-VHS consumer video format reached critical mass.
The Proud Valley sounds interesting, not least because of the censorship regime which prevailed in the 1930s, dictating that left-wing political sentiment (and especially anything to do with industrial disputes) be kept strictly off the screen. As for the print being 'new', I'd guess that either the BFI have taken over a load of 16mm Ealing inventory from Filmbank (perhaps Canal Plus have swapped the NTD licensing contract - I don't know), or that it's just 'new' in the sense that they're only now trying to market it.
Some of the 16mm Filmbank stuff I showed toward the end of my student film society days was quite impressively gruesome...
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 11-10-2003 10:42 AM
Agreed entirely. I think what did it was when the multiplexes came along, that vastly increased the number of 35mm release prints being made of mainstream titles. At the same time video was replacing 16mm for applications which were previously the mainstay of 16mm specialist labs - educational films, training films, promos and industrial a/v presentations. So 16mm use was declining (and therefore becoming more expensive), while at the same there were more good quality 35mm copies of mainstream titles getting into circulation. So that encouraged the 16mm-only venues (e.g. student film societies and one-film-a-week arts centres) to upgrade to 35mm, and for arthouse titles to use the existing stock of 35mm prints. While all that was happening DVD started to appear, and by that time the writing was on the wall for 16mm.
In the early '90s the BFI experimented with making 16mm optical reduction prints from a 35mm release print onto CRI stock, but the results were not very nice. To be honest I can't say I'm too sorry to see the back of 16mm. Yes, a good print well-projected looks lovely. But there are hardly any prints left which would qualify as 'good', and if it's just as cheap to strike a 35mm copy, why faff with 16mm for the benefit of the minuscule number of venues remaining which can't show 35? It would make far more sense to offer support (including in the case of public arts venues, financial support) to upgrade to 35, IMHO.
quote:
Proved to be easier than I expected. Previous experience with the BFI, some years ago suggested that they were not the easiest of people to deal with.
They have a largely unfair reputation for restricting access - one urban legend is that of the 'National Film Archive hymn', sung to the tune of Eternal Father, Strong to Save with the chorus 'We have it, well we think we do; but sorry no, you cannot view.' But widening access has been a big priority for the BFI in recent years, and that is starting to bear a lot of fruit. It's good to hear that your booking was totally painless.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
|
posted 11-10-2003 11:50 AM
16mm was very strong in this country, I get the impression that it was less so in America, to the extent that non-theatrical exhibition was almost entirely 16mm; 35 mm installations wre seldom seen outside cinemas. Schools, colleges, prisons, long stay hospitals, ships etc. even with permanent installations were usually 16mm. 35mm was also very much the exception rather than the rule for television production in Europe, at least since about the time of the conversion to colour.
35mm portable machines were never very popular, 35mm generally meant a proper projection box, carbon arcs, rewind roon, and all the rest of it.
I remember a proposal, sometime in the early '80s I think, from an American company, to use 16mm in smaller cinemas. The idea was not new of course, Pathé promoted their 17.5mm 'Rural' format before the war for public shows in smaller communities. The '80s proposal was to use modified Eastman 25 projectors. At that time it just might have worked. 16mm prints were then considerably cheaper, there were many cinemas with very small screens, transport of prints would have been cheaper, and there would have been no making up and breaking down of prints, most films would have been shipped on a single 6000 foot spool. Dolby A stereo tracks could have been used, and later Dolby SR and even DTS would have been possible.
I saw a demonstration in London at about the same time, using a Philips projector, Dolby Stereo track and a full frame image, with a 1.5x anamorphic compression, a much better idea than masking the tiny frame down to 1.85:1. I think the screen size was about 6-7 metres, as big as many cinemas at that time, and it looked and sounded pretty good. As others have said, the economics have changed totally since that time.
16mm is still often more convienient than video in a portable situation. Print quality was variable, and for many years tended to be rather poor. I have seen BBC material in screen one at the NFT, with stereo sound, and it looked supurb, but I suspect it was printed from the camera neg. I think 16mm probably has a worse reputation than it deserves, considering the tiny frama area, it's amazing what you can squeeze out of it.
Another problem of course, was that 16mm prints were often badly handled, and in poor condition.
I have even seen Super 8 projected on a scope screen of about 30 feet; I wouldn't recommend it, the light output was very low, but the quality of the image was not as bad as you might expect, and it had four channel (matrixed) magnetic sound! There have been some very good quality Super 8 prints made in recent years, 16mm ones of equal quality should have looked very good. Just don't push the screen size too far.
In one of the Documents in the Widescreen Museum from the 1929 ish wide film period, it was suggested that wide film was necessary for screens of over 24 feet wide, far less than we do with 35mm today.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Peter Hall
Master Film Handler
Posts: 314
From: London, UK
Registered: Dec 2000
|
posted 11-10-2003 01:56 PM
A former engineer from Pathe tells me that 16mm was used commercially in the 1970s here (uk) for soft core (OK, I said soft, perhaps totally soft, - they were pretty bad) adult films. ABC tried installing "4th" screens in some of their venues, running 16mm. Never caught on..
In NZ we had a draconian form of cinema licencing, which would not allow new cinemas on the grounds of excessive competition for old sites. The first site I ran had a legal restriction, stating that films must not exceed 16mm in guage and must be over 35 years old. We had to apply for a special licence to show "new" films - it cost us a special licence fee to run "Cat People" 8 weeks off the date to houses of 40 or 50. But we did run 16mm commercially for 10 years, using EIKI 3000s - when the government did finally change and we were allowed to run 35mm, our Pro35 and Speco platter, with the wonders of EPRAD stereo (surely a contradiction in terms ?)we thought the earth had moved..
| IP: Logged
|
|
Hugh McCullough
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 147
From: Old Coulsdon, Surrey, UK
Registered: Jan 2003
|
posted 11-10-2003 05:34 PM
When I was a trainee projectionist, in 1958, the cinema that I worked at could not get 35mm prints for some of the films they wanted to show as none were available. 'The Private Life of Henry 8th' is one title that I remember. I think that another was about J. Edgar Hoover, so we had to have 16mm copies.
We used a very clever idea from, I think, De Brie.
A 16mm mech was mounted on a special bracket on the wall. The film was laced up, and then the whole mech with the film was fitted onto another bracket on the Kalee 12.
We therefore had use of the 35mm arc lamp, and projection optics. As we were only using the centre of the lens I seem to remember that we had a very good picture up to about 25ft wide.
We got the whole programme on two reels.
Has anybody else come across this idea?
I remember going as relief projectionist sometime in the late 1960s to the ABC Rembrant, Ewell. This had been converted to a twin with 35mm upstairs, and 16mm downstairs running films that were about six months old.
The 16mm was terrible, especially in scope, as we were using a B & H machine with just a 250W halogen lamp. This idea of using 16mm was soon scrapped, mainly I believe to the bad condition of the prints after amateur projectionists had been using them for village hall, and home shows.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic