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Author Topic: Manipulation of color when preparing a negative ...
Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005


 - posted April 16, 2008 12:05 AM      Profile for Osi Osgood   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I was commenting on Steve Clare's review of "Black Five", (new on the reviews section of this forum), and it brought up an idea I was musing upon ...

I have been collecting a number of great vintage trailers from the 1970's on 35MM, (Battle Beyond the Stars, Grizzly Adam's, for instance), and they tend to be just slightly off color.

I devised a very nice light green filter than I use in projection at times. When the fade on a film isn't too bad, the filter literally makes the color look almost (but not quite) pristine, and since the green is quite light, it doesn't have the tendency of making a white sky look ... green.

I then thought that if I ever had the chance to make my own Suyper 8 prints, (I would start with vintage trailers and ad reels, as I have original 35MM of TV ads and such) and negatives, would I be able to add the filter to the "imaging mechanism" (okay, that's the only name I can give), so that the actual negative will look better than the source material that is used. I have noticed that the "Battle Beyond the Stars" looks nearly pristine with the filter applied to it, and I would therefore be able to make prints on Super 8 that are an improvement on the source 35MM.

comments gentlemen?

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003


 - posted April 16, 2008 01:25 PM      Profile for Steve Klare   Email Steve Klare   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
It's spelled "Klare", "Ozzie"! [Wink]

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005


 - posted April 16, 2008 04:33 PM      Profile for Osi Osgood   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Ah, yeah, "Klare",

So, any comments?

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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John Whittle
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 791
From: Northridge, CA USA
Registered: Jun 2003


 - posted April 18, 2008 06:13 PM      Profile for John Whittle   Email John Whittle       Edit/Delete Post 
If you make an internegative you'll need to do a lot of experimentation to get it right. If the case of film work on trailers (and old television commercials), IP (interpositives) were made of all the action pieces, then on an optical printer the IPs were printed to internegative with all the effects added. This camera negative was then used to make interpositives that were used to make internegatives to make prints.

Often the original IPs for features were printed off of dupe negatives used to make release prints so you can see that any trailer in 35mm is many many generations removed from the original negative. In the case of tv commercials when they were shot on 35mm film in the US, the negative was never cut (so it could be used in the future) and IPs were made of the selected pieces and then those were rolled to internegative with effects and titles. 16mm prints were made from a reduction internegative made from a protection 35mm IP made from the internegative from the optical printer. Again lots of generations away from the original.

If you were to make up a negative from your 35mm release prints what we'd do is make an IP and then a flashed negative (to lower contast) and photograph any other material on 35mm negative and then all the new negative material would be register printed to 35mm IP and on to an optical printer to make up a negative with all cuts, titles, and fades, wipes and other effects. This 35mm negative would then be used to make up an Interpositive which would be used to make a reduction 16mm internegative that would then be used to make up reduction Super8 prints.

So you can see why lab bills for a thrity second spot can run in to thousands of dollars. This doesn't include making the sound track, recording, dubbing (re-recording with music and effects) and then making up optical sound track for the 35mm prints and a 35/32 track for the 16mm prints and a magnetic sprocketed master for Super8.

Every scene will have it's own color correction and they're done without filters. Back in the late 1960s, Bell & Howell introduced the Model "C" additive color printer. In the light box, dichroic mirrors split the light into red, green, and blue beams. Each beam then passed through a shutter which was programmable to one of 50 steps. Each step was .025 log e, this allowed 175000 combinations of colors on a scene to scene correction without filters. Each light valve (as they're called) has a manual base set-up of 25 positions. If you work in a lab, the control department establishes the base setting for emulsion variation, voltage of printer lamp and any netral density filters necessary. The color timer adjusts each scene with a series of numbers such as 25-25-25 which would be considered "normal" in which Red 25, Green 25, Blue 25 would all be centered. If the negative needed to be corrected then the light would be adjusted. Originally these ran on paper tape with foil tabs, now they run with frame count cueing and computer memory.

By the 1980, the light house had been adapted to work with optical printers so the old method of subtractive filters was done away with.

Technicolor three strip cameras were another whole story for another day (and it's really amazing the results that they achieved with a 1-22 light system in printing the matrix material for the dye printer).

As you can see, it's a little involved. BTW if you want to use a positive print as a master, you need to use 7271 internegative since it's dyes and dye mask are adjusted to read from positive dyes where the normal internegative/interpositive films are designed to read from a dye mask original. Just shooting with a regular camera color negative gives you results with objectional contrast which is beyond correction(I know we've all seen PD prints that were made that way).

John

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005


 - posted April 19, 2008 10:41 AM      Profile for Osi Osgood   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Duhh, what?

I was hoping I'd hear from John!

I'm betting that when or if I ever start making little trailer reels, I'll hire someone like John and have him run the shop!

In the meantime, I'll still collect the best color quality vintage trailers that I can.

It's curious, one of my ads, (for taco bell) must have been a pre-release print, as it doesn't have a soundtrack on it!

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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John Whittle
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 791
From: Northridge, CA USA
Registered: Jun 2003


 - posted April 19, 2008 04:50 PM      Profile for John Whittle   Email John Whittle       Edit/Delete Post 
Perhaps, but it's more likely the print was used to go to telecine and they had more than one track so they layed back the track from magnetic material--you can use anything with time code on it since you can just punch in numbers to synch up the tracks. In the old days you had to put a "pop" at a start point and then line up the pop and advance the track and put your printing leaders on--but that's ancient history now days. Different studios had different starts, i.e. 9 foot start would have the pop on the 3 foot mark or "2" on the universal leader and was used by most studios. Warners used an 11 foot start which put the pop just one foot infront the the picture so after lining up the track you had to bloop it out! Then there's the matter of pull ups for reel changes, but that's a topic for another day.

John

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Adrian Winchester
Film God

Posts: 2941
From: Croydon, London, UK
Registered: Aug 2004


 - posted April 20, 2008 07:41 AM      Profile for Adrian Winchester     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Something that's vaguely relevant is that I know someone who, several years ago, had a film that was half good colour and half faded Eastman. As it was a rare and prized item, he took the faded reel to a UK lab who copied it and colour corrected it in the process. He was delighted with the results of the new (16mm) reel and apparently you would never guess the source was so faded. I think it cost him about $900 for maybe 40 mins of film, though.

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Adrian Winchester

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005


 - posted April 20, 2008 11:37 AM      Profile for Osi Osgood   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Interesting Adrian.

Though it's not talked about a lot, I'm sure that color correction can be done if you have the bucks to shell out.

Fot us collectors, it probably makes more sense to just
wait and find a good color print.

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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