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Could someone explain the process of making an entire picture on film without ever transfering the print to digital?


chauncey alan

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1. process the exposed film received from camera crew.

2. make workprint (eventually transfer sound to SEPMAG)

3. edit workprint on film editing table (if all else fails on the kitchen table with scissors)

4. send edited workprint to negative cutter for conforming (reads keykode numbers on workprint and conforms negative accordingly)

5. prepare for filmgrading by noting shot changes, and discussing with DOP

6. filmgrading on Colormaster, simulating the printlook from the negative using only RGB  light changes,  making a list of FCC-RGB data (where the lights have to change and printing lights, eventually fades and dissolves)

7. negative laced up on printer, paper tape read in Printer Control Unit, lights out, printstock laced up and start button pushed.

8. after print run, exposed printstock is processed.

9. screen print with customer, note further grading changes required, goto step 6. and repeat.

 

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After raw stock exposed in camera/s it gets processed. Developed to negative by one of the many known formulae, developed to color negative by the Eastmancolor Negative process, ECN. Ektachrome is E-6 processed for a positive image.

Dailies/rushes are exposed in contact with the original, be that a negative or a positive. Corresponding films are in stock with motion-picture labs. You can build your film from the dailies, image and sound. Sound dailies are transfers from quarter inch magnetic tape or other sources to magnetic film, so-called fullcoat or stripes (matter of costs). Other workflows are known.

Meanwhile securing elements may have become wanted, a master duplicate positive off the camera neg in most cases, on equipment that locates both films precisely. Sometimes not

Once the film has passed, i. e. “finished”, a lab answer print is struck off OCN, married with sound. The sound track is copied off an optical negative (special black-and-white film) in specific advance relative to image. Projection, approval. Or not.

Another answer print, often called correction print, and so on. Decision on distribution calls for internegative/s on special stock or not. So you have one OCN, maybe two dupe pos, a number of dupe negs, and the release positive prints that go to theatres/exchanges.

Generally continuous printers are used. They can be run fast, fastest go up to 2,000 ft/min, but image steadiness is not first class. Good prints are exposed on intermittent, if not precision printing equipment. Sound track is exposed continually in every case. Digital sound is often exposed directly on printer by LASER modules.

Originals and valuable duplicates are kept in cans. You have copies on the editing bench, view it on a Moviola, on a flatbed editor, in projection. There is special machinery with labs and or editing places with which separate image and sound can be projected. SEPMAG, in earlier days SEPOPT. Sound copies were pulled off photographic sound records. Hollywood began to adopt magnetic sound recording since around 1948.

Tradition had so-called short pics, snippets from the OCN spliced together to give an assembly of the film for timing/grading. Whenever possible they were made one length, say, six frames. A first short was printed, then assessed by colorists. They made a list of the colour corrections throughout, up to the late fifties as YCM gel filter values. The gels, Wratten filters, are available in steps of log 0.025 densities. Printers of the time had basic light intensities programmable in different ways. In 1957 the Hazeltine analyzer was put on the market, offering an electronically inverted image on a cathode-ray tube monitor. That, in comparison to the short or still slides projected alongside, could be altered in brightness (not density) and color saturation. Three channels, RGB. You understand that the comparison of an additively generated image to a subtractively working color system can be demanding. In my eyes it’s stupid. OTOH beautiful films were timed that way but DoP and lab technicians not always speak one language.

To round it off, you had softer prints for television, lighter prints for small-gauge projectors, high-intensity and xenon-arc color prints balanced warmer, color prints balanced cooler for incandescent lamp projection. The first Edison prints were quite dense because they were viewed lit directly from behind. It’s a vast field.

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To add to the info above, for 16mm it's necessary to do A & B rolls to make invisible cuts on your print. You can also add additional rolls for titles or even optical FX (Mike Jittlov's films are a good example of this).

I am in the process of doing a little all-analog film right now, but I plan on getting the workprint scanned so that the sound can be handled digitally. Once the mix is done, we'll send a digital file to the lab to get an optical sound negative shot.

Fewer and fewer labs make prints any more. Fotokem, Colorlab, and Spectra come to mind. Cinelab just recently stopped making prints, sadly.

...another option is to skip the whole process and shoot on an optical sound camera like an Auricon, on reversal film. Your camera original would be your release print!

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 7/26/2019 at 9:22 AM, Webster C said:

..another option is to skip the whole process and shoot on an optical sound camera like an Auricon, on reversal film. Your camera original would be your release print!

HA!  My first commercial I shot on an Auricon.  30 sec, one take.  No edits.  Them were the days. :)

On 7/26/2019 at 9:22 AM, Webster C said:

 

 

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