Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Eastmancolor

This is topic Eastmancolor - what A.S.A in 1956 in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-31-2016, 11:08 AM:

The Bolshoi Ballet performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Davis Theatre, Croydon, in 1956 were filmed on Eastmancolor. Does anybody know what speed the negative stock would have been at that date? I don't have an actual stock number.

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 10-31-2016, 02:58 PM:

If it was shot in 1956, chances are it was 5248, which was rated for ASA 25 with Tungsten lighting and 16 in daylight with a #85 filter.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-31-2016, 03:08 PM:

I wonder if they were filmed under the same lighting conditions as the stage performances, or if extra and/or different lighting was needed to achieve enough light to expose the negative properly.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-31-2016, 03:59 PM:

Looks like lots of extra lighting, a bit like the La Scala scenes in 'This is Cinerama'. There are two shadows which look like they could have been cast from big Mole Richardson arcs, or something similar. The scenes of Giselle at the ROH are fully staged, while those at the Davis are not, so it's easy to tell which is which. The ROH scenes seem to be better lit than those at the Davis. We're showing it tomorrow for the 60th Anniversary. The only format we could get is a DVD, and sorting out the rights was complicated. Thankfully, I wasn't involved with that part of it.

The Davis was about two minute's walk from the town hall where we will be showing it. It was short-lived, opened in 1928 and closed in 1959.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-31-2016, 04:20 PM:

I get the impression that there was no real market for fast negative stocks until cinema verite type people came along in the 60s, except for newsreel filming, in which grainy and contrasty as hell was considered acceptable.

I remember once seeing a production still from the PoW camp scene in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, in which a huge array of humongous great arc lamps was being used for an exterior shot in bright sunshine! OK, Technicolor separation stock was insanely slow (something like EI 8 if memory serves me correctly), even compared to the b/w negative stocks in studio use at the time, but even so!

The thinking appeared to be that professional studio filmmakers had the ability to throw as much artificial light on the scene as the film stock needed, and so the film stock makers saw no need and no market to invest significant R & D resources into making the stocks faster without taking a grain or gamma curve hit. Indeed, for release printing, when 1302 superseded 1301 in 1942, the new print stock was actually slower, requiring labs to upgrade the light sources in their printers.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 11-01-2016, 06:56 AM:

quote:
I remember once seeing a production still from the PoW camp scene in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, in which a huge array of humongous great arc lamps was being used for an exterior shot in bright sunshine! OK, Technicolor separation stock was insanely slow (something like EI 8 if memory serves me correctly), even compared to the b/w negative stocks in studio use at the time, but even so!

Presumably to soften the hard shadows cast by the sun, which can take a lot of light.

Mole are still in business, and seem to be the name for very high power lighting. They have several videos on Youtube, one demonstrating their carbon arc brute, and another showing their largest HMI unit, but sadly, not actually operating. The biggest HMI I have actually seen working was a 12 kW, I was aware that a 16 kW existed, but have never seen one. The largest Mole unit is 24 kW. That's a heck of a lot of light!

Haven't seen brutes in use for probably about twenty years now. The last time was at St. Pancras station in London; I don't know what the production was. Several brutes were in use and I was speaking to one of the operators during a break in filming. He let me strike one of the lamps. It's a pity you don't see them anymore.

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 11-01-2016, 04:51 PM:

Yes, the arc lights during the day would have certainly been for fill light.

I suspect the faster speed stocks were not a product of studio demand—as mentioned, flat and bright made for a thick negative, which was preferred by studio system DPs. However, one market that probably caused Kodak to continue developing film speed was undoubtedly the home movie market, in which mostly natural light was the one and only form of illumination.

The necessity for fast stocks during WWII seems to have caused the B&W stocks to raise their rating by '46 and '47, leading to the peak of film noir photography. This was met with much hostility by the electrical departments at the studios, who felt cinematographers like John Alton (who preferred minimalist lighting he set himself) were trying to put them out of business.