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Topic: BH perforations on release prints

Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 01-21-2005 01:05 PM

quote: Bill Carter
Is it possible this one was accidentally printed on some type on low-con stock intended for telecine?

2393 is projection print stock - the low-con telecine stock is 2395.

quote: Bill Carter
According to Dick May at Warner, original camera negative was used for those prints...

They contact-struck release prints straight off the cut camera negative?! [Eek!]

I've heard horror stories about how this was done in less enlightened times, shall we say, but it seems staggering that they would risk a camera negative, which for a film like Dr. Zhivago represents a multi-million dollar asset, by putting it through a printer for any more passes than was absolutely necessary.

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Bill Carter
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 162
From: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Registered: Sep 1999

posted 01-21-2005 02:28 PM

Hello, Leo,

Sorry, in hastily paraphrasing Mr. May, I made that unclear. IP's were struck in '93 from the original neg, except for the portions that existed only as dupe. From the new IP, dupe negs were made.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 01-21-2005 03:07 PM

Hi Bill,

Good to hear from you again. I gather that Minneapolis is a bit snowier now than it was in November!

Phew! I have heard stories about o-negs being used to strike rerelease prints back in the '70s and '80s, but thank goodness this is more-or-less a thing of the past now. That having been said, there was a really scary post on the AMIA list a year or so ago. It was from a Bollywood DoP, whose o-neg had been used to strike 300 release prints of quite a recent feature - they didn't even bother with any intermediate elements at all! When the neg started to fall apart, he had it Scotchgarded. His query to the list was whether it was possible to remove the Scotchgard before (finally!) duping to an f/g interpos for preservation.

One thing struck me, though - those prints must have looked spectacular.

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 01-21-2005 03:13 PM

quote: Leo Enticknap
One thing struck me, though - those prints must have looked spectacular.

At least the first dozen or so, before the wear on the negative started to show or a splice broke in the printer. One key reason direct prints look so good is that they follow the correct practice of printing a short-pitch original to a long pitch raw stock, so printer slippage is minimal. Done right, modern intermediate stocks retain almost all of the image quality of the original negative.

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Dominic Case
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Sydney NSW Australia
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-23-2005 04:28 PM

quote: Leo Enticknap
there was a really scary post on the AMIA list a year or so ago. It was from a Bollywood DoP, whose o-neg had been used to strike 300 release prints of quite a recent feature

Scary, yes. Unusual, no. Apparently this is the norm. 300 is a relatively large order for a Bollywood film, as the prints are worked their way around the country rather than the blanket day-and-date approach that we have become used to, which of course relies on much larger numbers of prints.

But the risk of damage to the negative (not just wear and tear after the first few runs, but the implications of a disaster on the printer) is indeed scary.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 01-24-2005 04:17 AM

We've had a similar problem, albeit on a much smaller scale, in the form of a collection of industrial and educational 16mm shorts from the 1950s acquired a couple of years ago. They were all shot on Kodachrome, and the release prints made by contact printing the original cut element to Kodachrome stock again for release! So you can imagine that the contrast looked horrid on the prints. The variable density track originals are also on reversal stock; but in this case some Ferrania stuff which has faded to hell, meaning that the tracks had to be re-recorded too.

They hadn't even edited the originals as A & B rolls, so job no. 1 was to take them apart and reconstruct them in A & B roll form before sending them to London to have a new preservation negative and polyester interpos struck on 7245 & 3242 (why won't any stock manufacturer make polyester negative stock? It would save archives huge amounts in making preservation elements of reversal originals or in cases where the only surviving element is a print). We could only afford to have a print made of one of the 13 titles, and the difference in contrast and saturation from the original prints is amazing.

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John Hawkinson
Film God

Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 01-24-2005 01:45 PM

Leo writes, "why won't any stock manufacturer make polyester negative stock?" I'm confused. If you're making preservation elements from a reversal original, don't you want to use an intermediate film like Kodak 5242 (aka 2242/3242/7242)? It's available in acetate and polyester for both 16 and 35, and you can use it for both INs and IPs.

--jhawk

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 01-24-2005 01:53 PM

quote: Kodak's website (my emphasis)
KODAK VISION Color Intermediate Film / 5242, 7242 and KODAK VISION Color Intermediate Film / 2242, 3242 / ESTAR Base are color intermediate films for the preparation of color master positives from color negative originals for release printing

It's not suitable for striking preservation negatives if the surviving element selected for duplication is a positive (i.e. a print or a reversal original). For that you need camera negative stock, as slow and as fine grain as possible; AFAIK, no-one manufactures anything suitable on polyester base.

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John Hawkinson
Film God

Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 01-24-2005 02:00 PM

The same paragraph continues:

quote:

...for release printing, and for mastering videocassette, DVD, and digital cinema releases, and for color duplicate negatives from the master positives.

I thought the intermediate stocks had the edge up on the camera stocks because they did not need to handle such a wide variety of light levels.

--jhawk

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 01-24-2005 03:02 PM

The explanation I've been given is that in high contrast (i.e. reversal) originals, there can be a wide variation in the light levels used for printing. Both of the labs that we regularly send colour duplication work to advise against the use of intermediate stock for striking a preservation master from a projection print or reversal original. You'd use this stuff for recombining seps, if the original is a fine grain interpos or if you're digitally outputting a preservation master from a laser or CRT film recorder.

Perhaps John and/or Dominic could come in if I'm missing or misunderstanding something, but as I say, both of the labs we use recommend that any preservation materials made from colour reversal or projection print originals be in the form of a dupe from the original on acetate camera negative stock and then a polyester interpos from that. Sometimes we can't afford both and have to rely on a new acetate negative for preservation. Admittedly this should last hundreds of years in a proper vault, but it'll still decompose sooner or later.

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 01-24-2005 03:09 PM

Kodak VISION Color Intermediate Film has a printing density contrast (gamma) of 1.0, so it copies the image contrast of the original negative when making master positive, except that the image is now a color-masked positive. When making a duplicate negative from the master positive, the image contrast is again maintained, yielding a duplicate negative. Since there is usually plenty of light available in the printer or laser recorder, the film is slow so it can be very sharp and fine grained.

An internegative stock used for copying projection contrast reversal originals or prints needs to have a much lower contrast, and may even have the tone scale optimized by flashing to avoid blocking in the highlights. Either 7272 or a camera negative film are sometimes used as an internegative.

Usually camera negative stocks (gamma of about 0.6) are used for CRT recording (e.g., Solitaire recorders), mainly because you need the extra speed.

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Tao Yue
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 209
From: Princeton, NJ
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-24-2005 11:13 PM

The only link I could find to an ESTAR base camera negative film is EXR 100T SO-256 in 65mm (discontinued half a year ago). I assume the SO stands for "Special Order" due to lack of general demand:
http://www.kodak.com/US/plugins/acrobat/en/motion/newsletters/news/PCN081604_Q.pdf

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Dominic Case
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Sydney NSW Australia
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-25-2005 01:23 AM

quote: John Pytlak
Usually camera negative stocks (gamma of about 0.6) are used for CRT recording (e.g., Solitaire recorders), mainly because you need the extra speed.

But having the low gamma, they require a higher gamma in the CRT output - that is, a greater dynamic range - and this can lead to problems with image flare. Laser recorders are brighter and so can work with the slower, finer grained higher gamma intermediate stock, and therefore require less dynamic range, thereby reducing any issues of flare.

Camera negative is about the only stock that is still normally made on acetate base: the intermittent movement of a cmaera is generally thought to be too sensitive to damage if there is ever a snarl-up (and we all know what happens to projector and platter movements if estar gets jammed, don't we. But also, it doens't have to have the toughness and resistance to multiple passes that print stocks do - but it does have to be capable of being spliced cleanly and accurately and completely invisibly, which is something that still hasn't been done successfully with estar base.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 01-25-2005 04:35 AM

...though you don't need to splice an element duplicated for archival preservation. I guess there just isn't enough demand generated by preservation duping to justify making camera negative stocks available on poly, even on a special order basis. I can see why the business case isn't there, but just feel it's a pity that we have no choice but to create preservation masters which are storing up the same decomposition problem as with the material we're duping from. Thanks for everyone's responses.

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 01-25-2005 10:37 AM

Some ESTAR base Kodak color negative films have been available on a Special Order basis. For example, 5279 is available as SO-579 for use in very high speed instrumentation cameras, and other films have been used in 65mm to shoot films in space for IMAX format films, where the thinner base and ability to withstand extremes of temperature of polyester base are a real advantage.

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