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Author
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Topic: Movies still being released on film
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Craig Hardy
Film Handler
Posts: 28
From: Barrington, New Hampshire USA
Registered: Oct 2018
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posted 11-01-2018 12:17 AM
I'm new here and haven't read all the pages of this interesting thread but I just read a long article on the subject and learned the film vs digital battle is not as settled as some might believe. Skipping over all the usual details about film maker's opinions about how the two methods capture light, color and other subtle qualities of the scene, it seems there are still serious questions about archiving. Today's film properly stored is now expected to last several hundred years. whereas digital medium is susceptible to damage, accidental erasure, etc. The driving force, as usual in any enterprise is cost. Supposedly digital is 90% cheaper than analog and instant worldwide distribution is seen as a huge advantage. But mixed in with all the dollar signs is another factor: constantly evolving digital formats.
About 1893 Thomas Edison and George Eastman ordered up som strips of cellulose nitrate 35mm wide, decided on 4 sprocket holes per frame, put an emulsion on it and filmed a few minutes of a Harvard-Yale football game. Today someone could bring that film out of the vault at NFL Films (I believe in NJ) and run it in today's projector. Not advisable of course, but you get my point.
NOW,picture the reaction of a Hometown,USA exhibitor when he's told the digital projector he paid $150K for a year of two ago needs to be "upgraded" before it will run a current release?
About 70 years ago my physicist dad said to me, "You realize, Craig that not all progress is forward!"
Leo Lukowsky, a retired North American sales director for a French movie camera company, had a column in a technical photography magazine where he answered reader's questions re all things photographic. About 1985 a reader wrote, "Leo, why do you keep talking about film when video has replaced film?" His reply was classic: "Video has not replaced film, but since rust is cheaper than silver I guess it's here to stay..."
Folks, I hope I'm not off topic for this thread and let's see how long film will still brighten our lives!
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 11-01-2018 03:57 PM
quote: Craig Hardy (my emphasis)
Today's film properly stored is now expected to last several hundred years. whereas digital medium is susceptible to damage, accidental erasure, etc.
That is what makes the pragmatic aspect of the issue (what approach is most likely to save your content in some form, any form?), as distinct from the ethical one (if it was originated on film, we should save it on film, right?) a lot more complicated than it might seem.
Storing film properly is a lot more cheaply said than done. Like ongoing data migration, it can be achieved by writing lots of humongous great checks, at regular intervals, forever. Film vaults cost money to build and maintain. I ran a small moving image archive between 2001-07, and its vault (with a capacity of around 20,000 2,000 foot cans) cost around $50k a year in electricity and maintenance of the HVAC plant needed to keep the temperature and humidity within the SMPTE specs for acetate film. For the mega archives, that bill is in the millions. If you don't believe me, ask for a quote from Hollywood Vaults or Iron Mountain to look after, say, 100 2,000 foot cans of 35mm for a year. The amount they'll want will be significant.
A typical feature film in 4K DPX files will be around 40-50TB. Storing those long term will cost a significant amount, too, but Moore's Law is pushing that cost down. Moore's Law does not apply to film vaults. In fact, the opposite is true: since I moved to Southern California in 2012, the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity sold to businesses has gone up by 30-40%, and as far as I'm aware, there has been no real change in the energy efficiency of HVAC technology.
By the way, film is subject to accidental erasure, too: Cinemtheque Francaise, 1959 ... Henderson's, 1992 ... a lot of it has gone up in smoke, even while in the care of people who were trying to prevent that from happening.
I am not advocating tossing out film and relying on digital surrogates of film-originated content for long-term preservation, but pointing out that (a) just because film will last a long time stored optimally does not mean that doing so is cheap or easy, and (b) that the math involved may result in film originals being lost in the future, even with all we know about preservation best practice.
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Craig Hardy
Film Handler
Posts: 28
From: Barrington, New Hampshire USA
Registered: Oct 2018
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posted 11-01-2018 07:28 PM
Leo, you've been pretty seriously involved in preservation!
I heard years ago that the National Archives only recognizes silver image on film as archival. Just checked, and that's still true.
A neighbor was a Kodak field service technician for 31 years--serviced the little microfilm rigs at banks, and then in later years things were more centralized: couriers took bags of canceled checks to central location where they went down a conveyor belt past camera. Said it got sloppy: checks dumped out of bags and travelled past cameras still wringled--parts of check in focus and parts not in focus, but they were fulfilling the law requiring all checks photographed at end of each business day!
You're the expert, but from my observations it seems moisture is more of a killer than temperature. I inadvertently stored some Kodachrome movies and slides in attic for 20yrs and they were still fine. They'd seen a lot of NH summer temps, but were always dry.
Nitrate: friend with theatre gave me some to dispose of and I was looking forward to some excitement out in open field but it was the slimy kind and only burned about like kerosene on newspaper. Been told if you open up a can and see white powder, look out! Any subtle thing like moon changing phase or Aunt Ida's birthday coming due can cause to go violently.
Dad taught me when I was very young: being inert, nitrogen doesn't like to stay combined with anything.
When I was very young and starting out I thought "safety film" meant safe from exposure when handling--the paper backing on 127 roll film. Found out true meaning years later.
A local video transfer outfit had no means to deal with 35mm and heard that I did. It was a nice little 7 minute demonstration of a folding boat. Their lady customer had found it in her attic where it'd been since the '20's. They'd never heard about nitrate. I snipped of a little piece and had them step outside with me where I took lighter and demonstrated. They were impressed. I called Kodak with code on edge of film--1922 stock.
Oh well, I'm just taking up space here with my ramblings, so better sign off. Keep up the good work, sir!
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 11-01-2018 10:22 PM
quote: Craig Hardy
I heard years ago that the National Archives only recognizes silver image on film as archival. Just checked, and that's still true.
The problem with substantive dye coupler color emulsion (in which three photosensitive layers are converted into visible dyes by the developing process) is that the developing and fixing almost, but not quite completely, stops the chemical change that you need to induce to make the emulsion visible and no longer photosensitive.
How quickly that reaction continues thereafter is largely determined by the atmospheric conditions in which it is stored. That is why the combination of low temperature and low humidity is important. These conditions also slow the decomposition of nitrate and acetate film base, too, so b/w should be stored cool and dry as well as color. Theoretically, b/w polyester can be stored at much closer to room temperature and humidity, though I don't know if this is actually done anywhere.
Kodachrome is a unique case, because the color dye couplers are non-substantive. The dye is not physically present in the film before it is processed: the chemical processing after exposure actually introduces the dye, which sticks to three receptor layers (the couplers). So the color dyes are far more stable after processing than they are in substantive emulsions, because there is no continuing chemical reaction after processing is done. The down side to Kodachrome is that it is a very, very high contrast reversal emulsion, which means that you lose a huge amount of image information in any analog duplication process. Projecting the original slide or Super 8 reel looks beautiful, but a huge amount of image information is lost if you try to print an interneg from it, and then more prints.
For this reason, separation elements were considered the gold standard in preservation masters for color footage for a long time. This involves making separate b/w negatives or fine grain positives for each of the three primary color records and storing those, because the b/w emulsion is far more chemically stable.
The problem is that it is very difficult to recombine them well, especially if they have shrunk at different rates in storage. There was a spate of cases in the 1990s when attempts to make new color internegs and then prints from separation masters produced very poor results because of this. I'm guessing that nowadays the seps would be scanned rather than recomined photochemically, which may mean that this preservation route is back in fashion again. I don't know.
A big variable with nitrate decomposition is the quality of the cellulose pulp used to manufacture the film base. This is why elements from the 1890s to the 19-teens are sometimes discovered in astonishingly good condition, but many from the 1930s and '40s have rotted to mush. As film base production grew to an industrial scale, cheaper and more acidic wood pulp was used as the feedstock.
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