Dominic Case

You're right, there is still work left for people to sort out the numbers when other people screw up transfers or logging. But it's soul-destroying work, and you rarely get proper recognition for sorting out disasters. At best the show ends up the way it was meant to. Usually you are brought in after things have gone wrong, and in theory you can charge what you like, as there aren't many people around who have a clue how to do this sort of stuff. In practice you're on a bit of the budget that doesn't really exist, and no-one even understands what needs to be done anyway. I did this in the 90s. There weren't many phone calls that didn't feature the numbers 24 and 25 (we're in PAL land too!). I'm happy not to be doing it now. Bring back the exercise books and scissors, I say! ;-)

State and Main ( I love the producer threatening the lawyer) Day for Night (yes, OK, already mentioned,but it's worth another) Newsfront (Phil Noyce's 2nd feature, a milestone in Aust. cinema)

Yes. Telecine the camera original neg. Offline edit. Cut and splice the original negative to match the edit, using EDL (edit decision list). Then grade the neg as described earlier and make the first print. Not many films are made now that don't go through the DI process. The advantages of the digital grade are becoming irresistible, and you can also do the titles, dissolves, fades, repositioning, dirt removal and other fix-ups digitally. hey used to be done optically, but those skills are disappearing from the labs as people retire. Film has hung on a lot longer than many younger people expected, but the result is that its death is being hastened by a lack of entry into the skilled jobs a decade or more ago.

Thanks for the book recommendation, Christian. Hope you find a copy, Dylan. To answer your question (which the book would explain too!), the short answer is yes, you are remarkably close to the truth. In a non-digital-intermediate process, a print is made directly from the colour negative, onto print film which works photographically the same as camera negative. (Different stock, different chemicals but the same principle of exposing a silver halide emulsion, and developing up a colour dye image). But how do you know how to colour-balance the print? The negative is run in a colour analyser, which is similar to a telecine, but calibrated differently. The controls simulate the effect of changing the proportions of Red, Green and Blue light in the printing machine, which would make the printed image more or less biased to any colour, or lighter or darker. The R, G,B settings are noted for each shot in the reel, and that data is used when the print is struck. Typically, once the first (answer) print is made, the colour grader can look at the results and make some fine adjustments before making a second print. A really good colour grader won't need to do this, especially if the cinematographer has supplied a consistently well-exposed negative. Yes, this process can also be used to tidy up any errors in a digital grade - but labs will strive hard to get the digital grade perfect, as you can't put scene-to-scene light changes in high-speed printers used for bulk release copies, so it's usually just a matter of setting the overall balance throughout the reel.

Realistically,Steve, I think it's time to re-invent yourself. I don't think there is a living for neg cutters anywhere anymore. The basic task of pulling complete takes (flash-to-flash) is something that average lab technicians are usually asked to do, not needing the very fine handling skills and consummate accuracy and infallibility of a neg matcher. The last bastion of careful negative handling will be (well, virtually is) film archives, both in the government or museum sector and in the studios. I suspect we'll be seeing a mass migration of film handlers in that direction: best get there before the stampede.

Hey David - I know it's been a while, but my name's still Dominic Case - what's with the new spelling? Or have you got someone else in mind? :) Anyway, back to the topic . . . Exactly so for the skip bleach process. ENR has a similar end-result: retained silver image - but gets there a slightly different way: it's actually similar to the redevelopment process to add silver to optical soundtracks up until a few years ago when they all swapped to cyan tracks. Here's the process: in the colour developer, exposed areas are developed to silver, and this process also produces colour dyes as David explains. Then, after a stop bath, undeveloped silver halide is removed (from unexposed areas)by the first fixer, leaving a silver plus dye image. The bleach bath then converts the exposed silver image back to silver halide. After a short rinse, the film passes into a black and white developer, which develops the silver halide back once again to a silver image. Since the amount of silver developed is dependent on time & temperature, it can be quite finely controlled. Finally the film is fixed, removing any silver halide left over from incomplete second development - and washed and dried. The amount of silver present in the final image can be measured with an infra-red densitometer, which ignores the colour dye density. More silver results in a contrastier image, with deep colours being desaturated, but shadows made a darker and richer black.

In another thread, Dom Jaeger wrote: If anyone has done this, it would be tremendously useful. As Dom says, the equipment manufacturing footprint, amortised over a very short time, would be a big part of the digital side of the equation. And film manufacturers and labs have made great strides in recycling chemicals and water (though energy efficiency has a long way to go, so CO2 is still a big issue). So, any clues, anyone?

There was a time when trailers HAD TO only include shots that were in the finished film - otherwise there was the legal issue of misrepresentation. Now, as John points out, trailers have to be ready way before the final film is finished (which is often only days before the premiere and world-wide release - no pressure on the lab to get prints out on time!). So often scenes are shot just for early teaser trailers months before even the shoot is finished, let alone post. In this neck of the woods, some studios now send a digital master of the trailer by satellite to the lab, where it's downloaded, recorded out to film, and printed. Saves a couple of days of shipping and givs the lab a back-up in case the neg gets damaged in printing. And of course the master is there for DCP digital release copies.

Not really. The grey dye in b/w negative base has no effect on gamma. It's there to cut down on halation caused by internal reflection. Some light that passes through the emulsion then through the base is reflected at the back surface and strikes the emulsion a second time (from the back), slightly displaced. The dye absorbs about a stop of light each way, reducing the relected light to a quarter of what it would have been.

True but unhelpful. Of course film isn't about theory. Nothing is about theory. Theory is about stuff. So you can have theory about film, and it's perfectly legitimate. But the theory serves the film, not the other way around. If the purpose of the quote is to anti-intellectualise the endeavour of filmmaking, then it is a sweeping generalisation. And while film certainly requires manufacturing, so do buildings, and statues, and books. In every instance there is a lot of relatively non-reflective manufacturing work required, in collaboration with some extremely creative, often intellectual input. In some films more than others. The existence and commercial success (sometimes)of the ridiculous junk that packs-em-in at the multiplexes and dies a death a week later is actually as deserving of theoretical examination as a high art or "poetic" film that struggles to find a mass audience but usually finds a deeply appreciative one. If the purpose of the quote is simply to say that not everyone on set has to be Lars von Trier or Peter Greenaway, then fine. I can't help thinking it's being invested with more meaning than that, though.

Hey Jim Are you writing a glossary or something? You've sent a series of quite basic questions to this forum over the past few weeks, mostly about things that are so uncontroversial that they haven't engendered the usual distracting arguments, or descended into the inevitable film vs digital argument or the "who needs a cinematographer" one either. Which is, of course a good thing, though unexciting;-) And so you've elicited excellent, straightforward answers that seem to have satisfied everyone, yourself included. A tribute to the clarity of expression shown by some people on this list - but nothing has really gone beyond what a simple film-making primer could have told you - and the rest of us. I'm just curious: is the individualised human response better, or just less effort on your part, than a simple Google search or reading a book? Or are you an invention of Tim Tyler, calculated to add value to the forum? ;-)

Not So.. What about POSTWORKS - at 100 Avenue of the Americas. That'd be more or les in New York - last time I looked anyway. (Though I believe it's neg processing only.) I think they have some DuArt alumni there too! Sad to see DuArt out of the processing business. They were at one time the greatest. Well done Irwin and Bob and the team from over the years.

You may think this is good news - or bad news - but in fact Kodak have already developed a DoF app for iPhone. It's the only worthwhile part of the app, but it seems very good, and visually very simple to understand. Look for Kodak Cinema Tools v1.1

Thank you Simon I have the Rawlence book. I now notice that the rest of your information is drawn from Wikipedia citations, and comments that Rawlence mentioned but which I had previously discounted for lack of any other evidence. You are now suggesting the possibility that Le Prince may have re-emerged in Chicago where a teenaged Albert Howell learnt from him, to form a company ten years after Le Prince's second death in 1898??? I'm happy to believe in Le Prince's camera as the first successful(ish) motion picture camera (though not really film as he only used paper rolls), but I'm not ready to see him as the true father of Bell and Howell - whose perforation standards are perhaps one of the most significant bits of engineering after the original inventions to have contributed to the rapid international spread of cinema. Well of course it's speculation, but I understand what you are thinking about - that it is rarely one person who invents somethoing, and often it's not the inventor who gets the credit. Yes, Longley (we're back in Leeds now) was undoubtedly clever, and certainly of a lower class than Le Prince, who, nevertheless possibly had the imagination to see the application of Longley's bits of metal. I have a particular interest in James Longley as I am certain that I am related to him, though more distantly than I at first hoped.

Simon, are you saying that Le Prince's mysterious disappearance from a train in France in 1890 was staged, and he lived another 8 years in Chicago? WHere does this idea come form? I'd love to follow up these sources. Also, I am interested in James Longley - as you say, more than an assistant, and possibly the man who should be credited with the "movement". A man who had patents in machines that punched out tram tickets is a worthy ancestor for our industry :rolleyes: Seriously though, do you have other sources of info on James Longley. Do tell. Is the Leo Sauvage reference that you quote entirely in French? Or is a translation available. My French is not all it might be.

Thre is a question on the archivists' list AMIA-L about the edge numbering on 60s and 70s era 16mm stocks (especially reversal). I'm dismayed to find my memory of that is too fuzzy to accurately answer the question. Does anyone here have any clear information, in particular the system used to identify the stock type? I recall that the prefix of the footage number indicated stock type - a system that carried forward into Keykodes. I might have a list somewhere if what letters referred to what stocks, but it would be buried very very deep in a box: where could I find a list, or any other explanation of the numbering system? Thanks for any help. Dominic

Very good points, John. But there's one big difference in the way 3D is offered to audiences, compared with most previous tecnical advances. It's about choice. When colour started to come in - whether it was early 2-colour or full colour systems, there weren't other cinemas down the road showing the same film in black and white. so no-one had the opportunity to gather statistics about audience preferences (as have been quoted in another thread on this site). Imagine conversations like this: Casablanca is opening next week. Shall we go and see it in colour or black and white?". Or "I just saw Henry V in colour at the Odeon. What a waste. Lawrence Olivier and Shakespeare don't need gimmicks. I think I'll go and see it again next week - just the black and white version at the Picture Palace". Or even "Went to THe Wizard of Oz last night. Saw it in black and white, the queue was too long for the colour one. Didn't get the point about the yellow brick road though." ALthough I think the truth of the matter is that the current crop of 3D films aren't Casablanca or The Wizard of Oz, or even Henry V. Sooner or later Hollywood is going to have to accept that 3D won't save a bad film, and it won't even add to a good film unless it's done with relevance. Bottom line - 3D will survive if it's made compulsory :P .

I've asked about this on the AMIA-L list of film archivists. Archivists are a naturally conservative lot, but consequently extremely rigourous in thier research. Overnight there have been several comments. Generally it seems that there is footage, but taken on the Titanic's similar-looking sister ship the Olympic, and also the Carpathia, which carried many of the survivors on to New York. The BFI has a copy of what may well be the film in question - detailed shotlist here. The description ends with the words "this newsreel is a fake". Biograph may announce itself to be the sucessor to the original Biograph company, but I'm not clear what that means, if anything. The chances of discovering new footage of any sort that shows the Titanic would seem to be very very slight (though not impossible). The chances of this being the ultimate holy grail: film shot during the sinking, also very very slim. The chances of unprocessed images surviving 98 years on the ocean floor, negligible. The chances of rumours of new footage appearing almost exactly a century after the sinking - almost certain. It also appears that "there¹s a good book ³The Titanic and Silent Cinema² by Stephen Bottomore which talks about some of this fakery." Check Google Books.

When the talkies arrived, many in the industry dismissed sound as a passing fad that had nothing to do with real film making. Same with colour. When Dolby introduced stereo optical tracks, many people argued that mono sound was OK for most films, and stereo was really for pop musicals and action/sci-fi films. The difference between 3D and all of these other innovations which have become standard, is that audiences are offered the choice of 2D or 2D. Why is that? It can't just be the cost of converting projection equipment - that was a big factor in 1927, and again in the late 1970s. But 3D requires the viewer to wear glasses - and it's the first time the viewer has had to do anything except sit on a chair and look at the screen. Why is wearing the glasses increasingly a turn-off? Could it be that viewers have realised they can't read their iPhone screens easily with the glasses on? If you can't Twitter it, you haven't done it!

<seriously for a moment> Lab-call: "Sorry, we opened your film can and it was exposed to daylight because it wasn't in a black plastic bag." Anyone who ignored the universal convention of putting raw stock in a black bag and then in a can and taping around the edge of the can did so at their own risk. I've no sympathy for this one. </seriously for a moment> But on the lighter side, the best story I heard out of a consumer photo counter was the customer who picked up his envelope of postcard size prints from a D&P service, shuffle through them to check they were his, and complain that hey had all been printed upside down. On stills again, re the original comment - 8x10 not still frame? Well if you have shot 35mm film it's 24mm x 36mm which is 1:1.5. 8x10 is 1:1.25 so it's not full frame - you'll be cropping quite a lot. And 120 film may be shot in a variety of aspect ratios, but square isn't 1:1.25, neither is 6cm x 9cm. Same with most digital formats. PS loved the video in the previous post. What a wally! The model looks bored witless.

My recollection might be a bit hazy, but I think you might expect to get a couple of grams of silver for every thousand feet of 35mm negative. More for some types of emulsion, less for others.

Rob is right, assuming it's colour neg. You'll need to bleach and fix, and the silver will come out into the fixer. But if the silver level builds up in the fixer, then it won't be as effective and you may get some silver reatined in the emulsion. Electroplating will get you pure metallic silver. Once again, if you overdo the plating current you'll get silver sulphide and other impurities that will devalue the silver. Doesn't matter if the neg is exposed or not. You get all the silver anyway. If it's black and white negative it is a different story. You only need fixer, but if you develop the film too, it mustn't be exposed. When you say that processing virgin neg gets you very little silver, what do you mean? How much do you expect? how are you recovering it? how are you measuring it?

I wouldn't have used the term "salvage the prints". It's true that Eastman negative improved from an indifferent start, although it gained widespread use quite quickly simply because of the convenience of a single strip negative. But I think that Technicolor labs were chosen for the print runs (and therefore the "Color by Technicolor" credit) often not for any reasons of superior colour but because the imbibition process was quite simply cheaper for large print orders(despite a higher set-up cost). One of the reasons for Technicolor's demise (the print process, not the lab) in the 70s was the shrinking print runs as cinemas closed in the spread of colour television, making Eastmancolor more price-competitive. Ironically, print orders in recent times would astonish the labs of the pre TV era, as we now have so much global day-and-date release.

You are very lucky to have an Olympus OM1 to learn with. It's a perfect camera to get the hang of the relationship of exposure, aperture, film speed, depth of field etc. You can use or ignore the internal meter, but you should inore it if you want to learn about exposure. For learning the Ansel Adams zone system (which is just sensitometry using Roman Numerals;-) you'll need to use a spotmeter and use the manual setting controls on the camera. Using an OM1 will also force you to use manual focussing. A good thing. As you might guess, I have kept my OM1, though I disposed of later 35mm camera when I got a digital SLR. It's the best camera I've owned. Enjoy it.

You will note the date of Doctor Who. I believe the first episode was run again a week later because the audience was distracted by tragic events across the water in the US. and hear the original theme music - so much better then because the electromic sounds were new (and analogue!) Just realised that Coronation Street is 50 years old this year. OMG. Is Ken Barlow still in it?