Digital Intermediate vs Photochemically finished film

[Luis Chavarry]

Hi, I’m new to this forum due to my interest in filmmaking, I would like to know what are the advantages of a photochemically finished film as oppsosed to DI. Why does Nolan avoid DI’s for his films ? Is the contrast, saturation, resolution better retained ? And if so aren’t release prints 3/4 generation copies anyways ? Wouldn’t be better to do a DI and have all prints made from the negative ? I may be wrong on all of this but I thought I’d ask since you guys are way more knowledge than I am. Thank you. 

[Gautam Valluri]

There is no technical benefit to doing a photochemical finish over a DI. Nolan, PTA et al rejected DI pretty early on when it was catching up in the early 2000s because they probably felt the look and the work flow is different to their preference. And It's true to an extent: for example, you cannot do power windows in photochemical so you accept it if there are parts of the image that are blown out as an inherent feature. It could also be because these guys want their films to look like the films they loved growing up.

Both are big fans of Kubrick for example, who did a lot of photochemical experimentation. We've discussed his photochemical decisions on Eyes Wide Shut in depth  here in the past. Having watched the film first on DVD in the 2000s and then finally seeing an old print of it a few years ago, I confirm the DVD took out all the deliberate artistic decisions that Kubrick made and just made it look like any other 90s drama.

Choosing one over the other is also choosing their inherent limitations as much as the options they provide. For those who do DI, they have to choose things like the kind of scan (Scannity, Arriscan, Northlight etc), the resolution (2K, 3K, 4K etc), the endless options in grading and so on. They should also plan for this while shooting by aiming to get a flat image that gives them the most options to work with. In Photochemical you have to plan for certain things while capturing the image: ND filters, 85A / 85B filter (if shooting Tungsten stock in Daylight), colour temperature of lighting, contrast ratios...all these decisions have to be made beforehand as there's only so much you can correct in post.

Again one is not better than the other, it comes down to what the artists working on these films do with their craft. I was blown away by the colour grading of The Grand Budapest Hotel, which went through a humble 2K DI but I was also blown away by the photochemical timing of Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre  which having seen on 35mm, also used colour brilliantly.

I do my 16mm films via the photochemical finish but I work in experimental film and the independent film lab circuit, where my process is the point of my craft. However, for any commercial work I do, there's no other way but DI because the end-point is exclusively digital.

Personally, I'm glad Nolan and PTA are still doing a photochemical finish at their level as its interesting to not have a DCP monopoly. My friends and I alway make an effort to watch their films on 35mm or 70mm even if we're not fans of their work and if it makes people go to the cinema, it is good for cinemas everywhere.

[Aapo Lettinen]

Photochemical finish requires setting almost all things perfectly on set and very little can be corrected afterwards apart from the actual vfx scenes which are scanned anyway. Some filmmakers really like this approach, having to make everything perfect from the start instead of repairing half good stuff afterwards.

Some people who do DI like to use only simple printer light controls etc stuff which can be done photochemically to emulate the feel and mindset of photochemical. For example Rodrigo Prieto did this on Biutiful and you can see the it on trailer too, clear difference to normal DI look

[Gautam Valluri]

50 minutes ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

Some people who do DI like to use only simple printer light controls etc stuff which can be done photochemically to emulate the feel and mindset of photochemical. For example Rodrigo Prieto did this on Biutiful and you can see the it on trailer too, clear difference to normal DI look

Very interesting approach. Dirk Dejonghe was saying here recently that he did something similar on Kaurismäki's "Fallen Leaves".

[Robin Phillips]

it should also be noted that a photochemical finish when you're talking 65mm and imax film can make sense from a maximizing quality perspective. If you were to say scan 5 perf 65mm 50D and output it back to film, Im not sure if you're going to easily be able to get that printed at more than 4k. Higher resolution scanning is possible, but going back to film is the problem. You also have to account for DCPs maxing out at 4k (and the bitrate for 4k and 2k DCP is the same...), so you are arguably loosing resolution vs going fully photochemical and then back to a 65mm print. 

Now all of that being said, its not like they make super sharp glass like master primes for the 65mm and imax film formats. Imax likes to say their film has a resolution of something like 18k, but I dont believe any glass compatible with their camera system is capable of achieving that level of performance. The only lenses Im aware of that can pull that off are what they're using on that system for the Las Vegas Sphere 

[Luis Chavarry]

10 hours ago, Gautam Valluri said:

There is no technical benefit to doing a photochemical finish over a DI. Nolan, PTA et al rejected DI pretty early on when it was catching up in the early 2000s because they probably felt the look and the work flow is different to their preference. And It's true to an extent: for example, you cannot do power windows in photochemical so you accept it if there are parts of the image that are blown out as an inherent feature. It could also be because these guys want their films to look like the films they loved growing up.

Both are big fans of Kubrick for example, who did a lot of photochemical experimentation. We've discussed his photochemical decisions on Eyes Wide Shut in depth  here in the past. Having watched the film first on DVD in the 2000s and then finally seeing an old print of it a few years ago, I confirm the DVD took out all the deliberate artistic decisions that Kubrick made and just made it look like any other 90s drama.

Choosing one over the other is also choosing their inherent limitations as much as the options they provide. For those who do DI, they have to choose things like the kind of scan (Scannity, Arriscan, Northlight etc), the resolution (2K, 3K, 4K etc), the endless options in grading and so on. They should also plan for this while shooting by aiming to get a flat image that gives them the most options to work with. In Photochemical you have to plan for certain things while capturing the image: ND filters, 85A / 85B filter (if shooting Tungsten stock in Daylight), colour temperature of lighting, contrast ratios...all these decisions have to be made beforehand as there's only so much you can correct in post.

Again one is not better than the other, it comes down to what the artists working on these films do with their craft. I was blown away by the colour grading of The Grand Budapest Hotel, which went through a humble 2K DI but I was also blown away by the photochemical timing of Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre  which having seen on 35mm, also used colour brilliantly.

I do my 16mm films via the photochemical finish but I work in experimental film and the independent film lab circuit, where my process is the point of my craft. However, for any commercial work I do, there's no other way but DI because the end-point is exclusively digital.

Personally, I'm glad Nolan and PTA are still doing a photochemical finish at their level as its interesting to not have a DCP monopoly. My friends and I alway make an effort to watch their films on 35mm or 70mm even if we're not fans of their work and if it makes people go to the cinema, it is good for cinemas everywhere.

Thanks for the info, do you know if directors in the early 2000’s who used cgi like Raimi for Spider man/ Peter Jackson for LOTR not release “show prints” for those films so they mask the cgi ? Did they use the N/IP/IN/release print stages to their advantage to cover the cgi ? Or did they make show prints that where closer to the negative no matter the quality of the cgi at the time ? Do directors releases show prints based on the quality of the vfx/cgi in general ?

Edited April 23 by Luis Chavarry

[Luis Chavarry]

2 hours ago, Robin Phillips said:

it should also be noted that a photochemical finish when you're talking 65mm and imax film can make sense from a maximizing quality perspective. If you were to say scan 5 perf 65mm 50D and output it back to film, Im not sure if you're going to easily be able to get that printed at more than 4k. Higher resolution scanning is possible, but going back to film is the problem. You also have to account for DCPs maxing out at 4k (and the bitrate for 4k and 2k DCP is the same...), so you are arguably loosing resolution vs going fully photochemical and then back to a 65mm print. 

Now all of that being said, it’s not like they make super sharp glass like master primes for the 65mm and imax film formats. Imax likes to say their film has a resolution of something like 18k, but I dont believe any glass compatible with their camera system is capable of achieving that level of performance. The only lenses Im aware of that can pull that off are what they're using on that system for the Las Vegas Sphere 

From your perspective, Have DI’s gotten better to where they are indistinguishable from a photochemically finished film ?

[Tyler Purcell]

23 hours ago, Luis Chavarry said:

Hi, I’m new to this forum due to my interest in filmmaking, I would like to know what are the advantages of a photochemically finished film as oppsosed to DI. Why does Nolan avoid DI’s for his films ? Is the contrast, saturation, resolution better retained ? And if so aren’t release prints 3/4 generation copies anyways ? Wouldn’t be better to do a DI and have all prints made from the negative ? I may be wrong on all of this but I thought I’d ask since you guys are way more knowledge than I am. Thank you. 

Well, photochemical finishing of an entire film today, even a short film, is very expensive and time consuming. Plus, when you're dealing with formats us mere mortal's can use (8mm, 16mm, 35mm) the benefit of perhaps making an answer print off the original camera negative for the purpose of showing your movie, where it's downright cool to watch personally, doesn't offer your audience anything unique really.  

So what's the difference? Well think about it from an optics and loss standpoint.

If you print film to another piece of film, even a contact print, you lose quite a bit of resolution first. So if your 35mm negative is 4k, your answer print is 2k. Now you have to project that print, which is another loss. In the end, you probably have 1000 lines on the screen, even with the best 35mm answer printing. Sure, the grain will be softer and it will be a more pure color science, but you lose so much in the process, it seems hardly worth it, even for 35mm. Nolan gets away with it because he shoots large format and when you're dealing with a negative 5x larger than 35mm, the losses in printing/projecting, aren't quite as great. Plus, the IMAX projection system is higher resolution then a standard ol 35mm projector due to how the film is pushed onto a piece of flat glass when it's illuminated by the lamp source, which is also way more even. Even 5 perf 70mm was a huge jump forward in on screen brightness, but it struggles with a lot of the same issues 35mm does. 

With digital finish, your film is scanned at high res (hopefully greater than 4k) into the computer, preserving the entire resolution of the image AND with good digital imagers, the color science to boot. Then you finish your film digitally in even HDR and distribute digitally. If you want a print, you can simply have someone record one out on a Cinevator, which is a 2k machine, but the quality isn't horrible. It's actually crisper than any standard 35mm print and it retains much of the dynamic range in the digital source, something that's hard to do with a photochemical finish. 

 

Where I've been impressed with what Nolan and Tarantino have accomplished in recent years using photochemical timing, I don't think any of that technology is available to the mere mortals. I agree that some parts of Dunkirk and Oppenheimer look pretty good, I don't think the films over-all have a better look than the HDR UHD version I saw at home. Tenet on the other hand, looks stellar on film because from my understanding, they recorded the entire film out. So the IMAX and 5 perf prints, are absolutely flawless. I remember reporting at the time of its release, how damn good the timing was, best I had seen on film in a long time and no way done photochemically, the blacks were too perfect. 

In the end, if your audience is watching on a tablet, phone, laptop or TV, grading photochemically makes no sense. If your audience is watching a film print only and you will never have a digital version, there could be an argument for making a print if you had the cash, but I would STILL do a digital finish for the sheer fact of having more control over the finished results. 

[Robin Phillips]

1 hour ago, Luis Chavarry said:

From your perspective, Have DI’s gotten better to where they are indistinguishable from a photochemically finished film ?

I'd side with Tyler on this one. For 35mm and smaller gauges especially, you're going to have a better experience even if you ultimately do a film out. And its arguably been better for a long time now. 

that being said I love the subtle gate weave on a print and still think that can be easier on the eyes when everything goes 100% right. And yes Im the sort of sociopath that will put a tiny bit of artificial gate weave on a master going to a DCP if they'll let me.

[Luis Chavarry]

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Well, photochemical finishing of an entire film today, even a short film, is very expensive and time consuming. Plus, when you're dealing with formats us mere mortal's can use (8mm, 16mm, 35mm) the benefit of perhaps making an answer print off the original camera negative for the purpose of showing your movie, where it's downright cool to watch personally, doesn't offer your audience anything unique really.  

So what's the difference? Well think about it from an optics and loss standpoint.

If you print film to another piece of film, even a contact print, you lose quite a bit of resolution first. So if your 35mm negative is 4k, your answer print is 2k. Now you have to project that print, which is another loss. In the end, you probably have 1000 lines on the screen, even with the best 35mm answer printing. Sure, the grain will be softer and it will be a more pure color science, but you lose so much in the process, it seems hardly worth it, even for 35mm. Nolan gets away with it because he shoots large format and when you're dealing with a negative 5x larger than 35mm, the losses in printing/projecting, aren't quite as great. Plus, the IMAX projection system is higher resolution then a standard ol 35mm projector due to how the film is pushed onto a piece of flat glass when it's illuminated by the lamp source, which is also way more even. Even 5 perf 70mm was a huge jump forward in on screen brightness, but it struggles with a lot of the same issues 35mm does. 

With digital finish, your film is scanned at high res (hopefully greater than 4k) into the computer, preserving the entire resolution of the image AND with good digital imagers, the color science to boot. Then you finish your film digitally in even HDR and distribute digitally. If you want a print, you can simply have someone record one out on a Cinevator, which is a 2k machine, but the quality isn't horrible. It's actually crisper than any standard 35mm print and it retains much of the dynamic range in the digital source, something that's hard to do with a photochemical finish. 

 

Where I've been impressed with what Nolan and Tarantino have accomplished in recent years using photochemical timing, I don't think any of that technology is available to the mere mortals. I agree that some parts of Dunkirk and Oppenheimer look pretty good, I don't think the films over-all have a better look than the HDR UHD version I saw at home. Tenet on the other hand, looks stellar on film because from my understanding, they recorded the entire film out. So the IMAX and 5 perf prints, are absolutely flawless. I remember reporting at the time of its release, how damn good the timing was, best I had seen on film in a long time and no way done photochemically, the blacks were too perfect. 

In the end, if your audience is watching on a tablet, phone, laptop or TV, grading photochemically makes no sense. If your audience is watching a film print only and you will never have a digital version, there could be an argument for making a print if you had the cash, but I would STILL do a digital finish for the sheer fact of having more control over the finished results. 

Based on what you said, do colors have better saturation, contrast when it’s photochemically finished ? If their isn’t much of a difference why didn’t Nolan didn’t Nolan Do a DI for interstellar in your opinion and all prints would have come from the negative ? Sorry for asking so many questions, you are very knowledgeable on this and I would like to keep learning. 

[Jon O'Brien]

5 hours ago, Robin Phillips said:

... I love the subtle gate weave on a print and still think that can be easier on the eyes when everything goes 100% right. And yes .. will put a tiny bit of artificial gate weave on a master going to a DCP if they'll let me.

Oooh yes, I agree. Tiny, subtle bit of gate weave is good in my opinion. Gives an unconscious feeling of freedom to the image. I'm not kidding. If film doesn't move just a bit, a tiny bit, in the gate, in my opinion something doesn't look quite right. It's like vibrato in violin playing in my opinion ... none at all and it sounds tight.

Edited April 24 by Jon O'Brien

[Gautam Valluri]

12 hours ago, Luis Chavarry said:

Thanks for the info, do you know if directors in the early 2000’s who used cgi like Raimi for Spider man/ Peter Jackson for LOTR not release “show prints” for those films so they mask the cgi ? Did they use the N/IP/IN/release print stages to their advantage to cover the cgi ? Or did they make show prints that where closer to the negative no matter the quality of the cgi at the time ? Do directors releases show prints based on the quality of the vfx/cgi in general ?

Can't say for sure. One has to dig into the American Cinematographer Magazine archives to find the specific work flows for these films. I'd reckon the CGI sequences were filmed out onto whatever N or IN they were using back then and then spliced into the OCN (original camera negative)? Perhaps they even used optically printed mattes?

[Gautam Valluri]

4 hours ago, Luis Chavarry said:

Based on what you said, do colors have better saturation, contrast when it’s photochemically finished ?

Not Tyler but I'd like take a shot at this question. Photochemcial prints are dye-based and therefore the colours are subtractive (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black). Digital projection is light based RGB and therefore an additive colour space. This is also the reason that people often complain of "muddy blacks" in digital projection. The dyed, subtractive version of black is considered rich and desirable in general.

This also means that once a celluloid-shot film goes through DI, the subtractive colours are brought into an additive colour space. Of course, the current colour grading tools are very capable of simulating the rich blacks of a photochemical print but eagle-eyed experts can still tell the difference.

[Tyler Purcell]

13 hours ago, Luis Chavarry said:

Based on what you said, do colors have better saturation, contrast when it’s photochemically finished ? If their isn’t much of a difference why didn’t Nolan didn’t Nolan Do a DI for interstellar in your opinion and all prints would have come from the negative ? Sorry for asking so many questions, you are very knowledgeable on this and I would like to keep learning. 

No, color saturation would always be better doing a DI, especially if a good CRT recorder or Arrilaser was used. The DLP systems for recording out like the Cinevator, they can be a bit "meh" on color compared to a CRT recorder or Arrilaser. The big difference with a photochemical finish is the softness and the fact you won't see as much of the film grain. So it winds up being a really soft and beautiful image, more painterly. The silver moving, grain and almost 3D color aspects of film projection, don't change if it was done entirely photochemically or digitally. As I said above, the DI treatment to Tenet was outstanding. 

Nolan does it, to keep the knowledge in existence. Also, to limit what he can do with the color, so people don't go all crazy with it. I also think if you're dealing with large format, you probably want to strike the prints from the negative because it would be probably better quality over all than digital intermediate because the expense of doing a 6k or 8k record out, isn't worth it. Even Nolan can't afford that. So most movies are done in 4k and yea, a 5 perf 70mm or 15P 70mm print, for sure holds more res than that if photochemically finished. 

Interstellar the 35mm scenes were blown up to 15P and the prints were struck from the 15P negative, but the 35mm shots were several generations duplicated, so they looked like crap. Had he done a DI, it would have been a lot better. Dunkirk suffered this same problem with the 5 perf shots. I didn't see it as much in Oppenheimer, but Tenet was perfect due to the film being entirely done DI, there was no difference between the 5P blown up shots to 15P, they looked the same. The 15P shots would be reduction printed to 5P and the prints would be struck off the 5P negative. They didn't make many prints, so it's not like this destroyed the negative. I'm certain the 8k master they made from the camera negative, was done WAY before they even made the prints. 

[Tyler Purcell]

8 hours ago, Gautam Valluri said:

Of course, the current colour grading tools are very capable of simulating the rich blacks of a photochemical print but eagle-eyed experts can still tell the difference.

Yea, a DI to film output has FAR better blacks, night and day. You can actually record out REAL black, which you can't actually do on a photochemical finish. We've done several record outs, right from my the very computer I'm typing this on to you and I've been blown away how much black detail I can achieve. 

So why can't you get blacks black? Because it's risky. You could easily lose them. So most people don't try to get them that deep. Different projection lamp brightnesses and throws, can irreparably hurt the black level. Just watch any movie from the 70's to the late 90's and you'll see they light the blacks very carefully to make sure you can see detail. Even a classic like Taxi Driver, which on BluRay has deep rich blacks with detail, is missing a lot of detail on film in areas they didn't light. Amazing what they actually caught on film, the digital presentation is stellar. 

Edited April 24 by Tyler Purcell

[Luis Chavarry]

4 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

No, color saturation would always be better doing a DI, especially if a good CRT recorder or Arrilaser was used. The DLP systems for recording out like the Cinevator, they can be a bit "meh" on color compared to a CRT recorder or Arrilaser. The big difference with a photochemical finish is the softness and the fact you won't see as much of the film grain. So it winds up being a really soft and beautiful image, more painterly. The silver moving, grain and almost 3D color aspects of film projection, don't change if it was done entirely photochemically or digitally. As I said above, the DI treatment to Tenet was outstanding. 

Nolan does it, to keep the knowledge in existence. Also, to limit what he can do with the color, so people don't go all crazy with it. I also think if you're dealing with large format, you probably want to strike the prints from the negative because it would be probably better quality over all than digital intermediate because the expense of doing a 6k or 8k record out, isn't worth it. Even Nolan can't afford that. So most movies are done in 4k and yea, a 5 perf 70mm or 15P 70mm print, for sure holds more res than that if photochemically finished. 

Interstellar the 35mm scenes were blown up to 15P and the prints were struck from the 15P negative, but the 35mm shots were several generations duplicated, so they looked like crap. Had he done a DI, it would have been a lot better. Dunkirk suffered this same problem with the 5 perf shots. I didn't see it as much in Oppenheimer, but Tenet was perfect due to the film being entirely done DI, there was no difference between the 5P blown up shots to 15P, they looked the same. The 15P shots would be reduction printed to 5P and the prints would be struck off the 5P negative. They didn't make many prints, so it's not like this destroyed the negative. I'm certain the 8k master they made from the camera negative, was done WAY before they even made the prints. 

I see, Thanks for the info, this very interesting/informative, so just to understand,  a DI finish printed back to film has more consistency in terms of color overall than a photochemically finished film ? Do you think Nolan should start doing DI’s moving forward instead of a photochemical finish to have more consistent colors like he did in Tenet ? But at the expense of losing resolution ? 

Edited April 24 by Luis Chavarry

[Tyler Purcell]

On 4/24/2024 at 2:11 PM, Luis Chavarry said:

I see, Thanks for the info, this very interesting/informative, so just to understand,  a DI finish printed back to film has more consistency in terms of color overall than a photochemically finished film ? Do you think Nolan should start doing DI’s moving forward instead of a photochemical finish to have more consistent colors like he did in Tenet ? But at the expense of losing resolution ? 

Yes, it will have way more consistency due to the excess control. You have 3 primary color adjustments on a normal photochemical printing system, that's it. You can't do any fine tune adjustments AND to even see the changes, you really have to make an answer print. You can get close with the two tools (color master and filters on a projector) but you don't know until you print it. So what if one shot in a given reel is meh? Do you move on or do you start all over again and make another answer print? Even Nolan, moves on. 

Nolan and Hoyte do complete DI's and then try to get the film to mimic their work from the DI suite. At Fotokem, they have a dual projection system which can show both the digital version AND the film version (usually 35mm, which is what they use to cut costs on timing and dailies for IMAX workflow) on top of one another. So they can do side by side comparisons between the digital color and the film color. This is how the film color comes out so good. It's in my view, the only "modern" way to make it happen. 

I will say for the record, if photochemical color were to have some sort of comeback, I have been white papering an idea of an OLED powered optical printer which uses the OLED light source to do pin-point accurate color changes on film. Tho, there are lots of hurtles like OLED density and of course some light wavelength issues, I think with proper software implementation, one COULD create a crossover template which could apply directly to the OLED panel and grade certain sections of a given shot differently, which would vastly alter the way photochemical printing is done. Is it worth it? Meh... I don't think at this point anyone cares sadly. The development cost would be exorbitant for a dying tech. It's a shame, but as I said earlier, doing this the photochemical way, is just not really worth it, even if you nail the colors.

With 5 perf and 15 perf, I don't think you really notice the loss, if you strike the prints from the original camera negative. With narrower gauge formats like 35mm and 16mm, yea... they are a lot softer when you print. I have some very nice one light contact prints made from 16mm and 35mm negatives which are awesome to watch, but they are all very soft compared to the source scanned properly in 4k.

If Nolan didn't use DI on Oppenheimer, (which evidently he didn't) then I don't see him transitioning over to it unless Fotokem says enough is enough and basically pulls the plug. Even Nolan's "can do no wrong, endless budgets" can't compete with Fotokem putting their foot down. IMAX relies on them for any optical/photochemical work as well, they only do scanning and recording in-house. So if Fotokem says no, which they will soon enough, then it's all over.

As a side note, we have hit the end of recording via CRT recorders. So unless someone comes up with a solution that's similar resolution and quality, we may see the end of high quality DI's as well. It could be why Nolan isn't doing full DI's, he doesn't want to waste the poor CRT recorder tubes. Once those are gone, those machines are worthless and the entire industry will have a hard reset on who can do what. OLED may offer the solution in the future, but currently pixel density is not quite high enough. So LCD and DLP are the two major techs being used, along with Arri's Arri Laser, which is ONLY for Internegative 35mm stock and can't be used with anything else unfortunately.  For negative it's LCD and for print stock it's DLP. I for one am preying we have a breakthrough on the OLED display tech, where we can get 8k displays with extremely high pixel density. ASUS just announced one at NAB, so let's see how it trickles down from there. I'd love to build a machine. 

[Gautam Valluri]

On 4/28/2024 at 9:23 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

I have been white papering an idea of an OLED powered optical printer which uses the OLED light source to do pin-point accurate color changes on film.

This would be amazing and I hope you'll get it done. At our artist-run lab, L'Abominable, we've modded our Matipo contact printer to use a LED light source and basically eliminated the need to use physical colour filters while doing photochemical timing. Of course, the kinds of films we make here are purely experimental. We're not aiming for industry standard colour accuracy but this system has been working really well for us for the past few years and has helped save costs for artists working with lean budgets.

 

On 4/28/2024 at 9:23 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

I think with proper software implementation, one COULD create a crossover template which could apply directly to the OLED panel and grade certain sections of a given shot differently, which would vastly alter the way photochemical printing is done.

So basically power windows in photochemical timing? That would be revolutionary stuff if it can be done! I imagine the OLED source has to be very close to the film frame on the negative? To prevent any light spills?

[Chris Worner]

On 4/28/2024 at 5:23 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

As a side note, we have hit the end of recording via CRT recorders. So unless someone comes up with a solution that's similar resolution and quality, we may see the end of high quality DI's as well. It could be why Nolan isn't doing full DI's, he doesn't want to waste the poor CRT recorder tubes. Once those are gone, those machines are worthless and the entire industry will have a hard reset on who can do what.

Not necessarily, you just have to find somebody who is passionate enough to invest the time and money into either reverse engineering the Celco tubes or starting from scratch, custom CRTs are still manufactured in the states so it could be done.

Edited yesterday at 01:25 PM by Chris Worner