Ektachrome 100D cross process

[joaquin del paso]

Hi everyone,

 

i'm a film student in Poland, I've been shooting all the last year with black and white negative and now it's the time for me to shoot in color negative, I am trying to find the correct look for my pictures and tried a lot of tests in most of the negatives that you can get easily in poland, none of them get the look that I want and I thought of shooting with ektachrome 100D and making a cross process. Unfortunately I realized this quite late and I dont have the time to make the proper tests, so I will tell u something about the story and my questions.

 

The story is about a woman that tries to escape her town and accidentally kills her husband, this happens the day of a wedding and everyone is dressed in traditional polish dresses that are full of flowers and colors. The whole action happens inside a the woods, the trees are white and snow is sticking on them and the floor of course is only snow, the idea is to make her to be the only colour accent in the movie. The coloured flowers and the blood.

 

I've shot a lot of cross in the last years and now but never under full control of it and I am wondering how to control it, if I should be extremely concerned about all the exposure details in the shot (and always have them exposed on a certain range, for example like taking care of not having really hot highlights in the picture) or if I can be more open about this effects. Maybe you also have a recomendation into achieving good color control, like overexposing always and bring it down in the positive... I dont know, any kind of tip would be great.

 

thanks a lot!

 

Joaquín del Paso

[Charles MacDonald]

I've shot a lot of cross in the last years and now but never under full control of it and I am wondering how to control it, if I should be extremely concerned about all the exposure details in the shot

 

Cross Processing is using the materials in a way that is different than the designers intent. AS such it is probably somewhere between difficult and impossible to accurately control the effects. Those who use the technique generally get "otherworldly" effects.

 

have you considered a slightly more conventional approach such as using the Fuji VIVID stock?

[joaquin del paso]

Cross Processing is using the materials in a way that is different than the designers intent. AS such it is probably somewhere between difficult and impossible to accurately control the effects. Those who use the technique generally get "otherworldly" effects.

 

have you considered a slightly more conventional approach such as using the Fuji VIVID stock?

 

Thanks for the reply, I got two cans for almost free and now I'm thinking of doing it Reversal and develop it in Germany, maybe that is the "Safest" choice... Do you have any examples of films or sequences shot in reversal film with the E6 process?

 

Joaquin

[Nico Hardy]

Ektachrome 100 run thru E6 has a particular look, offhand I'll say it looks more contrasty, more saturated and "sharper" than negative stock, but not by huge margins.

One thing I do know, unless you've been shooting slides with your stills camera AND using the same light meter as you use for cinematography, make sure you have some way to double check (polaroid? DSLR?) your exposure settings. Chromes have minimal leeway in exposure tolerance. Shooting negative film is a poor way to know if you meter is calibrated to the tolerance needed for reversal. Another way to make sure you get the look you want is to do snip test to see if need to push or pull in the processing. This is common practice when shooting chromes. if the lab is used to run reversal, they should know about this. Just remember to leave some exposed footage at the tail end of the roll.

 

If you decide to cross process, one way to make the effect less dramatic, is to overexpose by 1 1/2 or 2 stops and pull process 1 stop. Tiffen ultra contrast (strong ones like 3-5) also help. This leads to less blocked shadows and less burned out highlights. the rest you can deal with in the positive.

Make the fake blood more red and less burgundy that looks right to the eyes. Xprocess makes reds look darker than they are

 

Hope it helps.