Steve Farman UK Neg Cutter

I have some 473ml cans of NEW in DATE Kodak film cement for sale Had to buy a box of 12 off Kodak as Minimum order, need it as still negative cutting here in the UK. £90 per can or can decant to smaller amounts New unopened cans with September 2019 date on, but will last much longer.

No i have Film Fusion software so can neg cut frame accurately to EDL in 16mm and 35mm at 24 and 25 fps. Or i can cut overlenght and make a conform EDL for Scanning to match the new select rolls of negative. credits inc Batman Begins, Kingdom of Heaven, Daniel Blake, King Arther, every episode of Minder and The Sweney, etc

sorry this is going to be a bad advert, but a friend of mine has a 16mm 6 plate steenbeck with mag and optical sound pick ups, been in storage for a few years,, But does not work now, so could be a easy and cheap fix or not, thats the risk. please message and I'll send his details its in Lincolnshire UK

After a year of not being asked to work on any projects I had turned the cutting room back in to a home office. Now i have had to reinstall the cutting room for Ken Loach's next feature. then get asked to cut a 5 min A & B job on 16mm Also have had 4 other enquiries in the last 2 weeks.for a documentary and another private feature film. I guess the old adage of " never say never" works here I have 8000ft of 16mm of Kodak black and 6000 feet of Kodak 35mm black left in stock so should be OK for a few jobs yet. But still a bit shocked about being asked to cut again. I am based in Tonbridge in Kent UK but my clients are US, European as well as UK based steve at negcut com

Some peoople have assumed that due to Kodak not making black leader anymore, negative cutting has stopped in the UK Due to the fact I brought all the remaining Kodak black in the UK and the USA and I still have stock of this 35mm and 16mm black. (sorry will not sell it as rolls it it only for use on jobs I cut) I am still cutting negative in Tonbridge in Kent. I can work via print and EDL and can 16mm or 35mm ( 3 perf, 4 Perf and cinemascope) and cut as either A & B rolls or single roll. I can accept EDL's in 24fps or 25fps or indeed NTSC, non drop frame. I can also do slate or overlength assembles with conform EDL's for jobs requiring a video finish, ideal if you have shot 10,000's feet of negative. Batman Begins shot 1.3 million feet of 35mm negative, finished film was 15,000 feet ! I can also inspect and repair old cut negatives or trims. PM me for more info Thanks Steve

Hi Yes you will need 360ft of black leader, which of course I have in stock, re the printing all my 16mm A & B printing is done by Dejonghe Post Production in Kortrijk Belgium, they are printing 16mm every week and can handle, fades and mixes etc, they also can make titles on to 16mm negative and will also make optical sound tracks from lots of sources.. No I am not on 10%. :rolleyes:

Hi You may want to read the thread about black leader for negative cutting if your going to cut your negative as a A & B roll. Good Luck

What is going to be minimum order for a batch of black, 250,000 feet or more. How much will it cost ? more than £80 per 1000 feet I would think ! None of which matters as long as the clients can afford to pay for the extra cost of the negative cutting. I am OK for a while as now have 30,000 of black 16mm leader and 10,000 feet of 35mm black leader. The worlds total stock of black ( anyone got a cheap safe )

They have the new "Star Wars" negative processing contract I believe. Speak to Nigel Horn there a great guy and really helpful.

http://www.savefilm.org/supporters/ Looks like someone is getting the big players involved let's hope it can save whats left. Which is not much :( I think the best option would be to process Orwo 16mm positive stock to a good black. You can still get it on acetate but it will be long pitch (1R3000). If you use the one foot of official short pitch black before and after the shot, that would work. Sounds like it would work OK, but it will still cost about 3 times as much as Kodak black once processed etc, This is another cost increase that the clients will have to pick up.

Hi Dirk Yes its true, we used to do this when I had a branch at Technicolor London, they zero closed the printers and we used reprocessed NG prints ( to almost black out the image) to make up the length then cut back to black 3 feet before the shot change. But that was because Technicolor had a big stock of acetate NG prints ( not because they were a bad company just faults in the stock) sorry had to say that, legal stuff. !! Now there's no prints are on acetate so what do I use to space out between the good black after and before shot changes, Polyester print stock will need tape splicing in, cant do that I have professional pride, you know. Anything I use needs to be of a know source, I cant have breaks in the gash stock when printing due to be very old or just rubbish stock. I would not like assume responsibility for cutting in unknown stock into a cut neg, it could end up a disaster, for me and the client. Buying new acetate stock would cost more than the Kodak black did. But I have 36,000 feet of 16mm black in stock and 6,000 feet of 35mm black so will be OK for a while.

As one door closes another one slams in your face !! The Kodak black leader is carbon black, no emulsion. You can get Orwo black leader, processed or unprocessed. This is classic B&W film with emulsion that could get damaged. Please see below an e-mail i have recievied from Orwo, so even if paying double the price by the time its processed to black, there is only very limited stocks of this product. Thank you very much for your e-mail and the phone talk this morning. With regard to black leader I have to inform, our black leader is an emulsion coated leader with acetate base. After exposing and developing it has a density of 5 or higher. Unfortunately, we have stopped the production, caused through very low demand. But there are still any rolls in stock (approx.. 30 of each kind), but only unexposed/undeveloped. That means you have to do that in a lab. We could give to do that to a German copy lab, but it would increase the price. ORWO black leader LF2/LF20 35mm/610m 246.59 EUR/roll ORWO black leader LF2/LF20 35mm/305m 123,30 EUR/roll ORWO black leader LF2/LF20 16mm/610m 176.14 EUR/roll ORWO black leader LF2/LF20 16mm/305m 88.07 EUR/roll I presume the carbon black was made in the now closed Kodak Acetate Factory and no one else can make it. I don't think there will ever be an order big enough for it to be remade either even if "The Film Advocacy Task Force of the Association of Moving Image Archivists" or " UNESCO" gets involved.

Thanks for the replies, No it is not a problem to get black leader made from Orwo sound stock, but at what cost and quality. Kodak black was always pin hole free, will that be the case with processed black then there is the cost I have priced it at about 6 times more expensive. Raising the cost of a 10 minute 16mm A & B neg cut from £400 to £700 and a 35mm A & B from £500 to £1000 I will contact Elena with my concerns thanks for the info. There is also another group call Save Film. see www.savefilm.org which should be up and running tomorrow 17th April. One of the founders of this group is Tacita Dean, who is a famous artist that works on Film, "FILM" ( which I neg cut) was in the Tate Modern Main turbine hall for 3 months in 2012 She is also on Radio tomorrow 17th of April at 11.30 or listen on iplayer Leading British artist, Tacita Dean takes listeners with her on a mission to save a language. Not the kind that is spoken in a remote community, but an artistic one - photochemical film. She travels to UNESCO in Paris, to the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage, to persuade the world's heritage keepers to act fast or lose what she considers the most important form of artistic expression of the 20th century

Please see the shock e-mail I received from Kodak UK Hi Steve we have the following available 33 rolls (33,000 ft) of the 16mm black leader - CAT 8905630 - @ £** ea 20 rolls (20,000 ft) of the 35mm black leader - CAT 8545865 - @ £*** ea Steve, as I will need to bring this in as a 'special order' from the US I will need a firm order on the qty's you wish to take on delivery to the UK...please let me know as soon as possible as the product is running out pretty quickly. This was the complete stock available from Kodak US, I have already brought the 6000ft of 16mm Black that Kodak Europe had in stock. This is now all in the UK and on its way to me, which to the best of my knowledge is all of the rest of the worldwide stock of black leader. This is a big investment for future work as I cut about 10,000 feet last year, so it will not last for long. So much for the promise made in June 2013 that Kodak had plenty of stock that would last for years, the black leader ran out after 10 months. http://www.motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/PCN030214_Q.pdf If I can help please let me know. Steve Farman Tonbridge Kent UK.

Yes the BBC royally screwed 16mm film production here in the UK. Some said it was one man quest to kill film off, some said it was because he installed the wrong compression kit and was covering him back, but he had the ear of the BBC board and was very powerful and no one on the film side could beat him at board level. But he was a video man and film was a threat to digital as it was still better than the early video formats plus the BBC had spent millions on Video kit that nobody wanted to use, so the only option was to force them to use it, to use to save face as most film production companies and film makers liked to work in Soho not at the Wood Lane work house. The only approved BBC film option then was 35mm but the costs ruled it out. Basically he won, it killed 16mm film production in the UK within a year. Some people still shot on 16mm but delivered on a Digital format until the BBC invented software to detect it. Allegedly of course. Yes Spooks was the last thing I cut for TV here in the UK on 16mm. Funny thing is Channel 4 never had a problem with 16mm productions. But I am very biased.

Spoke to John at idallies yesterday they have a 35mm printer and grading kit in now as well as a B/W developer so looks like they are going to offer a full service print service too on 35mm. I hope they will do the same on 16mm as well. Its good news for me if they will print from cut negs, I most of my cut negatives (16mm and 35mm) go to DeJonghe in Belgium or Tacita Dean's last 35mm A & B cut neg project went to Arri in Germany for printing. Steve@negcut.com

Yes Deluxe closing on the 21st of March was a shock, I had just neg cut reel 3 of Ken Loach's new film Jimmy's Hall for printing at Deluxe. Then they said they where shutting a month early so could not print it before they shut. So the other 5 reels have been cut with an 8 frame handles along with a conform EDL that I create using Film Fusion and have gone to Molinaire for a DI, shame I hoped that this would be my last proper film neg cut. Mind you Ken still works on editing with print so it was nice to get cutting copy/ work prints as my guide. But its nice to see John and Nigel at idallies are offering more services. But most of the productions I neg cut go to DeJonghe in Belgium, if fact I cut a lot of European work for them, as there seems to be no neg cutters in northern Europe now either. What a dinosaur I have become. I feel sorry for all those great technicians that have or are going to loose there jobs, there skills will be lost forever.. Steve Farman PNC

Technicolor was the prefered branch for many Hollywood and UK producers to make the bulk print and premier prints as they were better than the US or Italian ones, some even agreed to pay more to get them done in London, though in the end the europeian head of Technicolor put a stop to that as he was Italian and it made him look a bit of a knob not getting the work over in Rome, but many people thought that anyway, nothing to with printing. Buck Labs and Deluxe still do 35mm printing in the UK. Pretech can but there very slow. Steve www.negcut.com The good old days

Hi have worked with Martin and Nigel at ilab for many years and have been the negative cutter that they recommended to there clients, in fact I was cutting for them in December. iLab shutting as I understand it was mainly for two reasons, one is that Reliance subsidised the lab all the time it was open, to make it attractive to there Indian clients and the UK ones too but last year Reliance had a very bad year in India and so were looking to make savings worldwide also the FX side of Reliance wanted more space, so the lab space was taken for that. Also there were some very bad choices made about film equipment purchases made in the last year which lost Reliance a lot of money and although the purchasing decisions were NOT Nigel’s or Martins they were the casualties. I worked in Amsterdam last year at a Lab called Cineco, neg cutting the film currently in the Tate Modern after a bit of a cock up by there old negative cutter. They still print 16mm and have all the 16mm services in place including a rostrum camera etc as well as 35mm, good little lab. I had a branch of PNC at Technicolor for 10 years and got a good insight to the lab, they are only interested in bulk print, which makes all the money, front end neg processing was almost a loss leader to get the printing. 16mm was only done to keep the BBC and ITV work, once that went to tape they were never going to keep it going, 16mm for one off prints etc is almost impossible to make money at unless you charge big money for it, Deluxe and Technicolor are now not making anything like the money they used too and so are unwilling to operate a non profit making 16mm service. Which is very sad as I used to have 6 guys just cutting 16mm TV and art films along with 7 people cutting feature and commercials on 35mm, now it just me working alone, but I keep busy, I am currently working on Ken Loach's next film at present, 35mm negative cut single roll to a cutting copy !!. very nice.

Yes I know its nearly time to hang up the sissors, but with Ken Loach still cutting on steinbeck with print rushes ( Route Irish cut by me for printing) and with slate pulls still being required by the major studios for archive i think there still some life in having a neg cutter about. I think the thing I need to promote is that when things go bad in the rushes TK process the whole conform process goes to hell, had a job the other month, were some neg was telecined twice in a roll and other rolls had some neg missed out altogether, so the film roll lenghts did not match the master tape roll lengths hence a conform from the editor EDL would of been very painful. I default logged the the negative to match the incorrect NTSC TK transfers so the editors EDL matched the negative logs in our system, then i translated the edtors NTSC EDL's in keycodes, then cut the negative slates into edit order, relogged the slates to a new 24P timecode and then created conform 24P edl's which worked just fine in the conform after the DI scan. That what will be missed as much as cutting negative for printing. But thanks for the kind words. Steve F

Hi I am a negative cutter, in the 90's I had 13 negative cutter working for me @ Technicolor, now I work from home on my own and only do a job a month. I cut negative from EDL's for conform and or printing, athough the last feature I did was for Ken Loach and that was done using a cutting copy ! If i was not doing it from home i would of packed up in July, so if I do pack it in, does that mean chemical printing from cut negatives will also stop, as none of the labs offer negative cutting. I have the promise of some work later in year, but i have to survive till then. Cv, Batman Begins, Kingdom of Heaven, King Auther, Midsommer Murders, Doc Martin, Troy, Slumdog Millionaire, Route Irish Etc Etc. Cheers Steve Farman

Just a quick note to say if you need negative cutting in Europe, we are Professional Negative Cutting based in London. We is still in business (just) with the much lower levels of work around we are now a company of 3 from the heydays of 16 cutters. We can can cut frame accurate 25mm and 16mm to cutting copy (work print) and offline EDL's in NTSC and PAL formats. We can also cut with bumper frames ( handles )the negative or whole slates for re-mastering in 16mm, 35mm 4 perf and 3 perf film formats, we create conform EDL's in NTSC , PAL 25 and 24P formats for the conform edit. We also log negative for telecine checks and archive storage after DI scanning from whole rolls. Advise is free everything else costs. Steve Farman steve@negcut.com negative cutting since 1971 CV: Batman Begins, Troy , Kingdom of Heaven, 7 years in Tibet, King Arthur, 10,000 BC, The invention of Lying. Cassandras Dream, Match Point, Slumdog Millionare etc.

Hi Guys Just to let you know negative cutting is alive and well in the UK. Just cut a 35mm feature film in 35mm A & B roll to cutting copy (workprint) for Ken Loaches new film which is being printed as I write this, it will be shown in Cannes next week. We are logging Clash of the Titans for archive, just did the same on Sherlock Holmes Cutting 3 Bollywood films for a DI finish. We cut, Batman Begins, Troy, King Aurther, Kingdom of Heavan, 7 years in Tibet, in the past just to name a few, we were a company of 14 people now down to 2. www.negcut.com is my site now out of date but use it to contact me if needed. Spent 10 years on the UK Technicolor site. Met Mo Henry once for lunch, scary lady. Yes we are the last company left in the UK. And neg cutting is easy, well after 33 year of practice it is. cheers Steve