16mm splicer question

[Charles Brubaker]

I'm producing a 16mm film, expected to finish in late 2014.

For editing, is there a specific 16mm splicer that you would recommend? Let me know what brand for me to keep an eye on. Thanks!

[Alan Duckworth]

The splicer of choice for editing is the CIR - http://www.cir-srl.com/ - several 16mm models. Show up on eBay fairly often, Moviola in Hollywood used to sell them [still may do], the listed dealer is shown as RTI - http://www.rtico.com/contact.html

 

Best of luck with your project,

[Dirk DeJonghe]

These tape splicers are strictly for workprint NOT for negative that is to be printed or scanned. Telecine would be OK with tape splices. We would need some more details on how you want to handle/finish the 16mm film in order to give best advice.

[Charles Brubaker]

Planning to splice the negatives for editing.

[Mark Dunn]

That's a professional job.

One mistake and you've lost the cut. 16mm. usually has to be cut into two rolls interspersed with black leader and cement spliced to avoid partial frames because the frameline is too thin to contain the splice. Look up A/B roll cutting.

Edited September 18, 2013 by Mark Dunn

[Brian Drysdale]

You meed a chemical neg splicer for AB roll, this has a narrower overlap, which only covers the black spacing, so you don't have the splice covering the picture frame. You need a work print for the actual editing process, you'd use the CIR splicer for that stage.

 

Unless you're planning the neg cutting as part of a learning process, I'd leave that to a specialist neg cutter. Chemical splices need a lot of practise to get right and you need to be ultra clean when handling neg.

[Gregg MacPherson]

These tape splicers are strictly for workprint NOT for negative that is to be printed or scanned. Telecine would be OK with tape splices. We would need some more details on how you want to handle/finish the 16mm film in order to give best advice.

 

Dirk,

I understand how you are trying to advise towards good working practices and I don't want to interfere with that, but there might be some interesting questions here.

 

Perhaps some films do not have a clean look, so contact printed tape splices would not be noticed or out of place. The question then I wonder about is whether contact printers generally are ok with the physical tape splice. I asumme it could be spliced both sides. Years ago the lab repaired a couple of broken splices in my A, B neg with tape while doing a wet gate contact printing job, so maybe that aspect of this is OK.

 

Do you know if tape splices will run through most scanners? If one tried it and one was happy with the look, is there some hidden problem that may appear? People used to run tape splices through projectors. I used to review my edit that way on a bigger screen. I did back splice (splice both sides) to make that safer sometimes.

 

If tape splicing a neg for a clean looking film, could one do it with even one frame extra as a handle, assuming that frame wasn't being used somewhere else.

 

The motivation for thinking about the tape splices is that for some experimental or heavily textured looking films where the printed splice may be un-noticed or unimportant, the artist/film maker could enjoy working with the neg himself.

 

Cheers,

Gregg

[Dirk DeJonghe]

Tape splices (double sided) are OK for a limited number of passes in the contact printer wetgate. With more than three passes, the tape will start to stretch and you may have larger jumps at each splice, if even more passes the tape adhesive may become dissolved and the splice may open with possible damaged film.

Scanners and optical printers with pin-registered gates are also problematical, if these printers get out of step with the perforations, they start to make new perforations at random, not usually in the right position.

Workprints that are now 99% polyester are best spliced with tape, if you insist on splicing negative, it would be best to learn cement splices. I recommend the Hammann film cleaver/joiner for good clean splices. Do a couple hundred splices on practice stock beforehand.