Dirk DeJonghe

We are planning to do work for an animation series for children. The basic files we receive are made at 24fps, we need to deliver 25 and 29.97 masters for international television. The 25 fps part is easy, just do a 1:1 conversion and accept the reduced running time. What motion precision is expected in the old NTSC world? The playback of 24 fps into a 29.97 container, how smooth should it be? Do the normal tools in Premiere Pro and After Effects do an adequate job? Any suggestions?

Last month a customer completed a short, shot on 7213 and pushed 2 stops for grain. During tests I suggested he did an exposure test to find the real speed after pushing.The speed point (.10 above D-Min) on the curve gained no more than 2/3 of a stop. The grain was increased considerably and he was happy.

It will give a reasonable image, because of the high sensitivity it will have some gamma-ray caused fogging. If you overexpose by about 1 to 1.5 stops you should be OK for non-critical work.

Sander, in order to get confident in using the exposure meter I suggest you read Ansel Adams 'The Negative'. It is about B&W photography but 100 % applicable to motion picture.

OK, you are right, artists do 'things' to film like destroying the emulsion, scratching film, etc.

I have never done bi-pack or tri-pack. I am quite familiar with optical printers, having run one since about 25 years now, but only for blow-up, reduction and 1:1 ops as well as flat to Scope. As far as I can see, these title operations are mainly done on IP/DN as I suggested, with travelling mattes etc. I am sure the literature has some examples on how this was done before digital titling replaced it. Since about 15 years all titling we do in-house was digital to film.

The traditional way is to make an IP from the picture and AB print it with the white titles on black background on high contrast stock onto the dupeneg. Except digital, I don't see many other practical solutions.

We used to transfer prints as SOP many years ago. They were graded prints and either printed on special low contrast stock or printed 2 to 3 points lighter. This helped with shadow detail. You could pull the shadows down until you got it just right. From a standard projection print it was always a struggle to get sufficient shadow detail. Now we only transfer from prints if nothing else is available, meaning original negative, interpositive, duplicate negative.

If you really must transfer from a positive that is yet to be printed, ask for a lighter print by at least 2 printerpoints.

I had the pleasure to work with the original DoP Caroline Champetier AFC on her film 'Tout une Nuit' (Night and Day in English) for grading a television version. I never met Chantal Akerman, she was about my age, but when I saw her films I always had the feeling that she made the films I would have made if I would have gone in that direction. Strange but true.

We always use Fedex, had bad experiences with UPS into Paris. Depends on the local people I guess. Did you contact customer service?

So far, nothing beats the service we got from Chronopost, not entirely their fault. A brand new blow-up print for a feature was shipped to a Paris suburb for subtitling. In Malakoff, France, the van was robbed by armed men, everything valuable was taken out, the van was then burned with the film inside. We made an new print in emergency, it was subtitled, not robbed and sent in time to the Cannes festival where it won the main award in its category (Camera d'Or).

If anyone has done this, I would like to know how it came out. There should be a useable image but what else?

I think it is the very old ECN-1 camera stock not the newer Color Intermediate Film that probably is not made in 16mm. I would not recommend to process it in ECN-2 since it is not prehardened. Must be from before 1975 or so.

I really want to run a computer with Audacity on it and play the sound file in sync to the mains frequency. The optical camera runs on 3x220v, I don't see any other sync input so I suppose it is synced to the mains frequency.

I need to be able to transfer full 610 meter reels with less than one frame error. How will the computer sync to the mains frequency?

I used to transfer Nagra tapes, synced by SLO to the mains frequence, to SEPMAG also synced to mains. In this case the computer will take the place of the Nagra and the SEPOPT the place of the SEPMAG.

I am installing a 16mm optical sound camera to make my own sound negatives. I am looking for a way to inject my audio coming from a WAV file into the camera while keeping in sync. In the old days a SEPMAG follower was used and the 48/50hz pulse out of the follower was used to drive the camera.

Is there anyone with a good memory who remembers most of the details. The camera is a Picot 50 from the mid 80s.

A very good read to understand the basics of photography is 'The Negative' by Ansel Adams. It iteaches how to use a spot meter, the zone system and how processing and printing are used to create an interesting image; Not all is applicable to motion picture film, but many customers who have read this book at my recommendation were very satisfied. 'Expose for the shadows and let the highlights fall..'

Feel free to ask questions about traditional film grading (timing), I still do this on a daily basis (almost).

There is no reason to convert DPX to TIFF unless your software can't handle it. DPX is by far the most preferred format for professional exchange. At this very moment I am doing a commercial for a very famous beer, downloaded from London, and my work will go to LA for final finish. DPX in/out.

DPX can be 8, 10, 12?,16 bits with or without alpha channel and can have embedded soundtrack as well. I can capture realtime DPX with 16 soundtracks embedded.

In my operation, say the customer wants to change a few seconds in a 90 minute feature. In DPX operations, you rerender the sequence of a couple hundred frames. In Quicktime you have to rerender the whole 90 minutes.

It all depends on your available hard- and software capabilities

DPX is 10 bit and then best use in LOG encoding, if you use linear encoding use 16bit DPX.

DPX can be 8, 10 or 16 bit.

You need a tape splicer to splice Estar base. An ultrasonic splicer will work as well. No cement splices possible.

On a Macbook you will be best served with Quicktime ProRes 422 HQ or 4444. DPX will never play back in real time unless you have a fast RAID array.

The early versions had the footage scale too close together, the later version solved this.

We recorded digital files to camera negative stock for several productions, all high-end commercials (think SuperBowl) or parts of a coming US feature film; in all cases it worked very well to achieve the film look from Alexa files. However the operation is not 'cheap'.

In Europe and other PAL countries, the viewers are conditioned to the 4% increase in speed and pitch since all movies on TV are transmitted 1:1 (film frame to video frame); in fact most of the theatres ran the 35mm projectors also at 25fps. I know that Titanic was 15 minutes shorter. Numerous feature films that I worked on and where I was present during the premiere were definately shown at 25fps (stopwatch in hand).

I even called Kinoton and they confirmed that the standard projectors were set up for 25fps in 50Hz countries. Only in postproduction mixing studios and labs could true 24fps projection be found.

The 100ft Pan-F will probably have KS perforations instead of BH perforations usually used in MP cameras.

We have a number of customers from Spain and Portugal. They ship to us via FedEx. We can arrange pickup at your door. Files can be returned via hard disk or download via ftp.

If you have a 1080p 'scan' from a telecine versus a 2K 'real scan' from a real scanner, then there will be a noticeable difference, with my equipment: less grain, better image stability, better sharpness, less weaving side to side, less registration error, etc.

Of course, a scanner is more expensive to run than a telecine and usually customers only scan selects after editing;

The difference is much more than just the amount of pixels.