Replicating the photochemical characteristics of older Eastman stocks using modern film: a comprehensive questionnaire. (5248) (5250)

[Owen A. Davies]

I shoot with expired film quite a lot. As a matter of fact, I would say that it's my go to. My favorite stock I've ever shot with is hands down Kodak EXR 5245 50D. I have lately realized, however, that there are a few realities about shooting on expired that I need to come to terms with quickly. It’s unreliable, it’s in short supply, it’s going extinct, and no professional production wants their investment shot on expired film. I need to move on, but frankly, I have always had a visual distaste for VISION3. 

I want to further pursue something I've only ever experimented with but never fully committed to in the past: emulating the photochemical characteristics of older Eastman fine grain film stocks by experimenting with exposure, density, and processing using modern Kodak film. For reference, I most often shoot on 2-Perf Techniscope with the original line of Basuch & Lomb Baltar lenses dated at the 1940s. The two Eastmancolor stocks I am most interested in trying to emulate are ECN 5248 25T (1952-1959) and ECN 5250 50T (1959-1962).

About a year ago I did a short experiment on 35mm with Baltar lenses where I shot a few short reels of footage on VISION3 500T using ND filters in direct sunlight outside and had them exposed and processed in different ways. I then had them scanned in 12-bit HDR and brought them into DaVinci to level out all the footage and see how my end products differed. The four types of footage I got were underexposed one stop and developed at box speed, underexposed two stops and developed at box speed, exposed at box speed and underdeveloped one stop, and exposed at box speed and underdeveloped two stops. After leveling out all my footage in Resolve, I was extremely disappointed in the results. Once normalized with HDR tools in DaVinci, all the underdeveloped footage looked nearly identical to a standard exposure and development. And the underexposed footage just had crushed blacks with very little discernable differences other than that. I considered it a failed endeavor and steered clear of these kinds of experiments again after that. 

Top visual inspirations:

5248:

• Rear Window (1954)
• The Ten Commandments (1956) 
• Vertigo (1958)
• Ben-Hur (1959)
• Rio Bravo (1959)

5250:

• Spartacus (1960)
• The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• West Side Story (1961)
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) 

Assuming that the 4k and 1080p blu-rays of the previous film were scanned from the negatives themselves and not the print, I will take it that what I've seen is a quality representation of the stocks in question. 

My eyes often roll when people talk about footage looking "vintage" "old" or "film-like". Mostly because this could refer to over a dozen different visual aspects in one's footage, and what invokes the feeling of "filmlike" to one person may differ from another. For the sake of this experiment let’s ignore aspects such as lens choice, format size, granularity, lighting contrast, production design, and (for the most part) color scheme. Let’s instead talk about the photochemical qualities of the negative itself. I mostly associate the Eastmancolor look from the mid 50s to the early 60s with neutral to muted highlights, rich and deep blacks, with the density and dynamic range that was available with those stocks at the time. 

I'm young and an amateur in this field, so I don't understand film on a more in-depth level like so many others hear. But firstly, I'm curious to know what the distinction between film density and dynamic range is, cause I can't quite make heads or tails of it. I am hoping someone with lots of (or any) experience with celluloid, the photochemical process, and the visual evolution of film over the decades can chime and and possibly steer my ventures in the right direction. 

THE 2383 QUESTION:

Small update. During my writing of this post a friend of mine found an interesting video and vimeo and shared it with me. He suggested it as a possibility for me to shoot with 2383 in camera with lots of sunlight and that if developed using ECN-2 and given a simple color correction, the end result may be something close to what I am after. It is difficult for me to discern whether what I like so much about this clip is due to the 2383 stock or if it is just the hard tungsten lighting. I don’t currently have the time or funds to properly run a test myself but I’m putting some consideration into shooting some footage with 2383 in camera rated at 6 ASA in the cloudless sunlight and having it cross-processed using ECN-2. I can get a good 12-bit HDR scan and see if what I’m left with retains the photochemical qualities I have in mind. This clip does remind me very much of the 5250 stock—more so than most other emulations of vintage film do. But as I said, it could just be the hard tungsten lighting. I'm not certain. 

 

 

[Owen A. Davies]

And yes, I hate Ektachrome. Cause I'm sure the topic of reversal film will come up at some point in this discussion lol. 

[Tyler Purcell]

Watch The Love Witch by our forum member David Mullen. 

Shot on modern negative, but has a very old school look. 

Personally, I feel the look you're after (and many others like you) is mostly; art direction, lensing, filters and lighting. Where it's true, modern stock doesn't have the same color representation or contrast as the older stocks, nobody is going to watch your film on film anyway. Any digital grade would be able to tweak the colors to look a certain way. You can build a look in Resolve very easily and simply apply it once you've achieved the look in camera. 

Remember, all the films you're referencing had lots of light. So much more light than you could ever imagine, it's not even funny. Daylight scenes outdoors with 5 arc lights pointing directly at the cast. Bet if you lit that way even on digital, it would look very similarly to the films your referencing. 

[Owen A. Davies]

 

22 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Watch The Love Witch by our forum member David Mullen. 

Shot on modern negative, but has a very old school look. 

Personally, I feel the look you're after (and many others like you) is mostly; art direction, lensing, filters and lighting. Where it's true, modern stock doesn't have the same color representation or contrast as the older stocks, nobody is going to watch your film on film anyway. Any digital grade would be able to tweak the colors to look a certain way. You can build a look in Resolve very easily and simply apply it once you've achieved the look in camera. 

Remember, all the films you're referencing had lots of light. So much more light than you could ever imagine, it's not even funny. Daylight scenes outdoors with 5 arc lights pointing directly at the cast. Bet if you lit that way even on digital, it would look very similarly to the films your referencing. 

Yep, I've seen Love Witch, and I'm well aware of David Mullen's contributions on this sub. It's certainly a great piece and was able to achieve what many here are constantly trying to emulate. His work and knowledge on this subject is not lost on me.

But it doesn't require a budget, a lighting setup, and a hefty production design to meet the standard either. the screenshot below belongs to Webster Colcord, but he provided me the RAW footage where I gave it a simple color grade out of a strong blue tungsten balance to what you see below. It's 2-perf, shot with the original Baltars, and on VISION2 200T 5217. 

I think a lot of it is to due to both the strong direct sunlight and the lens choices. I've got a higher quality compilation of the footage stored somewhere on my laptop, but it is probably my favorite footage of anything I've ever graded in DaVinci, and it isn't cause of the color. I especially love the way that white building complex and the hills behind it in the mist were rendered. 

What I'm trying to say is that there's a visual quality to the way film can render lights, shadows, image, and detail that I have found in all my experience in Resolve just cannot be replicated through a digital medium (as I'm sure you already know). Even if what I'm looking for cannot be achieved without a great amount of care into the lighting and production design, I'm sure there is a way to get a few steps closer through the photochemical process alone. 

Edited May 26 by Owen A. Davies
Clarity and detail

[Joerg Polzfusz]

On vimeo/YouTube/whatever, there should be samples of Vision3 after push-/pull-/cross-processing and even after processing in C41 (plus remjet-removal). Maybe one of this gives you the wanted results? (For C41, you could also simply search for scanned CineStill-negatives on Flickr.)

Other than this, it’s the amount of light used on the set (see Tyler‘s answer), the scene lengths and the soundtrack. (Simply add a monophonic, optical soundtrack to a video shot in UHD on your smartphone - and everyone will tell you that it’s a scene from the 60s. Or add a fresh 5.1 soundtrack to a movie from the 60s and edit it to a faster pace - and everyone will assume that it’s a current production.)

 

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Owen A. Davies said:

the screenshot below belongs to Webster Colcord, but he provided me the RAW footage where I gave it a simple color grade out of a strong blue tungsten balance to what you see below. It's 2-perf, shot with the original Baltars, and on VISION2 200T 5217.

That shot does not look like it was captured in the 1950's at all. Appears like a "look" applied to modern stock. No shot in anything from the 1950's would ever look like that. The shot would be a model and it would be lit with arc's. They wouldn't waste their time shooting a real ship and have that harsh shadow. Too expensive to light properly. 

I think you're more obsessed with the slight color tint, rather than what actually makes the "look" of the movies you described. 

[David Mullen ASC]

The older color negative stocks were softer and grainier for their speed than modern stocks, and had less dynamic range. And the print stocks of the day didn't help in that regard.

To some degree, pushing something like 200T one-stop (maybe without underexposing it) would help get closer to the look if combined with softer lenses.  But the problem with replicating 1950's film stocks is that you have no accurate references -- these negatives have either faded a lot, particularly the yellow dye layer (blues), or you're seeing something made from a YCM separation that preserved the color but often at the expense of more contrast and grain. Recent digital restorations have gotten closer, sometimes by combining the cyan and magenta layers from a scan of the original negative with the yellow layer (blue) coming from one of the YCMs.

But many blu-rays are transfers using older interpositives, etc.

At some point, it's more about creating the feeling of these old stocks rather than a technical recreation of them.

[David Mullen ASC]

You could look at something like this blu-ray transfer of "Written on the Wind" (1956) for example. Probably not a scan of the original negative. Despite being shot on 25 ASA stock (5248), it's not super fine-grained for example, and not super sharp either -- despite being shot under full sunlight.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here is a shot from dailies for "The Love Witch" -- in this case 250D instead of 200T because I couldn't gel the daylight windows. Zeiss Super Speeds (so a bit sharper than the Cookes and Baltars of the 50's and 60's) but with some diffusion on the lens (a light net combined with a 1/8 Classic Soft filter.)

[Owen A. Davies]

56 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

The older color negative stocks were softer and grainier for their speed than modern stocks, and had less dynamic range. And the print stocks of the day didn't help in that regard.

To some degree, pushing something like 200T one-stop (maybe without underexposing it) would help get closer to the look if combined with softer lenses.  But the problem with replicating 1950's film stocks is that you have no accurate references -- these negatives have either faded a lot, particularly the yellow dye layer (blues), or you're seeing something made from a YCM separation that preserved the color but often at the expense of more contrast and grain. Recent digital restorations have gotten closer, sometimes by combining the cyan and magenta layers from a scan of the original negative with the yellow layer (blue) coming from one of the YCMs.

But many blu-rays are transfers using older interpositives, etc.

At some point, it's more about creating the feeling of these old stocks rather than a technical recreation of them.

Thank you for the input David. I was hoping you’d respond. I don’t know if you skimmed over the section I wrote on the 2383 film, but do you put any stock in that idea, or do you believe much of what can be seen in that short clip is due to the tungsten studio lighting? I don’t know how much knowledge you have regarding 2383’s latitude and application as camera film. 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I have no serious advice to give, alas. But, if you'll allow me, I'll think aloud. So, the modern Kodak stocks are really really good, but they don't give the same, super rich look as some of the older stocks can give. Two of my favourite films in terms of image quality are Blade Runner (5247) and Eyes Wide Shut (5298).

I wonder what it would look like to print 5219 onto 5203? So instead of printing to 2383, print to a camera negative. You will maybe get too much contrast, so the 5203 to which you are printing can be 'overexposed' by a stop, then pulled. I have no idea how this will look.

Or, print 5219 onto Ektachrome for an IN, then to 2383. Or any irregular combination. Maybe print to Gold 200?

[Jon O'Brien]

On 5/27/2024 at 10:46 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

Here is a shot from dailies for "The Love Witch" -- in this case 250D instead of 200T because I couldn't gel the daylight windows. Zeiss Super Speeds (so a bit sharper than the Cookes and Baltars of the 50's and 60's) but with some diffusion on the lens (a light net combined with a 1/8 Classic Soft filter.)

Lighting and general 'look' reminds me of the Ascot race scenes from My Fair Lady (1964). Beautiful.

 

18 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

..they don't give the same, super rich look as some of the older stocks can give. Two of my favourite films in terms of image quality are Blade Runner (5247) ....

Agreed. Also from a little bit earlier, Alien (1979) has a fantastic look.

[Jon O'Brien]

... from back in the days when the medium itself was a huge contribution to the feeling a movie created in the audience. Many don't realise that digital filming gives you the literal facts (definition etc) of the scene but very little added beauty. What do I mean by added beauty? It's something hard to define, but impressionist painters had the knack ... Somehow making the bland look kind of magical, and a bit more special, in a way .....

[Jon O'Brien]

... which is one of the ways that emotion is conveyed in art. In my humble opinion the beauty of the image itself is very important. The image you see has got to be worth paying money for and sitting down and watching. Even with a great story it's still got to look captivating somehow, with a bit of magic.

Edited May 28 by Jon O'Brien

[Karim D. Ghantous]

4 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

... from back in the days when the medium itself was a huge contribution to the feeling a movie created in the audience. Many don't realise that digital filming gives you the literal facts (definition etc) of the scene but very little added beauty. What do I mean by added beauty? It's something hard to define, but impressionist painters had the knack ... Somehow making the bland look kind of magical, and a bit more special, in a way .....

And it wasn't obvious or literal. There was no excessive or literal grading. It was the medium, allowed to be itself. 

[Geffen Avraham]

On 5/26/2024 at 11:14 AM, Owen A. Davies said:

And yes, I hate Ektachrome. Cause I'm sure the topic of reversal film will come up at some point in this discussion lol. 

I find Ektachrome quite beautiful personally.

[David Mullen ASC]

On 5/26/2024 at 9:20 PM, Owen A. Davies said:

Thank you for the input David. I was hoping you’d respond. I don’t know if you skimmed over the section I wrote on the 2383 film, but do you put any stock in that idea, or do you believe much of what can be seen in that short clip is due to the tungsten studio lighting? I don’t know how much knowledge you have regarding 2383’s latitude and application as camera film. 

I think suggestions like using reversal or dupe stock or print stock as camera negative are too extreme to match color negative film of the 50's, unless you're trying to create some sort of degraded-over-time effect, like a transfer from an old print or something that got duped badly. It would be simpler to just push slower-speed camera negative stock a stop to reduce some dynamic range and add contrast, and then play with it in post. After that, it's really about lenses, filters, lighting, production design -- matching the general aesthetic values of people of the past in what they considered "proper" cinematography.

That's the problem with creating the look of these old movies, it's all tied up in what we saw -- an old print (fading to magenta), a new print of an old negative (with yellow dye fade), a digital restoration from the negative, from YCMs, or a mix, from old IP, did we see it projected in 35mm, digitally (2K, 4K, laser, etc.), on blu-ray, etc.  Too many variables.

[Gautam Valluri]

On 5/26/2024 at 7:46 PM, Owen A. Davies said:

THE 2383 QUESTION:

Small update. During my writing of this post a friend of mine found an interesting video and vimeo and shared it with me. He suggested it as a possibility for me to shoot with 2383 in camera with lots of sunlight and that if developed using ECN-2 and given a simple color correction, the end result may be something close to what I am after. It is difficult for me to discern whether what I like so much about this clip is due to the 2383 stock or if it is just the hard tungsten lighting. I don’t currently have the time or funds to properly run a test myself but I’m putting some consideration into shooting some footage with 2383 in camera rated at 6 ASA in the cloudless sunlight and having it cross-processed using ECN-2. I can get a good 12-bit HDR scan and see if what I’m left with retains the photochemical qualities I have in mind. This clip does remind me very much of the 5250 stock—more so than most other emulations of vintage film do. But as I said, it could just be the hard tungsten lighting. I'm not certain. 

 

 

This test was done in my lab. We get up to a lot of experimentation here.

The look your are seeking will probably need a classical style of lighting with hard tungsten sources.

I would try daylight filming 200T + 85 filter (rated maybe at 50ASA), pushing it a couple of stops and then contact printing it onto 2383 and scanning the positive image. You could do this even with your 2-perf camera as you will only be scanning the 2383 positive. My hypothesis is that the generational loss from contact printing onto the much finer grained 2383 will perhaps reduce the lattitude of the 200T neg and give you that "photochemical dyes" colour palette.

[Owen A. Davies]

On 5/30/2024 at 5:01 AM, Gautam Valluri said:

This test was done in my lab. We get up to a lot of experimentation here.

The look your are seeking will probably need a classical style of lighting with hard tungsten sources.

I would try daylight filming 200T + 85 filter (rated maybe at 50ASA), pushing it a couple of stops and then contact printing it onto 2383 and scanning the positive image. You could do this even with your 2-perf camera as you will only be scanning the 2383 positive. My hypothesis is that the generational loss from contact printing onto the much finer grained 2383 will perhaps reduce the lattitude of the 200T neg and give you that "photochemical dyes" colour palette.

I think that the info provided in this thread has really yielded me a lot of clarity regarding what exactly it is it is I am after and how exactly I can go about getting it. And I also think that you get the image I have in mind best. A lot of reading I have done this week has led me to conclude that the photochemical look I am after is best achieved photochemically. It is going to be my goal going forward to learn as much as I can and get as much hands-on experience as possible with contact printing, color timing, and dye transfers. I have spent the weekend watching a good number of scans put out by MONO NO AWARE of fully timed color work prints uploaded to their channel and have compiled a brief compilation of some of their work that I think best brushes up with the photochemical look I have been after. Take a quick browse at the footage I have compiled if you have any interest. I think they're pretty close to what I am looking for. 

https://vimeo.com/showcase/11194075

My idea, for now, is to shoot something on VISION3 with my Baltars in 2-perf 35mm, underexpose it by a stop and a half, overdevelop it by two stops, and then have a fully timed color work print contact printed onto Kodak 3383 and scan the resulting reel. I would love to see the resulting image from doing the opposite of a blow-up and having 2-perf 35mm printed onto what is essentially a Super 16 image area. I don't know your level of experience regarding color timing and contact printing, but it is something I intend to seriously pursue going forward. Because at the time of writing this, I am not all too sure what specific aspects of the print film are manipulated by the timing process. Is it just the color of the print, or is it the color, hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, and density? Is there a way that I can do a manual grade myself whilst color timing, or is my resulting image entirely dependent on the skill and creative tendencies of the person who is manually operating the printer themselves? Do I even want to have my footage color timed when printing onto 3383, or would it be better to just have my negative printed with neutral to balanced colors and then color grade my scan from there in DaVinci? What even is 2383/3383's latitude? The point I am making is that I am currently entering a whole new world with this printing thing and I have got a lot to learn for certain. I am hoping that a potential connection with MONO NO AWARE or some other lab that does printing, timing, and dyeing this summer could change that for me a little bit. 

[Gautam Valluri]

2 hours ago, Owen A. Davies said:

I don't know your level of experience regarding color timing and contact printing, but it is something I intend to seriously pursue going forward. Because at the time of writing this, I am not all too sure what specific aspects of the print film are manipulated by the timing process. Is it just the color of the print, or is it the color, hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, and density? Is there a way that I can do a manual grade myself whilst color timing, or is my resulting image entirely dependent on the skill and creative tendencies of the person who is manually operating the printer themselves?

The first thing you have to understand is that photochemical timing works in the subtractive colour space (CMYK) and digital colour grading takes place in additive colour space (RGB et al). In a contact printer, you are basically playing with how much light you're letting through your image negative and onto the positive at a first level and various colour filtrations in a second level.

When I made my first contact prints on the Matipo, we used to make an exposure/ filter band (which is basically a 35mm shaped carboard strip) by punching holes of various diameters (for controlling exposure) and then manually pasting colour filters on to the holes. It was also kind of freakishly counter-intuitive as the print film sees the colours as "opposites". So to take out Cyan from your image, you need to paste a cyan filter on your filter band. You make the filter band in order of various sequences in your image negative and then you make a tiny "notch" on the perf-side of your neg (crazy I know) to trigger the next filter in the band to enter the contact printer.

But of course these Matipos were 1950s tech and labs now have much more advanced ways to do the colour timing. There's some material and manuals on various kinds of contact printers on the filmlabs website:

https://www.filmlabs.org/technical-section/film-printing/

Ultimately, you have to prepare yourself to doing at least 3-4 passes in colour timing to get everything right. To save time and costs, we at L'Abominable do a "bande courte" where we take about 120 frames of each sequence from our final negative (or frames that closely resemble the shots) and put together into a smaller cut negative and colour time it. For my 10-minutes films, I usually ended up with a "bande courte" roll of about 2 minutes that I would contact print several times with various changes to get to the final filter combination, which I will then use on my final edited negative. I'm sure MONO NO AWARE have their own method of going about this. One must adapt to their lab in this case.

Good luck, enjoy the process and share your results with us!

[Gautam Valluri]

Oh and also Dirk Dejonghe had posted on these forums about his work on Aki Kaurismaki's films. I believe he did The Other Side of Hope photochemically first and then colour graded the DCP to match the print's colours. I believe for Fallen Leaves he colour-graded the film digitally first but keeping strictly to only the parameters that are possible in photochemical timing (no power windows for example). Both films have exquisite colours, I highly recommend you do a search for these posts.

[Owen A. Davies]

On 6/1/2024 at 3:40 PM, Gautam Valluri said:

The first thing you have to understand is that photochemical timing works in the subtractive colour space (CMYK) and digital colour grading takes place in additive colour space (RGB et al). In a contact printer, you are basically playing with how much light you're letting through your image negative and onto the positive at a first level and various colour filtrations in a second level.

When I made my first contact prints on the Matipo, we used to make an exposure/ filter band (which is basically a 35mm shaped carboard strip) by punching holes of various diameters (for controlling exposure) and then manually pasting colour filters on to the holes. It was also kind of freakishly counter-intuitive as the print film sees the colours as "opposites". So to take out Cyan from your image, you need to paste a cyan filter on your filter band. You make the filter band in order of various sequences in your image negative and then you make a tiny "notch" on the perf-side of your neg (crazy I know) to trigger the next filter in the band to enter the contact printer.

But of course these Matipos were 1950s tech and labs now have much more advanced ways to do the colour timing. There's some material and manuals on various kinds of contact printers on the filmlabs website:

https://www.filmlabs.org/technical-section/film-printing/

Ultimately, you have to prepare yourself to doing at least 3-4 passes in colour timing to get everything right. To save time and costs, we at L'Abominable do a "bande courte" where we take about 120 frames of each sequence from our final negative (or frames that closely resemble the shots) and put together into a smaller cut negative and colour time it. For my 10-minutes films, I usually ended up with a "bande courte" roll of about 2 minutes that I would contact print several times with various changes to get to the final filter combination, which I will then use on my final edited negative. I'm sure MONO NO AWARE have their own method of going about this. One must adapt to their lab in this case.

Good luck, enjoy the process and share your results with us!

When contact printing onto 3383, does the film that you're printing with HAVE to be a negative, or could I print a positive--or even another print--onto 3383?

[David Mullen ASC]

You can expose whatever you want to 3383 (16mm) but it was designed to create a projection contrast positive from a negative or dupe negative that has an orange color mask.

So if you exposed a positive 3383 print image onto it, you'd get a high-contrast negative image with no orange color mask. You could print that again to 3383 to reverse it back to a positive image but then it would be very high in contrast, probably with some off colors.

Film copying is always a negative to positive to negative, etc. process unless there is reversal film & processing involved.

You also have to factor in that contact printing is usually emulsion-side to emulsion-side. 

[Owen A. Davies]

On 6/7/2024 at 8:24 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

You can expose whatever you want to 3383 (16mm) but it was designed to create a projection contrast positive from a negative or dupe negative that has an orange color mask.

So if you exposed a positive 3383 print image onto it, you'd get a high-contrast negative image with no orange color mask. You could print that again to 3383 to reverse it back to a positive image but then it would be very high in contrast, probably with some off colors.

Film copying is always a negative to positive to negative, etc. process unless there is reversal film & processing involved.

You also have to factor in that contact printing is usually emulsion-side to emulsion-side. 

I am aware that often in the 35mm photographic printing process, when the negative in question was too thin to yield a normal contrast print, the operator would use special contrast filters in the printing process as a substitute for what would have essentially been done by having the film pushed. Some people have even told me that certain photographers preferred this method over pushing the film, as whilst the high contrast printing method would not recover the shadow details from a thinner negative, it would in fact yield the desired contrast ratio for a print without the exaggeration in grain, color shift, and loss of resolution found in push processing. 

Do you know of a similar "high contrast printing" method which could be applied to printing motion picture negatives to 2/3383? I think printing something onto 3383 and then printing it an extra two times for an increase of its visual effect is a bit to costly and tedious to peak my interest. 

[David Mullen ASC]

FCP color processing of motion picture print stock is very automated / standardized, it's not really designed to be manipulated but maybe a small lab would be willing to try.

I'm not sure why you are so against pushing the negative but want to push around the print stock... Anyway, Fotokem once had a demo of a high-contrast print image created I think by using a color print as an interpositive (still requiring a dupe negative be made for printing.)  I could be mistaken.

I still think all of these ideas are going far beyond recreating the look of 1950s/1960s color negative stocks -- they weren't THAT weird in color and contrast...  Plus all of this is just to get a 16mm contact print that you can project? There's no need for a digital master, no D.I., you're going to A-B roll cut the negative, etc.?  Because as soon as you have the option of digitally color-correcting the image, then changing saturation and contrast is relatively simple.