Dirk DeJonghe

If you don't mind uploading it to my ftp site, PM me and I will create an account and password. We can all learn from this.

It would be helpful to know what is really wrong with the DVD, may save hassle in the future.

Welcome to the brave new digital world. Life will never be as simple as it was. How will it be five years from now with every manufacturer having his own blend of fileformats, hardware, OS, metadata etc, etc. How much chance is there that 50 years from now your files will still be readable? Your negative will still be fine.

My daughter Kaat comes to London quite often, but right now she is in Tel-Aviv. We can arrange Fedex pickup from your house if necessary. Just give us a call and they will come to pickup later in the day. We get daily shipments from all over the globe and Fedex is the best courrier we can imagine.

If you received a Prores file on a DVD ask for another copy of the file on another disk or stick. Nobody transfers Prores directly to DVD so they probably still have it on their computer somewhere. We usually keep transfers(simple rushes) for at least a month before erasing. What happens all the time: customer receives a Mac formatted Hard disk as requested by editor. Producer puts it on his Win computer. Computer says: "disk is not formatted do you want to format yes/no?" You can imagine what happens in some cases; obviously not possible on a dvd.

The Kodak stocks on 100ft daylight spools used to be wound using an oscillating motion where the film was moving from left to right to leave no gap between the film and the flanges of the spool. There also used to be (on the negatives) an additional layer in the emulsion that protected against light-piping. Since these two measures are no longer applied at the factory it is greatly recommended to load the film in very subdued light or complete darkness if you can. Especially if you shoot Super16 on daylight loads. Even a jacket turned outside in will be better than nothing; a changing bag is a good investment and can be handy to resolve camera jams too.

Our customers can also order Kodak stock via us. Talk to Aaike or Kaat for details;

Static electricity is very rare on color camera negative because of the conductive carbon rem-jet backing. It might be a problem in very low relative humidity on B&W stocks. We wind color intermediate and print stocks at over 1000 ft/min in complete darkness, never seen a spark. Very little chance on hand rewinds. Just keep the room at 50% humidity or more if in doubt.

You can buy both Fuji and Kodak from= http://www.frame24ltd.co.uk/

The work we did was to have the camera groundglass marked for 2.35, nothing else was changed on the camera; in the case of optical blow up to Anamorphic, one production used both the Tronchet anamorphic add-on lenses and the spherical Super 16 lenses with center extraction. This particular film was shown as closing film on the Berlinale Festival. There are now 1.33 ratio anamorphic lenses available that would permit use of the entire 1.66 Super16 area against the 1.17 area used by the Tronchet system. The advantage of using spherical lenses on a cropped 2.35 image on the Super16 negative are: much wider lens choice, not limited in front diameter, normal out-of-focus backgrounds instead of squeezed, zoom lenses can be used as well as long telephoto lenses. In brief: optical blow up from S16 to Super 35 Interpositive using spherical Printing Nikkor lens on the optical printer, next Super35 spherical to 35 Anamorphic Duplicate negative using special design Isco blowup lens on optical printer. Last: contact print 35mm Duplicate negative to Projection print 35mm CScope (fully standard formats). If digital: scan the Super 16 negative full gate and crop in postproduction. Render to anamorphic and record to 35mm film. With current generation negative stocks both methods give very good results with standard Super16 equipment and lenses. You cannot just take a file and open up a wet gate for optical printer, you have to build a new one, start counting at 15-20000 US$.

Super 16 is here since several decades, it is an ISO standard and supported by manufacturers of film stock, cameras, lenses, telecines, scanners, film printers, animation cameras, and many more than I can think of. No need to invent yet another format. Those Keykode numbers on the perforation side are mighty useful for negative conforming, scanning from edit list, etc. We have worked on about a dozen Super16 features that were blown up to Cinemascope 2.35 anamorphic format via optical printer and digital scanner. Let's concentrate on using existing formats with existing tools.

It is not common at all; you need a very decent budget to do that. Of course you only apply this to the final edit. If you live in the US, you may have watched this years SuperBowl. The CocaCola commercial 'America is Beautiful' (60 and 90" versions ) was shot on Alexa, digital DPX files were transfered to 35mm 500T 5219 stock (using only Super16 area) and then rescanned back to 10bit LOG DPX files that were sent back to the US by FTP. There is a version on Youtube but without the added film grain because Youtube compression doesn't handle this grain very well. The intention was to create a 'home-movie look'. Our client was very pleased.

The Kodak daylight 100ft spools hold 33 meters or 109 ft. Some clever people load their spools in a changing bag and can use all of it; 400ft reels hold 125 meters.

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.

Steve, You only need about a foot of real black leader per shot, we can zero-close the printer between takes so no light strikes the not-so-black leader between the shots.

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.

Good you found it. An old trick is to make a very small flashlight, just a bulb and a battery with switch, switch it on, lay it inside the camera, and then sit in a darkroom with the camera on your lap for a few minutes. Any light coming out of the camera will show the leak.

It looks like light bouncing off the oscillating mirror when the light comes from the front. It seems not like any motor or mechanical issue to me. Is the inside of the camera between the lens and the film gate sufficiently blacked with matte paint, also the sides of the mirror/shutter?

A few years ago I attended a seminar on archiving etc at the Cinematek Brussels. A German professor of the Fraunhofer Institute spoke about resolution from a biometric point of view. He said: If you are seated in the best seats in a theatre where you can see the entire screen comfortably without panning your head, and if you have perfect vision (only a few percent of the population), then anything above 3K is no longer detectable by the perfect human eyesight. Imax is great for documentaries and some selected scenes in fiction. I saw one fiction in Imax by Jean-Jacques Annaud about Aeropostale (I think) and the visual information was too much to follow the plot. In a restaurant scene for example the viewer starts reading the menu on the table instead of watching the actors.

You will be fine, 7219 has considerable exposure latitude and most people treat it as 320 anyway (2/3 stop over). You will need an ND6 filter combined with an 85 if shooting outdoors with plenty of light.

Nowadays most people use negative stock (colour or B&W). It can be transfered to digital HD format with very good results. Reversal film is only suitable for direct projection, but has much less exposure latitude. Also, you can still make very good projection prints from negatives, while making prints from reversal requires an expensive internegative since no reversal print film is available any more.

When an Japanese engineer talks about improvements of his camera, he says it has 'improved clarity' compared to the previous model. Very rarely have I had fiction customer DOPs ask for more 'clarity', usually they talk about 'mood, tone it down, etc'. In the hands of a capable DOP, film is becoming what a fine oil painting has become, a unique art of expression. I now handle more artists films than commercial fiction films and they all 'create' something rather than 'capture'.

If you look at a piece of film in its natural undeveloped state, you will notice that it is curling slightly, emulsion in. This is also the way the Aaton camera supports the film, The pressure plate on the base side of the film is slightly concave. This means that the emulsion is not really touching the camera aperture. Have a closer look at a metal tape measure and you will understand this natural curl also helps steadiness in the gate. This also produces less 'hair-in-the-gate' and less emulsion scratches because there is some air between the camera aperture and the film emulsion.

Mark, Triacetate base certainly shrinks, even more when stored at room temperature. Look up 'vinegar syndrome' and you will understand. I still don't think it is a good idea to run this film.

Any competent B&W lab should be able to process it in D-96. I would suggest you expose at 64 ISO, the film is going to be very fogged by gamma rays because of age. I wouldn't waste any money on it and buy some fresh stock.