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This topic comprises 10 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
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Topic: The digital revolution
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Christian Appelt
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 505
From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: Dec 2001
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posted 02-17-2011 02:39 PM
Jonatahan,
according to R.A.Harris it was the Disney live action film POLLYANNA (1960):
quote:
Seems that when the separation masters were produced those forty years ago, someone, well... some forgot to change a filter in the printer. For in the cans that Mr. MacQueen opened were three sep masters. The problem was that what was supposed to be a yellow record, a magenta record and a cyan record... turned out to be a yellow record, a cyan record and another cyan record.
DigitalBits.com - RAH on Eastman Colour
When BECKY SHARP, the first Technicolor 3-strip feature, was restored, one of the records had to be recreated for some scenes because it was lost, there was an excellent article in American Cinematographer (Nov. 1984).
BTW, Fuji makes a special film for digital separation work:
Fuji Sep Film
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Jonathan Smith
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 201
From: Youngstown, OH
Registered: Jan 2010
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posted 02-17-2011 03:31 PM
Thanks Christian. As always, you are very very helpful.
Anyone know when polyester replaced acetate for sep. work?
I love how the guys doing the sep. work were too lazy to print ONE FRAME to confirm that everything was correct. They wouldnn't have had video analyzers in 1960, but as early as '69, you wouldn't even have had to print. An early version of electronic imaging.
Hopefully, volume falling at release printing labs will be a GOOD thing, in that they won't be so rushed sending 3 prints to one theatre and that BS, that they can do good quality work on timing prints.
I've seen some real doozies in the last year, real crap, but I got a piece of ttape on, I think "Up In The Air" that had:
105-97-100
[. . .] 2 + 0 + 0
Not sure if that was Kodak or Fuji, but those numbers are pretty close to the 109 106 103 Kodak AIMS and 110 105 105 for Fuji, especially when you consider that the print stock shifts 3x as much for every one-point change on the printer. . .
Of course, what's more likely to happen is that the labs will just give up and the infrastructure will fall apart.
Anyway, Jan 2013 is totally bogus. Anyone that came up with that number probably believes the world is going to end in 2012 so it won't matter anyway. Seriously, that's less than two years away! Even if the "Big Three" drop 35mm altogether, there are plenty of theatres in the 3rd world that need prints. This isn't a Kodak EZshare camera you're talking about as a trade in for a 35mm, you're talking about a big honking DLP machine. I've seen some pictures of projection booths in India that are CHANGEOVERS. . . FROM THE '40s.
Do you really think, Brad, that Kodak and Fuji are going to go from 5+ billion feet each to practically zero in that amount of time? 22 mos.?
As for DIs. You're right, they're garbage. Then again, the film I think should win best picture was cut-negative- "Inception." If it wins, that'll make two years in the last four that cut negatives have won the top nod for cinematography. That's certainly a statistical fluke, but , an INTERESTING one, nonetheless.
You can burn 4K+ of info. straight onto 35mm print stock, so as good as or better resolution than anything out there. All I want to see is a fair comparison: 35mm 50- or 64 speed film contact printed onto print stock side-by-side to a 4K DLP machine playing footage from the best digital whatever, or film scanned at 4K.
But the truth is, people WANT 35mm film to curl up and die, they WANT anything not compatible with their iPhones 4 to cease to exist. That line of thinking is garbage, and is probalby going to reduce the mid 2000s and then next couple decades to areas of history where nothing survives, because people are so incredibly flippant when it comes to producing a lasting visual legacy for the future.
I guarantee you the grandchildren of the f*cktard that didn't know how to flip a filter, print a cinex strip, are jumping up and down in anticipation for 2K, even 1.4K (3D) projection.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-17-2011 04:19 PM
I'm not sure what the current state of play is, but the last time I ordered any preservation lab work, having the preservation elements made on polyester was easier said than done. Most camera negative and intermediate fine grain IP and IN stocks are still made on acetate base. The majority of studio cameras and printers are not really designed to cope with polyester, and in particular a serious film jam (as in, causing major damage to the mechanism) in a camera on a remote location would cause a hellish expensive problem. So ironically, even though it's the worst stuff for preservation, many actual preservation elements are still made on acetate. The IP stock for the masters I had printed was theoretically available on Estar, but it was a special order job: in other words, Kodak wait until they have enough orders for a production batch to be cost effective. The lab I worked with told me that the wait could be up to eighteen months, and I needed the job done within three.
Good point about successive frame Y-C-M records solving the differential shrinkage problem with seps. AFAIK Disney are the only ones who ever used this method on any significant scale, probably because their rostrum cameras shot the o-negs of their Technicolor animated productions that way in the first place. My guess is that the only reason its use wasn't more widespread is because during the period seps were regarded as the best bet for preservation masters, the extent to which cellulose triacetate shrinks was not realised.
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Jonathan Smith
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 201
From: Youngstown, OH
Registered: Jan 2010
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posted 02-17-2011 04:45 PM
I understand not wanting to run polyester through a camera, but we're talking about a contact printer or a 1:1 optical printer for sep. neg.'s right? There are some high-speed cameras designed for polyester only. I'd think a suitable camera that could handle polyester jams would be simple to come by.
That defies all logic not using polyester. Even if I had to run a camera movement at half speed or something, I think it would be worth it.
If the elements are on acetate, sorry, but what is the point? They are still prone to base shrinkage, deterioration, vinegar syndrome. Polyester, for all intents and purposes, lasts forever and is incredibly stable.
I like the concept of doing three sequential exposures, but if someone can F___ up one for a whole element, I can imagine all sorts of things that can go wrong if a camera is rapidly running with three filters, light valves sequentially firing. What if the printer breaks, the thing is stuck on red, and the son of the printer who didn't flip the controls in 1960 is at the healm?
;-)
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-18-2011 04:00 PM
quote: Jonathan Smith
I'd think a suitable camera that could handle polyester jams would be simple to come by.
I've asked this question at archivists' conferences, and the answer I got was that 35mm studio camera mechanisms are manufactured in such small quantities that the R & D necessary to make a truly polyester-compatible one would cost far more than sales could ever recoup. Most of them in use today are basically refinements and improvements on the mechanisms initially developed in the '20s and '30s - e.g. the Bell and Howell 2709, the Mitchell NC and the original Arriflex. Because triacetate has very similar mechanical characteristics to nitrate (crucially in terms of thickness and tensile strength), this wasn't an issue during the conversion to acetate in the '50s. But polyester is a lot thinner and a lot stronger, and from what I've been told, this does create a big problem in everyday use.
quote: Jonathan Smith
If the elements are on acetate, sorry, but what is the point? They are still prone to base shrinkage, deterioration, vinegar syndrome. Polyester, for all intents and purposes, lasts forever and is incredibly stable.
Don't shoot the messenger! I agree with you completely. All I'm saying is that my (admittedly limited) experience in ordering preservation lab work and what I've been told by people who do a lot more of it is that the world's film archives do not generate enough demand for fine grain IP and IN stocks on polyester for it to be worth Kodak's while keeping them available as a line item.
New acetate put into cold storage immediately after processing is also likely to be very stable for centuries, but I agree that the storage costs are higher and that for preservation it's second best.
quote: Jonathan Smith
I like the concept of doing three sequential exposures, but if someone can F___ up one for a whole element, I can imagine all sorts of things that can go wrong if a camera is rapidly running with three filters, light valves sequentially firing. What if the printer breaks, the thing is stuck on red, and the son of the printer who didn't flip the controls in 1960 is at the healm?
So we get back to the issue of checking your work once you've done it. The IT techie at work is always telling me that there's no point in backing up your data if you don't check the integrity of the copy immediately after you've done it. Same with any preservation element you make - if you don't inspect it carefully before declaring it good for the vault, it's anyone's guess what's going to be there when you need it in 20-30 years' time.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-20-2011 09:51 AM
A fitting article was just published in the SMPTE Journal (January/February 2011 page 24) titled "Archiving Color Images to Single Strip Black-and-White 35mm Film-The Visionary". It was written by Sean McKee and Victor Panov of Point.360 Digital Film Labs, in Burbank, CA.
If you are a SMPTE member with online access
Though not the paper listed above, below is a brief description what is in the paper:
http://www.point360.com/NewsArticle14.html
quote:
Point.360 DFL Digital Film Labs Unveils Visionary Archive™ Technology at The Reel Thing
Single Strip 35mm B&W Film Archive Technology Offers Revolutionary Alternative to Traditional YCM Separations
Burbank, CA, August 13, 2010 - Point.360 DFL/Digital Film Labs, will introduce Visionary™ Archive Technology - a new technology for archiving of color motion images. It is a unique process using only a single strip of black-and-white film as opposed to the traditional YCM 3-strip separations.
Visionary™ Archive is a patent pending archival process that has been in development for over a year at Point360 DFL Digital Film Labs. Sean McKee, Director Restoration and New Technology at Point.360 DFL states, "At its heart is a Bayer pattern encoding technology similar to that used in most digital cinema cameras, such as ARRI, RED, Phantom, Dalsa, and SI. The Visionary™ system allows for the full color image to be placed on a single strip of black-and-white 35mm film." The detailed alignment and calibration patterns encoded on the film ensure pixel accurate registration of the restored color image, rock solid stability, and color reproduction that matches the original creative intent without additional color correction. As there is only one strip of black-and-white film with this process, only one layer of grain is added to the restored image as opposed to the three layers of grain in conventional YCM separations.
Scott Call, General Manager of Point360. DFL, adds "Visionary™ Archive shows excellent promise for long term archival storage offering the best of both digital and analog worlds, using advanced algorithms for encoding and decoding. You can actually hold the film up to a light and see the image, not zeros and ones on film. For future generations, it will be easy to interpret the encoded image, and we are making available open source software to fully restore image to its original color and resolution."
The first presentation of Visionary Archive™ was presented at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood during AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) Reel Thing XXV, August 13, 2010.
About DFL Digital Film Labs - a Point.360 Company (NASDAQ,PTSX):
DFL is an internationally acclaimed Digital Intermediate and Digital Cinema Mastering facility, with a 25-year reputation for technical excellence. DFL's services include: 4K/2K film scanning; film-to-HD; data-to-HD; 35mm Filmout; advanced digital restoration; closed captioning, quality assurance, and conversion for worldwide technical deliveries. DFL's client list includes every major Hollywood studio. For more information please visit: www.point360.com or call DFL Sales: 818.569.4949.
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