Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Negative dirt in Greek Wedding

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Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 09-15-2002, 08:02 PM:

Reading Cinemas in Manville NJ got My Big Fat Greek Wedding back on 8/23. Since Reading opened the movie in April and later dropped it, the theater got a new print for the current run. This new print has a lot of negative dirt from R2 on.

Do your prints of Greek Wedding have a lot of negative dirt?

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 09-15-2002, 09:51 PM:

To clerify are you seeing white specks or black specks. Negative dirt will be white specks

Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 09-15-2002, 10:10 PM:

Our print doesnt have dirt, but the first 3 reels are sure scratched to hell.

Josh

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-16-2002, 02:20 AM:

I haven't seen this film but as a general rule I'd say that serious negative dirt and scratching is becoming more and more common on release prints of mass-distribution titles. Indeed, so are contrast issues, soft focus and weak colour.

I can't help wondering if this is the film industry's answer to Ken Livingstone's congestion charges. He is the extreme left-wing, motorist-hating Mayor of London who, from next February, intends to charge everyone £5 to drive into the city centre. In order to make this politically more acceptable, he's changed the traffic light programming to create gridlock, the idea being to change it back again when the charge starts so that everyone will think that the policy is actually achieving lower traffic congestion.

Could the same principle be in use here, i.e. these shitty prints are being foisted upon us so that when digital comes in everyone thinks it's wonderful, even though the standard will have been dumbed down massively relative to what a decent 35mm print can deliver?

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 09-16-2002, 02:13 PM:

Charles Everett wrote: "This new print has a lot of negative dirt from R2 on. Do your prints of Greek Wedding have a lot of negative dirt?"

Sorry to hear of that problem. Labs will usually replace reels with excessive amounts of "white" dirt. What type of print stock was used (look at the magenta colored edgeprint)? I don't find MBFGW on any of the lists of releases using Kodak print film, but sometimes the labs don't tell Kodak what film is being used for a particular production, especially for the smaller distributors like IFC.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Joe Beres (Member # 678) on 09-16-2002, 02:23 PM:

I am guessing that because of the way this indie film unexpectedly exploded into the mainstream, some super quick and apparently sloppy labwork was necessary to get the prints out in a hurry. I would try to get some better reels if the white flecks are really distracting.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 09-16-2002, 02:38 PM:

It hasn't been confirmed yet if this is "white dirt" or not. I just saw this title and I must say the print looked great. As a matter of fact, I even noticed that the color saturation was exceptional. I wondered whether this was the new Kodak stock.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 09-16-2002, 09:09 PM:

The print of MBFGW I saw was one of the "new batch" that came out when they expanded the release. It looked OK but not great. Parts of it were very grainy, and it didn't look especially sharp...

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 09-19-2002, 04:41 AM:

Just rehersing My Big Fat Greek Wedding this morning as I type this...

The print is grainy and soft and has a constant gitter to the image, not exactly a jump. I'll try for another print but from what I've read so far I doubt I'll get one.....

I'll not be able to sit thru the rehersal run as I've other things to do with my time... all I can do is check it every 10 or so min.

I guess any other problems will come to light during the public screenings....

Also rehearsing Road to Perdition in our THX screen.... looks great...

Posted by Rachel Gilardi (Member # 4594) on 09-19-2002, 02:08 PM:

Our print looks great. Not grainy and the color saturation looks real good. We have a print from the original batch.

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 09-19-2002, 04:16 PM:

Its hard to say what position in the batch league our print has come from.... but it looks exactly what it is, a low budget film. Its just not good.... not bad as in awful just not good. The other thing is it's only an SR print.... no SRD or DTS. I thought we'd moved on from single format prints. Is there really any excuse for this today?

When I get the chance I'll sit thru the film, and see if anything else jumps out of the screen at me.

Wish I had the time to sit thru all prints and actually watch them but time and finacial considerations dictate otherwise.

As in the computer software industry, Jo public have to act as our beta testers and report the faults to us. We have become a reactive rather than a proactive industry. We open films on a Fiday so any complaints cannot be acted upon until Monday at the earliest. If a 'new' print is available it may not arrive until nearer the end of the week. With the way prints are fast processed today the chances are the replacement print will either be the same or have other defects on it.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-19-2002, 05:36 PM:

Ken,

The movie was catching on with the public when I saw it and as far as I can tell, the print looked like an average low budget film. Since all of the existing prints were made from a master internegative or positive, I do not think an effort will be made to tweak the original negative source and strike new prints for all the theatres playing the movie just because it had turned into a big hit. As far as the sound is concerned, the Dolby SR soundtrack is just fine because the movie features mostly dialogue just like Woody Allen's films. At lease "MFGW" has a stereo soundtrack. Woody Allen advertises his films as SRD, DTS, and SDDS but in actuality they are all big fat MONO films!

Although the theatrical prints lacks the look of a high quality film, I expect the DVD to have a much better picture quality when it is released.

-Claude

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 09-19-2002, 06:55 PM:

>>The print is grainy and soft and has a constant gitter to the image, not exactly a jump.<<

Every print of MBFGW I have seen bounces all over the place. Then again, what else would you expect from DeLuxe Hollywood?

-Aaron

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 09-20-2002, 12:49 AM:

Our print is typical Deluxe Hollywood. Crappy black level, crappy shadow detail, and poor registration. Not bad enough to annoy the average customer, but still very upsetting to those of us who know how good "Film Done Right" can look.

This is from the original batch and doesn't have any noticeable issues with negative dirt...just the lab issues described above.

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 09-20-2002, 04:28 AM:

Thanks for that Scott..

"Not bad enough to annoy the average customer, but still very upsetting to those of us who know how good "Film Done Right" can look."

Thats exactly how I feel, all I can do is cover my back by passing it on to our print manager so that if any complints do come in I'm covered. Thats all I seem to be doing recently, covering my back all the time.

Regards Ken.

Posted by Jeffry L. Johnson (Member # 453) on 09-20-2002, 07:01 AM:

I checked a print that's been playing since May. It is on Kodak 2383.