How do you find your own printer light?

Ozgur Baltaoglu · February 9, 2004

the AC manual 8th edition has a great article by Richard Crudo, ASC but I got lost along the way reading since I have shot film only once and I finished video and don't have any lab experience thus many aspects remain a question mark. Can someone explain the process? Thank you

Ali

Mitch Gross · February 9, 2004

This is a practice that is a little out of date now with the common use of video dailies on all but the higher budget production, but here goes.

Printer lights are the combinations of red/green/blue that the lab uses to print the negative to a positive film print. There are generally four types of lighting environments: day ext., day int., night ext., night int. While you may use the same light meter and gray cards, often a DP will have a certain "look" for each of these conditions, where he perhaps may like to slightly underexpose night ext. with a bit more blue or she might prefer the look of overexposed day ext. with more red. Through a series of tests using filters, lights and shooting under the different lighting conditions, the DP would work with the lab making a number of test prints to find the "correct" look for each of the lighting environments. There may also be some special environments for flashbacks, dream sequences, etc. These red/green/blue settings would be logged by the lab and then used to print the feature film's film dailies. This way the dailies would not only reflect the look that the DP was going for but would also be instructive to the DP and Gaffer on a day to day basis to make sure that they were achieving what they had planned. Gordon Willis was noted for having very exacting dailies, so precisely exposed that the preset numbers were almost always dead on and the color timing for the answer print took very little effort to correct. Most of the inconsistencies could usually be attributed to the variation in filmstocks and lab chemistry that are no longer an issue in these computer-controlled days.

Hope this helps.

Ozgur Baltaoglu · February 10, 2004

Thank you Mitch, I appreciate it...

what you're saying is, since digital color correction (Da Vinci etc) has become an industry standard, you shoot and the lab prints "normal" and you do your c.correction and then print a film out (do you still get the I.P from the cam.neg. though) from that; the film out would be the I.N and from that you get color corrected release print.

So there's no messing with printer lights on this pathway?

Ali

David Mullen ASC · February 10, 2004

Well, that didn't happen in my case with "D.E.B.S."....

The IDEAL situation is that your digital color-corrections are so good that when you record out to 35mm IP or IN, whatever, your final print off of the IN is a "one light" -- the entire reel prints at one set of lights without changes.

"Jackpot", which I shot in 24P HD, was generally a one-light print.

However, "D.E.B.S.", also shot in 24P HD, had to be re-timed in film doing scene-to-scene color-corrections because, well, it needed it even though it had been timed digitally already.

But in theory, your film-out should print at one set of lights. However, seeing something on film can make you change your mind about how some scenes look.

Mitch Gross · February 10, 2004

In theory, when using a Digital Intermediate the film out print should be a simple one-light, likely all at 25-25-25. In reality this is not yet the case. There's still differences from seeing the material in an electronic projection to a mechanical/chec=mical version. As much as they try to adjust for this there are still differences.

And the vast majority of film printing is still done with standard intermediate stages, not digitally. So for these the use of printer lights is still very common. Just last week I sat with a color timer and talked printer lights as we screened an answer print.

The common post path these days is to get video dailies of all the footage and edit from these. If the production has a little bit of money and/or the DP insists, a small portion of the footage will be printed to a film daily so that he/she can view it and check the printer lights. Often I have had films go through video dailies only but still had the lab put up the negative on a Hazeltine analyzer to give the printer numbers that would have been used had they made a film print. The video cut is edited together and the film neg. is cut based on this edit. Then an answer print is made off this neg. with a color timer going through every shot and assigning printer lights for what he thinks are correct exposures. The DP and color timer view this print together and discuss the adjustments. The color timer goes back to the analyzer and adjusts the printer light numbers and then makes a corrected print. If large additional changes are still needed they go through this again, but often the changes are minor so they can be made without the expense of another print. The colorist makes the changes and an Interpositive (IP) is made, which is an intermediate stage which incorporates all the changes so that the original negative can be protected and no longer handled. An Internegative (IN) is made from the IP and this new element is now the new Master negative, which incorporates all the printer light adjustments made along the way. If everything went absolutely perfectly then a 25-25-25 print should yield a correct image. But variations do happen along the way, so a Check Print is made. There are usually some minor adjustments that need to be made here, which the color timer programs into the printer lights for the IN. Now dozens of release prints can be made from the IN with no further adjustments necessary.

In the DI variant, from the computer either a color timed IP or IN is burned out. A check print is made from the IN and then as David says additional color timing happens from here. Then release prints are made.

Marc_Abernathy · February 12, 2004

great info guys.

id like to ask a question that may or may not be related to this topic.

when viewing movies in the theater, there is the sync blip the pops up at the top right of the screen at 10 and 2 seconds apart. i remember these to be the timing cues for the projectionist back in the day to switch reels (i could be wrong). my question is why is this still needed in the modern theaters where the movie is usually on one huge reel (or two). is this process automated now where an electronic eye sees this visual cue and switches the reels when making these theater prints?

i appreciate any education on this. its just curiousity more so than anything.

Mitch Gross · February 12, 2004

Not all theaters are using the modern platter projectors, so the labs still put the cue marks in. After a film has completed its first-run release in the US (often only a couple of weeks!), the prints may be used for second-run release in the US or for foreign territories.