Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Is there info. about contents of each 20 min reel?

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Posted by Don E. Nelson (Member # 1049) on 05-07-2003, 05:38 PM:

Is there a website, datbase, directory that lists (a brief editorial review) of the contents of each (broken down) 20 min. reel of a theatrical feature, when it is in its shipping configuration?

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-07-2003, 09:50 PM:

You want to find a review of each reel? I used to do this sometimes in my mind (like "first reel great, second reel excellent, third reel...er...this started out so promising and now it's turned stupid") but I've never heard of a listing like you seek. Why would you want this?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-08-2003, 05:54 AM:

Some film archives catalogue their holdings this way, providing a descriptive account of a film's narrative with reel and footage references to identify this scene. The reason for doing this is to allow researchers to identify the particular bit of a film they're interested in from the catalogue, and thus reduce the number of cans that have to be pulled up from the vault. For example, if a TV researcher was working on a documentary about Hitchcock and wanted to use a clip from the shower scene in Psycho, the archive would only have to pull out, say, reel 3, and tell the telecine operator to make a digibeta of 672-1084ft.

As a general rule, the public sector film archives will do this sort of cataloguing:

quote:
R1(0) Opening Titles. (309) Fred (Joe Bloggs) appears at enters the doorway of his ex-wife's apartment block. Shortly afterwards we hear a single gunshot. Fred leaves the block by the rear entrance, making sure no-one is watching him. (752) Inside the local police station. A 'phone rings on the duty officer's desk....

Whereas TV libraries and commercial stock-shot agencies tend to use a form of cataloguing called shotlisting, because it gives users more accurate information about the content of each shot. For example:

quote:
(309)GV ext. 1930s apartment block. (325) MCU Fred, lights cigarette. (337) ML apartment block entrance...

That way, if a broadcaster wanted to find stock footage of someone in a 1930s costume smoking (for example, to illustrate a documentary stating that no-one thought smoking was dangerous in the 1930s), this information would let him find it, whereas the narrative description above wouldn't. As you might have guessed, shotlisting takes a lot longer than descriptive cataloguing (which is why public archives rarely do it) and sometimes requires very specialist knowledge. For example, if you were catalouging a war propaganda film, it would help to know precisely what type of aeroplane or tank you were looking at. If a documentary maker wanted footage of a Spitfire Mk. I but not a Mk. II, you would need that information on your database in order to service the request.

You can find lots of examples of shotlist cataloguing on the British Pathé newsreel website.

I, too, can't think of any reason why a projectionist would need this sort of information, though.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 05-08-2003, 06:01 AM:

The only reason I can think of would be someone trying to get a really confusing film in the right order after somebody chopped off all the leaders and tossed them away.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-08-2003, 08:29 AM:

A David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino film, just to make things easy! [Big Grin]

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-08-2003, 01:14 PM:

Well, there is also a cutting continuity which is akin to a script but with a shot by shot description with footage and frame counts.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-08-2003, 01:18 PM:

In the case of older titles these often don't survive, and they wouldn't have been produced in the first place other than for studio-made feature films. Where they do survive (as with other screenplay-related documentation) they can be extremely valuable for archives, as they can identify things (e.g. the towns or streets in which location shooting was done) which would be quite impossible through normal cataloguing or shotlisting techniques.

Posted by Don E. Nelson (Member # 1049) on 05-08-2003, 02:19 PM:

..........well if you must know, i just hope John P. isn't listening,

I like to buy (odd) 35mm reels of features, (they are usually cheap, and I can edit out the good scenes and use the rest of the film for scene editing practice[w.o syn sound] on my
upright moviola)

And yesterday I see this add on the net where this guy is selling reel 5 of the latest blockbuster.
(I'd rather not give the title, .......but it is a trilogy made in Australia, and the directors first name is Peter, and it came from a famous book about little people)
And I though, gee .............what happened in reel 5, 100 minutes into this 3 hour film? what part of the story were they telling, and there you have the reason for the (odd) question.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-08-2003, 02:24 PM:

quote:
..........well if you must know, i just hope John P. isn't listening...

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-11-2003, 11:24 AM:

Whow, Don, you want a description of each scene in each reel?!! I would be happy just to find out what aspect ratio the thing is meant to be projected in and if it is Dolby A or Dolby SR, IMDB not withstanding (that database is riddled with errors).

Frank

Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 05-11-2003, 12:08 PM:

A few years ago I received an American rejuvenated print, when I suspected a couple of reels were in the wrong order. I was right as the distributor (UIP) had the script of the film, and was able to describe the scene and shots on the end and beginning of every reel. I also had from Warner’s a copy of POLICE ACADEMY 12? with two reels of reel 3 and no reel 5. I had a third replacement copy on the first day of showing, as the 2nd replacement copy had the end of the film footage completely missing spliced onto the cast list.