Last night I first outside screening of a movie at the 'Boronia Twin Drive-in' . I hung a 2400 x 1200mm melamine board on my gate (white) and projected onto that. Its quite smooth and very white. The projected image ended up being about 1300mm x 1000mm approximately. As the surface was quite reflective the 250 watts from my projector gave quite a clear, bright steady image. I was impressed with the overall effect of 16mm. With a good surface, print, and bulb the results can be outstanding for outdoor home use. A passer-by who peeked in was quite impressed! I think this qualifies as a case of FDR!
The film I projected was 'What's Up Doc' and it was in good condition however as the title of this post suggests it had started to go a bit pink. No scratches though!
I was just wondering whether anybody had dreamed up a color-correction solution for projecting films that had gone a little pink. Did anybody ever develop a sort of lens filter which compensated by filtering the redness a bit?
Thanking you
cheers Peter
Perhaps it might be worth experimenting with some plastic gels (i.e. the things that are used in stage lighting) towards the blue and green end of the spectrum. The only drawback I can think of is that they'd absorb quite a bit of light, so upgrading the projector's lamp might be necessary.
If anyone decides to market a range of gels which are specifically graded for projecting pink prints through, I'm sure there'd be a market for them in arthouse and rep cinemas which show these prints on a regular basis.
Personally, I would rather watch a pink or red Eastman print than one thru a gel.
-Aaron
Paul
It must be possible to avoid the blue cast in optical film duplication through filters, though, because I've seen restored elements that have been produced this way which looked better than you could possibly imagine, given the state of the original. Maybe the restoration was done via Y-C-M separations, which would obviously give you a lot more control over the colour balance of a newly combined fine grain element than a filter in front of a projector lens would give you over the picture on the screen.
-Clude
There is a big difference between negatives and Eastman release prints. With negs and seps there is some allowance to use corrective filters or other processes to bring the images/color back up to snuff. However on an already-pink release print, there's no going back...
-Aaron
Perhaps graded camera filters might be tried with projectors. Large ones intended for use in matte boxes might be big enough for use on theatre projectors. One might begin with light blue glass Kelvin temperature correcting filters.
I suppose an alternative to using filters would be to alter the light source.
I understand that 'white light' is a mixture of wavelengths including all the colors of the rainbow. If there was some way (lasers?) to reduce the amount of red wavelengths relative to other colors then this might offset the excess red in the print.
cheers Peter
Motion picture printers have long used "additive" light sources, where the amounts of red, green and blue light can be adjusted on a scene-by-scene basis:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h1/printingP.shtml#plusminus
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
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I do projectionist work for International Film Theatre here in Perth (Aust) and as the name suggests we run a lot of overseas product sourced from all manner of distributors in Australia. Many of the films are quite OLD and thus are also quite PINK and generally the image is quite sharp but the poor colouring is another matter.
A friend in New South Wales experimented with various filters to try and find a combination that would help him enjoy his collection of "pinkish" 16mm prints and he found that most but not all looked quite acceptable using a Yellow Green filter.
So I chased up a Yellow Green filter and ended up purchasing an Arrow Optical Filter coded YG and this one is 62mm in Diam.
They are available in various sizes but I reckoned that size should fit over the Isco lens used at IFT and it does fit in quite neatly over the front of the lens and a couple of pieces of masking tape hold it in place so it does not fall out. (Quite a steep projection angle downwards at IFT in Alexander Library Theatrette Perth)
We have now tried it on two quite pink films and it does help a great deal but my only criticism is that the sub titles appear yellowish due to the filter as does many whites.. or what you would expect to be white areas.
Audience reaction has been very positive and you can ceratinly see the difference if you just hold it in front then remove it.
Cost, $40 Aust and cheaper for smaller diams that may be more applicable to 16mm use.
The projector is a 35mm Ballantyne with a 1600w Xenon onto a 20 foot screen and light loss was almost negligable. But on a 16mm Eiki it does suck a bit of the light up.. to be expected I suppose with only a 250 watt lamp there.
Some of the really faded prints look almost Sepia toned which I feel is much better than looking at a bright pink presentation.
Give it a go.
Lindsay
Where can I order one?
Got a telephone number, link or email address?
cheers Peter
To get an idea about what 'What's Up Doc' looked like in its original color I rented a copy of the movie on VHS today.
The copy had been produced a couple of years ago. To my surprise the copy had a green tinge and the color seemed faded.
So I have some questions:
1. Why would the above film have this tinge? Wouldn't the VHS film have been produced from a good quality negative? Do film companies care much when producing films on VHS?
2. Have the film companies kept good quality negatives of films produced in the early seventies or have they let the originals simply fade and go to red? Do they care?
cheers Peter
The filter is a Yellow/Green camera filter, it is glass and in this case was made by Arrow Optical with the code YG.
I purchased it from a camera shop here in Perth so I would imagine that any well stocked camera shop in Melbourne could also find you one.
Arrow make quite a wide range of camera filters and these were on their coloured flyer.
The shop in Perth had to get the filter in from Melbourne so I guess there must be an Arrow Distributor over there.
They do come in a variety of diameters so you can get one that will fit the front of the Eiki lens... or even slip it into the scope lens bracket and swing that into place as needed... might not be a good idea if you are running pink scope films I guess...not that there is much 16mm scope stuff about now.
I just tape this one on when we need it and it works fine.
Good luck, Lindsay