Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Black and white on color

This is topic Black and white on color in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-20-2001, 04:51 PM:

It seems some prints of "The Man Who Wasn't There" are being printed on black and white stock, while others are being printed on color 2393 stock. I saw one of the "color" prints last weekend and was very disappointed in the image. Black and white should be just that, black and white with no hint of any other color.

Perhaps John can explain this, but is it a cost issue or a lab issue?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 11-20-2001, 06:07 PM:

Since all the sound negs are done in B&W chemistry most labs can handle BW 35mm
Stock though may have been an issue as most labs don't stock a lot of release printm B&W

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-20-2001, 09:52 PM:

Although most labs do have a B&W (D-97) process for sound negatives and prints, it is usually a relatively slow machine that cannot handle large volumes of film quickly. So when a large number of prints are needed, the B&W machine would not be able to process all the prints in a reasonable amount of time.

In the past, some labs have temporarily converted one or two high speed color (ECP-2D) machines to B&W to handle large volumes of prints. Evidently, that was not done in this case, and the distributor opted to go with some prints on color print film, and a few on B&W print film.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Les Brock (Member # 1041) on 11-24-2001, 07:57 AM:

During my time working in a film lab we were faced with the task of bulk printing Schindlers List.

Show prints were made on the slow B&W developers and colour stock was spliced in for the colourised scenes of the film for example where the girl is wearing a red coat.

Sadly this was all lost in the release prints as time did not allow the use of B&W so colour print film was used and despite close controls on developer speed, chemistry and some excellent grading ( timing )staff being assigned to the flim it was never possible to get the exact look of B&W.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-24-2001, 06:55 PM:

Y'know, I could have sworn I saw a marked difference in reels on "Schindler's List." I saw it the first time in an exclusive engagment at Dallas' lost-but-legendary Northpark theater. This certainly had to be one of those show prints since the quality difference in color versus black and white reels was pretty obvious. The color reels just seemed to be a bit cloudy and slightly blue-ish in nature.

I had thought that all the prints for "Schindler's List" had a mix of B&W reels for B&W only scenes and color reels for the colorized segments and full color segments at the film's start and finish.

Here's an ironic thing for you. I certainly agree that B&W films need to be shown on B&W only reels. But in the computer work I do, it is far better to make a full color RGB or CMYK scan of a black and white image. You get deeper greyscale saturation and sharper detail with the extra two or three color channels in the scan. It is too bad it cannot work that way for projected films.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-24-2001, 08:32 PM:

Northpark had show print #8. It was a black and white print with color shots spliced in by hand at the lab. We also received a regular "color" backup print and it was just horrid.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 11-25-2001, 01:17 PM:

All the Canadian prints were on B&W stock with spliced in colour sections

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 11-25-2001, 05:05 PM:

You guys are lucky! The last print I got that was B&W with spliced in color sections was "She's Gotta Have It"

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-25-2001, 08:41 PM:

The print we had of "Schindler's" was B&W stock with the color bits spliced in. When I first was loading the print I was freaking out because of all the splices...called our booker to ask about replacing the reels, and he said all the prints were that way. I can see why they would make prints on color film to save $$$ though.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-26-2001, 05:29 AM:

I saw a colour print of 'The Man Who Wasn't There' and it too was horrid - a different colour cast on every reel.

The problem isn't just with lab capacity, but with stock availability as well. Some of the small labs in London which specialise in b/w printing for archives (e.g. Hendersons and Film & Photo Design) of intermediate elements and one-off release prints almost went out of business at around the time of 'Schindler's List' because that one film was consuming almost every foot of b/w raw stock being manufactured.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-26-2001, 11:54 AM:

AFAIK, given enough lead time, Kodak can supply as much B&W print film as needed. But we don't keep 30 million feet of B&W print film sitting in a warehouse, just in case someone decides to order it two weeks before 3000 prints need to be in theatres!

Likewise, if a lab normally runs only one B&W machine at a few hundred feet per minute, they just can't turn out thousands of B&W prints in a few days. With enough lead time, B&W print film is available, and the lab can put more machines on line.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-28-2001, 04:35 AM:

This makes perfect sense - the scale of the success of 'Schindler's List' took everyone by surprise (over here, at least). It was widely expected to be a 50-100 print limited release, mainly because of its length and subject matter, but it then got rave reviews in the US and won the Oscar just as the UK release was coming up. So I imagine what happened was precisely the situation you describe - 200 to 500 prints were suddenly needed at zero notice. I do remember going to see the National Film Archive's (as it then was) restoration of 'The Third Man' that autumn, and the speaker who introduced the screening said that it was touch and go as to whether the print would be ready in time because of the b/w stock shortage caused by the 'Schindler's List' release.

Posted by John Schulien (Member # 215) on 11-28-2001, 05:03 PM:

I was just thinking ... as a creative possibility ...

When you have something like Schindler's List, where the film is mostly black and white, but has color-on-black-and-white footage ...

Print the entire film on black and white stock, except for the scenes with color ...

... print the color scenes in true black and white, and have Technicolor use the dye transfer printers to overlay the color onto the black and white stock.

That would give you the best of both worlds -- a true silver black-and-white image, and whatever color elements you wanted.

Imagine if Pleasantville had been printed this way. I'll bet that would have been striking!

Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 11-29-2001, 07:18 AM:

John,

Exactly! It would definitely have been stunning to see Technicolor red laid onto a silver B&W image. And from what I understand, Technicolor had been capable of doing this (the old silver "key" image). I wonder if it is still technically possible given that there are new stocks in use?