Dirk DeJonghe

You can order fresh LF20 Black Leader from Filmotec.

For sale: Aaton manuals (new), 15€ each plus postage.

Select XTR Prod or XTR Plus, about 95 pages each, English;

info@postproduction.be

DS8 film is 16mm wide and needs to be cut in half after processing. The perfs are different from 16mm so it won't run on standard equipment.

The Relative Humidity is important. In winter, with low temperatures and central heating, indoor air may become very dry. This is when you get the sparks when touching the doorknob etc. B&W has no antistatic protection, colour has the carbon backing.

If you keep RH around 50% or higher, you won't have any problems.

I can say I have rewound millions of meters of exposed film, both reversal and negative, colour and B&W. It is never a problem with colour. B&W might be a problem in extreme circumstances (very low humidity, easily countered with a humidifier) . We splice camera rolls together into 2000 ft lengths while running it through our fingers to detect damaged perfs or sticky tape repairs before processing. Any static discharge is visible after spending 20 minutes in a completely dark room.

Kalle,

Have him contact me, I can help with the respooling and the film stock as well as the rest of the process.

Static is never a problem with colour film because of the remjet backing which contains carbon and is conductive.The main concern is not overfilling the spools so the film doesn't jump the ridge on the inside of the flange.

Kodak doesn't tape the tail to the spool and there is no slot. I use a very low tack paper tape to start the tail on the core. Using a stronger tape may cause jams when the camera runs out.

if you take the magazine off, you will see two rollers with a rubber coating (o-ring). These are the ones driving the takeup spool. When you push the magazine forward to the ready position, these rollers will contact the plastic film spool and open it slightly since the shape of the spool edges is angled.

The roller driving the edge of the spool also pushes the flanges apart to let the film pass easily. When you remove the exposed spool from the camera you should let it fall by gravity, not pull it by the flexible flanges that assure a certain protection from edge-fogging.When self-spooling 400ft loads to the Minima spools, you twist the film slightly to fit between the higher rim of the flanges that stop light from fogging the edges. Regardless, it is advised to load the Minima mags in as subdued light as practical, complete darkness or a changing bag is a good idea.

No, 200ft metal spools won't fit. The plastic spools are driven by the edge, not by the centre. Most labs have a reasonable supply of empty spools for their customers.

I looked at the delivery specs, it needs to be a 23.98 progressive (a 1:1 from 24 fps with slight sound retime should be OK I think) and a 29.97 progressive from our 24 fps progressive. A pulldown will be generating blended frames or freeze frames as previously discussed.

Thanks, Tyler, I was just wondering what quality levels the TV stations expect. Once I made a repair to a damaged frame by freezing the previous frame for one frame, the film was very fine grained, there was no movement whatsoever and it was still rejected by a german TV station. They said it contained a freeze frame, I said it was impossible to see when viewed at normal speed. We had the computer check it they said and it was flagged.

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.