DI facilities

[Mah Su Li]

Please advise if the film splicing & cementing way of editing is still relevant when DI facilities are here now? With the 16mm negative shoot, what format should I view on the rushes to judge the exact performance, tapes after TC or positive print? Thank you.

[ryan_bennett]

Can you be a bit more clear, I'm not sure what the question is with how you phrased it but here's my go. Generally you can shoot on negative get it processed then take it to a post house and with a supervised transfer, see it right there on the monitors as the colorist makes the changes, usually to whatever format that you wish to then edit it on an NLE so you can eliminate getting a work print and use the tapes TC and keycodes to later go back to the negative and have it conformed to the EDL spit out by the NLE.

 

Asking if splicing and cementing is still relevant well thats a person question. At times I would rather have the physicallity of film and cutting it by hand. In fact I rather really enjoy it and find it relaxing if i'm organized. Some projects lend themselves to an NLE while others a Steenbeck. In terms of education, I think film students should learn the old ways and splice their films together then move up to the newer ways.

[Mah Su Li]

Am sorry for the vague question. In fact you have answered me partly.

Let us forget about the DI process or other grading. My main purpose is to judge my own original rushes/work without any other post. This enables me to really judge my exposure setting, my light contrast ratio decision and so on. What format would you suggest me to see the rushes from the original 16mm negatives? I have two choices - A TC tranfered DVCpro tape OR a direct positive print from the original negative. Will a DVCpro final product is inferior to the positive print film? Thanks.

[Sam Wells]

In a certain sense a contact print is better than ANY digital/video transfer.

 

I could qualify that by saying if you are shooting for a digital/video finish that superiority may or may not be relevant (I'm doing 16mm - originated work now that goes through Final Cut, Color, Motion 3 etc).

 

Or maybe if you're doing real scanning as opposed to video transfer, but to see what you can do with your negative & judge your work, why not go with daily prints ?.

 

(As an aside, I'm at the point where I'm really thinking "let film be film" & for the digital 'envirionment' I'm ready to switch to digital capture..... as 4K become viable... I learned filmmaking on reversal stocks, didn't even workprint everything... just wound the film carefully and used a Moviscop viewer or light panel and magnifying glass - very "WYSIWYG" very educational..)

 

-Sam