This is topic Strange way to pack a print. in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-07-2003, 03:43 PM:
 
While I was projecting on Friday evening a print arrived. Our prints normally arrive on cores, each part in a can, normally plastic now, and up to six or seven cans in a cardboard box. Long films would arrive in two boxes.

I thought the box that this print came in looked rather small, when I opened it, no cans! The first roll was loose in the bottom of the box, on top of that was a thick sheet of card, with a hole about 25mm diameter in the centre (to make it easier to remove from the box?) and a roughly 35mm wide flap folded up on each edge, then the next roll, then another card separator, then the next roll, etc. On top of the last roll, nothing, just the flaps of the box folded down and taped. Has anyone else received a print packed like this? There was quite a bit of loose dust from the card on the rolls of film.

The film was "Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress ", a Chineese/French co-production, and I thnk the print was French. Is this the normal way of packing a print in France now?

This has got to be the worst way of packing film that I have yet seen. I really like the look of the cans that someone psted a picture of some time ago, with a central spigot to locate a core, and stop it moving about, even if nly holding a short roll, but I've never seen these used.
 

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Posted by Joe Beres (Member # 678) on 08-07-2003, 03:50 PM:
 
I have seen this many times here in the states, most often from a particular seller, but also from some very small distributors. I have received some Hong Kong fare in that manner as well. It certainly isn't the best means for shipping a print, but I haven't seen any severe damage done to a film packaged that way, unlike films shipped on broken reels.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-07-2003, 03:57 PM:
 
Sounds like that type of packaging could cause some real damage to the film, especially without shipping reels. Not to mention dirt from inside the cardboard packaging.

Kodak actually packages large rolls of print film raw stock in a vapor-proof, light-tight, vacuum-sealed bag. Kinda like the bags they seal "bricks" of coffee in to keep them fresh. As long as the bags remain vacuum-sealed, the film roll is very well protected against getting loose, damaged or dirty. But you can't easily reseal the bags with a new vacuum, so you'd have to find another package to ship the print back.
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-07-2003, 05:03 PM:
 
We don't normally see shipping reels over here. They are sometimes used in special cases, for example for two strip 3-D films which are kept permanently in 6000 foot parts, and I've also seen 70mm transported that way. I'm not keen on the American style metal shipping cases, they tend to get dirty and rusty, and are heavy to carry. You need at least two of them for most prints. We very rarely see those here, only if a print has been sent over from America for a festival. I have, many years ago, seen them, painted red, used for transporting nitrate prints.

Cores are cheap and lightweight, but a small roll in a large can is obviously going to move about; that's why I like the look of the cans with the central locating spigot. The extra cost would be very small.

Thre's another advantage to cores; they're universal. In Europe you sometimes see the American 5/16 style spools with a keyway, but they're not very common, at least not in theatres. You also find 9mm, 3/8 and at least two different versions of 1/2 inch spindles, all with driving pins, not to mention a few projectors which took totally non-standard spools, Fedi Solo and BTH Mk, 1 SUPA spring to mind. Cores are standard size, and will fit any plate or split spool, worldwide.

One london cinema I can think of has to have three hand rewind benches, one 5/16 for 16mm, one 3/8 for projector spools, and one 1/2 inch for 6000 foot spools on which prints are made up for transferring to a tower. If a print wee to come in on American style shipping reels each part would have to be run off onto a core using a plate on the 16mm bench, then it could be spooled up on one of the 35mm benches.

Rolls of film loose in a cardboard box, without cans, is a new one on me.
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 08-07-2003, 05:46 PM:
 
I get a lot of foreign prints shipped the way Stephen posted.
Most of the times they are coming from Deluxe Toronto. The only thing different when they come from a lab is they are sealed in plastic. They ship that way to save in the cost of shipping. I got a print from Brazil about two months ago. They had popped the cores out of the center.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-07-2003, 07:25 PM:
 
That is a common way the shipping depots receive their films here in the states. They are shipped on skids and as such don't go through the hands of soccer players from UPS and the like. Technicolor labs are now shipping in "adjustable" boxes, that being boxes with thick lids that adjust to how many rolls of film are in the box so they only have to stock one size.

I don't know the real reason behind the hole in the center of the cardboard, but my preferred way to pack film if I have to ship it in a cardboard box on cores is to put half a clip-together reel on the bottom (clipped to the bottom roll), then start stacking the reels with cardboard separators up to the top. When I reach the top, I stick a piece of EMT conduit down the center of all the cores and cut it. Then when I put the last reel on, I have the other half of the clip-together reel on top of the top reel and voila...the reels can't go slamming around into the walls of the box. The conduit holds the cores in the center.
 

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Posted by John Spooner (Member # 1565) on 08-08-2003, 11:30 AM:
 
You blokes are lucky to get your prints in reasonably secure trunks or cases. In Adelaide we receive all our prints from the exchange in flimsy cardboard boxes, no plastic cans and a sheet of cardboard between the flats. The boxes often rip or tear when being carried. If we are lucky the ends may be taped down, but often the miniscule piece of masking tape has let go and the ends are loose.
To receive prints on exchange spools in secure trunks is a thing of the past down under now.
The ridulous thing is that the major distributors are multi-million dollar corporations and the cost of decent shipping spools and trunks would be nothing to them.
John Spooner.
 

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Posted by Erik Stevens (Member # 1497) on 08-09-2003, 05:19 AM:
 
I'll second what John has said. Looking at the pictures of your projection rooms, and seeing film trunks lined up against the wall or on shelves would be bliss! The other day I was amazed when our film courier arrived with a set of trunks! We had a screening of the original SHREK, and it was packed in tins.

It always seems to be pot luck when a print arrives! Will it be tightly wound round a core, will it be plastic shrink wrapped, will there be protection cardboard between spools etc...

It's funny, I was at a movie themepark in Queensland a couple of years ago, and one of the rides was "Gremlins". Whilst going through the ride I saw mountains of spool boxes collecting dust. Ironic really!
 

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Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 08-09-2003, 09:43 PM:
 
John & Erik tell it exactly as it is in Australia. Film trunks are long since gone except for a few smaller Art House distributors and we get the prints in carboard boxes and in many cases with the cored up product sliding about between layers of cardboard.
Some distributors do send their stuff in plastic cans which is more desirable than just cardboard as there is much less dust.
However in the plastic with the core moving about in transit any sloppy rewind where a few edges stick out of the pack you end up with a print that has numerous edge damage... OK if poly but not so good if acetate.
The dopes that get me going are those sites who pack cores in the boxes without any cardboard seperators so the whole lot is often "coned" over the smaller reels and when you open it up god what a mess. Much care is needed to get that lot out and onto a platter without loosing the centre of the reel onto the floor!
I do not know what they do with the cardboard seperators and I feel it is just sheer laziness when repacking that they just leave them out.
If I have to ship a print back to a Distributor in the eastern states I stuff wads of newsprint around the cores so that they cannot move about and the whole box is quite firm as a result.
Takes a little time but the print travels well that way and does not arrive with rolls of film poking out of holes in the edges of boxes caused by poor handling and having spaces that can be crushed in. The newsprint takes up that space and helps cushion any impact from other freight in transit.
The group I do screening for over winter got a 16mm short last week to be screened with the Sunday program but we could not do so.
The idiot Distributor had stuffed a 1600 foot short on a core into a plastic mailing satchel and sent it thru the post like that. When it was opened up it was just a tangled mess after the 2000 mile trip by post from Sydney to Perth.
It took us many hours to untangle that and repair many damaged sections. At times I felt like stuffing it back into the bag and sending it back as it was with a "snaky" note but sanity prevailed and we kept at it until it was all onto a reel and then cleaned with Film Guard and this week we view it. Fingers crossed.
Lindsay
 

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Posted by Paul Trimboli (Member # 1509) on 08-10-2003, 01:20 AM:
 
Hello Lindsay , I am glad I was not sorting that 16mm short out with you last week! What distributor sent it like that? I don't like the metal film trunks becuase they are too heavy, I like a cardboard box with plastic cans inside, seems to work well.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-10-2003, 10:16 AM:
 
This sort of packaging was unusual but not unheard of during my time in the box.

Ironically, one set of prints I particularly remember being delivered that way was a series of rereleased Warner Bros. classics, to celebrate their 75th anniversary. This included beautiful, brand new 35mm copies of titles such as 42nd Street, The Big Sleep and The Searchers, and they all came with cartoons, trailers and shorts too. Of all the one-of-a-kind prints to ship backwards and forwards in crappy cardboard boxes they had to pick those.

In answer to your point about France, Stephen, in my time the French labs (e.g. LTC and Éclair) still tended to use the steel cans in which I presume the raw print stock was supplied to them. I much prefered the plastic containers in which mainstream titles arrived from Perivale: the steel cans tended to get dented and deformed very quickly, especially if they'd been shoved with brute force into the slots of those horrid green shipping cases.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-11-2003, 10:30 PM:
 
Since the bigger labs purchase most of their print film in 4000-foot or 6000-foot lengths packed in vapor-proof bags without cans, the supply of "free" 2000-foot cans is limited, although they can be purchased:

http://www.fpchollywood.com/cans.html

Likewise, every roll of raw stock comes with a core (bobbin), but cores can also be purchased:

http://www.fpchollywood.com/cores.html
 

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Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 08-12-2003, 05:41 AM:
 
Here in Cyprus one distribution company "saves cost" by not ordering the prints in cases but the way that you describe. Each reel is put in plastic naylon and then laid down with a piece of cardboard to separate the reels. Sometimes the cardboard is not even there!!!!
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 08-12-2003, 07:50 AM:
 
Apparently, I am the only one who doesn't mind the "print on cores in a cardboard box with those funny separators" shipping method. Art house prints sometimes come this way directly from the lab. Usually the distributor sends some empty reels and ICC cans for use when returning the print.

The only caveat is that the print needs to be wrapped in plastic before being packed in the cardboard box. Since labs tend to do this, anyway, it's not really an issue here.

I also don't mind getting shorts that are packed in lab cans (or camera raw stock cans). For features, though, good reels and ICC cans seem to be the easiest thing to deal with, at least the way that most US booths are set up.
 

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Posted by Bill Langfield (Member # 818) on 08-12-2003, 03:07 PM:
 
I agree with EVERYTHING Scott said.

All our stuff (OK MOST-we still get the odd trunk with fim on REELS!)come in cardboard boxes with corrigated cardboard between reels, and each reel is a plastic bag.

However,
Wait until you get Bollywood prints.
Packed in 1000ft cans, with NO core at all, wound directly to the rewinder. THe only why to make that reel up is to put a pencil through it and wind onto a core or reel.(Normally about 15 cans)
With most reels having heads/leads missing or make no sense.

I'd love to hear from a projectionist from India why this happens.

Bill.
 

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Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 08-13-2003, 02:57 AM:
 
why anyone would wind a print like that (inner diameter of a pencil) is beyond me. if you've ever dealt with something wound that way, and allowed to sit a bit, you know that it will coil itself into a mess on its way into the platter brain and break or cause a wrap. it's not as if you're saving any room doing it like that. the film displaced by a core would add negligibly to the outer diameter of the roll. are cores scarce or something?

carl
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-13-2003, 06:01 AM:
 
A roll with severe "clockspring" like that is also almost impossible to focus, as it will not lie flat in the projector gate. Even trailers should be wound on cores, hopefully with at least a 3-inch (75mm) minimum hub diameter. Every roll of raw stock film comes with a new core, so there should be no shortage of cores in the world.
 

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Posted by Bill Langfield (Member # 818) on 08-13-2003, 04:03 PM:
 
Carl:

quote:

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why anyone would wind a print like that (inner diameter of a pencil) is beyond me. if you've ever dealt with something wound that way, and allowed to sit a bit, you know that it will coil itself into a mess on its way into the platter brain and break or cause a wrap

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quote:

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Every roll of raw stock film comes with a new core, so there should be no shortage of cores in the world

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However, Wait until you get Bollywood prints. Packed in 1000ft cans...

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