Simon Wyss

Well done, simple and straight. Makes me think about time, about the flurry-hurry of us «normals».

I wait for a producer to decide on a silent again, hand cranked, lit with the sun and carbon arcs. It may be a one-reeler, poetic, black and white, madly made. I wait for someone to rediscover the charme of 16 frames per second projected with three-blade shutters on the projectors, with carbon arc lamps. And no popcorn. Slower, please, slower, more intimate. More upright.

John, will there be any underwater shoots in your film?

I perfectly understand your confusion. It derives from the fact that any given film can be processed in various ways. Let us stay with black and white, because all this does not apply to colour stock where (almost) everything is standardised. Now, as you certainly know, there are different films. One is a highly sensitive rather low-contrasty emulsion, an other one reacts more harshly, and so on. A developing formula given, different stocks may be processed with the identical chemistry and then characteristic photographic curves established. Yet, we must not forget that we can develop a film to a certain contrast while not developing it out to full density. So, a film's contrast range will be defined only when developed out. To change contrast at full density we shall have to employ other chemistry. That is why there are so many formulas, and sometimes somewhat mysterious ones. I have to say, as a lab manager, that the cinematographer needs to develop her or his taste in order to cook or to let others cook. Of course, there is only so and so much contrast to be displayed on the average cinema screen. Starting from the cinema conditions and calculating backwards over the printing process, the camera original and its treatment we finally arrive at certain light(ing) levels for the shoot. That is what I have been teaching in courses since years. Back in the Fourties a director of photography would have called for more or less light with stop 1:5.6 already set. Admittedly there was nothing around like hand held cameras, cinéma vérité, available light filming or more than 200 ISO.

Guillaume, give it five minutes at 20 degrees C, fixation six minutes.

Was in Hollywood, payed a visit to Larry Edmunds Bookshop, and found The Technique of the Motion Picture Camera by H. Mario Raimondo Souto, third edition. Souto writes about the viewfinder system of the Arriflex, that it was developed in 1931 (nineteenthirtyone), two times. First time on page 44, second time on page 108. Now, isn't that an assist? How does this widely travelled member of the SMPTE come to say 1931. And he mentiones Erich Kaestner. Only that Kästner was not with Arnold & Richter before 1933 . . .

Oh, gosh, you did indicate the camera make.

Yes, I do get your meaning. You ought not compare apples to oranges. Super-8 was the biggest business of the EKC ever but today its input-output ratio dictates changes. Let's stay with the mileages of 70, 65, and 35 mm film they sell. Ay, there's the rub!

It does not take a huge industrial work to manufacture modern film. Agfa-Gevaert, EKC, Fuji Photo Films, all of them have small pilot facilities on which everything can be made. In the nearer future the units will become smaller and more flexible. That is all for good. How many Big Boys have been braught back to operation? I don't think many, but Pacific railroad engines are restored by numbers.

What do you expect? The company began with a bank clerk (G. Eastman). Simply from time to time bankers listen to those who know physics or chemistry.

A couple of years ago I had young visitors to my home. I'm not living there anymore. We had an old wall telephone there from 1931. It's got a dial and it is black. When the youngsters wanted to use my phone they plugged the finger into the round holes, in the succession of the number to be composed, and waited for a connection. They had no idea of turning the disc. I stood there left with a mixture of feelings between amusement and fear.

Taking it you present the image the right way the scratch lies on the left side when we look from the inside of the camera towards the lens. With a number of cameras that left side is somewhat more difficult to clean: guide rails, aperture plate. Is it a Bolex ? Sometimes also the aperture plate bears bruises, infinitely small, but there gelatine may collect and build up into hard bumps which can later scratch a film. A tooth mirror and sunlight will help you detecting defects.

I know some about film manufacturing. Once everything is put up and trimmed at ease, believe me, the machines become very profitable. EKC has its own PETP (Estar) base work in Greece, NY. That thing there spits out plastic foil 24 hours, 365 days. Later you give it the emulsion cover, slit and perforate it. The sale is based on trust. Most certainly they remove the unprofitable from the administration water head. I have had contact with Eastman people who knew virtually nothing about the products they were supposed to sell. Catastrophy But what the carton, there are Fuji, Foma Bohemia, Harman Ilford, Agfa-Gevaert, Filmotec, two Russian, two Chinese works, Ferrania, and EKC. They have been ciné film manufacturers since 1889. They are learning now what it means to have to stand pressure from competitors.

The main problem is that the non-hardened backing gelatin will flake off the film but must not come in contact with the pictorial layer. Once gelatines merge you cannot even think of trying to separate the unwanted from the wanted. I think it'll be best to remove the black backing after the process by some kind of damp method, not wet-wet. You'll have to try out. All the best!

No, not everyone thinks that the Lumière and Edison did it all. A lot of work has gone into European Wikipedia articles and discussion. Even at Eastman-Kodak Co. one began to slowly correct a point here and there. Marey didn't build a thing with his own hands. He is in the same league as are Eastman, Edison, and others. It was his physioligist assistant Georges Emile Joseph Démény who devised the photographic gun, the photochronographe (later renamed chronophotographe and chrono de poche système Démény, built by Léon Gaumont). This is a sad story that so many things become attributed to the wrong persons: The Mitchell has been invented by Leonard, the Debrie G. V. is Mr. Labrély's idea, film is the invention of Hannibal Goodwin, anamorphosis (CinemaScope) comes from Prof. Chrétien, the Latham Eidoloscope was constructed by Lauste, the very photographic sound film pionieer is Sven Berglund, and so on and on. AMC's Biograph camera, allegedly given to Dickson and Casler, is entirely the camera of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, chief-engineer with Edison until 1895. Dickson knew exactly what was covered by Edison patents and caveats, so he made a camera which is loaded with unperforated film. The Biograph camera punches holes out of the film right while being driven. It has a suction pump that provides perfect film flatness before the aperture. When we turn to Le Prince I'd like to say that I presume him behind the Bell & Howell wooden case camera of 1909 and the Bell & Howell Standard of 1911. I cannot prove anything. I simply see him finishing his work of life in Chicago or somewhere there. He used one of the better vanishing tricks on that September 16, 1890. One of my favorite silents is the English Explosion of a Motor Car of 1897.

CinemaScope is nothing for no budget. But what do you mean by rustic?

It was La cabina which won me for the movies. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065513/

The Third Man by Sir Carol Reed, 1949; in the U. S. as The 3rd Man Pépé-le-Moko by Julien Duvivier, 1936 La nuit américaine by François Truffaut, 1973 Hannah and her Sisters by Woody Allen, 1986 Dshamilijah by Irina Poplawskaja, 1969 High Noon by Fred Zinnemann, 1952

Are you going for high contrast images ?

Fully agree with and support Ira. If you already have that feeling about people wanting to bend film over to video just shoot film and project it in the dark. It can be 8 mm or 16 mm. Start all over again and again with black and white. It can be 35 mm. Try Gigabitfilm in 135.

That is disintegration of the alloy, intercrystalline corrosion. You cannot do a thing about it. There are several factors that can trigger it, sea salt is one of them, then rust from steel screws in the body, and more.

To whom it may be of interest It is impossible to help in such circumstances where equipment, film types, and chemistry tumble all over each other. I can only advise that one begins to DIY process with test footage in order to gain some dexterity with the equipment at hand before one develops more precious stock. Eastman-Kodak sell chemicals, correct, but they don't bother much about DIY results. Their primary concern is machine processing of most cheaply produced stocks by any way. A hand-processed black-and-white film almost always looks more crisp, but also much more uniform if well done. It's not possible to imitate hand quality with machines in black and white. It's become hardly possible to imitate machine processing of color stock by hand. Would you, dear reader, please note that it makes a difference whether you process the five feet of a 135 film or 50 or 100 feet of ciné film. That difference lies just in the way the film is handled. I for myself have found the best mechanical arrangement after long years. It's not the rewind tank.

Sorry in case I missed it in the thread but did we mention the fact that our eyeballs tremble? Shaken by their movement muscles at about 50 cycles a second we kind of overthrow the retinal impression again and again. Else the eye nerve(s) wouldn't have a bit to transmit. Vision purple decays, impulse is made, and then? That goes in harmony with the Showscan experience. People have had their eye muscles paralysed for tests. They stated they wouldn't see anything more than what was moving, the rest an indefinable grey. The number of phases of analyzed motion becomes a fluid syntheses at a somewhat variable frequency of 15, 16, whatever, but that has only to do with the effective changes (the apparent motion) of the whole impression. We may loose control of our binocular vision, the parallel gaze, under the influence of alcohol. There, too, appears the fact that our sensors are vibrating.

I'm not a Guru, I am the Messiah-haha of hand processing. Seriously, there have been alternatives to Metol (Kodak Elon®) since decades. Phenidone® is one of them, leads to tighter grain structures. So I employed it instead of the former with many of the Eastman-Kodak formulae which are numbered D-1 through D-97 up to now. There isn't the slightest problem with changing chemicals except for one: Hydroquinone is still the most powerful blackening agent in fine grain layers, i. e. on micro-sized crystals, when adequately supported. Ascorbic acid also has come into use as a reducer. But, like my 25th wife used to say, cut out that talking and get to do some.

No, you don't.