This is topic Are there any good BARRY LYNDON prints? in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=006079

---

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 04-18-2004, 05:30 PM:
 
A question to the GB forum members:

Tonight I saw BARRY LYNDON in what was called a "Special Show Print" from Warner Bros. After suffering through many a faded and splicy print of that title, I was enthusiastic - until the film began.

All titles were fuzzy, the print was quite grainy and had inferior resolution. Even old 16mm prints did look sharper, in the long shots you could not see the faces any more.
I left after reel #3 because I couldn't stand the lack of focus and the unsteady image any more. All in all, this print looked like it was struck from an old dupe negative by improper contact printing, there were even flashes and blotches on the negative.

Now, did you ever get decent prints of BARRY LYNDON from Warner Bros. GB over the last years, or do they all have such inferior image quality? I wonder what Stanley Kubrick would have commented on that print, after spending so much time in creating those beautiful images...

BTW, the print had a Dolby Digital sound track.
 

---

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 04-18-2004, 09:53 PM:
 
I remeber BL being very soft focused when it first came out and very grainy since they pushed the negative extensivly to allow the use of natural candlelight photography
 

---

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-18-2004, 10:16 PM:
 
Actually the candlelight scenes were filmed with a modified rackover Mitchell BNC and a specially adapted f0.9 lens. Don't remember the film stock used and how much they pushed it. The mods to the BNC and the the lens adaption were done by Cinema Products at their Hollywood shops. You had to focus the lens back out to near the front of its mount before you could rack the camera over because the elements extended almost to the film plane itself.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Dan Lyons (Member # 1454) on 04-19-2004, 04:07 AM:
 
Mods??? Let's get this thread where it belongs....

We showed this at my theatre a year ago.. no fading, good condition.

danny
 

---

Posted by Peter Kerchinsky (Member # 1098) on 04-19-2004, 04:53 AM:
 
Grainy, fuzzy and boring.
Sorry guys but I found this to be one of the most, if not the most, boring films ever. Maybe the soft focus and grainy images put me to sleep, but I hope never to see this tripe again in my lifetime.
The last time we ran this in a rep. format here in Seattle it died. So I think I'm not alone in my thoughts about this.
Ryan O'Neal can't act his way out of a wet paper bag if you punched a hole in it.
Hey, I'm beginning to sound like the Weenie Man.
 

---

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-19-2004, 10:23 AM:
 
"Barry Lyndon" was shot on EASTMAN Color Negative Film 5254, an EI 100 film that was considerably more grainy than modern Kodak stocks. It was "pushed" one stop in processing:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/2001a/bl/page1.htm

quote:

---

QUESTION: Did you use any of the 5247 color negative, or was it all 5254?

ALCOTT: We used the 5254, because the 5247 wasn't available even at the time when we finished shooting. It came out something like two months after we had finished the main shooting of the film...

QUESTION: Now we come to the scenes which have caused more comment than anything else in this overall beautiful film - namely the candlelight scenes. Can you tell me about these and how they were executed?

ALCOTT: The objective was to shoot these scenes exclusively by candlelight - that is, without a boost from any artificial light whatsoever. As I mentioned earlier, Stanley Kubrick and I had been discussing this possibility for years, but had not been able to find sufficiently fast lenses to do it. Stanley finally discovered three 50mm f/0.7 Zeiss still-camera lenses which were left over from a batch made for use by NASA in their Apollo moon-landing program. We had a non-reflexed Mitchell BNC which was sent over to Ed DiGiulio to be reconstructed to accept this ultra-fast lens....

QUESTION: And those scenes were illuminated entirely by candlelight?

ALCOTT: Entirely by the candles. In the sequence where Lord Ludd and Barry are in the gaming room and he loses a large amount of money, the set was lit entirely by the candles, but I had metal reflectors made to mount above the two chandeliers, the main purpose being to keep the heat of the candles from damaging the ceiling. However, it also acted as a light reflector to provide an overall illumination of toplight.

QUESTION: How many foot-candles (no pun intended) would you say you were using in that case?

ALCOTT: Roughly, three foot-candles was the key. We were forcing the whole picture one stop in development. Incidentally, I found a great advantage in using the Gossen Panalux electronic meter for these sequences, because it goes down to half foot-candle measurements. It's a very good meter for those extreme low-light situations. We were using 70-candle chandeliers, and most of the time I could also use either five-candle or three-candle table candelabra, as well. We actually went for a burnt-out effect, a very high key on the faces themselves.

QUESTION: What were some of the other problems attendant to using this ultra-fast lens to shoot entirely by candlelight?

ALCOTT: There was, first of all, the problem of finding a side viewfinder that would transmit enough light to show us where we were framed. The conventional viewfinder would not do at all, because it involves prisms which cause such a high degree of light loss that very little image is visible at such low light levels. Instead, we had to adapt to the BNC a viewfinder from one of the old Technicolor three-strip cameras. It works on a principle of mirrors and simply reflects what it "sees", resulting in a much brighter image. There is very little parallax with that viewfinder, since it mounts so close to the lens.

QUESTION: What about the depth of field problem?

ALCOTT: As I suggested before, that was indeed a problem. The point of focus was so critical and there was hardly any depth of field with that f/0.7 lens. My focus operator, Doug Milsome, used a closed-circuit video camera as the only way to keep track of the distances with any degree of accuracy. The video camera was placed at a 90-degree angle to the film camera position and was monitored by means of a TV screen mounted above the camera lens scale. A grid was placed over the TV screen and by taping the various artists' positions, the distances could be transferred to the TV grid to allow the artists a certain flexibility of movement, while keeping them in focus.

It was a very tricky operation, but according to all reports, it worked out quite satisfactorily.

---

quote:

---

I would be surprised if a limited release of an older film like this would be "mass printed".

---

Just wanted to compare the unsatisfactory steadiness to the "jiggling" prints that result, as you have explained some times, from improper duping/printing operations due to time restrictions.

Stanley Kubrick is said to have checked even dupe positives and negatives of his films back then, so I suspect that these new prints come from an old (maybe shrunken) acetate dupe negative, the color timing was quite odd, too.
 

---

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 04-19-2004, 03:34 PM:
 
<double post, deleted>
 

---

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 06-09-2004, 03:23 PM:
 
An addition to my previous BARRY LYNDON post:

Today I accidentally saw one reel a new print (German Language Version, YCM Labs, printed in April 2004) and was surprised again!

The US print had a really steady image, but colors were quite muted, almost "dirty". There were density fluctuations (screen illumination was not to blame for that) and the image looked sharper than the print I mentioned in this thread.

The GB print had very bad steadiness, looked quite unsharp (more like so-so 16mm) and was more grainy than the US print, but colors were bright and clear. (I think it was printed by Rank)

Now what does it mean? Is there an American interneg with muted colors, but otherwise OK, and a British interneg that has been produced and/or printed improperly?

Please, dear Brothers Warner, try to make a "Mid-Atlantic" print that has both colors, sharpness and a steady image - it was possible back in 1976, why not today? Please!
 

---

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-10-2004, 07:59 AM:
 
Possibly because tripack colour elements are likely to have deteriorated a lot since 1976. As John points out, the acetate base could have shrunk a bit and become brittle; and 'low fade' stocks were not introduced until 1981. Although archivists can work wonders with these problems nowadays, such a restoration hoovers vast amounts of money. For a high-profile classic like Lawrence of Arabia or Vertigo that investment is forthcoming, but for a niche interest film such as Berry Lyndon, it's quite likely that the studio decided that there isn't a business case for full-scale restoration, while the public sector archives can't justify blowing such a large proportion of their preservation budget on one title.

quote: John Pytlak

---

Perhaps a duplicate negative was made from a duplicate negative, adding two generations of duplication?

---