Dirk DeJonghe
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Posts posted by Dirk DeJonghe
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hello out there. my newest project is a dance film made for France. we are shooting 35mm but i have been told that for television in France it needs to be 16 x 9 format. do i shoot anamorphic and have it converted to 16 x 9 in PAL? please let me know what you know. thank you.
mike
Best to shoot flat format 1.77 (between 1.66 and 1.85). Telecine will do the squeeze to 16/9 anamorphic.
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Time will tell, I won't. ;)
John could tell us, but then he would have to shoot us (on Vision 2 of course).
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C41 uses CD4, ECN2 uses CD3 as developing agents. The picture would be there but the curves would be wrong.
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Phil,
The Northlight has a 6K sensor, the Spirit has only 1920pixels on luminance and 860 pixels on chroma (hoirizontal) . Not really the same ballpark.
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François,
I have small quantities left of 5218 in cartridges. We give them free of charge to customers. I may have some 5217 as well but it needs to be respooled.
Dirk
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François,
I have 35mm 36 exposure cartridges of 5218 in stock.
Dirk
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When working with the 'classic' B&W films, 7231 and 7222 in 16 or S16mm the age of the technology shows. Contact prints are no problem, when doing optical blow-up to intermediate pos/neg then a great deal of sharpness is lost even on very good printer equipment.
Shooting on modern color negative and then printing on sound recording stock will give you exceptional sharpness but the price is a funny grayscale. Some people may like it and some award winning films were made like this.
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May I suggest the reading of the classic " The negative" by Ansel Adams, available from most on-line bookshops. It explains how to set up B&W processing and how to use the zone system for exposure control.
This is all for still photography but very applicable to motion picture. I recommended this book to a new-to-film DOP (he had a lot of video experience). He shot about 3 or 4 rolls of 5218 reloaded in 36 exposure cartridges and made phenomenal progress as a film DOP.
Basically Adams recommends to do exposure tests and find where zone 1 (just above D-Min) falls. If you understand this then you will also understand that push processing a negative will not really increase the speed of the film, just add some density and give higher print numbers.
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Max,
Troy was scanned on a Northlight scanner, graded on 6 or 8 Baselight systems, and recorded on a Lasergraphics CRT recorder so that counts as a DI I guess. I had the privilege to see the film in MPC's preview theatre in Wardour street. Excellent projection, picture and sound, no commercials, no popcorn.
Dirk
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John,
My current favorite is the 5217, gives me good speed, very good sharpness by not driving the CRT too high, and matches perfectly with the original negatives that are mostly 5218 or 17 these days. it helps to reduce the grain on some of the scans because you don't want to have twice the grain.
Dirk
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The last film I saw was Troy, done on a CRT Lasergraphics, and it certainly looked very good.
The main advantege of lasers is that they can easily get higher densities on lower sensitive films such as 5242 Intermediate.
The main advantage of CRT is that they are so flexible and can shoot almost any stock in existence, in particular camera negative, black and white, high contrast positive stock etc. They used to be slower than laser but not anymore.
I find it easier to match CRT output on camera negative spliced into original camera negative.
Somewhat like the difference between a flying spot telecine and a CCD telecine, they have their own look that is no better or worse but different.
Dirk DeJonghe
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Sam,
Regarding the optical printer: we use two Seiki printers for blow-up, reduction and 1:1. They have a shutter just like a film camera and the light changes fall in the dark period when the shutter is closed and when the film is being transported to the next frame. We do a lot of direct blow-up this way, making a S16 contact answer print first to get the grading right, and then a blow-up using the same grading tape or diskette.
In our preview theatre the S16 answer print is projected on a dual format Sondor Nova projector where the final blow-up is also screened. they match perfectly, except the S16 seems a little more contrasty due to the projection lens.
A film we did a couple years ago was also distributed in the US: 'The red dwarf' shot on 7293, printed on B&W soundtrack stock via color IP/DN. This film won the European Cinematography Award in that year.
Of all the European labs I know we are probably the one with the highest ratio of blow-up versus 35 work.
Dirk DeJonghe
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Sam,
We stopped using the 'classic' hot splicer about 15 years ago. There is no comparison in the quality between the Hammann system and any other 1924 technology hot splicer.
Before a new negative cutter is allowed to work on customer film, he/she needs to make about 1000 splices on junk film to be sure they get the procedure right. Once mastered these splices are amazing, even on S16 we can cut and resplice without loosing frames. Also there is no dust generated because there is no scraping of the emulsion.
Dirk DeJonghe
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You could also leave the negative alone and have the prints made in bleach-bypass.
This will mute the colors, grain build-up will be less (I suppose you will do a blow-up?) because the positve stock has very fine grain to begin with and a larger area than the S16. Blacks and shadows will be emphasized.
Because in a positive bleach bypass you retain silver in the darker parts and not in the highlights the look will be different than in a negative bleach bypass where you retain silver in the (print) highllights.
Dirk DeJonghe
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We are now in the process of making release prints for the feature film "Aaltra", entirely shot on Super 16 7222 and printed via optical blow up to Super 35 IP and then to a squeezed Cinemascope DN. Prints are B&W positive with fairly high contrast and grain, just what the customer wanted.
During the optical blow up of any B&W material, the contrast picks up very quickly, on direct blow ups it is even difficult to hold it down at a reasonable level.
Pushing development will increase the gamma but will give you very little gain in film speed (re-read Ansel Adams' The Negative).
Pulled processing may be indicated if you want to mix B&W stocks with color negative stocks.
Dirk DeJonghe
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In our lab most of the time the entire film is negcut in a single strand (A-roll only) if no dissolves are needed and if the negative is all-color or all-B&W.
We use the 0.7mm wide Hammann splicer that makes a diagonal cut and where cuts can be made without losing a frame on either side. We also found this method more stable (splices not jumping) than AB-rollls. When going from neg to black spacer there always seems to be a slight pitch change in the perforations making the splice slightly unsteady. These single strand splices are invisible in 1.85 format blow-up from Super 16 if no hairs are caught in the splice.
The first exception to this is when the negatiive contains both color and black-and-white negatives and the customer doesn't want to go to the additional expense of having a B&W interpositive/ color dupneg.
The reason to separate B&W and color in this case is because the fiilm printer needs a different filterpack to make up for the lack of orange masking on the B&W stock.
If the film contains optical dissolves, then we still do most of the shots on a single rolll, and change strands just for the shots to be dissolved.
I believe that having all the shots in sequence on a single strand is better for grading uniformity and printing.
If making a contact 16mm print, then the printer light changes cannot be hidden and an AB cut negative might be advised. On optical printers, the light changes are invisible because they fall during the shutter closed period.
Dirk DeJonghe
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David,
A couple years ago we did 'The red dwarf', shot on color 7393 S16 and intended to be released as sepia B&W on color print stock.
It finally ended up as color IP/DN printed onto optical sound recording film (very high sharpness, high contrast). This film then won the 'European Cinematography award' and was released in many countries including the US.
The US distributor ordered an DN from us but were unable to match the look of the print so we ended up making the prints for US release as well (about 10).
We tried both Kodak and Orwo intermediate stocks and there is no way to get anywhere near the sharpness of the modern color intermediates.
Dirk
www.color-by-dejonghe.com
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Mitch,
Either way works, but I feel additional sharpness is gained by not having the second step on the contact printer. I think this has to do with the edge effect of the intermediate stock that seems more prononced on optical printing.
Even when doing 1.85 blow-blow up we now do the second 1:1 step on an opitcal printer and there is a measurable gain in sharpness.
Dirk
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Jarin,
A couple years ago a feature we processed had very serious problems with Ilford 35mm B&W stock. The sensitometric quality was very good, but it just wouldn't run through the camera properly (no lubrication on the backing).
A couple of days into the production the switch to good old 5222 was made and all stability problems disappeared instantly.
Dirk DeJonghe
www.color-by-dejonghe.com
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Exposing a 1000 iso stock as 500 iso is overexposing it one full stop. There is one full stop difference everytime the ISO is doubled.
say: 100 125 160 200250 320 400 500 630 800 1000
Also exposing 500 ISO stock as 1000 ISO is underexposing, exposing 320 ISO stock as 160 is overexposing one full stop.
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David,
You may want to consider a hybrid solution: do only the shot that needs 'something' on DI.
We do both optical and digital blow up and it is still very hard to match price and quality of the optical process.
Doing a test of 30 seconds of the same shot digital and optical will be interesting.
Dirk DeJonghe
www.color-by-dejonghe.com
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So far we have done about 8 feature films shot on S16 negative and blow-up via S35 IP to Ananmorphic 35DN.
The last major film was selected at the Berlin Film Festival recently and was the film on the closing night. It won the Award of the Public. The title was '25 degrees en Hiver" by Stéphane Vuillet and it was photographed by Walther Vanden Ende.
Picture quality is surprisingly good taking into account that only 66.6 square mm are used to blow up to a CScope DN of 367.42 sq.mm.
Christian Lurin of Kodak Chalon saw the results here and was very pleased. Absolute top notch blow-up techniques are essential.
On the other hand, a black and white S16 blow-up to CScope clearly showed the difference in sharpness between the current color intermediate stocks and the classic B&W intermediates. Sharpness on the screen was noticeably less with the B&W stocks even using the same printer, lenses, etc.
Does it replace 35mm? Certainly not. The difference in lab price for a 90 minute feature blow-up to 1.85 or to CScope is only about 6000EUR. The look on the screen of anamorphic is worth a lot more...
Dirk DeJonghe
www.color-by-dejonghe.com
lford in Europe
in Film Stocks & Processing
Posted
As one of the few labs doing B&W in Benelux/France region, we see very very very little Ilford. It can be obtained here but there were some major problems with mechanical properties (35mm Arri BL camera had great trouble running it). I don't think they have keykode on their films, making modern postproduction more complicated.
They make great emulsions, but I feel that they are no longer in touch with the requirements of motion picture shooting.
We have good results with Kodak and Orwo negatives.