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Author Topic: BH perforations on release prints Richard Fowler Film God Posts: 2392 From: Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA Registered: Jun 2001 posted 01-25-2005 10:56 AM                     I produced a few projects on 16mm reversal in the 1970's and depending on the film stock, we would either "flash" ( pre-fog ) the camera or print stock to lower contrast on the final prints. I FilmGuarded these prints recently and the color and contrast still look great  |  IP: Logged Dan Lyons Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 698 From: Seal Beach, CA Registered: Sep 2002 posted 07-22-2005 03:40 AM                     Once again I get a print with these type of perfs, "An American in Paris", new print on poly stock. Very dull colors and bluish in many of the scenes. In some scenes the colors vary from warm to bluish with each different shot. Such a shame that a Technicolor film is reduced to something so ugly.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 07-22-2005 05:36 AM                        Sounds like a print made from a faded interneg which itself was recombined from slightly misregistered seps (possibly due to differential shrinkage). You'd be looking at serious money to put that right, and even that would depend on the cut camera negative rolls surviving in reasonably good shape. That having been said, the good thing about Technicolor original elements is that there's no danger of several hundred release prints having been struck straight off them, as there is with a single-strip cut camera negative; so if decomposition isn't a problem and they weren't junked, they should be OK. The NFTVA had similar problems with The Magic Box a few years ago and most of the Powell/Pressburger Technicolor films they restored in the '80s: even optically printing the lot on a Matipo, the registration wasn't perfect. It might be viable to do that by 4k scanning the originals and realigning the colour records digitally now, though I don't know if a three-strip feature has been digitally restored yet.  |  IP: Logged Tao Yue Expert Film Handler Posts: 209 From: Princeton, NJ Registered: Apr 2001 posted 07-22-2005 08:48 PM                        Warner Brothers has been digitally reregistering many of their three-strip films recently, as misalignment shows up all too clearly on DVD. Singin' in the Rain and The Adventures of Robin Hood had new 35mm prints struck from the digital files for a limited release. Some of the others, like Meet Me in St. Louis, Gone with the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz went straight to DVD. The criticism, in fact, has been that these are too sharp compared to the original IB prints. Recombining three-strip with computer alignment onto Eastman stock avoids the registration issues inherent in dye-transfer. Dan, I must commend your theater for running so many new prints of classic films. All too rare these days. Too bad you keep getting bad-looking prints.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 07-23-2005 06:14 AM                        quote: Tao Yue Recombining three-strip with computer alignment onto Eastman stock avoids the registration issues inherent in dye-transfer. The original process was very hit-and-miss. The prints produced by the London and Hollywood labs in the '30s and '40s vary from astonishingly sharp to a fuzzy mess. In Britain during the war, when film stock rationing (there was never any film base casting plant in the UK: before the war we imported most of it from Europe; once it started it all had to come via the Atlantic convoys) dictated that the bad prints couldn't be junked, the misregistered ones were known as 'north of Watford' prints. Watford is a suburb in north London; the phrase implied that the good prints went to the high-grossing, prestige theatres in London's West End, while the misregistered ones were sent up north for the yokels! I remember seeing original nitrate release prints of The Thief of Bagdad and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp a few years ago, which were culled from a number of surviving release prints. The difference in definition and colour dye density between each 1,000 foot reel was astonishing. quote: The criticism, in fact, has been that these are too sharp compared to the original IB prints. That criticism was made here when the P & P restorations were done in the '80s. Personally I don't have a problem if all you're doing is making all the new viewing elements to a consistent quality which is comparable with the best prints produced for the original release: and from the 5-10 Technicolor features I've seen both in original prints and restorations, my guess is that this is more-or-less what's happening. quote: Tao Yue Recombining three-strip with computer alignment onto Eastman stock avoids the registration issues inherent in dye-transfer. Registration issues inherent in dye-transfer is the issue with original prints, but not with restorations or re-releases. The problem here is nitrate shrinkage, which often means that the three camera negatives (the cyan, yellow and magenta records) shrink at a slightly different rate. The analogue way of producing a new release print from there is to print them through filters onto modern colour internegative stock in three separate passes. So if one has shrunk more than the others, that gives you edge fringing and other defects. This can be offset to a large extent by using printers which are designed or modified to cope with shrunken film - the NFTVA uses a Debrie Matipo, for example. But as you point out, scanning all three separately and then using software to compensate for the shrinkage is potentially a much more easy and accurate way to do that. I'd be interested to see some 35mm prints of restorations produced that way, but as far as I'm aware none have made it here.  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-25-2005 03:40 AM                        I got a new-ish, low-contrast print of Bava's (I think} "Black Sabbath" for a show from Italy which I believe was not a print for theatrical projection, but for telecine or some other purpose. Low contrast, blue-ish, to an extent that it was obviously not a theatrical print. It had colorful opaque leaders with Italian which I couldn't decipher. I had to run it, it looked awful. "Black Sabbath" is famously a saturated Technicolor eye-popper; it was a shame. Someone must have grabbed a 35mm print of the title & sent it by mistake, possibly thinking it was all the same. On the other hand, they also sent an incredible, immaculate, probably from first-release print of the black & white "Girl Who Knew Too Much", which had a picture so gorgeous on carbon arc that you wanted to just eat the screen.  |  IP: Logged

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