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IN to Release Print Question


Frank Chang

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Just curious to know the process of making release print from internegative.

Do labs make the release print from married/composite internegative?

Or do labs make the release print from two sources?

(i.e. internegative and a separate 35mm reel with soundtrack only)

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So it goes:

 

Cut Negative

Interpositive

Internegative

Release print

 

The Interpositive will be a "composite" of the picture and sound track, married together on the printer. It's during the interpositive process that color changes are applied as well. A few internegatives will be struck from the interpositive in order to make release prints. Quite a few prints can be struck from an internegative before it starts to fall apart. But of course, the best prints are made from a duplicate negative, which is really the highest quality composite source.

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You mean original negative would be the highest quality source for a print -- you make prints either from the original negative or the dupe negative, you don't make prints from an interpositive, that would require some sort of reversal process to go positive to positive.

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You mean original negative would be the highest quality source for a print -- you make prints either from the original negative or the dupe negative, you don't make prints from an interpositive, that would require some sort of reversal process to go positive to positive.

Sorry, yea I was thinking dupe negative.

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That surprises me. I have never heard from a European lab that the projection positives would not receive the soundtrack directly from the original sound negative which has been exposed after a master. We are used to have either the original camera negative or an internegative on the printer along with an original sound negative.

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It used to be that the soundtrack was copied to the duplicate negative, but only for B&W and certainly not in the last fifty years or so. I see this configuration only on very old archive material in B&W from the 1950s or before. Currently all soundtracks are printed from a separate sound negative that can be used with the original negative (if suitable for printing) or from the duplicate negative. Friends in large labs told me they could strike about 2500 prints from one set of duplicate negatives.

A separate sound printer head is used because the exposure of the soundtrack is quite different from the picture. Also, light changes in the picture would do no good in the soundtrack.

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I should have articulated that better I didn't mean to say that IP has sound on it as well (besides as Dirk mentions this archival style) rather the sound is printed after picture lock, before color timing etc, to a separate negative but at the same stage as IP.

Edited by Kenny N Suleimanagich
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The printing machine has two printing heads, one for picture and one for sound. Two negatives are threaded to make one positive print.

 

I assume that doesn't mean three pieces of film are sandwiched together but that there are two heads side by side to expose the image and then the sound as the print stock passes through?

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David, that is correct.

I would like to add that in case of a direct blow-up/reduction on an optical printer, the sound negative is exposed after the image on a separate contact printer, using only the soundhead.

Agfa ST8D was a very good stock, but no longer available and no longer manufactured. Kodak and Orwo have comparable stocks.

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Just pulled out 38 reels that are marked FF35MM I/N B Wind.

 

I assume FF means Full Frame and does this means 1.33 or 1.37 ?

Is it normal for internegative (without married audiotrack) to be full frame at 1.37?

And is it normal for internegative to be full frame at 1.37, but the theater/release print at 1.33?

 

Anyone know what B wind means?

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Sorry. Corrections above. Please ignore the questions above.

 

The questions should be:

 

Just pulled out 38 reels that are marked FF 35MM I/N B Wind.

I assume FF means Full Frame and does this means 1.33 or 1.37 ?

Is it normal for internegative (without married audiotrack) to be full frame at 1.33?

is it normal for internegative to be full frame at 1.33, but the theater/release print at 1.37?

 

Anyone know what B Wind means?

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"Full frame" is a bit vague in this case -- it's not unusual, for example, for cameras to expose 4-perf 35mm Full Aperture (silent) which is 1.33 but the viewfinder is set up to compose the image within the offset smaller 1.37 Academy area or whatever.

 

FF may just mean that the lab didn't do any masking when masking the IN, whether or not the original has a 1.37 Academy hard matte in it or not.

 

Putting a projection mask, a hard matte, whether 1.37 Academy, 1.66, 1.85, etc. into the IN was not the norm... but it wasn't uncommon either. Either way, the projector itself has a physical matte that covers the soundtrack area and crops the image to something from 1.37 to 1.85, etc.

 

Once widescreen cropping to 1.85 became the norm, it can be confusing to look at the original negative or any contact-printed dupes because they can show the full aperture, leaving it to the projector mask to show the correct area - but there may be an image on the 1.33 full aperture silent area even if it was composed to be cropped to the offset 1.85 projection area.

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