Film splicing before sending it for scanning

[Paulo Arellano]

Does anyone here splice their film together (cutting out bad takes, etc) before sending it to get scanned to save $?

Edited December 1, 2014 by Paulo Arellano

[Bill DiPietra]

Does anyone here splice their film together (cutting out bad takes, etc) before sending it to get scanned to save $?

I own a Steenbeck, but I only use it to cut the work print(s) of an entire project. Are you talking about cutting a negative or a print?

[Paulo Arellano]

print.

[Aapo Lettinen]

if splicing 35mm negative film you need to have special tools for that, normal tape splicer does not accept BH perforated short pitch film. it is possible to do the mod for certain types of splicers but it is quite time consuming because you literally have to modify every pin there is which touches film and also the perforators. the short vs long pitch is actually more of a problem than the BH vs KS perforation profile.

 

last time I were at scanning I brought a test roll where I had short 16mm samples from various b/w and colour rolls I had shot for camera testing purposes. the biggest problem was that the operator had to reframe every single time there was a cut because there was slight variations in splices I had made. quite time consuming, originally I had planned the roll could have been transferred very quickly 1st light in single take :wacko:

[Bill DiPietra]

You also have to concern yourself with how your splices may run through the scanner. I'm not well versed in how film scanners operate, but from what I've seen of the 2K Spirit Datacine, the film feeds through the machine very much like a projector. And we all know how splices can cause jams, so I'd just leave whatever you plan to have scanned unscathed. I'd rather pay a few more dollars than deal with a whole other set of potential headaches.

[Robert Houllahan]

It has been the practice to build 'scan rolls' at the bigger labs to save time going through all the OCN from a feature, so it can be a good practice. That said it takes time and needs a very clean environment and a good splicer.

 

Any kind of Telecine or optical stabilized scanner will not have problems with tape splices, they are capstan drive and either sprocket-less (Kinetta, Scan Station, Xena Servo) or have a follower sprocket which is free running and only acts as an encoder (Cintel, Spirit, Just about any Telecine) there is no possibility of a jam or film damage from splices on any of these machines. A film break will cause all of these machines to stop instantly.

 

Pin Registered scanners (Arriscan, Northlight, Xena Pin Reg) need more care with splices and should be hot spliced instead of tape but we have put tape spliced through out Pin Reg Xena and it works, the big problem is the pins picking up a chunk of splice tape and it getting stuck in the gate. These machines all run slowly and have sensors to detect film breakage.

[Aapo Lettinen]

with Spirit the operators seemed not to worry too much about making perfect splices if some old films broke during telecine. standard practice was to use some tape on both sides to make a somewhat connection that the scanner allowed and run it slowly first time to see how it stood the tension the scanner made to the film.

Actually very good practice because it is not good to splice archive films in a hurry and possibly waste some frames if you can save them all and just use a quick 'tape it and move on' method.

 

That said, the scanner may create considerable amount of tension to the film, so very bad splices will certainly rip and break instantly...

 

Telecine operators hate to change rolls because it is unpractical: standard method is to do all the framing and colour corrections to the entire roll first, save the changes and then just roll it all through the scanner on one long take and record the video feed

[Perry Paolantonio]

Depending on the scanner being used and your ability to create one, a simple EDL might make more sense than splicing your original film, if all you're looking to do is scan selects. We do this fairly often on our ScanStation with 8mm and 16mm film. Each scanner's software is a little different, but we can set it up with either an imported file (a simple text file), or manually by entering the start and end frames of each clip then doing a batch scan.

 

Running spliced film through the machine isn't a problem, but the more the film is handled on a splicing bench, the more likely it is to pick up unwanted dirt or adhesive gunk, get scratched, etc.

[Will Montgomery]

I like being at the transfer session so I can tell the colorist what to skip. In the telecine days we would make a pass on color, the whole thing would rewind and lay off just what I needed or at least not spend time working on color of parts I didn't need.

 

I have a TON of Super 8 family film that I wish I could just tell the colorist to capture only the stuff with people in it but I'm not sure that would save me much money. I don't however want to cut up the film since I don't have another print.