Pull Processing - first attempt

[andrewbuchanan]

I've processed quite a bit of film, but all of it has been standard processing. I just shot a music video and I have a good bit of control over the look. I want to play with things a bit this time. I shot a little over a one stop over-exposure in mostly bright sun with either straw or choclate #1 filters. I did this with a pull one process in mind. I'm just wondering if there is anything that will be irreversible if I process this way? Trying to leave what I know is safe, and start doing what I know will look good.

[Greg Gross]

I'm just a newbie student cinematographer but a long time professional

photographer. I'm not sure that you understand pulling process,forgive me

if I'm wrong. When you pull you overexpose the film(use a lower ASA).

Then with processing you underdevelop the film. Now here's a problem you

will run in to. Most of today's negative films are developed with automated

processing and this process does not allow you to make adjustments. Act-

ually pushing is a more widely accepted way. Pushing involves underexposing

the film(higher ASA setting) and then overdeveloping to compensate. Now I'm

speaking about "negative" film here. The main reason for pushing film is to

achieve good results in low light shooting. If you are going to push I would

speak with lab who's doing the processing. They should be able to vary pro-

cessing times to achieve acceptable results. Are you doing your own dark room

work? Dipping? Dunking? I have no experience with straw or choclate filters.

 

Greg Gross

[Wendell_Greene]

Once you request on the lab report for special processes like PULL or PUSH on your negative and they develop it according to what you're instructions you can't go back and reverse it. Pulling tightens grain and lowers contrast and softens colors. And since you're finishing in telecine you can add contrast, adjust colors and if needed add more grain in the transfer.

 

Was this S-16 or 35mm? Which stock were you using and how did you rate it with the 1 stop pull in mind and also compensating for the filter factors?

[John Pytlak RIP]

If you used a push or pull process, you can't change the image on the film after processing, but may be able to correct somewhat during transfer.

 

If you used a silver retention process, the film can be rebleached and fixed to remove the silver, but if you underexposed assuming a silver retention process, you will be left with the underexposure.

 

Since these process manipulations and/or reprocessing are extra services, plan well to avoid unnecessary cost.

[andrewbuchanan]

Thanks for the responses guys...

 

Greg -

 

I understand your perspective, butI went on the Kodak site and they disagree. I'm using 7274 200T and want to minimize the grain as far as I can. I've looked into the tech aspects of the stock and Kodak says it will handle the push fine. I am finishing in telecine so adding contrast or color adjustment will not be a problem - I just wanted to try something new. I wish I was doing my own processing, but I'm still payin' for it.

 

Wendell -

 

I was using a 3 stop over-exposure for my 85 + Choco 1 + over exposure, which I hope will give me some nice shallow depth in daylight. It was a little wierd - okay frightning to go that far beyond what my meter was saying, but the director was very cool.

 

I know that I can't go back and change, I'm just wondering if there is anything like a "blow-out" where info would be lost that could not be regained in my NLE. Probably not, but I'm trying to reassure myself.

[John Pytlak RIP]

A push process does increase grain and contrast somewhat. The Kodak color negative stocks generally handle push-1 very well, meaning the grain increase is not large, and the contrast increases without much color mismatch.

[Annie Wengenroth]

Changing the subject a little... I've got some Fuji 250T which already tends to be grainy by default. (Or at least that's what I've heard and also noticed in the 100' test I shot last year) Anyway, has anybody ever pushed 2 on this stock? What does it look like? A co-worker and I have a short end of 200' and some money burning holes in our pockets. So we are planning to try all sorts of things with this stock just for the heck of it. We know a guy who works at the local processing/telecine lab so we've got a little help here. B)

[David Mullen ASC]

Some of Chris Doyle's work was shot on 35mm F-250T pushed a couple of stops, like "Fallen Angels". As you'd expect, it gets more contrasty and grainy.

[Felipe Perez-Burchard]

Anyway, has anybody ever pushed 2 on this stock?  Fuji 250

 

in my experience, green shadows... and more GRAIN, but maybe it was something else...

 

-felipe.

Edited January 7, 2005 by felipe

[Greg Gross]

In my experience pushing is the proper technique to use. 1-stop I think would

be the limit but if you were shooting at night maybe 2-stops would give you an

acceptable look you could use(some grain though). I never said pushing should

not be used,in my realm of experience negative film should not be pulled. Re-

versal films gain their density from camera exposure. Forced processing of re-

versal film that has been underexposed can bring up its projection density.Some

reversal films can be pushed as much as 3-stops but there will be some loss in

quality. Maybe you would want to push 3-stops in an emergency situation.Can

you please post as to why Kodak would suggest pulling negative film? Maybe

this is related to cinematography as I have not heard of it. I never pull process

with negative film in stills photgraphy, I push process. I always shoot reversal

film right on(expose for highlights)and depending on nature of scene I will al-

ways bracket. If you are not sure how to expose reversal film then always br-

acket when shooting stills. Can you please post as to why you would want to

pull your film?

 

Greg Gross

[Greg Gross]

felipe,

You can push it 2 stops, it may be acceptable to you for the look you want.

There is going to be some grain you can count on that. 1-stop push is ideal.

Are you familiar with testing film? As in 50' of negative film that has been

processed, densities determined,optimum black determined. Making sure

your film will show blacks properly exposed. There is absolutely nothing

wrong with seeing what your film will do. However it does cost money to do

this. Be creative! I never hear anybody on this forum talking about modifying

light.

 

Greg Gross

[Greg Gross]

Okay I see value of pulling with telecine process in mind.

This is new concept to me. Of course I have no problem

with grain in still photography.

 

Greg Gross

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't know if there is real value in pull-processing with telecine in mind -- normal negative tends to have enough information anyway and you can create a pastel look in color-correction.

 

It's for normal printing and projection where overexposing and pull-processing have some advantages in lowering graininess and contrast, and softening colors a little.

 

Coppola's "Dracula" was shot before 200 ASA Kodak stock was available so it was shot on 500 ASA stock overexposed and pull-processed.

 

Roger Deakins shot all of the Gulf War flashback scenes in "Courage Under Fire" overexposed and pull-processed something like 2-stops for a pastel low-con look (for the earlier scenes in "Beautiful Mind" he used low-con Fuji F-400T instead, flashed with yellow light, instead of pull-processing.)

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Annie, why would you shoot an already-grainy 250 and push two as oppposed to shooting '18 and pushing one?

 

Phil

[andrewbuchanan]

Thanks for the responses all...

 

Why did I shoot with pull process in mind? I don't have a particular reason, I just had the opportunity to play (again, the director is a really cool fellow) and I wanted to do somthing different. I felt obligated to take advantage of the circumstances and try something new.

 

The winter here is pretty colorless (gray with a little bit of green thrown in) and we were doing a country music video for some young guys - kind of neuvo country (don't laugh, it pays). The song was definitely calling for bright colors, but without a insane amount of lights - I had to make daylight work for me. SO, I got a bunch of warmish filters. Tobacco, Straw, and Chocolate mostly with an armload of Tiffen sunsets and other warm graduated filters. Also, we found some 7274 200T at a very reasonable price (I would rather have used something from the EXR series, but it was less than half price). When I was reading the tech info on this stock I noticed the words "noticable improvement in grain" beside the pull processing info. The last music video I did was with 7218 - and while I liked the color and low contrast, the grain was a little larger than what I was expecting. Finally, I also read that the pull tends to yellow or warm the color slightly. I thought this would fit in with the scheme of trying to color things a bit.

 

I'll let you know how it goes, maybe I'll post some footage when I get it back.

[Annie Wengenroth]

Well we're actually going to try it both ways for comparison. For a music video shoot I'm doing in the spring, we're thinking about going for a VERY grainy look in some parts of it and we might use 250T, so this series of tests is more for reference than anything else. Then we're going to overexpose and pull one, seeing how much we can take down the grain. I think it will be interesting to see how many different looks we can come up with using just one stock. What can I say, this is what I do in my spare time...granted if I hadn't gotten the film for nothing I probably would be a lot more stingy about it!

 

Edit: this was in reply to Phil's post by the way.

 

Andrew, I'd be interested to see how your film turns out as well.

Edited January 7, 2005 by SpikeyAnnie

[Phil Rhodes]

I was gonna say, you have very expensive hobbies!

[andrewbuchanan]

UPDATE... intentional 1 stop pull processing...

 

Looks like everything worked. I thought everything would be fine, but there's always that little voice in your head saying... "you f*&@!d it up and it's going to going to look like hell when it comes back from the lab". I didn't realize that pulling wasn't all that common. I guess the big question is does it look different enough to justfy the extra expense? I'm will not be able to see the film until tomorrow or possibly over the weekend, but the producer is very happy with the look. I post some grabs as soon as I can.

[Justin Hayward]

A couple of weeks ago we were shooting something on one camera and we brought in another for some coverage. Somehow we overexposed a stop or a stop and a half on the latter (mitchel-fomer, arri- latter), but not the MC (5218).

 

At the transfer in the morning, I was able to see bringing the processed film down 1 stop or so (in the telecine) next to a properly exposed negative. (I?ve actually done it plenty before, but I never paid much attention. I just fix it and moved on.)

 

Maybe it was just too early for me to comprehend anything, but it seemed better overexposed and brought down in telecine than what we properly exposed. I watched them later (on a standard monitor) and I still thought the overexposed (slightly and brought down), looked better than the better exposed. It just looked? richer or sharper? or something (the colorist put the lost contrast back in). I kind of liked it.

[andrewbuchanan]

As promised, here are a couple of stills from the "pulled" footage (or at least I think - I haven't posted shots here before, but I am trying). These are from miniDV unfortunately, as I do not have access to the digibeta at the moment. SO, there is more noise that the digibeta footage.

 

I'm pretty happy with the results, but honestly - having looked at some of my other footage in 7274, they don't really look that much different. After reading the Kodak material, I thought the grain would look very different and the color would have a slightly strange cast - but it looks pretty normal (maybe slightly warmer than usual). The filters were Chocolate 1 and a straw 1 and a Warming Pola on the one with the 2 trucks.

 

Will I intentionally pull-process again? Probably not. I don't really see any benefit on telecine stuff, but who knows what the future will bring. BUT for the moment, I'd say stick to straight processing, because there just isn't that much difference.

 

By the way, the contrast corrected digibeta look A LOT better than these stills - I just wanted to show some straight material to anyone who was interested.

 

 

Looks like Dave Mullen was right... again.

Edited January 25, 2005 by andrewbuchanan

[andrewbuchanan]

Still having some trouble, I have them up soon.

[Austin Schmidt]

Justin, what you experienced in telecine is not technically what pull-processing is. Pulling occurs while the negative is being developed. It is actually developed for a shorter amount of time. This is different then bringing down the negative in telecine after developement. By overexposing in telecine you will find that contrast is increased as the highlights that are overexposed can not be manipulated as much because it is in the digital medium at that point and the detail is already lost. By doing it through the lab process you will find an image with less contrast as the shadows are exposed and then brought down however some of the detail will still remain and the highlights that are overexposed are manageable because it is still in the film medium. (I'm not saying one is better then the other, just that they are technically different) I believe pull processing is a wonderful way to obtain a low contrast and soft image (the color looks more desaturated because of the decrease in contrast) using any type of stock prior to the Vision2 '29 (although '79 is a personal favorite). This was very beneficial when a faster stock was needed with lower contrast. I also found it is another way to get a slight bloom/softer edge to overexposed areas. David mentioned some great film examples using this process; another I would like to mention being Requiem for a Dream for most of the beginning. Is there no real reason to use it with telecine in mind? I think that is a personal preference but I tend to believe it is best to create a look in camera rather then rely on post, especially when other people will have the capability to change that look without your approval. A definate forewarning to pull-processing is to make sure whatever lab you choose is capable or even aware of the process. After shooting a short in Prague, the lab (I believe it might have been Barandov) informed me they had never heard of pulling but were familiar with other labs having pushed -1. In other words they refered to pushing in negative or postive stops. They also said they had never done this process and told me it was a silly and a pointless step. In the end, they agreed to pull half a stop (to them push -.5 stop) and the rest was brought down in telecine via Justin's experience. However, the image was still a little too contrasty then the original intention.

[Dominic Case]

Barandov informed me they had never heard of pulling but were familiar with other labs having pushed -1.

Quite probably this is just a language gap rather than a technical competence gap. Did you discuss this in your language or theirs? I know a lot of people who don't use the term "push" either, preferring "forced processing".

 

The original purpose of push/forced processing was an attempt to increase the apparent speed of the film - in the days when you had little or no choice of film stocks, and nothing over 100 ASA. In that context, I would agree that there is little point on pull-processing: far simpler to stick on an ND filter, or close down a stop.

 

Besides, most processing machines are built to run at a certain speed. It is easy to slow them down, and there in no harm in the extra stop, bleach, fix and wash times that you get along with the extra developing time. But it's not always possible to run a machine very much faster without buring out motors or damaging the film, nor is it Ok to reduce the time in the other solutions below their normal. The alternatives are to relace the machine bypassing some of the developer (not always possible) or dropping the developer temperature (takes a long time of lost productivity).

 

There is no doubt that there are subtle differences to be obatined from a combination of particular exposure and processing combinations. But every time Kodak announces a new generation of emulsions, they claim they are more resistant to process variation than before. So I guess that if you are looking for a special "look" as a result of pull or push processing (rather than just trying to change the speed rating of the stock), you won't get as much difference as you would have done many years ago.