Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: 35mm Second Run Prints Directory

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Posted by Ari Leedsw (Member # 9336) on 02-19-2016, 03:54 PM:

I had an idea for theatres projecting second run and first-run prints destined for archiving:

Some sort of database for color, physical defects, with serial numbers and evaluations as to quality as to each run.

Hell, I could even read the test patch at the beginning, but maybe that is taking it too far.

If we get some or all of the film societies working together, we can help spot bad apples in the industry, do something about damaged prints, maybe even get mismatched reels moved around, replaced.

Maybe now that the nonsense of sending 3 prints to the same theatre is over, replaced with three prints per STATE :-/, we can keep a closer, better eye on what is still out there, and compile some sort of thorough excel file that keeps track of our experiences, conditions with prints that remain for long-term circulation.

Thoughts?

I've heard about this place for years, but never got around to joining it. Good to see other people who still like working, running film out there.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 02-19-2016, 04:05 PM:

The only comment about that is the tendency to mix and match reels from different print numbers in order to make a "better" print.

Posted by Ari Leedsw (Member # 9336) on 02-19-2016, 04:11 PM:

I am not sure I understand what you mean.

When there were thousands of prints of each title made, it was understandable that color would shift all over the place from reel to reel (which could be corrected, now, if someone actually went and read the color charts and swapped them from print to print).

But, with new titles, the volumes are so low, I sincerely hope the colors are consistent with each print, although I could be wrong.

If there were five prints, it is possible that some reels could be swapped around to make things better, though this would be something the depot would have to do.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-19-2016, 04:24 PM:

Mixing and matching prints could cause a number of issues, the biggest one being focus. For example if you take a print playing at one site with 6000 watt lamps the prints could become embossed. While that doesn't typically create any issues for projection, if you splice every other reel from an embossed print with one that isn't, depending on the projector and lensing there could be a focus change at every reel.

Also the analog soundtrack could have some light scratches or embedded dirt in it in one print that plays back noisy. Similarly one print may have a digital soundtrack that is too far damaged to play.

It's even worse with magnetic prints, such as older 35mm 4-track and classic 70mm 6-track, as if you sent out 100 prints of a title and they played for 3 months, many would come back with various damage such as thumps, ticking, varying output levels or most commonly varying levels of high frequency deterioration. Mixing those could cause havoc for someone trying to calibrate a system for a particular print.

As far as the original poster's inquiry, the best place is to ditch the idea of a spreadsheet and just use the Feature Info forum here. Just note the print number and condition as you handle them. This has been going on for years. A spreadsheet would only end up with lots of different copies of it and all would end up being different. Just search for the movie's title and if a thread doesn't exist on it already, create one.

Posted by Ari Leedsw (Member # 9336) on 02-19-2016, 05:13 PM:

Doesn't that go against the rules there?

I wanted to make notes about the conditions and reels of specific prints in circulation, now that the volumes are so low.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-19-2016, 05:30 PM:

We already gather this sort of information in our print reports, which we then file both for our programmers' reference when deciding whether or not to show it in future (especially useful if there are multiple options, e.g. DCP and 35mm), and for ours, to reduce the technical preparation time in gathering the same information twice. Here are examples of our DCP form and our 35mm form:

In this DCP example, the show took place with a live pianist who stopped playing as the surviving Vitaphone began. So by noting when this happens in detail, if we do this show again, we can brief the pianist without having to go through the DCP a second time.

Same principle here - We know that the changeover cues are all there without having to look for them again, and that the polyester BFI logo that will wobble and weave with the gate pressure set for acetate is lurking at the front, and thus needs to be run through doused. We also know that this is a very nice print, and probably our first choice if we were to show this movie again.

It's a very low tech system: just Word documents with pull-down menus for the option fields and free text entry form fields for the others. The files are then archived in a massive folder with a filename that records the title and one or two other bits of information. Anyone wanting to look just searches the folder in Windows Explorer (or whatever) to find the report they're interested in.

I would like to get the information into a proper database with more versatile search capability (e.g. "show me all prints of Japanese movies with a unilateral variable area track from between 1952 and 1955," if I thought that there could be a consistent sound quality issue with this sort of track), but realistically that isn't going to happen anytime soon. We have close on 9,000 of these reports, and putting them in would be a huge data entry task. Most of them predate the Word forms and are handwritten.

Posted by Ari Leedsw (Member # 9336) on 02-19-2016, 05:56 PM:

I would love to help you with this!

If it were made available to everyone, this would be a great resource to the film theatres still out there.

I'd be happy to put my densitometer up in the booth and start reading the color charts, if you want to get REALLY technical B)

Posted by Ari Leedsw (Member # 9336) on 02-22-2016, 10:44 AM:

@Leo: Hope you don't mind, I stole the format of your print screening log.

Appreciate your sharing it, here!