Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Who get quality prints and who does not get them?

This is topic Who get quality prints and who does not get them? in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mattias Ohlson (Member # 1662) on 08-08-2003, 02:41 PM:

I recently attended a showing of Terminator 3 and I was not impressed with the quality of the image projected. I live in medium sized town in Sweden. I posted about this in a swedish forum and was told that prints are made at different quality levels. I was also informed that subtitling foreign films degrade the image quality. Is this correct?

If this is so who gets the best prints? Also do we get copies of copies here in Europe or how is distribution of movies on films carried out?

respectfully

movie attender Mattias Ohlson

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 08-09-2003, 04:47 AM:

subtitles can worsen the image. if they are printed-in, then at some point 2 strips of film would have to be run through one on top of the other, which could affect the focus if contact printed. i don't know if this is normally done optically. but it seems like a golden opportunity for dirt to be introduced in the printing and for quality control to slacken.

it's been a few years since i saw a film there, but i'm pretty sure sweden uses only laser subtitling (small market). this is done after the fact on an otherwise finished print. sometimes used prints get recycled overseas and subtitled, so there may be some wear. even on a new print, i've seen many instances where somehow the subtitles "leak" onto other portions of the frame, for the duration of that subtitle. but even then it's obvious that's it's just a problem with the subtitle, not the overall quality of the print.

i hope i didn't flub the details.

carl

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-11-2003, 10:08 PM:

Subtitles can be inserted by optical printing, bi-pack printing (sandwiching the subtitle negative with the picture negative during contact printing), by chemical etch through a wax stencil, and by laser ablation.