Robert Hart

The new-old-stock Angenieux 17.5-75mm "compact" lenses which were sold by Whitehouse A/V out of inventory made for the CP GSMO do cover Super16mm. As Tyler points out, the older 12-75mm, 12-120mm and 10-150mm zooms do not. The long zooms vignette at the wide end and cinch in again at the corners between about 25mm and 35mm.

Long ago there was a rather primitive clockwork accessory which closed an iris. It was held immediately in front of the taking lens to generate a closing or opening soft vignette.

An interesting comparison might be visualised from a short movie which was shot on film in rural Western Australia some years back titled Ronan's Escape. I understand maybe incorrectly that it was commenced on 35mm but the camera laid down and a 16mm camera using the same stock in 16mm replaced it.

Confirmation bias or buyer's remorse??

In shooting the close-ups with a wide lens with the camera closer to the actor, the sound guy has at least some chance of grabbing some decent intelligible dialogue. Too much dialogue these days sounds like it was delivered with the actor's face buried in his or her armpit.

There may be another remote possibility if the camera has been dismantled for repair. It has been a topic of past discussion. From vague memory, there are two seams where the castwork related to the pressure plate and gate fit into the case. I understand that the seams are covered with some sort of jointing material. My older H16 had a light leak which lit a streak onto the film between shots when the film was parked. The seams are exposed between the turret and the removable loading lid.

Has the black bloop lamp enclosure on the bottom left near the turret been damaged and letting light in? It is possible if the optical viewfinder is not being used aftger set up on a locked off shot while the camera is running, for light to get in through the view pupil of the eyepiece and via the prism, laying a streak of light on the film? My memory is vague but I think there may be a selector lever on the top eyepiece relay tube to move a secondary mirror to exclude light if a human eyeball is not looking through the viewing pupil and thus blocking off any light from getting in. On a CP16R, there was an iris at the viewcup to stop light from getting in through an unattended eyepiece..

Another solution might be to optically copy to double 8 stock. That might get you frames 1 and 3 reproducing sequentially in the scanner set up for double 8 in one run then frames 2 and 4 reproducing sequentially in a second run. That would still leave you with the monkeypuzzle of how to reproduce all frames in a timeline in correct order. You might have to make do with frames 1 and 3 with playback speed correction from what would be a scan at half frame rate.- I think. The brain is beginning to fry in the effort of working this out. I don't know the Lasergraphics machine at all. It could probably be done on a Retroscan from a double 8 contact print made on a 16mm optical printer. Headache is looming from trying to imagine a way through this.

Something I had forgotten. The Cinema Products CP16R motion picture camera used another technology, a panel sliced off a piece of fine glass fibres adhered together. It had better viewability in lower light. At tighter lens apertures there were some chromatic artefacts which were of little consequence. A similar technology defined as "coherent fibre bundles" has been used instead of prisms or optics to flip an image upright for tube based night vision displays.

The facebook algorhythm takes one to all manner of places and this one popped up out of the blue. It is a piece by a young composer on the African continent. My first thought on hearing the clip play out was of a family friendly Hallmark film. As an underscore it is a good fit. The string players could tighten up a bit.

Recently, there was made by a young film-maker, Jordon Prince-Wright and a well motivated team, a movie, titled "Before Dawn". It is set in the Western Front during WW1 around the Australian and New Zealander volunteers who became identified in our national histories as the ANZACs. It is about to be released internationally. I am a now near-geriatric grandson of a WW1 vet. Watching the movie on the big screen was particularly affecting for me. About eight years prior to "Before Dawn", the young director's talent in leadership and mustering resources was already apparent when he assembled a small team and shot a short film, "Enmity". I suspect it was a practice piece for "Before Dawn". "Before Dawn" and "Enmity" share having been written around actual personal accounts. The location where the film was shot was near Esperance in the south-east corner of Western Australia's farming belt.

QUOTE Perry Paolantonio: "I can't tell you how many films we see where they ran out of black slug and used whatever random old print was kicking around as filler." Yes. I am guilty as charged. Some of my archive has inserts of what we called out here "junk spacer" which were out-takes from commercials or faulty prints. It was filling in gaps where a double system sound track remained entire, later to have cutaways, titles or archive footage inserted. Modern digital NLEs have certainly made life so much easier.

What happened I wonder. Were they expedient, unthorough and :- failed to check the wind of the film before scanning? flipped the film to scan though the base to avoid false triggers from splices or avoid an eroded emulsion surface which was defeating the triggering system then forgot to flip the image in their post work? Things happen like somebody interrupting for advice and distracting the operator from task.

I wonder if once you have a safety copy scanned off the film and the owner of the film consents to possible loss, that you could bleach the base face of the film and wash/wipe the bleach off before it can touch the emulsion face. I would be inclined to still try adding a green gel filter to your scanner's backlight source to balance the magenta. The ghost image may however remain as a faded black and white image. You have a conundrum there that I do not envy on little bit.

Andrew. If you could get hold of some green lighting gel, probably about 1/8 or 1/4 and place that over your light source, that might be helpful in bringing the blue and red channels back into balance if the magenta masking in the base is consistent in density.