HELP! Fogging advice!

Dan Salzmann · August 9, 2004

Hello,

I just got back from a very low budget out of town shoot and the AC just confessed that when he loaded a mag he accidently opened the feed side for "just a second". We were in relatively subdued sunlight, shooting 7218 which was tightly spooled on the core.

He also said that after this he shot off 2ft with the feed side cover on to advance the film that was in and near the gate.

The project is destined for TC and there won't be a print made.

There is no possibility of a re-shoot.

Is there a chance that this will mean just edge fog outside the image area or is it most likely that all on that roll will be unuseable?

I can't sleep because of this.

Thanks to all that answer.

Dan

David Mullen ASC · August 9, 2004

Sounds bad but who knows, you may get lucky. I once had a loader tell me he flashed a roll when opening a mag on the camera truck, but after warning me, I didn't see anything in dailies anyway, so the producer never found out. It was only one shot anyway, a short load.

But you're talking about a 500 ASA stock in a mag opened up outside... I'm guessing the best you can hope for was that the fogging stays close to one side and you can zoom in and reframe in the telecine to eliminate it.

John Pytlak RIP · August 10, 2004

Definitely worth processing the roll. If you are lucky, the worst you will see is some edgefog that doesn't get into the image area. But it may interfere with reading the KeyKode barcode. And even if the very edge of the image is slightly fogged, you can zoom in a bit during the transfer.

A tightly wound roll of color negative is pretty good in not letting much light "pipe" through the base, as the rem-jet quickly absorbs the light trying to go through from the edge of the roll.

Bob Hayes · August 10, 2004

I was shooting 100 ASA film with a NPR. I was loading under a shady lunch tent in the Bahamas. When I pulled the tape off the mag the lid flew off and up into the air a couple of feet. In one split second I looked down, saw the exposed film, caught the lid in my right hand and slammed it down perfectly in place. The film was usable and fogged just to the inside of the perf. A slight reframe corrected the problem. Whew!

Leon Rodriguez · August 16, 2004

Dan,

I had the same thing happen to me with a novice AC exposing the mag for a moment. (He didn't tell me until after the shoot-Arggghhh). I was sweating bullets but fortunately I only had a bit of edgefog and we cropped it out in the Avid. With any luck ... Get some sleep.

Phil Rhodes · August 16, 2004

Shudder!

Adam Frisch FSF · August 16, 2004

Worry, but don't over-worry. This could very well turn out to be just fine just like the guys here say. A tightly wound film roll isn't that easy to penetrate as one would think.

An AC I worked with on a music video some years ago took the mag out of the tent and we both immediatlety realised the lid wasn't closed properly. It was bright sunshine. I informed the

director, but there's was no time/money to do it again. We didn't see a thing in telecine the day after.

Also, even IF the light has hit the image area, it can still be saved in Inferno or any kind

of an advanced image processing program by bringing down the overexposed area. You'd be surprised what can be achieved. Not cheap, though.

Dan Salzmann · August 18, 2004

Well I just got back from the telecine. Sho 'nuff, there was edge fog but luckily we were able to zoom in and save it. Thanks to all for the support on this one.

John Pytlak RIP · August 18, 2004

Glad it all worked out! :) It's almost always worth processing the fogged roll. But if you know an accident happened, always best to reshoot then and there, just in case you are less lucky.