Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How to Tell if You're Watching a Technicolor IB Print

This is topic How to Tell if You're Watching a Technicolor IB Print in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Chris Haller (Member # 9206) on 03-20-2016, 12:29 PM:

This past Thursday here in Rochester, I had the chance to view a 35mm print of Hitchcock's North by Northwest at a local theater that's associated with the Eastman House and their library of films.

The print was largely undamaged, and the color was rich and saturated. The print was also incredibly fine grained, and had fantastic detail.

I know the film was shot using 8-perf Vistavision cameras, and that the film was printed using the technicolor dye process in the 50s during its original release on 4-perf 35mm.

My question is, could this possibly be a Technicolor IB print? My knowledge in this area is incredibly limited. The only other Vistavision sourced film I've seen on 35mm is White Christmas, and I saw an 80s Eastman print of that one a little over a year ago. It was soft, grainy, and kind of ugly, which surprised me quite a bit. It was nothing like this print of North by Northwest.

So I guess, rather than go around telling people I saw this fantastic technicolor print, I wanted to ask you guys if there are any noticeable signs or anything that I might have caught that would tell me whether or not it was an IB print. Thanks in advance - Chris

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-20-2016, 01:46 PM:

Look at the colors....they are normally bit over saturated and look at the changeover cues...they are normally just on one layer so they will be colored. You can also look for any misregistration too.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-20-2016, 02:55 PM:

Later IB prints ('60s onwards) tended to have a green curly border on the changeover cues, too.

As a general rule, if you know that you're seeing a pre-1982 print (1982 - when low fade stock was introduced) and the colors look good, it's very likely that you're watching an IB print. Specifically, if it's scratchy, dirty and there is above average noise on the audio, but again, the color is nice, these are telltale signs.

The oversaturated color can be deceptive. Our programmer recently asked me to examine a print of Show Boat from the Warners' archive, which they suspected could be in poor condition and delivered to us for inspection as is. It was significantly scratchy and dusty around the starts and ends, but otherwise OK physically. I put a reel of it on the screen to get a sense of whether it would be OK for a public screening, and the colors really popped out. A co-worker came in while I was doing this, and said, "Wow - what a great IB print!". I knew that it was in fact a 1984 print on 5384 stock, because I'd just looked at it on the bench, but if I hadn't, I'd have thought the same thing. Whatever lab made the recombined dupe neg from the seps did an excellent job.

So it is possible for a very nicely done dye coupler print of a movie originated on three-strip to fool even experienced eyes into thinking that it's an IB print in projection, but they are very rare.

Another telltale sign is that IB prints are, as a general rule, more likely to have VD audio than VA (after Technicolor abandoned the key image layer, the light gray track coating generated a bit more noise on VA, especially RCA duplex tracks), but again, you can only see this if you're looking at the print on the bench. The sound on that Show Boat print was twin bilateral VA, on the very dark blue dye background that is typical of 1980s release prints. It sounded great, too.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 03-20-2016, 03:51 PM:

I have a strip of IB Tech film from THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and have noticed the optical soundtrack has no color. It is gray and looks like B&W.

=Claude

Posted by Chris Haller (Member # 9206) on 03-20-2016, 05:43 PM:

Thanks for the responses guys.

Obviously, as an audience member who's never run a print before in his life, I will probably never get a good luck at this print on the bench. I did see a bit of a greenish hue on the changeover cues, but since they only pull these prints out of their library for one night runs, chances are I'll won't get to see it again anytime soon.

The theater has a rotation of projectionists in the booth, and I know one of them through my Dad's former job at Kodak. Occasionally, when he's running a print, which is only a few times a month, and I catch him, he'll tell me some cool info about the print, but the rest of the staff isn't as friendly, so I couldn't get any details on when the print was made or anything - Chris

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-20-2016, 06:30 PM:

Well yeah...if you are looking at the print in the booth...it is self apparent. It is on B&W stock so the sound track and edges will all be B&W but the picture will be color with zero fade.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 03-20-2016, 06:55 PM:

The last I.B. print I've seen was a Technicolor Process # VI print, the 35 mm Redux re-release of Apocalypse Now. The colors looked absolutely stunning. Highly over-saturated and very deep black, probably the best I've ever seen in 35mm.

Technicolor finally abandoned their revived I.B. process somewhere in 2002. It's a pity they wasted it on prints for movies like Batman and Robin, The Wedding Planer and Godzilla (1997)...

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 03-21-2016, 12:38 AM:

As Steve said, you can tell from looking at the print on the bench if the soundtrack and framelines are silver. Otherwise, there's no "real" way to tell an IB print on the screen.

About ten years ago, I assisted in having a "left" eye struck for a 3D film from 1953 that we had the "right" eye to in IB from an original print. The labwork was done from the camera negative at Triage and had to be optically printed because it was from a full-aperture negative (Technicolor would have reduced this at the time to the normal Academy profile while they made their matrices.) This was on, as I recall, Vision 2 stock. Mind you, this was also a fairly faded negative that had to be retimed. Triage was able to match the color to the IB so closely that, to my eye, most of the shots were perhaps only half a point off, which would have been in the realm of the norm for Technicolor even during its dye transfer days. So I'm not understating the value of IB prints, but I will say that we are (were?) at the point that with proper labwork, a print on Kodak stock can look as good as a vintage IB print.

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 03-21-2016, 09:46 AM:

Today's, er last generation 35mm print stock is capable of far more resolution than Technicolor because of the color layering process, right?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-21-2016, 10:28 AM:

The two variables are resolution and color saturation. Fans of IB prints claim that they can outperform dye coupler stock on the latter every time - kind of the photochemical equivalent of 4:4:4 vs. 4:2:2.

But with the right quality control all the way from camera to release print, and as Jack pointed out, dye coupler technology is capable of very good results (especially with the now sadly discontinued 2393 print stock).

Posted by Chris Haller (Member # 9206) on 03-21-2016, 04:58 PM:

Thanks for all of the great info. Looks like I won't ever really know unless I get a better look at the print.

You guys are the best. Getting the chance to absorb some of your wealth of information is really great, and as an outsider to theatrical exhibition, it really makes me appreciate what you guys do even more. - Chris

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-21-2016, 05:06 PM:

Most original IB prints will have a lab splice between the A and B reels (about halfway through each shipping reel). This will be on the frameline, but you can usually hear the "pop" that they make and also sometimes see a slight color shift at the lab splice. That would be a signal for an attentive audience member that the print is probably original. The late 1990s process could print full 2000' reels without requiring a mid-reel splice.

Posted by Chris Haller (Member # 9206) on 03-21-2016, 05:18 PM:

This print didn't have very many audible pops or clicks at all that I noticed, outside of a few bits of distortion accompanied by some popping on I want to say the....fifth reel of the film? Not that it really matters. The further away I get from the screening, the less distinct those memories become!

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 03-21-2016, 05:45 PM:

On the resolution side, modern dye coupling processes most likely outperform the IB process, especially the older processes. Dye coupling also has seen continuous improvements up until a few years ago.

Still, the dye transfer process has a larger color gamut than the dye coupling process. The reason for the revival of the format in 1997 was exactly this and it probably made sense for movies like Toy Story 2 and Apocalypse Now.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-22-2016, 03:39 PM:

quote: Marcel Birgelen
Technicolor finally abandoned their revived I.B. process somewhere in 2002. It's a pity they wasted it on prints for movies like Batman and Robin, The Wedding Planer and Godzilla (1997)...

This is the perennial problem that the programmers of 70mm fests and seasons face: the surviving prints in the best condition tend to be of movies that are forgettable garbage. Because the content is so bad, no-one wanted to play the prints very much, and so they're still OK. If you want to program a season called "Predictable, mediocre garbage that the 1980s forgot," I'm sure you could show it all on near pristine 35 to 70mm blow job mag prints. But you'll search in vain for a decent copy of 2001, Oklahoma, etc. etc.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 03-22-2016, 06:02 PM:

I know that Warner struck a new 35mm print for revival houses a decade or two ago that was supposed to be quite good. While I didn't see it, I did see a double 3-D print of Kiss Me Kate struck by Warners that exhibited all that you are mentioning. I thought that I might have been seeing an original Technicolor print (deep blacks, rich colors, low grain for an old movie), but when I inquired, I was told it was a relatively new print. The soundtrack I learned was a Dolby stereo optical print, which I believe that the North By Northwest soundtrack had (as well as an SDDS track?). If you heard stereo at all in that film, it would not have been an original release (mono only).

Posted by Chris Haller (Member # 9206) on 03-22-2016, 08:56 PM:

I didn't hear a single bit of stereo panning at all. It sounded like a traditional mono print to me.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 03-27-2016, 09:24 AM:

One thing I've noticed on just about every IB print I've seen is dye spotting. Some prints are better than others, but almost always I've seen at some point on the print what looks like colored dirt. Sometimes it might be a fairly large spot, sometimes very small specks. But it's almost always there in one form or another if you look for it.