Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Quality Control at Deluxe Labs Canada

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-10-2010, 12:11 AM:

I received a print of The Tourist that had a reel 4 which ended like this:

An out-of-frame lab splice followed by a lot of clear film. No proper tail and I assume a significant amount of missing footage. Hell, I don't care if only 10 frames were missing, I want 'em back! But I didn't see any reel change cues near here, if this film has any.

How, exactly, does something like this happen? Obviously it happened at the lab.

I called Deluxe and they kept asking me how much footage was missing. How the hell am I supposed to know? Am I magically supposed to have found out the second time they asked? Another thing they asked me to do was to go ahead and splice reel 5 to it and show it to customers. Uh, no! I told her we'd "go dark" to light a fire under their ass (and we will if they don't deliver). The local depot has a spare print so getting a replacement reel shouldn't be too hard.

Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-10-2010, 12:21 AM:

quote: Joe Redifer
I told her we'd "go dark" to light a fire under their ass

You tell 'em

Posted by Chase Pickett (Member # 5975) on 12-10-2010, 12:29 AM:

The print we received had issues with R5. A nasty chemical splice, and the heads and tails were spliced on. Switched around too. There was a sticker on the tails that said "OK". Right... and Joe I'll fight you for that extra print at the depot, but That frame doesn't look familiar as T4 to me so I'm guessing there is a rather large chunk missing.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-10-2010, 12:56 AM:

quote: Tom Petrov
You tell 'em

To be clear, I didn't tell her that whole phrase. She asked if we'd go dark and I said "yes".

quote: Chase Pickett
Joe I'll fight you for that extra print at the depot

You can have reel 5. I only need reel 4.

Posted by Chase Pickett (Member # 5975) on 12-10-2010, 02:42 AM:

I hate mis-matched print numbers. I'm willing for you to go dark for such a pet peeve. [Razz]

Plus you are the competition, so that works out for me.
In all seriousness though we got reel 5 already so no need. Had the same terrible chemical splice though. I hope reel 4 doesn't have your same problem.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-10-2010, 09:21 AM:

Actually they are ultrasonic splices. No extra chemicals involved.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 12-10-2010, 10:23 AM:

This has nothing to do with quality, per se, but
I noticed THE TOURIST is another one of those
prints where the last reel contains about two
minutes of the last scene of the movie, and
the entire rest of the reel is all credits.

I'm not sure where & how the "reel change"
decisions are made during the editorial process.
When I ran changeovers all the time, I used to
think they did this so that we couldn't just
skip the last reel (and the ensuing 8 or 9 minutes
of credits) and go home early.

(Not that < I > would ever do that, but there
were some people who would. . . )

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-10-2010, 12:37 PM:

Seems Like Deluxe also has the worst customer service in the industry. Last night when I called them they promised me a new reel by 10:00am today. I call around 10:30 and ask where it is. "Oh, that'll be there at 11:30am." WTF? Nobody ever bothered to call us and let us know. Too bad our first show is at 11:10 (which I informed them of last night). Now for some reason it is not being delivered until 3:30pm. WTF again??? Now there will definitely be cancelled shows. If it doesn't get here by 5:30 then the screen will be dark until I show up tomorrow afternoon, all Deluxe's fault.

Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 12-10-2010, 02:23 PM:

Reel 5 of one of our prints of Black Swan started exactly like that.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-10-2010, 02:36 PM:

Try this one for size .. from "Dream Treader" :

Someone at the lab really fubared on this one ...

-Monte

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-10-2010, 02:52 PM:

That was obviously done post-processing. Wow. They KNOWINGLY sent that bad patch of film out!

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-10-2010, 03:38 PM:

Printer light failed is why the colour change

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 12-10-2010, 03:51 PM:

We've received several Deluxe prints in the past few months like what Monte has pictured. One print had a reel that had several spots like that and I called for a replacement.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-10-2010, 04:13 PM:

..I thought it was light strike from being at the end of the roll, but what Gord said makes sense too...

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 12-11-2010, 10:42 AM:

I don't think this was a printer light failure, as the green color covers the sound track and edges. Printer light would just affect the image. It looks more like a safelight failure, or some other cause of the print stock being light struck.
How much footage was affected?
Obviously, this should never have gotten out of the lab. It was handled manually, noting the out of frame spice, so someone saw it.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-12-2010, 05:33 AM:

quote: Richard P. May
How much footage was affected?

Close to 3 feet sbove that splice...

I've had similar out of frame stuff like that, but without splices, where the picture began to weave around until it jumps out of frame. One can definitely can tell on that one that something in the printer was letting go.

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 12-12-2010, 12:53 PM:

I'll still guess that the lab loaded a new roll of film, and didn't run it down far enough to get past the section flashed in threading. Green on a positive print would be equivalent to being exposed to red light.
One of the flukes of mass production, and regrettably it is going to happen occasionally. That's no excuse for letting it be shipped to a customer, however!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-12-2010, 01:51 PM:

BOTH examples pictured in this thread were ultrasonic splices made by a human post-processing. There is absolutely no excuse other than gross incompetence or a complete lack of giving a shit.

Who is going to start the conspiracy theories as this relates to the push for digital? [Razz]

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-12-2010, 02:11 PM:

One thing for sure is that Digital WILL cure this problem as well as put the looser QC guy at the lab out of business.

Posted by Michael Voiland (Member # 5386) on 12-12-2010, 04:10 PM:

I had a great factory splice with them jockeying the position of the framing so you watched as the film slid into and out of frame. When i was taking out that section for our screening of it the managers sat the theater. I didn't even get to finish screening the movie. I got a new reel.
The labs get a big FAIL

Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-13-2010, 12:20 AM:

quote:
Who is going to start the conspiracy theories as this relates to the push for digital? [Razz]

I have been exposed!

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 12-13-2010, 08:12 AM:

I imagine that the lab is being told to get that shit out the door as fast as possible.

Lately, I've had several bad reels from DeLuxe. One had been QC'd for color!!

Posted by Jonathan Smith (Member # 5609) on 01-02-2011, 12:44 PM:

Gordon, respectfully disagree. That looks like light fog. I have a feeling that the ultrasonic splicers, if not used properly can fog film too. (Remember, this is done prior to printing and processing, under safelight or in the dark).

I've been darkrooming for decades, and I have no idea what the hell "safelight failure" means. I've never handled ECP under safelight, but I imagine it's similar to other color print materials (like paper). You can use a dim dim green or orange safelight, with a 5W bulb, but it's not like B&W where you have a bright red or yellow sodium vapor bulb. At best you can see shadows and you're only partially stumbling around in the dark.

Even the dim 5W bulbs I used would fog prints in the developer, unless you had them face down. This probably isn't an issue with a 500USGal motion picture print processor. Those tanks are pretty deep.

I've heard ECP is so slow that you can shine room light onto the edge a factory fresh spool of it and it won't fog into the image area. I imagine that sloppy practice can cause the fog some of you have encountered, if someone isn't careful in cutting enough of the outer winds of the film off after flashing a roll in such a manner.

I've definitely seen fog on the edges that matches that, but if I got fog on the image that bad, I'd cut it all out and call in a particularly nasty complaint.

Sending shit like that out is inexcusable. You should never see any fog on the screen at a movie theatre, especially from cheap print stock. Throw a hundred feet out. It's all of twenty bucks. You can make that up skimping on the leader for the next five movies.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-02-2011, 01:13 PM:

They already DO skimp on the leader! For example, on my JJs I absolutely HAVE to add 1-2 feet to the leader or the tip can't reach the takeup reel with one full revolution...and that's threading ON the countdown at the start frame (which is a big no no).

Posted by Jonathan Smith (Member # 5609) on 01-02-2011, 02:05 PM:

Brad, you're missing the point of what I am saying, that even trashing 100 feet of film to avoid fog can be made up for so the bean counters aren't angry.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 01-02-2011, 03:38 PM:

Bean counters? I remember bean counters. I didn't like them at the time, but now that they are gone, at least what they did made sense at SOME level.

Now, I look longingly backward at bean counters. Now nothing makes any business sense. louis

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-02-2011, 04:16 PM:

Jonathan, you've missed the math.

They have already exceeded what they can chop off of the leaders. They can't "make up the footage" in negative numbers.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 01-02-2011, 05:06 PM:

I believe the old MPTE standard was 33' of scrap on the head and tail of a reel

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-02-2011, 06:40 PM:

Yeah, that would be suitable, but I haven't seen that in 20 years (except for EK prints and other such low runs).

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-02-2011, 06:49 PM:

Once in a while, a new print shows up with 100' or so of clear film at the head or tail of only one reel (for some reason, this tends to happen on reels that arrive tails-up). I usually remove most of this and re-distribute it on other heads and tails, depending on whether the print is to be run on reels or platters.

But, yes, new prints normally have barely enough head and tail leader on them to run on projectors with 2000' arms or magazines, threaded with 8 or 9 in the gate. [Mad]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-02-2011, 07:12 PM:

I can't recall what movie it was, but I had a film last year that had nearly 100 feet of head and tail on each and every reel. It was a tad ridiculous.