Grad Student Research - Expired Motion Picture Film Questions

[Ryan Fajet]

Hello!

I’m beginning research for my cinematography graduate thesis project, and would love to gather some insight and wisdom from you all.

Before beginning my education as a cinematographer, I spent a lot of time shooting stills photography on film. This means that I inevitably ran into the occasional roll of expired film. As I’m sure you know, consumer-level stills photography film comes with a printed expiration date on every roll. This, combined (usually) with a reduction in price, means that shooting stills on expired film is and was reasonably accessible to those who may be priced out of burning through rolls of fresh film.

Currently, my film school has a reasonably large stockpile of unexposed, expired motion picture film. However, information and/or guidance on how to expose, load, or generally handle expired motion picture film doesn’t seem to be collected in any one place for convenient access. There’s information everywhere about shooting expired stills film, likely because it’s a more casual-consumer-facing product, but I don’t see any organized guide for the use of expired motion picture film. 

My first question is whether such a guide already exists, and I just haven’t seen it?

My next question is generally whether creation of such a guide is feasible or even useful?

I’m assuming that my film school is not the only with a bunch of expired film kicking around. And I occasionally see tins being sold online for steep discounts. It seems to me that if there was a usable guide published for it, folks who otherwise may not be able to afford motion picture film might have the opportunity to shoot discounted expired film with at least some level of confidence. I'm sure I'm by no means the first to consider all of this, but it's exciting to think that old tins of film might find some new life and motion picture film may be within reach of those with less resources at their disposal.

I’m basing this on plenty of assumptions that I acknowledge may not be totally accurate. I also understand that shrinkage may be a substantial issue, which I know very little about. 

This is an open invitation to you all for any thoughts, experiences, or wisdom.

Thank you for your time. 

[Tyler Purcell]

So Kodak makes film with a 6 month selling window as "fresh". Anything over 6 months in the world of motion picture is considered "expired". A stills guy, may laugh at that because people in the stills world, generally shoot decade old expired film without flinching, this is because the 35mm and large format negatives are so much larger than the vertical like 4 perf 35mm and 16mm, that the excess layer of fog (change in density) doesn't really phase them. Also with stills, the consistency between each image, doesn't really matter quite as much as motion picture. 

Storage is also critical. If the film is stored improperly, at too warm of a temperature for instance, the fog layer will be stronger. You can help reduce the increase of fog by simply freezing the film, but when was it frozen? A year after you got it new? Was it already expired before being frozen? There are just too many variables to build a successful guide in understanding. Each roll of film is unique, especially considering there is no way to exactly tell a rolls age, unlike still film where it's printed on the box. There is no such thing on motion picture, You can get close, maybe within a 2 year window, but you can't figure out anything else, not even Kodak can. 

So in the long run, there is nothing you can do. If you want to shoot old film, the risk is that it won't come out at all, even if you over expose, even if you do everything right. The remjet may be baked on because the film sat in someone's attic, you don't know. People aren't going to be truthful on the internet, so why bother? I know film is expensive, but if it doesn't come out, then you lost more than buying it new. So I always suggest to people, the best way to make sure you actually get results, is to shoot somewhat fresh film. Year old properly stored (frozen) film from a reputable source? Ok go ahead. But most stuff that's cheap on eBay, is junk. Straight 100% garbage. Mostly reversal stocks like VFN or older Ektachrome. None of that is going to work. Even EXR and Vision 1 stocks, I would stay 2 miles away from. Vision 3 stated in 2007 I believe, but only with 500T. So any stock that would be worth shooting today, would at minimal be Vision 3 and they did change the sticker, so you can tell if it's from 2017 or older, just by examining the sticker. 

 

[Mark Dunn]

Another caution is that, while you may be able to buy expired film cheaply, you can't buy expired processing, scanning or editing. You have to pay today's prices for those. So you save a little bit up front for the risk of poor, or no, results.

It may be fine for an artist processing in tanks where faults and flaws are part of the deal. But for a consistent result that someone else may be paying for? Not really.

Edited April 6 by Mark Dunn

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

There are already many different hints online (bracketing,…), spread across various websites in different languages. (I have seen hints in at least English, French and German.) But I haven’t seen a single guide. But that guide would be either too long or pretty much useless. That‘s because older movie film stocks have a lot of different processes: ECN, ECN2, E-6, K11, K12, K14, Agfa Scala, DR-5, Agfa Moviechrome, Agfacolor, Agfacolor Neu, Orwochrom, EM-24 to EM-27, VNF-1, ME-2A, … .

And as stated before: each roll has to be treated differently due to its potentially different storage history.

(BTW: some manufacturers also printed a „process before“-date onto the boxes/cans. Even Kodak did this for certain stocks/years. Now , you will have to call Kodak and tell them the batch number to get the manufacturing date.)

[Robert Houllahan]

Just about any expired film can be used and developed with the caveat that there will be more pain and effort required to use certain stocks.

I would say any old B&W film can be used and processed, a week ago I shot a 16mm roll of 7231 Kodak Plus-X negative that said "use by Aug 1965" ad it came out great. I rated it as 20iso and shot outdoors in bright sunlight.

Old Kodachrome is basically B&W film now but it has RemJet backing and so it needs to have a process where that is removed before the developer.

Old Ektachrome like all the E160 stocks have a softer emulsion and cannot practically be machine processed as color and are a mixed bag for B&W processing.I would not recommend shooting these stocks unless you want to deal with the fuss of getting them to process.

Old color negative can be great or at least not a problem to run in ECN2 or C41 (with backing removal) We ran some 16mm ECN film for a museum that was shot in 1984 and frozen for 38 years and it came out mostly pretty great and scanned fine.

General rule of thumb is to down rate the stock one stop per decade and that works pretty well.

 

[Okto Simaia]

Ah, a subject near and dear to my heart: how to shoot film and be a skinflint! 😛
the following advice is based on working with BW film; some of it may be applicable to color, some not

• You should definitely include benzotriazole (aka "reducer") in your development experiments. It will cut base fog without affecting the rest of the image too much. Many things written about it online, and also features in many older darkroom technique books.
• Develop cold. One of the things that happens to film as it ages is the grain gets bigger. More accurately, the grain clumps more, resulting in what we think of as "grain." Cold development reduces the formation of these clumps.
• Figure out how much you can overexpose to get the image out of the base fog without blocking up the highlights. Still film has the advantage that contrast and density can easily be tuned in the print, so you can get solid prints from even bad negs, but this is exponentially more effort to do with motion picture film. With reversal, you might not be able to get away with almost any over-exposure before you blow the highlights out. It's a look, but isn't always the right one.
• Get a still camera to do initial exposure and development tests. You'll waste less film, you can work with shorter lengths easily, and it's much easier (and more film-efficient) to bracket your exposures. Who wants to fuss with shooting just 40 frames of motion, let alone that much time loading and unloading magazines in the dark, not to mention how much film you'll waste on the head and tail of each clip? Bulk loader and any old 35mm SLR for 35mm, or a Kiev-30 or Mamiya 16 for 16mm. You'll need to load cartridges in a darkroom for the submini still cameras, but I imagine a school that still has piles of expired film stock likely has a darkroom

If you'd like to collaborate on this, I'm happy to help any way I can. I am primarily a stills photographer, but I've got more or less a decade of darkroom experience and access to a very well-equipped darkroom. I'll DM you about it.

Also, here's some info from folks who have been working with super-expired still film:
How I removed base fog from old film stocks - DIY Photography
TRI-X 74 - extremely-expired development experiments | Shaka1277

[Brandon Paterno]

yes if you’re going to be writing about expired motion picture stocks it’s equally as important to be discussing the modes of processing.

Okto’s advice is spot on but i suppose your job would be going through the nuances and finding the best general recommendations

most of these methods would require hand processing to make the cost savings worthwhile, so perhaps in addition to making a catalogue one would be also discussing the effects of making such a sacrifice into a language. because it is extremely unpredictable.!! a few of my peers and I have been hand processing expired films both color and BW and the results have been stunning but also very unpredictable. but it works for us. it would be junk for like anyone else. it’s cheap, and it speaks to a particular materiality. of course any discussion on hand processing brings up further questions of equipment cost! tanks, drying (!!), chemical disposal

one would not shoot a feature with exclusively expired film unless it contributes to what the film is doing as a film!