16mm print�

[Jay Taylor]

Here's what I'm thinking about doing. First, I'd like to make some short films in 16mm. I'd want to have a transfer done for offline editing. Then I'd want to send an edl to (negative cutters?), and have a final print made. I have a couple of questions regarding this workflow.

 

How does color correction work? Can you tell the lab, or whoever makes the final print, to make such adjustments? I'd want to be there obviously to make those decisions. What would this cost?

 

How do you sync sound? Could you sync it in your offline edit, and then just supply the audio from that?

 

And finally, does anyone know of any places in Nashville (or nearby) that would do this, and what would you estimate the cost would be for the transfer, the negative conforming, any color correcting, adding the sound, and the final print?

 

I'm guessing a fortune, but I'm hoping you guys will tell me otherwise!

 

Jay

[David Mullen ASC]

You should read a textbook to answer all of those questions...

 

As far as color-correcting a print, it's called "answer printing". Basically a print is struck from the cut negative and you watch it projected with the timer and describe the changes you want to make, shot-by-shot, in terms of brightness/darkness and color balance (adding/subtracting red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta). Usually takes at least three answer prints to get something you will be happy with.

[Jay Taylor]

You should read a textbook to answer all of those questions...

 

As far as color-correcting a print, it's called "answer printing". Basically a print is struck from the cut negative and you watch it projected with the timer and describe the changes you want to make, shot-by-shot, in terms of brightness/darkness and color balance (adding/subtracting red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta). Usually takes at least three answer prints to get something you will be happy with.

 

 

Answer printing, huh? Sounds good.

 

About the other stuff, is there a textbook that you would recommend?

 

Does anyone know of any labs in Nashville that offer this stuff? There's MPL Media, but I think they only process and transfer film. No prints or anything.

 

Jay

[David Mullen ASC]

You may have to go out-of-state, like to Colorlab in Rockville, MD.

 

The textbook I co-wrote ("Cinematography" Third Edition, by Malkiewicz and Mullen) covers the steps to finishing a 16mm movie in fairly basic terms; there are also books like:

 

"Film Technology in Post Production" by Dominic Case

"The Filmmaker's Handbook" by Ascher and Pincus

 

But I'd also look into some books on sound post, maybe a tutorial on ProTools, which is the most commonly used software for editing sound in the film industry (maybe overkill for you, I don't know.) Probably the sound editing software that is part of the NLE software you are using (Final Cut Pro, for example) may be good enough.

 

Eventually, after you have cut & mixed your soundtracks, you would need to give the lab a digital master ("printmaster") of some sort (DA-88 DAT tapes are common, but these days, people are probably just delivering the sound on a hard drive) that they would use to make an optical negative, in order to print the optical soundtrack on the 16mm print with the picture (called a composite print). Just a warning that 16mm optical sound is not very impressive...

 

Since this is all very complicated, my suggestion would be to design a simple 1 or 2-minute short film with sync sound and multiple tracks that you take all the way through post. Learn all the steps on something as cheap to print as possible. In film school, our first class involved shooting a 100' roll of 16mm (nearly 3 minutes of footage) and cutting this down to a one-minute movie, and have a sync dialogue track and an effects track, and then take it all the way through post.