S16 TO TECHNISCOPE BLOW UP

[Giorgio Taricco]

Hello guys, I'm shooting some rolls with my A-Minima and I'd like to blow-up to 35mm 2-perforations, what are my options, digital, optical etc... how much quality I will loose and what about cost? Thanks for your advices.

 

Giorgio

[John Rizzo]

Hello Giorgio

 

Curious why you would want to blow up S16 to 2 perf 35mm what result are you trying to achieve?

Weather it could be done optically or digitally it would have to be a custom made set up.

[Chris Burke]

I am assuming that your aspect ratio is 2.39 or there abouts??? If so, why blow up to two perf 35mm? To do anything with that negative, you will have to go through another scan or optical blow up for presentation, decreasing the quality further. If your intent is to have a 35mm print, then you should enlarge S16 to 4 perf 35mm for scope. Digital route would probably be best but, What are the specifics of you project? It seems as if you are going down the wrong path.

[David Mullen ASC]

Blowing up to 35mm 2-perf only makes sense if you have to cut the footage into a 35mm 2-perf negative project which will then be optically blown up to 4-perf 35mm anamorphic and you need a cut negative for archiving, and even then you would be better off blowing up the S16 to 4-perf 35mm anamorphic directly and then cutting it into the 4-perf 35mm anamorphic blow-up from 2-perf. And if you were planning on doing a D.I. to convert to 4-perf 35mm anamorphic then you'd just scan the S16 and combine it with the scan of the 2-perf footage. 2-perf is not a finishing format, it's always used to convert to some projection format, usually 4-perf 35mm anamorphic.

[Giorgio Taricco]

Thanks guys for your helpful answers. It'a just a corto and my idea is to have a 2 perf 35mm negative to project and as David said seems to me that this would be the right choice, why you are so critic about that? Quality loss, cost? Thanks.

 

Giorgio

[David Mullen ASC]

2-perf 35mm isn't a projection format.

[Giorgio Taricco]

I know David, I mean a 35mm 4 perf negative projected anamorphic.

 

Giorgio

[David Mullen ASC]

If your entire project is S16 and you wanted a 35mm print, you'd blow it up to a 4-perf 35mm projection format, usually either matted widescreen (1.85) or anamorphic, aka "scope" (2.40). 2-perf 35mm is a camera negative format only and has to be blown-up to 4-perf 35mm anamorphic in order to make a projection print, so there is no reason to blow-up S16 to 2-perf 35mm and then blow it up again to 4-perf 35mm anamorphic, assuming you can even find a lab that does all of that optical printer work anymore.

 

Film is usually a negative to positive process, so most labs, if you really wanted to go from S16 to 2-perf 35mm to 4-perf 35mm would have to make a number of generations. Like S16 Neg --> S16 IP --> 2-perf 35mm IN --> 4-perf 35mm IP --> 4-perf 35mm IN --> 4-perf 35mm print. Each dupe element, if feature-length, can cost $10,000 and each optical printing step might cost $15,000 so for a feature, that would add up. Not that a D.I. instead is cheap but the quality of the final printing negative would be higher than going through all of these dupes, and you'd have a digital master as well as a film master for prints.

[Dirk DeJonghe]

If you shoot S16 with spherical lenses, we would first do a S35 Interpositive Blow-Up. From this we can squeeze the image to be anamorphic going to the Duplicate negative stage. Then contact prints with optical soundtrack can be made. We haven't done this in the last ten years, but the equipment and the people are still there.

 

Another way is to use anamorphic lenses on the camera and do a direct blow-up (only for small number of prints, after conforming the negative).

[Tyler Purcell]

Hello guys, I'm shooting some rolls with my A-Minima and I'd like to blow-up to 35mm 2-perforations, what are my options, digital, optical etc... how much quality I will loose and what about cost? Thanks for your advices.

When you say "some rolls" I assume it's only for a test.

 

As pointed out above, you will do a blow up to 4 perf 35mm and it's expensive, very very very expensive.

 

It's far less money to scan your Super 16 negative at 4k and do a laser out to film after color correction. It will be a crisper image and retain much of the super 16 detail that goes missing with the optical blow up process. Plus you have a lot more control in the DI suite to cleanup the S16 image.

[David Mullen ASC]

If you shoot S16 with spherical lenses, we would first do a S35 Interpositive Blow-Up. From this we can squeeze the image to be anamorphic going to the Duplicate negative stage. Then contact prints with optical soundtrack can be made. We haven't done this in the last ten years, but the equipment and the people are still there.

 

Another way is to use anamorphic lenses on the camera and do a direct blow-up (only for small number of prints, after conforming the negative).

 

 

Yes, but you'd blow-up to 4-perf, not to 2-perf and then blow-up again to 4-perf just to be able to make prints.

 

Yes, some labs will do a direct blow-up from S16 to 35mm print or IP, though that means doing the color timing in the blow-up stage rather than from a color-timed element (which is why many labs don't offer that service.) "Howard's End" was originally released in a direct blow-up from S35 negative to 70mm prints in some theaters.

[Dirk DeJonghe]

David,

 

In post #7 the OP stated he wants 4 perf anamorphic, the title is misleading.

 

The special S35 to Scope lens we have allows only one setting: from S35/2.25 to Scope. At any other frame size the results are suboptimal.

In some countries in EU it was common to shoot on S16 for shorts, make a contact answer print, and then a direct blow-up to print, the optical sound being exposed on a 35mm contact printer. We did hundreds of those shorts, only one print was required for festivals.

For feature films shot on S16 we worked via IP blow up, contact DN.

When doing a S16 to Scope feature we had to use the optical printer for both steps (IP/DN) giving an exceptional quality from a very small negative area.

[Tyler Purcell]

Techniscope is a non-anamorphic 2 perf format.

 

Taking a 1.67:1 S16 image and using anamorphic lenses in some way on 35mm seems counter intuitive.

 

The 1.67:1 S16 image will print nicely with bars at the top and bottom, onto academy framed 4 perf 35mm using an optical printer OR what I suggested, digitization and then laser out.

[Doug Palmer]

Although as David points out Techniscope was never a projection format, maybe it's time to consider that as a non-digital alternative in some cinemas. Tyler, didn't you have thoughts on this once ? User-friendly projectors, less weighty spools and so on. And potentially better quality from a S16 or U16 original by avoiding anamorphics altogether.

[David Mullen ASC]

David,

 

In post #7 the OP stated he wants 4 perf anamorphic, the title is misleading.

 

The special S35 to Scope lens we have allows only one setting: from S35/2.25 to Scope. At any other frame size the results are suboptimal.

In some countries in EU it was common to shoot on S16 for shorts, make a contact answer print, and then a direct blow-up to print, the optical sound being exposed on a 35mm contact printer. We did hundreds of those shorts, only one print was required for festivals.

For feature films shot on S16 we worked via IP blow up, contact DN.

When doing a S16 to Scope feature we had to use the optical printer for both steps (IP/DN) giving an exceptional quality from a very small negative area.

 

 

He wants a 4-perf 35mm anamorphic PRINT but he wants to blow-up to a 2-perf 35mm NEGATIVE first, which is the part that doesn't make sense.

[Dirk DeJonghe]

2 perf has no place in this discussion, it is strictly a capture format just like S16.