This is topic Print Color Timing Question in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 08-09-2002, 12:50 PM:
Over the past few weeks I've had occaion to screen lovely LPP prints of three '50's Fox titles: Enemy Below, Affair to Remember, and April Love. All had the original lab leaders and, while the prints themselves had great color, all of the lab leaders were red as a beet with the countdown numbers so faded you could hardly distinguish them. I'm just curious since all the prints were obviously from relatively new, color corrected dupe negs how the leaders could be so bad. I can't recall seeing this as dramatically on any other studio's older titles--is this a Fox issue? Anyone have any ideas?
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-09-2002, 12:59 PM:
Were the leaders spliced onto the prints? If so they may have been from a very old batch of pre-printed leaders made on a different brand of print film.If the leaders were printed as part of the original printing negative, it may just be that the lab did not correct the color balance of the leader to be neutral, as specified by the SMPTE standard. Sometimes the original for the leader is made on less expensive print stock, attached to the orange-colored (colored coupler masking) printing negative, so the leaders print very orange-red if printed at the same balance as the picture negative.
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Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 08-09-2002, 01:14 PM:
Thanks, John. One print had spliced on leaders, and the other two had no splices, but even the spliced on leaders had edge codes matching the print, so I guess it's a case that the lab didn't bother to correct them. Still, it's curious as the print switches to true pure black just before the Fox logo with CinemaScope extension.
Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 08-09-2002, 06:17 PM:
Interesting... contemporary release print reels from the big labs sometimes suffer from this to a certain degree, in that the runout section after the reel will be orange instead of black. Perhaps it's the same cause? I also recall a few countdowns on contemporary release prints of foreign films suffering the same problem-- very orange and very light.