Help!!!! Film jam, loop form error

[Guest Christopher Heston]

Help! I was shooting a short film with some B&W on a day light spool and the film jammed. I opened the camera (in very dim light) and found that the film wasn't getting threaded in by the take-up spool. Instead, the film was looping itself in a small circle inbetween the two spools. I took the jammed film and threaded it by hand into the takeup spool. Unfortunatley, the film tore in half while doing so. Can my film be salvaged, developed???

 

Am I screwed?

 

Please help.

 

-Chris

[daniel mahlknecht]

sounds bad, if the film has not ben on the takeupspool, even very dim light will burn the film. It depends on how long it was exposed to the light and how dim very dim is. probably you will still see something when you develop, but if it is usable is an other question, for sure you will see the entered light on the borders of the image and on some spots of the film frames will be very light or totaly burnt. if there is no way to do the reshooting I would try to develop, otherwise I would safe the money and shoot the scenes again.

If you reshoot you can still try to develop the film on your own with a morse g3 tank, this is inexpensive and maybe something can be safed.

 

daniel

[Dickson Sorensen]

Almost never send jamed film to the lab! The reason is that your damaged film, even with nothing more than a torn sproket could break in the processor and ruin everything else that is in the machine at that time. If you ever absolutely must process damaged film you must let the lab know so that they can run your material as a seperate run. If it should break inside the machine only that section will be lost. If you even suspect there may be damaged film, like say you find chips or small tearouts in the camera, camera trampled by horse, dropped from cliff, fallen of car rig, always let the lab know so that they can inspect the film as it goes into the machine. The life you save may be your own.

[Laurent Andrieux]

It is, for sure, worth processing it normally.

 

Since the film was cut by two, just put each piece in a different black bag and can, call the 2 rolls with two different names, the first shot being the master roll, the second called as a short end (in France will call them bis, ter, etc.).

 

There are many chances for this to be ok but the only point is that where the cut has happened, it won't be possible to consider a shot in editing. If the director wants to use the cut shot anyway, it will be possible to use the beginning (roll 1) and the ending (roll 2) only if cut by another shot. This one doens't exist in one piece anymore.