Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Did I See a Technicolor IB print last night

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Posted by Lincoln Spector (Member # 6835) on 11-06-2016, 11:44 AM:

Hi, folks.

Last night, I saw Renoir's The Golden Coach at the Pacific Film Archive (http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/event/golden-coach-0). The film was shot in 3-strip in 1952. I'm not sure if I saw a 3-strip print.

I certainly saw an old print, worse for wear. A lot of scratches. The last minute or so appeared to come from an entirely different and much worse source.

The print lacked the saturated colors of an IB print, and I didn't notice anything unusual about the cue marks. And the PFA didn't advertise that it was an IB print.

OTOH, the colors were extremely variable. Even within a single shot, I could see the colors shifting a bit. Unless I'm mistaken, that's more likely to happen in IB prints than with Eastman color.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-06-2016, 01:31 PM:

Hmm ... impossible to say from your description.

I have been fooled, though.

A few months ago, I had print of Show Boat from the Warners archive, which was scratched and dirty as hell, but the colors really popped out. I could see on the bench examination that it was a dye coupler print on 5384 stock with a 1984 date code, but if I hadn't know that, I'd have sworn that I was seeing an IB print. In fact, while I was testing a reel, a co-worker walked in through the auditorium, and commented on what a great IB print I had! He didn't believe me that it wasn't until I put a reel on the bench for him.

Whoever recombined the seps and made the printing IN for that reprint did a fantastic job.

In my experience, the genuine article ranges from astonishingly crisp and dense to a blurry, unwatchable mess.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-06-2016, 07:26 PM:

I had an IB print of Show Boat a while back. Its fricken gorgous and you'd definitely know it was I.B. just by the way some of the colors reproduce, especially powder blue and that Technicolor lime green. Eastman just can't do those colors like dye transfer can.

Mark

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 11-07-2016, 11:29 AM:

If the print came from Janus, it was an Eastman color print. Color flux can depend on a number of issues.

Technicolor had high quality standards, but even they had off days. I've seen a number of dye-transfer print jobs both 35mm and 16mm that were particularly lousy—either out of register and soft, or with poorly-timed matrices.

Dye-transfer prints are often beautiful, but with all things equal with pre-print materials, modern Kodak stocks can look just as good. About ten years ago, I worked on the restoration of a 3D picture called SANGAREE, for which we had archival dye-transfer prints of the left/right on one half of the film and only one "eye" on the other. Working with Paramount, Triage laboratories printed the missing "eye" on Vision 2 stock, with Triage's color timer matching the 1953 dye-transfer print almost perfectly (note: this was also from a faded negative.) On screen, with both prints playing simultaneously, it was impossible for audience members to tell which was the IB and which was the new print. The trick is good lab work, and an extra answer print always helps, but we got it right the first time out of the gate.