S16 optical blowup

[J Costantini]

Hi

 

I'm about to shoot a S16mm shortfilm and I'd like to have part of the material with the skip-bleach look.

The thing is that this film will probably be transfered to 35mm using an optical process.

 

my question is how could this material react when transferred? The bleach-by-pass parts I mean...

 

As far as i'm concerned the grain on the S16mm negative would be bigger on the 35mm negative so I believe that these parts could look too grainy and dirty on the 35mm print.

 

I COULD develop it normally and bleach-by-pass develop the internegative... i've seen some tests they look nice.

 

The issue is: we are not sure if this film will ever be blown-up to 35... it could finish on video and I would like the material to have the skipbleach look.

 

What should I do? Should I skipbleach on the s16 original negative? How possibly would this picture look when optically transfered to 35?

 

Just to let you know: I will be underexposing the negative 2 stops during shooting.

 

Thanks!

[David Mullen ASC]

You can't have everything... I'd either live with the way skip-bleached Super-16 neg looks when blown-up and also have it in the video transfer... OR do it in the 35mm IN and live with it not being in the video version (if the blow-up is never done) and just simulating it in the telecine transfer.

 

Since you can underexpose the S16 neg when skip-bleaching it (although I'd underexpose by one stop, not two) you can use slow-speed stock to mitigate the graininess. Some people even pull-process rather than underexpose.

 

But no guts, no glory... I'd go for the skip-bleach -- it's never going to be subtle anyway.

[Dominic Case]

It is normal and preferable for the blow-up dupe negative to be one-piece, unspliced. (Better for release prints, as there are no splices to jump or fall apart, and no grading corrections).

 

If you want just part of the film to have a bleach-bypass look, you would therefore have to run those sections separately, and assemble the dupe negative, with the disadvantages mentioned above.

 

However, the graininess will be exaggerated when you blow up bleach bypassed 16mm. If you blow-up to 35mm IP in the first stage of dupliction, then the silver grains will be emphasised by the specular light in the blow-up printer. If you make a contact 16mm IP and blow that up to 35mm DN, then the resolution will be slightly worse, and you may become more conscious of the grain structure.

 

But as David says, you can use a finegrained 16mm negative as the bleach bypass process will allow you to underexpose by a stop or two.

 

If you've seen tests of bleachbypassed dupe neg, can't you ask for some bleach bypassed 16mm neg to be blown up so you can see the results of that and make an informed decision?