Robert Houllahan

That is a Bell&Howell Filmo 70.

Fantastic camera I love mine.

2 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

That workflow isn't exactly right. The 16mm prints distributed to television stations you talk about were typically aired direct to TV using a film chain. This is basically a projector with and 5-bladed shutter, piinting at a camera.

 

All the major network TV 35mm and 16mm movies would be broadcast direct from a Rank/Cintel MK3 from about 82 ( or earlier maybe ?? ) on through to the 1990's. Local stations probably did not have real telecine unless they were big stations in major markets but the big three networks had rooms full of them and would play both 16mm and 35mm prints direct from the MK3 flying spot telecine to their affiliates.

Different less toxic bleach in processing.

Yeah almost everything in that time was scanned on the SDC2000/2001 "Classic" Spirit to 1080x1920 HD. The Spirit would be connected to a DaVinci 2K or Pogle color corrector and recorded to D5 or HDCam/HDCamSR tape. There was also the Cintel DSX or ITK Millenium scanners but they were fewer compared to the Spirit.

'Oh Brother where art Thou" was run on a SDC Spirit with Pogle to a DVS Clipster at 2K and that was very high end DI for that time.

By the early to mid 1990's 4K pin registered scans were available from scanners like the Kodak Genesis or Quantel Domino system, scan times were 30s -3min per frame. They had massive fridge sized disk arrays in the mid 1990's for VFX shot stuff that were maybe a 1/4 or 1/2 TB of storage. I remember seeing a Quantel system at NYU in 95 or 96 that was a complete 4K scanner / VFX system / 4K CRT recorder for that VFX pipeline and it was massive and I think it had 500gb of storage.

3 minutes ago, Joshua Echevarria said:

Thanks Rob

  our project isn’t shooting until mid Feb but I just learned that we do have a quick turnaround so I may have to keep things local to ny 

Talk to Jack at Metro about the Director or maybe call Co3 NY or Postworks for Scannity or Arriscan scans.

On 1/7/2025 at 7:30 PM, Joshua Echevarria said:

ah yeah I didnt realize it was a 4k Director.  I would imagine for our film's budget which isn't super low but still relatively modest, an RGB scan might be out of the question unless we were to send the film out to Fotokem or elsewhere with the scanner I'd like to use

I spoke to Jack at Metro yesterday and you should maybe reach out about a scan on his Director 4K it will be a excellent high quality true RGB scan and likely still offers the advantages of an RGB scan over the 6,5K Scan Station.

Alternatively if you want to DM me I could possibly scan on my Arriscan although I would have to figure out a schedule as I am in the middle of a selects scan on a 50 lab roll feature film on the Arriscan.

I would also say not to sweat the scanner too much as all of the machines in question make incredibly good scans.

Rob "academically" surrounded by film scanners and a busy film lab Houllahan...

39 minutes ago, Joshua Echevarria said:

ah yeah I didnt realize it was a 4k Director.  I would imagine for our film's budget which isn't super low but still relatively modest, an RGB scan might be out of the question unless we were to send the film out to Fotokem or elsewhere with the scanner I'd like to use

FotoKem and Co3 both use DFT Scannity and Arriscan scanners I do not think either company has any LaserGraphics scanners.

1 hour ago, Joshua Echevarria said:

I appreciate your insight.  

I'm up in the air right now.  Its for a short that is guaranteed a theatrical screening.  There is only 1 LG Director in NY that I know of.  Everyone else has a scanstation.    do you have any side by side comparisons?

I know Metro has an older 4K Director I am not sure how that compares to the current Scan Station you could probably talk to Jack at Metro about that.

New Directors use the 6.5K sensor but it is a monochrome one instead of color and has a piezo shift like the Arriscan to make 13.5K out of a 6.5K sensor. The older ones used a 4K monochrome CCD I am not sure how that performs but they did have 2-flash and 3-flash on them from the beginning.

As for comparisons you will have a hard time finding any and the film I am scanning now did allot of tests they spent the time effort and funds to compare the results for their film. I know Co3 NY has an Arriscan and Scannity but I do not think they take smaller jobs.

It really comes down to how much extra time and cost do you want to go to squeeze the very best out of the film and how much post finishing you plan to do to the film. The Scan Station does an excellent job and it is very consistent and every place has one or two of them so the cost associated is allot less than a much more costly and less widely available true RGB scanner like the Arriscan or Director.

4 minutes ago, Joshua Echevarria said:

Thanks for your reply Robert.  I posted the same question in another forum as well and based on the answers I've received, the different between and RGB scan from the Doctor, Arriscan etc and a 2 flash HDR from a Scan Station for example, is negligible.  Whats your take on that?

I am doing a selects scan for a S16mm feature right now that did extensive tests on multiple Scan Station 65K HDR scanners and went with the Arriscan because it is a better scan for freshly shot negative. The Arriscan out performs the Scan Station in terms of detail and color accuracy at the expense of being slower and slightly less stable overall.

The difference really depends allot on the final post pipeline and if the scan is for Web or TV or Theatrical.

Almost all small post shops only have a Scan Station the Director or Arriscan are not really too commonly available.

Film scanning was R/G/B and sometimes IR from the very beginning.

Currently any "Big" film you see will have been scanned on a true RGB scanner like the Scannity or Arriscan both of which can produce 16bit per color channel scans. One of the really big differences with a true RGB scan vs. a CFA scanner is the color accuracy and separation of the color channels. This tends to make scans which have better detail especially in denser areas of the negative.

As for IR dirt map DICE it could have been a much more widely used and developed system in motion picture scanning. Kodak decided to charge incredible license fees for DICE in the past and that unfortunately kind of hurt the use of DICE. Subsequently not many post apps really fully developed more advanced tools built around the 2-bit dirtmap alpha channel available in DPX.

Just saw it today.

Thought it was great and very entertaining loved the cast and the look is fantastic.

4 hours ago, Roberto Colapietro said:

insane how it came out! Was it initially 100 iso? Did you overexpose 2 stops? If you had Tri-X from 2009 how would you go about it? 

This was 1962 Plus-X negative and it was 80iso then so I did 2 stops and rated it as 20iso.

I would either rate the 2009 Tri-X as on the box or maybe rate it under a half stop.

7 hours ago, Roberto Colapietro said:

1963? Unbelievable. Did you overexpose for it?

I rated it as 20iso

In my experience B&W films last really well and does Kodak even develop B&W Reversal?

I used a 16mm 400ft roll of Plus-X negative for a music video I made for some friends band a few years ago and that roll had expired in 1963 and came out great.

YMMV

Ah can't wait to see it this week.

4 hours ago, Luis Hartmann said:

Interesting, I never thought of using a older scanner.
Do you have any references and comparisons?

Comparison is going to be a virtually impossible task as these machines which were the staple of the industry were designed for big facilities with engineering staff and cost a million or more dollars to buy and have allot of maintenance and power requirements to keep running properly, thus making them allot harder to find running today.

As for references many many films were remastered on the Spirit 2K / 4K series scanner maybe between 2006 and today. It is and was a great high quality scanner but not quite as detailed or as low noise as it's successor the Scannity. It uses three 4K Kodak line CCDs and a big bright Xenon lamp and when all aligned and operated well it makes fantastic scans.

I know from running the Spirit 2K/4K and the Arriscan and other scanners the differences can be pretty subtle or not noticeable if the scans are done right. The differences might seem more like a choice between Cooke and Zeiss glass or be nearly impossible to tell after the grade.

Going back further to the Classic Spirit or Cintel flying spot scanners like the Millenium might have a more presence of the scanner in the scan especially on the classic Spirit as it is color sub-sampled but those machines from the 1990's are much much harder to keep running and why Steve at Mono No Aware took his Classic out of service for example.

There are a few places still running the "newer" generation 2K / 4K Spirit machines for archival work.

I do not think anyone is running a Classic Spirit but it is possible that National Boston still runs their Shadow which was a "lite" version of the SDC2000 Spirit.

Between the two Scan Stations the Arriscan and the Xena there was just no reason to try to keep the power hungry Spirit 2K and 4K going at Cinelab and while they make good true RGB scans the Arriscan Xean RGB or Scannity really far surpass them in terms of noise and stability.

I was never really a fan of the older SDC2000 Classic Spirit and thought it usually made a kind of plasticy looking scan, the color channels are 1/2 sampled and only one line was 1920 pixels.

I will be putting the Spirit 2K and 4K plus the parts machine up for sale in a bit.

I think that one is Orwo if I remember right.

In our Allen linear machine processing we run F76 at 75deg 3min in a 150Gal dev tank with constant turbulation.

On 12/6/2024 at 12:34 PM, Florian Noever said:

@Robert Houllahan 

What I still don't get is how for example the Scan Station has an Area Scan Sensor but is able to do continuous scanning, is the light source generating powerful enough flashes for very short exposure times to scan continuously? Do the Scanity and Arriscan use flashes as well, or continues light?

The Arriscan / Director / Scan Station / Xena all use pulsed RGB LEDs to expose the film to the area scan sensor. With true RGB scanners like the Arriscan the sensor is monochrome and the LED lamp pulses R/G/B up to 12 times for 6K HDR and the Director does that up to 18 times for 13.5K HDR and then these monochrome sensor scanners add one IR pulse for the dirt map.

Scan Station uses a sensor capable of 30FPS and can run in 1-flash at 30FPS where the RGB lamp balance is set to the base and pulsed for each frame, in HDR it has a high exposure pulse and a low exposure pulse which captures the same film frame at slight different positions in the gate in continuous motion and the software combines them perfectly using LaserGrpahics seamless machine vision perf stabilization.

21 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

 

Answer print is a generic term for creating a print off a set of originals. 

Panel printers are really cool. They have multiple incoming rolls of film, which are contact printed to original stock. They aren't necessarily setup for color grading, they're just for one light printing. The stock runs through two different print heads on some of them, where the picture head is the same distance from the sound head as the projectors are. 

 

The latest generations of the B&H Panel printers with Michelson valves can make 1/10 stop RGB light value changes scene to scene and they are very much capable of being used to fully grade a film.

On 11/24/2024 at 3:01 PM, Florian Noever said:

Hi everyone,

I have a few more questions that came up during my research:

1. I’m still trying to understand how sound is handled with the ARRI Laser and what kind of sound format is used. Also, what film stock is the sound recorded on, is it Kodak 2374?

2. I have a basic understanding of the two ways to create a 35mm film print today, but what is the workflow for making 70mm prints? Which recorders are used, and which scanners does Fotokem utilize?

3. What machines are used for contact printing? Are optical printing machines still relevant?

4. I know that scanners either stop at each frame for digitizing or continuously scan. Are there specific terms for these types of movements? Do the Lasergraphics scanner stop at each frame, or do they continuously scan?

5. From what I found, only the ARRISCAN provides pin registration, while the Scanity and Lasergraphics scanners use optical perf registration. Is that correct?

Thank you in advance! 🙂

 

The Arrilaser V1 and V2 only record picture to intermediate or camera negative they do not record sound.

Optical sound for 35mm has a number of possible formats 1. Dolby SR stereo analog. 2. Dolby Digital 3. DTS timecode 4. SDDS and out of these SDDS is not used anymore I believe. The sound track is recorded to 2374 or 2378 monchrome stock using a Westrex or newer sound recorder.

For 70mm it is mostly answer printed but IMAX and FotoKem (I think ) have Celco Fury CRT recorders.

Bell&Howell 35mm and 70mm panel printers are used to combine picture and sound elements onto positive print stock.

Scanning tech has three major technologies, 1. Line Scan like the DFT Scannity which is continuous motion true RGB 2. Intermittent true RGB with pin registration and a monochrome area scan sensor with multi flash like the Arriscan or Director, the Arriscan uses a mechanical pin for registration and the Director is intermittent with machine vision registration. 3. Continuous motion with a color Bayer sensor like the Scan Station and others.

Very little to none

5 hours ago, Florian Noever said:

I see, maybe Oppenheimer was a bad example.

What is the standard process today for making prints from a digital source, regardless of whether the original footage is film or digital? Is it Digital Data -> recording to IN -> Film Print, Digital Data -> recording directly to print stock, or perhaps another process?

How is sound typically handled in film prints delivered from a digital source?

The Cinevator direct to 35mm print recorder is a fast and lower cost option for 2K to print, the bigger shows record on the 4K Arrilaser to 2254 IN stock and then the sound is recorded on another machine and the two are printed on a B&H panel printer.

The Arrilaser can record to IN stock or 50D 200t and 250D if it is equipped with the negative kit.

The Imagica records to IN stock.

They stick sometimes, you can remove the whole front with the shutter and turret (carefully) and clean the button and apply some lubricant to the gear and under the shutter button and they tend to run right and stop right again.

I just did this to a 70DR I bought that appears to be basically new and never shot it was stuck in position for 40-50 yrs it looked like and now it runs great. There are also some clearly marked oil spots inside the camera.

On 11/11/2024 at 3:51 PM, Florian Noever said:

@Robert Houllahan, following up on your answers:

1. I’m curious about new developments specifically for working with film, such as the IndieASSIST for 16mm and 35mm cameras. Are there even any new advancements in film post-production?

2. So, processing machines today operate the same way as those that originally introduced computer control?

Linear film processors are a industrial / manufacturing type machine they have tanks and pumps and heaters they submerge the film in chemistry for certain amounts of time at certain temperatures and keep the chemistry contained in individual tanks and then dry the film once it is finished I don't know exactly what "advancements" might be made other than small process improvements and control improvements.

2a. That’s good to hear, I didn’t know that.

3. What is the industry-standard scanner for 65mm negatives?

 

The DFT OXscan 14K would be today's machine, 14K Sony Pregius 16bit mono sensor with RGB + IR

 

https://dft-film.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/OXScan-14K-Brochure_20201201.pdf

 

4. I’m looking forward to conducting my own tests to see for myself what I feel is the practical limit.

 

Good Luck

5. What steps differentiate a digital DI from a film DI? I assume dust-busting is one aspect, are there others?

 

I am not sure how you are defining the difference as DI = Digital Imtermediate which presumes film scans and film recording. DI is an older term.

6. From what I’ve read about DI in the early 2000s, film recorders were used to create an interpositive, which was then used to produce a few internegatives from which many prints were struck.

 

No multiple Estar Imternegatives were made to print from 2254 for example is a negative recording stock.

Alternatively, if they had access to more film recorders, they would directly create a few internegatives from which prints would be struck.

Yes multiple IN were made on 2254 to print from on continuous loop printers with processors attached that ran at up to 1500ft per minute.

If you want to create a film print today, what is the workflow like? I think CPC in London prints directly onto print film, what about other labs?

 

Arrilaser 4K recorders.

CPC has Cinevator 2K direct to print recorders that also record sound at the same time as picture.

Thank you in advance; this is incredibly helpful information!