Can you tell me what this is?

[Curt McAloney]

Hi,

 

Does anyone know what the numbers are in the lower right hand corner? I thought it might be printer light numbers, but in addition to RGB there is one frame with C included. This clip was made in 1964. Any help would be appreciated.

 

 

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I have slightly less than no idea what this is, other than that it's obviously a timing test of some kind. I presume you have this as an item of Star Trek memorabilia - this is the pilot, yes?

 

They certainly look very much like printer light numbers. One would presume that C is mnemonic for cyan, and the appearance of the image would support that, but you're right - that would be a special setup, unless they were just notating +C as -GB.

 

I'd be fascinated to find out more. Strikes me as a Dominic Case question!

 

Phil

[Guest Sean McVeigh]

I agree, it looks like subtractive colour correction or filtration figures for printing. (-10R = +10C, etc.)

 

I'd concur with you regarding the R,G,B figures. Doesn't look like C/Y/M filtering (which I'm more familiar with from the darkroom).

Actually, the only other place you see the "G/C" is in front of a light bit of handrail (making the C look like a G).

Probably just a crappy font where the G looks like a C.

 

-Sean

[Curt McAloney]

Yes, it is from the first star trek pilot.

 

The original size of the scan is much larger and from it I can read the top frame which 18-15C. The bottom frame is 24-15C-10B.

 

Was this normal to have test footage with the numbers superimposed like this?

[David Mullen ASC]

>I agree, it looks like subtractive colour correction or filtration figures for printing. (-10R = +10C, etc.)

 

Yes, you see this still used for wedges for optical printing where they do different strengths of R,G,B,Y,C, and M color-correction filtering in the optical printer combined with changes in density (exposure.)

 

I don't know if this is what they used to call a "cinex strip" or not.

[Curt McAloney]

Thank you, David! I looked up Cinex strip on Google, and it appears thats what this clip is.

[K Borowski]

Oh my God, it's Captain Christopher Pike before the accident with the Berthold Rays! ;-) I remember reading how they had a hell of a time with the lab when they shot that because the lab was printing Majel Barrett's face as if it were pink when they wanted it to look green and they kept putting more and more makeup on it but it was still coming back pink. Finally they talked to the lab and the technician was returning her face back to pink when they were printing from the negative because he thought he had screwed up somehow when he had processed the film.

 

~Karl

[David Mullen ASC]

Oh my God, it's Captain Christopher Pike before the accident with the Berthold Rays! ;-)  I remember reading how they had a hell of a time with the lab when they shot that because the lab was printing Majel Barrett's face as if it were pink when they wanted it to look green and they kept putting more and more makeup on it but it was still coming back pink.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The story about the lab trying to print a green person back to pink was in regards to the green Orion slave girl in that episode, not Majel Barret's face.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Nice piece of film history there. :) Today, most film color timing is done on an electronic color analyzer, and additive printers are used. But subtractive "Cinex" tests were widely used in that era, especially if a subtractive printer was being used.

[Dominic Case]

Subtractive printers were still almost universally used in the early 1960s, although Bell & Howell Model C printers (the first additive printers) had been introduced in (I think) about 1962.

 

Black and white printers typically achieved scene-to-scene exposure correction by a "light band". This was a long strip of opaque 35mm film with a series of apertures punched in it according to the lights required. Lights were incremented in one-sixth of a stop intervals (double the normal "printer point" used today, but quite precise enough for the lower gamma black and white print film). Notches cut into the edge of the negative close to each splice triggered the light band to move on to the next aperture. The system had been easily modified for colour prrinting by fixing small squares of CC filter over each aperture. So the test frames in the sample shown were Light 18 +15CC cyan filter; Light 9 no filter; and so on, finishing with Light 24, +15CC cyan +10CC blue filter.

 

With no electronic previewing system available at the time, it was a bit of a trial and error system: so each shot would be printed with single frames at a series of light/filter combinations, and the best result for each shot could be picked from the resultant strip (like the one shown).

 

A reel with -say- 100 shots would require a light band to be made up with 100 holes, each with one or two small squares of filter to be cut out and clipped over the aperture. This was quite time-consuming, as well as error- and damage-prone. It's no wonder that the additive system was welcomed when it was introduced, although it would take quite a few years for labs to update all their equipment. Also, it really required a video colour analyser to take full advantage of it. Kodak introduced one with a massive rotating filter drum which rotated red, green and blue filters sequentially in front of a small monochrome monitor showing sequential R, G and B signals, hopefully in sync with the filter drum) later in the 60's.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Subtractive printers were still almost universally used in the early 1960s, although Bell & Howell Model C printers (the first additive printers) had been introduced in (I think) about 1962.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Kodak developed quite a bit of additive printing technology in the 1950's, primarily for printing still films. Robert C. Lovick of Kodak published SMPTE papers on scene change cueing (November 1956) and on glass additive color filters (January 1958). The Bell and Howell additive printer was introduced with the technical paper "An Automatic Additive Color Printer" by Hans Christoph Wohlrab, in the July 1959 SMPTE Journal, Volume 68, pages 189-192. The Bell and Howell paper was first presented at the SMPTE Technical Conference in Philadelphia on October 4, 1957.

 

(I'm getting old, as Robert Lovick was one of my early mentors at Kodak when I first started here in 1970).

 

Kodak introduced one with a massive rotating filter drum which rotated red, green and blue filters sequentially in front of a small monochrome monitor showing sequential R, G and B signals, hopefully in sync with the filter drum) later in the 60's.

 

The Kodak Video Color Analyzer did use a rotating filter drum and monochrome CRT display. However, sync was not an issue, as the PMT filters that "read" the negative were on the same drum that filtered the CRT. But the noise level of the rotating drum and flicker of the sequential additive display were a limitation of this early technology.

[Dominic Case]

The Bell and Howell additive printer was introduced with the technical paper "An Automatic Additive Color Printer" by Hans Christoph Wohlrab, in the July 1959 SMPTE Journal, Volume 68, pages 189-192.

Thanks John - my SMPTE journals don't go back quite that far;-) - and it's a little earlier than I had thought.

 

When I started in a lab, release printing was still done on Model E printers ("Bell and Howell Fully Automatic Printer"), in which colour corrections were achieved with a reel of dyed 35mm film moved slowly in front of the lamp (at 1/4 the negative speed), which had different dyed lengths spliced together in proportion to the shot lengths. The printer ran at real time (90fpm). A far cry from today's 1,000fpm (and faster) machines.

[K Borowski]

The story about the lab trying to print a green person back to pink was in regards to the green Orion slave girl in that episode, not Majel Barret's face.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Majell Barrett was used for the original makeup tests :P