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Author Topic: Digital Theatre - She's coming... (long) Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-14-2004 10:51 AM                     "This will sound cruel, but what secondary market" Often the break even or profit on any film's distribution and production is met in the foreign secondary markets first run engagements rarely recoup the negative cost  |  IP: Logged System Notices Forum Watchdog / Soup Nazi Posts: 215 Registered: Apr 2004 posted 08-13-2014 05:34 PM                 It has been 3651 days since the last post.  |  IP: Logged David Buckley Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 525 From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand Registered: Aug 2004 posted 08-13-2014 05:34 PM                        There's a big red set of words above this post that says its a long time since there was a posting to this thread. It's ten years, in fact. Ten years since the naive me had a go at crystal balling. How'd I do?  |  IP: Logged Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-13-2014 06:24 PM                        Not too bad. Didn't quite get VPF's quote: David Buckley The trick will be to survive until the backlash and nostalgic revival of 35mm, like vinyl on yur record player. We'll see how this one plays out  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-13-2014 06:40 PM                        Well vinyl LPs are cool once again but they're still not selling much -- it's less than 1% of the total music market. Most people who love vinyl are resurrecting old records at garage sales and such. I suppose there'll always be a niche for movies shown on film -- until all the prints are trashed, anyway.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 08-13-2014 08:22 PM                     quote: Mike Blakesley until all the prints are trashed, anyway. That's happening pretty fast already. All it takes is a couple of places with 2 junk-O-craptacular projectors cobbled together with "projectionists" who think they know what they are doing.  |  IP: Logged David Buckley Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 525 From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand Registered: Aug 2004 posted 08-13-2014 10:44 PM                        I was well wide of the mark on that. It's fairly trivial to make a vinyl disc in ones basement. Running off a print: that needs not just a very big basement indeed, but a source of film stock, and that is much harder to come by than sourcing something for a vinyl pressing. Being how we were the cinema at the end of the universe, we rarely returned prints to the distributors, and they just piled up, and when there were just too many movies, we dumped them. We've just given away our last pile of about 50 movies. End of an era, an era that started in about 1914.  |  IP: Logged Steve Matz Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 672 From: Billings, Montana, USA Registered: Sep 2003 posted 08-13-2014 11:38 PM                     quote: David Buckley Today there is a massive industry built around the making of prints. A movie heading for a big first run requires thousands of prints. It’s not much easier to make a thousand prints than ten prints; each print requires a copying process, and a development process. There are few economies of scale. Right at the time that Technicolor and Deluxe Labs were closing their Doors a 35mm 2hr Film(6reels) was on average around $1200 per print. So you need 3000 Prints figure about 3MILLION 600Thousand Bucks. 70mm was even more astronomical sometimes costing as much as 10,000+ Dollars if it was Contact Printed. Like I mentioned in another thread I was looking at a Color Optical Printer(one of several that Deluxe had up for auction)The Transfer rate was 1200Feet per minute. So do the Math on a 2 Hour Print.6 Reels at 1800ft =10,800fT divided by 1200FPM = 9 Minutes. That is phenominal considering the Days of Contact Printing where 300 FPM was considered Fast. Probably why the 70MM Contact Prints were so high priced. Time is Money. Even though it wasn't feasible/cost effective to Contact Print 35mm Features when Studios needed Thousands of Prints verses 100's back in the Day.A contact Print out does an Optical Print in every way no matter how precise those Optics were...  |  IP: Logged Christian Appelt Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 505 From: Frankfurt, Germany Registered: Dec 2001 posted 08-15-2014 07:00 AM                     All release prints were contact-printed. There are two different types of contact printing, continuous and step-printing. The first type, called continuous contact printer, has negative and positive film in contact while they are moved across an illuminated slit. If contact between both strips of film is not maintained perfectly, unsteadiness (weave) and loss of sharpness is the result. A step contact printer will print frame by frame, so both films are in contact but they move intermittently like in a camera or projector. There used to be a rule of thumb that in step-printing resolution will suffer the faster it is done while continuous printing will get better results at higher speed. Of course, this was in the days before ultra-highspeed printing for thousand of release prints. Optical printing was not used for release printing at all, with two small exceptions: 1 - Direct blow up 35mm release prints from 16mm or Super 16mm camera negatives. The idea was to produce a small number of 35mm prints from 16mm low budget productions without expensive intermediate stock. All format changes require optical printing, the frame by frame step-printing type. 2 - 70mm blowup prints from 35mm anamorphic or 8-perf Technirama/Vistavision type original camera negative. The OCN was enlarged while step-printing frame by frame to 70mm positive stock which was mag striped afterwards. 70mm prints were more expensive because of the low number of prints and because they had to be mag-striped and recorded separately. Some processes, like Technirama-70 or blowup from 35mm OCN, were done in liquid-gate optical printing only with more variables to watch and difficulties in operating (speed, avoiding bubbles, health hazard from the fluid etc.) Optical printing had its own problems (contrast buildup, enhancement of defects like dust, scratches etc) and was much more expensive than contact printing, so it was used for visual effects, title sequences and format changes only. The only continuous optical printers I am aware of are - The COSHARP printer which was introduced (and soon abandoned) in the late 1980s with the idea of making 65mm production easier and more affordable, allowing fast 35mm dailies from 65mm OCN. There is a SMPTE Journal article on it. - A special continuous printer for creating multirank super 8mm preprint, unfortunately I don't recall the manufacturer. IIRC, the 35mm or 16mm image was split up by a prism device to reduce it to four small S8mm images. Some lab people may deny this, but in many colour and b/w prints from the 1950s there is a degree of sharpness and perfect steadiness which is not easily replicated in new continuous prints even from the same negatives. However, we should remember that print runs were small back then and that step-printers will create wear on negatives, especially if printing is done from the cut OCN which has hundreds of splices.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 08-15-2014 07:16 AM                     Another thing to remember is that one can only continuos contact print 1-step. That is, you can use an IN to continuous contact print release prints but you had to step-print the IN. The industry only really had two perforation pitches. .1866" for negatives and 1870 for positives/release prints. For continuous contact printing to work the "inner" negative (the one directly touching the sprocket while the two are in contact with each other) has to be a shorter pitch to allow for the added radius due to the thickness of the film itself. Otherwise, you will get slipping between the two layers and cause vertical unsteadiness in the image. In later years, one of the problem with the release prints was not that they were printed in such a high-speed but that in the name of speed, they continuous contact printed generations that should have been step printed. Step printing takes much more time than the contact print.  |  IP: Logged Steve Matz Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 672 From: Billings, Montana, USA Registered: Sep 2003 posted 08-15-2014 09:53 AM                     Well the optical printers that Deluxe was selling(same as Technicolor0 work like a photo enlarger. the image is projected on the film stock. The Negative is not making contact with the release stock so it's Optical Printing not Contact printing. One of the resaons Optical Printers were developed because of their Speed. 300FPM verses 1200FPM is not what Labs wanted when they had orders for 1000's of release prints. The SMPTE lAB TECHNICIAN that sent me the info regarding 3 Strip Technicolor confirmed this...  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 08-15-2014 09:58 AM                     Magnetic soundtracks added to the cost of traditional 70mm prints. Hazardous chemicals were involved. The magnetic coatings took a certain amount of time to dry. Prints had to be sounded in real time, which could be a real chore if the movie release had dozens of 70mm mag prints. I had hoped DTS 70mm would allow dramatic cost savings with 70mm prints. The prints could be made at high speed, just like 35mm prints. But with so few 5/70mm DTS prints actually having been produced with Hollywood releases the prints probably still had to cost a ridiculous amount of money.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-15-2014 01:30 PM                     Well a there would be needed a high speed 70mm printer which don't exist and the DTS timecode is printed seperatly as it is a anamorphicly stretched one  |  IP: Logged Steve Matz Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 672 From: Billings, Montana, USA Registered: Sep 2003 posted 08-15-2014 02:58 PM                     BELL & HOWELL did make a highspeed Model C 65/70MM Printer;but I'm not sure how many were ever sold(IF ANY) to Lab's because it was developed for NASA. There is one on EBAY for quite awhile. Yours for just under 30 Grand. Since it was Taxpayer Money designing and building the NASA Model I'm sure it was at least 10 times that new http://www.ebay.ph/itm/UNIQUE-Bell-Howell-65-70mm-Motion-Picture-Printer-Used-Space-Shuttle-/2515 69528275?pt=US_Vintage_Cameras&hash=item3a92b65dd3  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-15-2014 04:53 PM                     The printer in your ad is a 65/70mm Model C or D, an older printer actually made by B&H. Bell & Howell became BHP after the employees bought that part of Bell & Howell. A friend still works for them and I believe they are now owned by RTI who has been buying up film equipment companies at fire sales left and right. BHP made LOTS and LOTS of 65/70mm panel printers and they were all custom built to the individual lab's requirements. Far as I know they are still able to manufacture new ones although RTI has bought a lot of used BHP at labs that are closing of lately. http://www.rtico.com/bhp/ Mark  |  IP: Logged

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