Film history question about rushes, dailies

[Curt McAloney]

Hi,

 

I'm hoping someone here can help me out with some film history regarding the creation of dalies/rushes.

 

What film stock was used to create b&w rushes/dalies in the '60's? Was it color print film developed differently to produce b&w rushes, or was b&w print film used? If the latter, what was the stock and its print characteristics, i.e., contrast, grain, etc

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Curt

[Leo Anthony Vale]

Hi,

 

I'm hoping someone here can help me out with some film history regarding the creation of dalies/rushes.

 

What film stock was used to create b&w rushes/dalies in the '60's? Was it color print film developed differently to produce b&w rushes, or was b&w print film used? If the latter, what was the stock and its print characteristics, i.e., contrast, grain, etc

 

it was 5302 B/W positive film. It's basically the same stock used today. There's probably been minor improvements over the years.

 

It was also used for dailies from color negatives on some low budget movies and TV shows.

[K Borowski]

I think I have an old film-workflow chart from the '70s I can put up if I can find it in my files. What's the reason for your question? Are yo trying to depict the film industry of the recent past in a movie you're doing?

 

Regards,

 

~Karl

[Dominic Case]

As Leo says, 5302, or the Agfa equivalent 5.61.

 

Gamma (contrast) was/is between 2.10 and 2.50 depending on processing conditions. Sometimes the lower gamma was used to accomodate a wider range of negative densities, so that the rushes didn't need to be graded or timed accurately. This range of gamma combines well with the b/w negative gamma of around 0.65.

 

5302 is blue-sensitive, so if it was used for cheap work prints from colour negative, it produced the equivalent of a blue separation image. Usually passable for editing, but absolutely useless for a DoP to determine how the final colour print will look.

 

No point in using colour print stock processed differently to get a b/w image: you could do it in theory by using a b/w developer, but as the colour stock was originally dearer than the b/w stock, why bother.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

5302 is blue-sensitive, so if it was used for cheap work prints from colour negative, it produced the equivalent of a blue separation image. Usually passable for editing, but absolutely useless for a DoP to determine how the final colour print will look.

 

While looking up something else in bound issues of american Cinematographer, I came across a July '72

article: The Advantages of One Light Dailies.

 

It seems that in 1965 Quinn Martin, producer of 'The F.B.I.', was telling Sid Solow of CFI that he was unhappy with the B/W dailies that they were using on 'The F.B.I.', but the cost of fully timed color dailies were beyond his budget.

Mind you, this was no Roger Corman production, but ABC's big Sunday night show for which J.Edgar Hoover supposedly approved the scripts.

Solow finally agrees to do one light color dailies for half the cost of timed dailies.

 

A new chapter in lab history opens.

The given advantages of one-light color dailies are: 1) morale & 2) "an excellent means of evaluating the camerawork on a production".

 

& it had slipped my mind that in Ch.Frayling's 'Sergio Leone: something to do with death' that the budget for 'Per un Pugno di Dollari' was so low that it had B/W dailies. Frayling also implies that the dailies were contact printed instead of 4-perf anamorphic. A Spanish lab rather than Technicolor Roma did the front work. The US posters did say prints by Technicolor.