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Author Topic: Apr 2 Nitrate booth fire at the Stanford, Palo Alto Bill Gabel Film God Posts: 3873 From: Technicolor / Postworks NY, USA Registered: Jan 2002 posted 04-06-2009 12:48 PM                     The Stanford Theatre Foundation is one of those Special Venue theatres that can book films from Film Archives like UCLA Film Archives, George Eastman House collections and others. The print lost was an archive print, but not from UCLA's collection.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 04-06-2009 01:00 PM                     Jack...I'll say this..._I've_ never seen a modern print ever come close to a Nitrate in its look...regardless of stock or lab work done in the modern print. That includes color or black and white. Steve  |  IP: Logged Jack Theakston Master Film Handler Posts: 411 From: New York, USA Registered: Sep 2007 posted 04-06-2009 01:09 PM                     Steve, I've split-screened several safety films with their nitrate components. Some obviously didn't look so hot (being off of dupe negs), but others that were off of the o-neg and had good labwork behind them looked as good as the nitrate originals. Book Universal's print of HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN sometime and you'll see what I mean. As for Technicolor prints, any new print is going to look sharper if done directly from the three-strips, in my opinion. Technicolor prints from before 1954 are often inherently soft because of the printing technique. Technicolor changed their chemistry that year to compensate, and no doubt the growing number of theaters showing widescreen at that point lit a flame under their asses. Another print that looked better than the original IB was ironically another horror film from Universal: BRIDES OF DRACULA. At this point, it would be safe to say that Kodak's stocks post-Vision have as wide a color range if not better than Technicolor's dyes. [ 04-06-2009, 04:09 PM: Message edited by: Jack Theakston ]  |  IP: Logged Richard P. May Expert Film Handler Posts: 243 From: Los Angeles, CA Registered: Jan 2006 posted 04-06-2009 01:38 PM                     One of the reasons nitrate prints have such a legendary reputation for looking good is that most of what survives was probably made from the original negative, with slow and careful lab work. I have seen many modern Estar prints made from the original negs that look beautiful. It's like Jack says above, the lab work is what really counts. Even if a nitrate print appears to be in very good condition, projecting it is a chancy thing, as the newest of them is in the range of 55 years old, and would have some degree of shrinkage. That could cause the film to jump off a spocket, with expected disastrous results. It's not like working with such old film in a lab environment, where there is no appeciable heat involved, and if film breaks in a printer it can be stopped very quickly. DM  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 04-06-2009 01:41 PM                     quote: Jim Bedford "We cauld see the flickering light from the flames from the orchestra" area near the front of the theater, audience member Kenneth Allen said of the 7:35 p.m. incident. Did the fire shutters not drop then? One function of them, apart from the obvious one of stopping the fire spreading to the auditorium, is to stop the audience from seeing the fire, and panicing. Do we know exactly what happened? Was the fire contained to the film in the gate, or did it spread to the spoolboxes (magazines)? I haven't heard of any nitrate fires for several years; the last one I can think of was in the vaults at Henderson's Labs in south London, probably something getting on for ten years ago now. I can't remember the last nitrate film in a cinema that I heard about; there was one in Paris in about the late '80s, have there been any since? I wonder if this will spell the end for the exhibition of nitrate prints? It might be used as the excuse to introduce a total ban. The best safety print of an old film that I've seen was 'The General' a few years ago at the National Film Theatre. I'm pretty sure it was polyester, it was a fairly recent print, and it really did look superb.  |  IP: Logged Bill Gabel Film God Posts: 3873 From: Technicolor / Postworks NY, USA Registered: Jan 2002 posted 04-06-2009 02:01 PM                     quote: Stephen Furley Did the fire shutters not drop then? For most fire shutters to work in that era type theatres. The fire would have to melt the lead spacer that holds the chain to the shutters for it to drop or the operator to do it manually in the booth. The fire would have had to be a major booth fire for the shutters to work on there own.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 04-06-2009 02:18 PM                     But not for the operator to pull the manual release. If they see the film catch fire they should be able to drop the shutters within a second if they've got their hand on the release. I agree that if the fusible links go then you've already got a sizable fire on your hands.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 04-06-2009 02:34 PM                     I agree with Steve. I've never seen a safety print look anywhere near as good as nitrate. I've seen old WB cartoons on nitrate stock and the look is absolutely amazing. Ultra fine grain and a depth that just isn't there with safety stock. What exactly caused the fire in CA? Obviously the film jammed in the gate but my question is what caused that to happen? Additionally, if they were using magazines shouldn't the fire trap rollers have stopped the spread of the fire? In that case, the fire should have not spread beyond the projector head if everything was being operated properly. Anyway, the film that was already projected should have remained intact on the takup reel.  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 04-06-2009 04:25 PM                        Scott: density, in the audio track, is very critical. In the B & W days, sound density was precisely controlled, so the picture followed along at no charge, since there was one step development. Color had picture developed first, then sound in a sequential process. One of the byproducts of cyan tracks, is that we are back to a one step process; sound density being the more critical. Picture quality gained accordingly. Louis  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 04-06-2009 06:19 PM                     Besides, dye transfer printing was just not a fast process anywhos, let alone the few prints that were pressed anyways back in those days. Thus, time was definitely in the lab's favor for making excellent prints. The sharpest that I've ever seen when it comes to I.B. printing, is of "the Ten Commandments." Far cry from the gazillion miles printed today .... -Monte  |  IP: Logged Jack Theakston Master Film Handler Posts: 411 From: New York, USA Registered: Sep 2007 posted 04-06-2009 06:57 PM                     Of course, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS was a large format production essentially being printed 1st gen, as opposed to the 2k intermediates that are used today. Depending on what stock shot the film in the first place, the post-'68 IB prints tend to look best, to my eye. Of course, if you're in a low-light setting, it's going to be grainier.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 04-06-2009 08:00 PM                     but, what made "10 C" as clear as it was being that the camera negatives were the 8 perf VV horizontal negatives with printing negatives done 90* for standard 35mm presentations. Last time I ran nitrate was at a drive-in. We had a b/w clock reel and it looked better on the screen than the regular features. I told the owner that this reel was nitrate, he knew about the stock, but said it was okey to run anyway...which it did, but I was right there at the machine at all times...  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-06-2009 08:05 PM                     At the end of the second dye transfer round I thought Technicolor had the speed up in the 800 to 1000 foot per min. area... Anyone know for sure??? Mark  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 04-06-2009 09:29 PM                        What was the actual statistics of nitrate film fires before safety film was introduced? Have there been instances when entire theatres were destroyed with tremendous loss of lives from nitrate film fires ? -Claude  |  IP: Logged Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-06-2009 09:34 PM                        That may be a fun thing to search through the Boxoffice magazine files for. They used to run reports on booth fires. My issues from the 1940's seem to have a couple every week. Common enough they were rarely more than a paragraph or two in length. Unless, of course, the theatre was destroyed.  |  IP: Logged

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