Jock Blakley

Hi all, Last night at work I came across a small section of cut workprint for what was going to be a television commercial for our cinema. Nobody can remember anything about it and consequently we can't date it. The workprint is on Agfa stock but carries the MR-Code from the neg. While I'm fully versed on Kodak's various date systems, I can't find anything on Fuji. This is the section I imagine it's embedded in: "F500 107 091 F72FD5" Cheers.

I'm a projectionist for a cinema that owns and regularly shows a 70mm print of BARAKA through a special arrangement with Mark Magidson. Regrettably we've been informed though that the odds of there being 70mm prints of SAMSARA are exceptionally low due to the 8K DI process. To date all screenings have been from 4K DCP. I'm pretty disappointed by that, to be honest. Part of BARAKA's fantastic look is in the stunning colour and contrast of the contact prints on EASTMAN EXR 5386. Not that SAMSARA won't be amazing, but 4K and 7.1 doesn't excite me quite as "IN PANAVISION SUPER 70 and DOLBY STEREO 70MM SIX-TRACK". And this leaves Branagh's HAMLET with the unfortunate title of "last 65mm acquisition to get 70mm release"... sixteen years ago.

Non-standard ratios can be done in digital projection just as they can be in film projection, but it's still not a perfect and super-easy thing. The DCP standards aren't too hard to get around - they simply demand that at least one dimension of the image meets standards, so for a 2K image it just has to be 1080 px high OR 2048 px wide. Your 1.37:1 image comes in at 1480 x 1080, so no trouble. You just then have to find a theatre that'll show it properly. Most places will just show it using the 1.85:1 set-up and so it'll be in focus and the right height on screen, but with grey screen on each side unless the auditorium is fitted with manually-controlled screen maskings. If the auditorium is raked then the edges of the picture will show keystone. Of course if you find a theatre with caring and knowledgeable projectionists (such as myself :P ) it'll look just fine. We're set-up to show more ratios than you could possibly want to show in film and in digital (1.15:1 Movietone, 1.33:1 full, 1.37:1 Academy standard, 1.66:1, 1.85:1, 1.85:1 70mm, 2.20:1 70mm, 2.39:1 Panavision, and 2.55:1 mag-only Cinemascope). Naturally for the rest of the "industry" though there are some workarounds to get 1.37:1 into first-run theatres - the 1999 re-release of GONE WITH THE WIND was anamorphically compressed into the Panavision frame, and the recent prints of THE ARTIST had the Academy frame printed within the 1.85:1 area (ie a tiny frame and impossible to mask nicely). As to why 1.50:1 didn't catch on? Not a clue, although personally I prefer 1.66:1. As David points out though the full-frame aspect for Vistavision was 1.50, just that it was always then cropped to 1.85 for 35mm or 70mm release.

Could you get way with using the T-MAX Direct Positive Development Outfit, assuming they still make it?

IIRC at that time Kodachrome came in both balances, or so I think I read once.

Even though the ratio is wrong you can still get a 2K (or 4K, for that matter) DCP finish. You could keep the standard 858 high and pillar-box. Then during presentation the projectionist can at the very least bring the side maskings in (and ideally set up a new masking file on the projector to match the shape and position of the screen masking) Alternately go for 2048 width and let the height follow. Then during presentation a new lens and masking file would be needed but you'd keep the full resolution, and venues that show it using the standard 'scope set-up would simply show a 2.4:1 crop.

Trust me, if there was a KS-perf version I'd already be projecting it :P

Regrettably very few projectors are truly comfortably with handling BH-1866 perf stock.

EKTACHROME 100 Plus (EPP)'s number code was 5005 until it was discontinued some years back now. EKTACHROME E100VS was number-coded 5085. EKTACHROME 100D (KCR) is still number-coded 5285 ;) Plus there's a post by Kodak employee the late John Pytlak around here somewhere saying that 5285 was derived from 5085. As to the doom and gloom about 64T... you're right, it was replaced by 100D. On the other hand, the situation matches (the parent still film was discontinued), and this time around there's no still film to step in and fill the gap.

Eastman EKTACHROME 100D 5285 / 7285 is derived from and is essentially identical to Kodak Professional EKTACHROME E100VS 5085 / 6085, but is a different product that is handled by Kodak Cinema and Television, rather than the department that manages still films. Any discontinuation of a still film is meaningless to motion films unless a matched discontinuation notice for the MP is issued at the same time. Of course there's absolutely nothing to say that they won't pull their usual stunt and discontinue it themselves within the year - as they did with EKTACHROME 64T. Journalists writing for the stills publications have no comprehension that film is even used in movies, hence the blanket "colour reversal is dead" comments.

Um... I do know that, actually. My question again, but more clearly - why do they make Kodak VISION Colour Print Film 3383 in two-row-perf 16mm (other than as a special-order) when 99% of 16mm projectors are 1R because the other perf area is usually used for soundtrack? Mark: I have heard of people shooting 3383 and some colour intermediate films with two stacked 85 filters, but I've never actually seen the footage. You can however get quite interesting, and sometimes even quite usable, results using EASTMAN Panchromatic Sound Recording Film 3373 and EASTMAN High-Contrast Panchromatic Intermediate Film SO-331 in-camera. The latter is 65/35mm only though - I wonder if EASTMAN High-Contrast Panchromatic Film 3369 could stand in for it.

I didn't even know they made 3383 in 2R - what application would that have that specifically warranted 2R?

Toland also used compositing for some of the shots - there were many optically-printed mattes, for example. The shot where Kane bursts into the Susan Alexander's room after her suicide attempt was even performed in-camera; with the foreground shot in focus against a dark background the camera was then backwound and the shot reshot with the foreground blacked-out. This is necessary because you will eventually run out of depth of field, and you'll do it quickly unless you have a lot of light. Remember that simply using wide-lenses is not necessarily the best solution - as you reduce focal length you increase depth of field, yes, but you also change perspective and visually move the background further from the viewer, which will in turn diminish the apparent importance of that background - problematic if you want to block across the whole depth of the shot. As to the "sweet spot" of any given lens: it is generally considered to be three or four stops down from maximum aperture - usually around f/5.6 or f/8 - though of course some lenses are specially optimised to be different and so may not adhere to this 'rule'. As you would probably know many lenses are more-than-acceptably sharp when opened up more than that, but 99% of the time you will get the best performance out of a lens when in that ballpark. Stopping down more actually reduces sharpness though a phenomenon known as diffraction, where the diaphragm actually scatters the light coming through the lens. The exact point where this becomes a serious issue varies based on lens and film size, but I generally don't like to stop down below f/16 unless I'm shooting 60 mm or larger. Which is another thing actually - DOF changes with film or sensor size. The smaller the recording area, the wider the DOF.

Yeah, you're missing the fact that everything that was ever achievable with film never happened. Geez, get with the program. ;)

The only trouble with 1.66 is that it's been thoroughly forgotten by practically everybody, and it's not a darling of the presentation world either - you have to pillarbox it to fit it into HD which makes it look "outdated", you can't show it on Super-8 or 16mm because none of those projectors can be made to show anything other than 1.33, you can't distribute it on 35mm because only a handful of rep houses have 1.66 apertures and everybody else will use 1.85, and even in D-Cinema it looks a bit wrong unless the auditorium has movable maskings and the projectionist is actually permitted to reconfigure the projector. Which is a pity because its a very versatile ratio. But as Paul's response indicates, any facility with a decent scanner should be able to give you a 1.66 extraction.

I've projected Blu-Ray through a Barco DP4K-32B on more occasions than I'd like to have. The BRD picture does come close to a 2K DCP for flat (1.77:1/1.85:1) images - although at the size we project to (19x9 metre common-height screen) I can pick the compression artefacts and minor but apparent lack of comparative sharpness. For 'scope, of course, the 2K DCP's 2048x848 picture does noticeably outperform a BRD's HD letterbox image. Of course this is just my impression from showing this content on a 4K projector on a very large screen with a long throw. Said projector is easily switched between XYZ colour and REC 709 colour by loading the appropriate Projector Configuration File - which also controls pixel aspect ratio for non-DCI content. It has two DVI inputs, both of which support HDCP so we can connect HDMI sources directly via a simple adaptor. For computer inputs via DVI, the projector appears as a display named "BARCO CINEMA" and offers 1920x1080 or 2048x1080 native resolutions. Sound for both DCI and non-DCI sources is irrelevant to the projector. We use a combination video scaler / sound DAC that takes AES 6-channel audio from the D-Cinema server and converts it to discrete 6-channel analogue for input via our Dolby CP-500's 6-track input. The same DAC also takes Dolby Digital or LPCM over S/PDIF co-ax or TOSLINK and puts out the same 6-track output - so no fiddling directly with the amps. Other installations with more cash often use the Dolby DMA8+ for the same purpose, and often have new processors too :P This news of media blocks having to be in secure cabinets is, well, news to me. I've never heard that requirement before. To the best of my understanding, even though they're often connected via HD-SDI for 2K systems, the server, media block, and projector are all part of the security system because the projector performs decryption inside it's own closed image path. Because we show 4K we use an integrated media block - it's installed in one of the projector's expansion slots, but technically part of the server and is connected to it via PCI Express. Content from the IMB is then fed directly to the projector's ICP (which stands for something I've forgotten). Antti's reasons for why BRDs are NOT a suitable professional playback medium are very accurate - plus of course there's all the home video bullshit like trailers, extra distributor logos, and my most fervently-loathed creations of all time, disc menus that have music or sounds playing over them. Especially when the feature ends three frames after the last credit has faded and dumps you directly back to the menu. Reaaaallly professional. I'd take a well-cared-for print over a BRD any day, and even over some of the DCPs I've seen. The fact that that new films are being premiered from digital when there are prints in existence disappoints me greatly - but I will admit if the print is from the same 2K DI as the DCP than I suppose it's not so bad. If it was a photochemically-finished film, though, I wouldn't be sticking up for seeing the DCP. Far cry from the days of a show print being struck directly from the OCN, or the master interneg at a pinch. We had a small-ish film festival at our theatre a few months back that ended up presenting HD H.264 files. They looked... better than they could have, granted. The festival director was adamant that digital was better than anything else and had got shitty H.264s of two entries that were also available as prints. In the end I talked him into getting one on 35mm and we showed that. Afterwards he came up to me and thanked me for opening his eyes.

It might pay to have the lab clip-test the rolls to work out if an altered development procedure is in order, especially for the 7298.

It was Richard who put me on to 3374 in the first place! Edgecoding is a valid point though. Kodak 16mm s/neg film still has it outboard of the perfs and so not in anybody's way. I know (for 3374) it reads "EASTMAN 374 13 12 11 10 09" with the two-digit strings being the year it was made - so 2009 in my example - but I don't recall if they included footage numbers. Can't really see a need for it, actually, considering that films are cut to the KEYKODE on the picture stock and then the soundtrack is cut on tape before a one-pass strike of the s/neg. The last 35mm s/neg I handled was one struck in 1986 with the usual "EASTMAN S'AFETY FILM" down the side, but it definitely has no footage numbers. It is a valid point about where it's meant to go on digital-track prints though - really the only areas left are the picture area and the area between the non-track-side perfs. Certainly the solution to that problem on 35mm release prints was to stop edge-coding for a time, but then when SDDS switched over to cyan printing (so the soundtrack is formed only from cyan dye rather than silver) the edge coding moved back into the usual place but in magenta so that the red LED readers could ignore it.

Oh, I see. Right. Well I've never pushed any of the 50D stocks myself, but I'd imagine with 7203 that you could probably get it to at least EI 200 (ie 2 stops) before you start have troubles. Of course testing is the only option, really.

Is there any reason you wouldn't just switch over to 7207, considering the additional lab expense of pushing?

I have a feeling that the OP might be asking about using s/neg film for pictorial purposes. Sound negative films are coated across the whole film and so will form images if used in a picture camera (as opposed to a sound "camera", which is what they're called). I know a few people who've used EASTMAN Panchromatic Sound Recording Film 3374/7374 for this purpose. It yields a very (and I mean very) high-contrast image, but with clever development you could probably get very interesting results. There used to be some on Vimeo but I can't find it now.

Projecting the 4K restoration of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Nah, just kidding, we're closed Tuesdays so we ran the VD show on Sunday arvo. I'm developing film in my bathtub using my tears as wash water.

Is this the old Lab-X site at number 40, or a different place?

Not even one show print?

Though it must be noted that some of the Year Codes are the same as some of the Stock ID Codes - so in this case, "KA" following the emulsion numbers at the end of the human-readable section between the Keykode barcodes indicates manufacture in 2004. If the "KA" was at the start of the large-text section immediately before a barcode, it would indicate that the stock in question was Eastman Colour Intermediate Film 5/7243. It makes sense in time :P