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35mm post


jijhh

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i'm really intent on getting a print made for my senior thesis film which i'm shooting in a month and a half. we are most likely shooting anamorphic, which would mean a negative cut. i've put in quotes at a few places, but haven't heard much back at all yet.

 

could somone fill me in as to the total cost of negative cutting? just something to give me a ballpark idea. i realize this is based on the number of cuts, but my film is 20 minutes long. its not an action film and im not bela tarr so you can assume a fairly average number of cuts (if that exists).

 

also, where could i get an idea of print shipping costs? that's something else i'd have to worry about on a student budget...

 

i'm really just trying to figure out the practicality of making a print for a student film. just about everyone at NYU has tried to dissuade me, but i think a print would do this film (and the format) so much justice...

 

PS sorry to cross post, but i thought it might be geared better for here, and i couldn't figure out how to remove the other...

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I shot a 35mm short (not anamorphic) intended for optical printing.

 

I highly recommend talking to Jean Fee at Alpha Cine. They are a great lab for student work. They give student discounts are have great customer service. She can shepherd you through the process.

 

They don't cut negatives there, but they have a relationship with a few cutters in the pacific northwest.

 

If you don't have a lot of opticals it can be cheaper solution then scaning and recording. However get you budget square and get all of the money together b/c it's easy to run out of cash doing optical printing.

 

Also make sure and budget for a low-con print for HD transfer(HDCAM 29.97) as many festival will not screen shorts on 35mm (some only screen from 35mm).

 

Almost everything I shot as a student was done through Alpha Cine, they are good folks who do a good job and will take time to help film students out.

 

good luck,

 

je

Edited by Jason Eitelbach
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Just be sure of terms here- "optical printing" is expensive and not the same as contact printing, which is what I think Andrew may be refering to here. The cheapest way to get a 35mm print is to contact print from the cut negative. That is one of the interesting things about 35mm anamorphic, a contact print is all you need to get the beautiful wide image using all that film real estate. I recently helped shoot some film tests in anamorphic, they had a workprint made and projected at the lab's theater-- wow. Really knocks your socks off, especially when I'm used to seeing my stuff on a dinky 40" flat screen. I encourage you to go for it if you can-- you only get to do a senior thesis once, after all.

 

Bruce Taylor

www.Indi35.com (I just happen to rent 35mm anamorphic and 2 perf Techniscope gear)

 

P.S. Jason, congrats on your Western. Post some of it if you can.

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i believe you're right bruce. we are just figuring out the costs of getting a print after having our negative cut. is it just a matter of making 2 or 3 contact prints until we are happy with the color? then we're good to go?

 

too bad they don't teach much about analog post these days, or i'd be having a much easier time figuring this out...

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is it just a matter of making 2 or 3 contact prints until we are happy with the color?
The lab should be giving you a price for an answer print. You will notice that this is a lot dearer than release prints - because what you pay for is the grading up to the point where the colour is right.

 

With a good grader (timer) and a good brief from yourself (and well-shot material) that should be the first print. If that is clearly uneven or inadequate, then the lab will correct it and do another print. If you change your mind when you see a print, then the lab will do another print but you will have to pay for it.

 

And you only get the prints you pay for. If a print is rejected for any reason (ie colour is unacceptable, or there's a fade in the wrong place, or it's too dirty) you don't get to take that print away. If it's rejectable, it's rejectable.

 

PS the term "optical printing" is misleading. It refers to using a step optical printer to print effects, dissolves, titles etc "optically" not digitally. However, it's different from "contact printing" (which is also optical not digital but doesn't use optics such as lenses). Contact printing is the fast and inexpensive way of putting an image onto print film.

 

It wasn't at all confusing until digital came along :blink:

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The lab should be giving you a price for an answer print. You will notice that this is a lot dearer than release prints - because what you pay for is the grading up to the point where the colour is right.

 

With a good grader (timer) and a good brief from yourself (and well-shot material) that should be the first print. If that is clearly uneven or inadequate, then the lab will correct it and do another print. If you change your mind when you see a print, then the lab will do another print but you will have to pay for it.

 

And you only get the prints you pay for. If a print is rejected for any reason (ie colour is unacceptable, or there's a fade in the wrong place, or it's too dirty) you don't get to take that print away. If it's rejectable, it's rejectable.

 

PS the term "optical printing" is misleading. It refers to using a step optical printer to print effects, dissolves, titles etc "optically" not digitally. However, it's different from "contact printing" (which is also optical not digital but doesn't use optics such as lenses). Contact printing is the fast and inexpensive way of putting an image onto print film.

 

It wasn't at all confusing until digital came along :blink:

 

Sorry, guys. Does anyone could tell me what results if I will direct-to-print from HD final digital version of my movie into 35 mm AGFA color positive motion picture. I get few reel of this kind of motion picture as donation from AGFA and I intent to use for printing from HD digital to 35 mm. What about AGFA positive motion picture? ThanK YOU.

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one last question. are there different types of lens alignments for an anamorphic setup? do i need to make sure it is centered a certain way to allow us to contact print, leaving room for a soundtrack to be put on?

 

a

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Sorry, guys. Does anyone could tell me what results if I will direct-to-print from HD final digital version of my movie into 35 mm AGFA color positive motion picture. I get few reel of this kind of motion picture as donation from AGFA and I intent to use for printing from HD digital to 35 mm. What about AGFA positive motion picture? ThanK YOU.

You really should deal with a professional HD to Film transfer house, as this is not only difficult to do, it is incredibly difficult to do with any sort of quality. Honestly, this is not something for the DIY'er. The filmstock is not the right sort for transfer work, for one. You need to make a negative and a print first. Next you'd need a kinescope camera *and* synchronized TV for it, and I have not seen any Kinescopes set up for HD work available. Otherwise you would need a Laser Print Head such as out of a Fuji Fronteer minilab, which costs many tens of thousands. I don't mean to sound all gloom and doom on your idea, but it is incredibly impractical.

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i'm really intent on getting a print made for my senior thesis film which i'm shooting in a month and a half. we are most likely shooting anamorphic, which would mean a negative cut. i've put in quotes at a few places, but haven't heard much back at all yet.

 

In NYC there's Noelle Penraat who I've used and is very good -- are JG Films still in the DuArt bldg ? There's another one there too. I think Noelle Penraat has moved downtown ---

 

Are you using DuArt ? (does NYU still have a deal with DuArt ?) Or Postworks/The Lab ?

 

-Sam

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In NYC there's Noelle Penraat who I've used and is very good -- are JG Films still in the DuArt bldg ? There's another one there too. I think Noelle Penraat has moved downtown ---

 

Are you using DuArt ? (does NYU still have a deal with DuArt ?) Or Postworks/The Lab ?

 

-Sam

 

I couldn't get a hold of Noelle Penraat, and according to a few phone calls I made, JG is going out of business. Not 100% on that though, might have been misinformed.

 

We plan on working with Stan Sztaba (pending his schedule). I think the company name he works under is called World Cinevision Services Inc. He seems to have done a lot of good work and was really friendly to our project.

 

We aren't totally sure about post just yet. We are most likely going to let Duart handle most of it, but we have a single ten-second splitscreen effects shot, which we will probably scan/conform/laser out at Postworks.

 

I know there are some deals that I've gotten there, but I'm not sure if they are just student discounts or NYU exclusive...

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one last question. are there different types of lens alignments for an anamorphic setup? do i need to make sure it is centered a certain way to allow us to contact print, leaving room for a soundtrack to be put on?

Whether you shoot anamorphic or spherical/flat, the lens mount on your camera is positioned to centre on the Academy frame - i.e. leaving room for the optical soundtrack on one side. (It's different for super-35.)

 

When a contact print is made, the mask in the printer exposes the correct width of the projectable image, cutting off about a tenth of an inch on one side of the image where the optical soundtrack will be placed. That is normally printed from a separate sound negative onto the print stock on the same printer at the same time.

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one last question. are there different types of lens alignments for an anamorphic setup? do i need to make sure it is centered a certain way to allow us to contact print, leaving room for a soundtrack to be put on?

 

a

 

Dominic you just beat me to it! But here's what I was writing anyway...

 

Any adjustments related to the lenses themselves should be done at the rental house (and you should test all of them). They physically center the same as academy aperture. The anamorphic gate should be installed, and it should conform to standard specs (size, position of aperture), and you should be good to go. The Russian cameras I have take about 10 minutes to set for anamorphic: swap the gate, viewfinder and pop on an anamorphic lens-- you're ready to go.

 

Good luck. I love shooting 'Scope!

 

Bruce Taylor

www.Indi35.com

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Also make sure and budget for a low-con print for HD transfer(HDCAM 29.97) as many festival will not screen shorts on 35mm (some only screen from 35mm).

 

Is there a reason you need to do this instead of transferring from the negative directly? Is it because the the negative has been cut and spliced together that prevents it from going through telecine? Please forgive the ignorance of my question as I have not the gone through the negative cutting process (the shoots were either too low budget or they just wanted scan everything and make a digital master).

 

If you could transfer the negative, it would save you the cost of an extra print and give you more choices with grading for your digital master. Or is there a certain advantage having all of your colors set in the low con print and then doing an overall contrast adjust in telecine so the video version will match the look of your release print. Like I said before, I haven't had an opportunity yet to work in this manner, so I am curious about this process.

 

Thank you

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We make a lowcon print rather than transfer the neg so that the film print and video version look the same.

 

It's far more expensive to spend all that time making answer prints etc and then spend a bunch of time in a supervised HD suite matching it up at $400 an hour.

 

hope that helps,

 

je

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Is there a reason you need to do this instead of transferring from the negative directly? Is it because the the negative has been cut and spliced together that prevents it from going through telecine? ...

 

If you could transfer the negative, it would save you the cost of an extra print and give you more choices with grading for your digital master. Or is there a certain advantage having all of your colors set in the low con print and then doing an overall contrast adjust in telecine so the video version will match the look of your release print.

The lo-con print is a bizarre antique. It pre-dates telecine, back to the days when a film chain was a projector and a TV camera.

 

Projection contrast prints have a net gamma of about 1.4, the higher than unity contrast is needed to compensate for stray light in the theater. Lo-con isn't really all that low, it's supposed to be 1.0. Today, we telecine mostly from negative or interpositive, gamma about 0.65. Depending on how it's printed, the lo-con can paint you into a corner on shoulder or toe detail.

 

You can telecine from a cut negative, but you have to talk to the telecine house first. Some machines can handle it, others make a little bump and lose focus for a frame or two at the splices. The IP won't have splices, and it'll be timed. That saves a little time in telecine, you don't have to spin the balls as far. But the dynamic range of TV is more limited that that of film, so you can't just hang a reel and push go. The main advantage of the IP is that you can use it to print internegatives. Theatrical features always have IP's anyway, and they're a better source for telecine than a lo-con, so lo-con's are more money for less quality. That's why they're hardly ever made any more.

 

We had an MOW back in 1989 on which the producers insisted on a lo-con. It was considered obsolete even back then, and the whole thing was no damn fun at all.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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IIRC, "Murder She Wrote" was the last TV show to use the process of transferring Lo-Con's instead of the neg. They weren't the only one when they started in the '80s, but they were the last one when they went off in '96.

 

Transferring from negs became standard in the mid to late '80s.

 

Movies, due to the high value of the negative, were using lo-cons or IPs almost exclusively until DIs became prevalent. I'd say only optically-finished films are transferring from prints now.

 

Hope that tidbit helps.

 

I personally love the look of transferred prints and "Murder She Wrote" as a whole better than scanned negs. They're more "filmic" looking, whereas scanned negs tend to look more clinical to me.

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Transferring from negs became standard in the mid to late '80s.

But just to be clear, this is transferring from original camera rolls, for TV material (commercials, TV drama etc).

 

It's never been good practice to transfer from a final cut negative, for the reasons that John gave. Although in the 80s there was a lab in London that set up two telecines to transfer final cut material from 16mm A& B roll negatives - so the grader/timer/colorist could correct shot by shot in the correct sequence.

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