Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Numbered Film Frames

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Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 11-04-2005, 09:37 AM:

Last night while I was building my print of "The Greatest Game Ever Played", I noticed that on the head of reel 6, the first 170 individual frames are NUMBERED. The numbering starts with # 28 on the first frame printed on the head, then continues incrementaly all the way to 170. The numbers are located on the wide frame lines between the images of the frames.

Any idea why? I've never seen this before.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-04-2005, 01:57 PM:

Were the numbers hand scribed/inked on the film, or did they seem to be machine printed?

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-04-2005, 02:01 PM:

..be nice if the labs would do the good ol, roll letter and number and footage counts on the edge (but can't due to the SDDS tracks) so one can really determine the footage of each reel for accurate feature time length...

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 11-04-2005, 02:11 PM:

Prints that I get from the BFI (British Film Institute) usually have the footage for each reel printed on the can label. Recently, I've also noticed this on some, but not all, prints from 'normal' distributors as well. Is this what you mean, i.e. the total footage for each reel, or did you mean a running footage count along the full length of the film, as on camera stock? If the latter, why would this be of use to you, other than to identify which reel is which, if the count was continuous throughout the whole film, rather than just through iach reel?

I don't see many prints with SDDS tracks, but some that do also have edge printing, in magenta.

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 11-04-2005, 02:52 PM:

These were printed on the film. I took the whole reel into the office and placed a section the flatbed scanner, but it did not come out too good. I'll take the digital camera with me tonight and see if I can get a better shot with the macro mode on the camera.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-04-2005, 03:19 PM:

I've seen a couple of prints lately where they had clear and obvious frame lines throughout the entire print. I am assuming this had something to do with the digital master. If so, hopefully the studios could make that a standard practice, as well as start putting up black mattes on flat movies at about 1.66 to force people with a shortage of brain power to run the movies in frame. [Wink]

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 11-04-2005, 03:23 PM:

Film comes out crappy on a flatbed scanner because there is no rear illumination. Leaving the cover of the scanner off and shining a bright light through the film often produces an acceptable image.

--jhawk

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-04-2005, 03:23 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
shortage of brain power to run the movies in frame.

..lol, called "The Invasion of the Booth Clowns"

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-05-2005, 07:34 AM:

quote: Brad Miller
I've seen a couple of prints lately where they had clear and obvious frame lines throughout the entire print. I am assuming this had something to do with the digital master.

Standard SMPTE 195 specifies that framelines should be "essentially opaque". Clear framelines are usually due to a poor choice of workflow in making the duplicate negative. It could indeed occur if the master positive was digitally output, and the area between the frames on the master positive was not exposed (i.e., was left clear).

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-05-2005, 08:26 AM:

Admittedly I haven't handled new release prints for close on 5 years now, regularly, but when I did it was very rare to get a hard matted flat one all the way through. There were sections of footage which had a hard matte, usually where optical effects were inserted. I presume, therefore, that the matte was introduced at an optical printing stage. But most of the undoctored footage just reproduced whatever the camera aperture was - usually full height.

The only format I know of which printed footage numbers as part of the lab duplication process was Vitaphone. These prints had a number every 16 frames (i.e. every foot), the reason being that if any footage was lost in an accident, it had to be replaced with the exact same length of black spacing. The footage numbers enabled you to establish exactly how much film had got mangled. If it wasn't replaced, then the picture and sound would go out of sync, because obviously you couldn't cut out 8 frames or whatever from the soundtrack on a phonograph record.

Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 11-05-2005, 12:58 PM:

You often see films like that on television which I find extremely annoying when they could have been electronically masked on TX. I can never understand these days why 1.85 wide screen prints that are not hard matted are still shown full frame on television.

Going back myself 53 years ago until at least 1970 I can remember most films had footage numbers and the words Safety Film printed throughout.

Posted by Wolff King Morrow (Member # 2226) on 11-05-2005, 04:53 PM:

I also have a print of Greatest Game where there were several scenes with a frame counter in them. It almost looked like they were left on accidentally by an editor. The last reel had them all over it.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 11-06-2005, 04:11 AM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
The only format I know of which printed footage numbers as part of the lab duplication process was Vitaphone.

Also useful of course in any situation where you're working with more than one strip of film, separate sound, two strip 3-D, Cinerama and similar, Polyvision and various special venue processes.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 11-06-2005, 10:53 AM:

I first saw this back in 1976. We got a print of a turkey named Norman, Is That You. Every frame of every reel was numbered in the frame line area.

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 11-06-2005, 10:59 AM:

Norman was shot on a special 655 line video system and transfered to film...the numbers where burned into the video tape master. I booked that film when I was an exhibitor and had a good run [Smile]