pull process vs. lowering contrast and saturation in TK

[Rob Wilton]

Dear all,

is there a big difference in look between the pull process in development vs. lowering contrast and saturation to suit in the TK - if in both cases youre ending up on tape?

thanks!

Rob Wilton

[Robert Hughes]

My guess is - it depends on the dynamic range of the telecine CCD sensor and preamp circuitry. If the telecine can handle the shadow and highlight detail of your film image you can probably do it either way, but some productions shooting in high contrast situations pull process or use contrast reduction filtering on camera to give the transfer process a greater range of flexibility and a higher chance of success.

Edited July 28, 2007 by Robert Hughes

[Jon Kukla]

What about just using a lower-contrast stock like the Kodak 500T Expression or the Fuji 400T? Surely this is the easiest option because you don't have to worry about the additional costs of forced processing and the stock has more latitude to play around with in post anyway. I don't know the specifics of your project, so there might be a good reason NOT to do this, but given no information otherwise, I'd definitely look into it.

 

The biggest difference in theory should be that the pulled film has less grain, but this may not actually be perceptible by the time it works its way through the video transfer, especially if you've already done a bit of grading on the image, which can introduce noise anyway...

[Paul Bruening]

The old rule still has weight- get a proper exposure and development to get the maximum amount of visual data recorded then goof the rest of it to your liking in post. The more your alter the data on the negative, the less you will get of the film's designed, full spectrum of data. There was a tendency to make radical decisions with the negative to meet artistic objectives back in the all-optical process. These days, with so much artistic power in DI available there is less need of taking chances with the negative. But what the hell do I know? Big-timers are still goofing with their negatives. The whole bleach by-pass fashion still eludes me.

[matt cooke]

Hey Rob! Good to see you here!

If you can do it on the neg then why not? I have some tests somewhere that I shot a couple of years ago with pull process - so give me a call/email if you want to see them and I'll try to hunt them down. I Even did it with some super 8 Vision2 neg - looked great! The real good thing about pulling the neg is that you can get away with using less/no fill light, which can come in useful in small locations...

 

matt

[Charles MacDonald]

Hey Rob! Good to see you here!

If you can do it on the neg then why not?

 

Because of you have a "native" negative, you can always apply another idea later in the process. you can even transfer the same shot two or three ways and look at the different versions in context at an editing meeting. If you have a "baked in" effect and it does not look right to your team down the road, you can't fix it without a re-shoot.

 

The "Pros" may be more tempted because, 1) they get to run a lot of tests and so they can be sure that they will like the look and 2) that way the studio can't change the look for trivial reasons that have notthing to do with the story.