Dominic Case

Back in the 70s in the laba I worked in, all print stock short ends were managed on a butcher's scale. If you had (say) a 900 ft negative to print, the stock control man would go through his box of short ends and find one that seemed about right, and weigh it out to you. Short end returns were managed the same way. There used to be a wonderful brass ruler device, with a round knob on the end that fitted into the middle of a core. It was engraved with footages along both edges - corresponding to a 2" or 3" core. Some may still be around, or it's easy to make one: but they aren't as convenient in the dark. The equation that relates roll radius to film length isn't terribly complicated - in fact I think I provided it in this forum a year or so ago if someone cares to search: the footage is proportional to the area of the edge of the roll, which is proportional to the square of the radius. But you have to account for the size of the core, and the thickness of the film (polyester is slightly thinner than acetate - not much, but if it's 10% thinner, your calculation will be 10% out).

Wonderful looking images. Carefully art-directed of course, to avoid showing the lack of greens. Which is natural enough if you only have a two-colour system, something has got to go! It would be nice to see a test on modern stocks using the same black back-drop, make-up and lighting. Would it look as convincingly 1920s as this test (obviously) does? Somehow I doubt it.

There is no difference in the technology between 3D that comes out at you, and 3D that makes the screen like a window (in other words, 3D that is behind the screen). It's just postive versus negative offset. The difference is in the way the 3D is used in setting the scene, to make it convincing and compelling - but not exhausting. Actually, I have often argued that what we see now isn't 3D it's just stereo vision. It'll be 3D when he viewer at the end of my row in the cinema sees a different view from what I see in the middle of the row. Like a live theatre. And the problem we are seeing now is not so much over-use of 3D in-your-face effects, or under-use (or unimaginative use) of the depth in the photographic composition. It is the bandwagon films that are converting 2D images into so-called 3D - in a few layers. There's no real depth, it looks like a cardboard cut-out diorama. Trouble is, people go to see these films and think that is all 3D is. It's not a new problem. People have been herded into "now screened in super Digital presentation" venues, only to be shown a DVD on a data projector, and walk out convinced that digital cinema is rubbish. And not forgetting the formats that were sold as "3D" in the 1950s - even including Cinerama, which is no more 3D than a bus ticket!

I think the don't cross the line" rule goes back to a much earlier period of filmmaking, when audiences were less sophisticated. It was there to avoid confusion, right back when the audience was used to much longer shots, even complete scenes in one wide shot. All this chopping and changing could be confusing. It goes along with avoiding jump cuts, seamless editing (as distinct from montage) maintaining story order (ie don't start the film with the ending, so popular now) and so on. Today, it's a rule that it's good to know, and good to be able to break so long as the final result isn't confusing (as others have said). Though God knows some films are confusing enough regardless of the 180 degree line.

Everyone has stories, but I always think of the ones about Australian Customs officials back in the 60s and 70s opening cans of exposed unprocessed stock to check they weren't pornographic films. Australian officialdom was a little more sensitive in those days. (Well, not sensitive so much as clodhoppingly prurient.) Security wasn't about the threat of bombs, it was about the threat of permissiveness. But in terms of you ensuring that the runner always takes care of the film, (a good thing), there are threads around that question the idea that you entrust the most valuable thing to come out of the day's work (a roll or two of negative) to the most junior, inexperienced person in the crew.

That easy huh?Most of the 3D movies that come out are blockbusters with a wide release. There wouldn't be many spare projectors around at those times. Anyway, Dolby system runs on a single projector, with a spinning filter wheel. Once it's fitted, you can still run 2D movies on the same machine - just remove the wheel. What's the need for hiring another projector? Back to the topic. What have the audiences been like in the UK for 3D sports coverage, Karel?

But John, Chris lives in Australia - how can India be as close as Australia? Nothing's as close as Australia. Many countries have absolutely no film labs any more. But if you are fortunate enough to live in one that has one or more, it seems wilful and somewhat contrary to try so hard to process elsewhere - with all the risks that that entails.

Sorry to but in on this private conversation . . . ;) but this surprises me. Are you talking about cinema here? (The conversation seems to drift around between cinema sports screenings, pub sports screenings, home projected TV, ordinary home TV at random. But to my knowledge, the majority of cinema 3D installations in Australia have been RealD, which is the polarised system with reflective screens. Dolby, with the offset spectral system and plain screens is in there, but not so many screens. Unless anyone can correct me with more up-to-date figures. Or unless you (Keith) have gone out of your way to seek out Dolby 3D installations.

I hope you aren't as hard-hearted as you sound here, Karl. OMG, perhaps you are :blink: More to the point: Your argument is weakened a little by the fact that most labs have the same policy. But you can't avoid using a lab :) - you can avoid the postal service or unsupervised shipping.

And this will give the consiracy theorists plenty of ammunition to deny the reality of the shots when they finally come back. Funny how the big advances in space exploration imagery seem tied to film directors. From Kubrick down :rolleyes: . Next thing we'll be hearing that a researcher has proved that George Melies' A Voyage to the Moon was the first actuality footage ever shot. Seriously though, it's interesting that NASA hires a director to stage their record shots. Presumably this will come out of their PR budget: it's an attempt to make science interesting and bolster support for their flagging budget allocations.

Doesn't mean it's safe to do so. You were lucky. Perhaps you park without paying - and you often get away with it. Doesn't mean you'll never get booked. It's a risk that you'll get your images ruined.

There is a global lab directory on Kodak's website at http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Suppo...ctory/index.htm You will find three labs in Hong Kong and one in Singapore, for instance. Check the facts - the Kodak list isn't always up to date. For example FilmPlus in Melbourne is listed, but on their website they announce that they no longer process film. Also, consider a few things before you decide to process or buy stock overseas. How do you know the quality is OK? You go to a lot of trouble to expose your film correctly, you don't want to ruin it all in a cheap and quick process to save a few dollars. How will you ship the unprocessed stock? - normal airfreight will be X-rayed. How long will it take, and how will you communicate if anything is wrong? You are asking about not just processing, but also work-printing. One-light? Colour-corrected? That's not cheap, and in fact workprinting isn't at all routine any more. Personally I'd recommend trying to get your work done in Australia. Neglab can process your negative but not print it. You'd have to go to Deluxe in Sydney or Melbourne for that. In NZ you can choose between Filmlab in Auckland (processing only), or processing & printing at Park Road Post in Wellington. Not sure about 16mm reversal processing any more. Richard Tuohy at Nanolab might be able to advise.

Not so fast, Brian :unsure: You are correct when it comes to converting printer points to a filter correction in the printer - and in the later part of your post when you discuss laying a colour filter over a print to extimatge a regrade correction. But I think the discussion here is about the effect of a filter over the camera lens, in terms of printer lights when it comes to make a print. So the gamma of the negative comes into play. In plain terms, a 0.30ND filter (a 30ND) on the camera is equivalent to one stop (we know that). It will have the effect of reducing negative density by about 0.17 (which is the 0.30 times the gamma of the negative, around 0.55). To correct that in the printer lights, you need a change of 7 printer lights (at the value you mention of 0.025logE). It's the same for individual colours, so any filter that has a density of 0.30 to one primary colour (R, G or B) will correspond to a printer light change of 7 lights in that colour. A yellow filter would reduce the blue printer light etc. I'm not sure what the density readings of a tobacco filter would be, but I suspect your guess of -4R +3B wouldn't be far off. Probably more on the red if anything. To grade out an 85 filter takes about a 20-point shift. Bear in mind that, especially for creative filters like tobacco (asdistinct from CC filters) the exact spectral profile is significant and you can't make an exact comparison with RGB grading, or even with more complex correction in Photoshop or the Lustres and Apple Colour systems. Finally, despite all this knowledge, I have always recommended that you request the grader to give you what you describe,, rather than giving her/him instructions on how to grade - which they are supposed to know better than you! As others have suggested, you need to be very explicit. If you shot a grey card, unfiltered, then have them grade that to neutral and print the rest of the roll AT THAT LIGHT. If the print comes back with a neutral greycard and yur filtered shots also neutrl, then maybe you are overestimating the effects of your filter. If the greycard isn't neutral, then they haven't done as you ask. But if you call the lights and you still don't get what you hope for, then you are finished. You have nowhere left to go. Sorry this is long - it's a complex, but not at all unfamiliar problem.

Karl is right. The bleach stage of the process should normally run to completion, so the machine is designed to complete the bleaching at some point well before the film passes into the next bath (wash). That allows for day-to-day variations in the bleach solution. It doesn't matter if the bleaching is completed half way through or 95% of the way through. The chemistry isn't controlled quite so precisely as the developer, and so the end-point may be reached differently on different days, or with different stock types, or gauges. Also ther eis the issue of turbulation and faster processing near the perfs, that Karl describes. Not a problem for complete bleaching, potentially a serious problem for partial bleaching. Which is all well and good until you test a "partial bleach". What you get one day may well be different from what you get the next, or on a different emulsion type or gauge. The "test" isn't a reliable predictor of your end result. So whether you prefer the look of the chemical effect or the digital effect, you won't have the control you need if you go for chemical "partial" bleaching. Spend your 4 cents a foot on lighting instead - as you know you really want to.

The amount of blur (which is really circle of confusion projected the other way) is equal to the diameter of the light source, times the distance from puppet to wall, divided by the distance from puppet to light source. So the further away the light source is from the puppet, the better. And the smaller the light source (or lens in front of it) the better. Have you considered using a slide projector as your light source? Alternatively, how big is your puppet? Can you use it horizontally over the surface of an old overhead projector (the sort used to project full page size transparencies?) Or re-rig one of those to have a vertical light plane?

You don't say if your Dad found 35mm reels or 16mm reels. The entire show could be on two 2,000ft 16mm reels. Many films were also distributed in 16mm for club screenings etc

Er . . . . I think you could try this out for yourself almost as quickly as you got an answer here. And see the result.

I don't think you've read the responses. Expensive or not, (and 2 or 3 cents a foot still mounts up), processing variation simply doesn't have much of an effect. You simply WILL NOT get anything approaching the look of the Youtube clip you refer to, by processing. There is image flare there, and you'll need filters or nets to do that. I don't see why any camera is incapable of having a filter rigged onto it somehow - in front of the lens if you can't get behind it. And flashing can be done in any camera provided you can rewind the stock and run it through again. Though I wouldn't do that without testing either. Still, if Fotokem is going to pull 3 stops for you, I just hope you get the film fully bleached and fixed. Good luck.

Check with your lab. Will they push as much as two stops? How much will they charge you for that? Surely you could buy a lo-con filter for less, and get the film processed properly. The clip you referred to looks like overexposure and some kind of diffusion. I agree with Freya, maybe white stockings. Flashing would work too, as it lightens the shadows: but you absolutely shouldn't do that without testing. Whatever you do, aim to get the look right without relying on processing tricks. Film stocks are become more and more stable to process variation. You need to achieve your look with a standard process, and maybe just rely on the pull-process to avoid the neg getting too dense.

It's entirely a matter of stylistics and storytelling. The basic question is "how much do you want to darw the audience's attention to the character in focus?" How much do you want to isloate them from the other person and the background? Sometimes the speaking character is in focus, sometimes you are more interested in the other character's reaction - or even the fact that they aren't listeining, they are thinking of something else. If the background is distracting you would use a shallower depth of field to throw it nmore out of focus. You can also use a different focal length lens to make the background smaller or larger in relation to the foreground character. Up to you and the director and the story.

No, but I do have the AMPAS annual report for 1929, which also quotes the "WHEREAS . . . . . be it resolved . . . etc" statement. There is an additional paragraph to this statement which Brian didn't quote that is interesting in the light of more recent discussion in this thread. It says: BE IT ALSO RESOLVED: That the committee further recommends that theatres which make a practice of reestablishing the full screen proportions from sound-on-film pictures do so by the use of an aperture whose size would be 0.600 by 0.835 inches on the basis of projection on the level, the horizonal center of the aperture coinciding with the horizontal center of the S. M. P. E. Standard Aperture. my italics - if I read this correctly, it's an attempt to cover the trigonometrically challenging problems of keystoning. Incidentally, this statement was issued by a committee consisting of representatives of no less than four organisations: American Society of Cinematographers; American Projection Society (Chapter 7); SMPTE (Pacific Coast section); and AMPAS Technicians' Branch. The Association of Motion Picture Producers Technical Bureau was also there. What a bunch of organisations, it's a surprise they ever got any work done! BTW another little question. In copying this out I carefully transcribed the exact US spelling of 'center' , but noted that the word 'theatre' is spelt in the English way. It seems to be common in all my American papers from that time, though not so now. Anyone cast any light on how Noah Webster came to be so ignored in the theatrical or cinema business?

I have neither a fresh piece of stock not a micrometer to hand, but I do have the SMPTE standard SMPTE/ANSI 109. It says the width of 16mm film is 15.950 ± 0.025 mm. So the minimum width is 15.925mm and your sample is wider than that, so it's OK (though only just - how much is Kodak saving by shaving about 0.15% off the film ;) There is a note that says "The metric conversion of dimension A is purposely chosen and shown to three decimal places to prevent the maximum width dimension from exceeding 16 mm." And since you are looking for precision, the standard applies to film at the time of perforating, and at a temperature of 23C and 50%RH. Processed film will shrink very slightly.

Simon says: In fact, the film IS coated with a substance called remjet, which is an abbreviation of REMovable JET. Jet is another name for lampblack: very finely divided carbon particles (which is what the coating consists of). You can take my word for it, or check with Paul Read: Restoration of Motion Picture Film (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000). You are right that the remjet is removed (after softening in an alkaline solution) by sprays or jets, though they are most certainly NOT underwater. The impotant thing about remjet removal is that the carbon is sprayed off the back of the film but not allowed to touch the emulsion surface, where it would be instantly and permanently bonded onto the wet emulsion. This calls for very precisely adjusted spray nozzles.

Hmm. I agree completely that the rectangle becomes a trapezoid, so you file the gate out to compensate. (Which, by the way, means that the framing is inevitably slightly different from what the cinematographer intended: vertical lines near the side of the frame give the game away very quickly, 'cos they are no longer vertical). But I think that the down angle would also change the aspect ratio. As the screen is not at right angles to the projected beam of light, the vertical dimension of the beam is increased, while the horizontal stays the same. (I found it easier to visualise a round beam of light (as in a spotlight) projected onto a square-on surface producing a circle of light: then, on tilting the surface, you get an ellipsoid (or some kind of oval anyway). So a tilted projector would produce more height for the same width: a 1.37:1 projector mask would therefore produce a 1.33:1 image on the screen. Of course that is measuring across the middle of the frame. What is the aspect ratio of a trapezoid ? :blink: :unsure: Filing the mask out will alter the aspect ratio in a much more tangible way.

Pull processing is achieved by speeding up the processor to reduce development time. If you speed up too much, then you get incomplete bleach and/or fixing. That is why you can't get more than 2 stops (and that is optimistic). Hypothetically a lab could achieve a pull process by dropping the dev temperature instead of reducing time. But most machines are fitted with heating elements not cooling elements, so it would take a very long time (lost processing time) waiting for the dev temp to drop sufficiently. Guess who would have to pay for that lost productivity? The good news is that film has so much latitude, especially on the over-exposure side, that yhou'll get a great image with standard processing and digital colour correction. The colour correction system will probably run out of range before the negative does.