8mm Forum: IB Tech ... printed for Theatrical or Library?

This is topic IB Tech ... printed for Theatrical or Library? in forum 16mm Forum at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on March 26, 2013, 01:27 PM:

Hey ... this might be my first post on the 16MM part of this forum.

My curiousity is that, comparing both IB Tech prints of various titles to eastman or otherwise, I've found that the IB Tech prints are always a notch up in quality, not just color reproduction, but in all cateogies.

It makes me wonder, were the IB Tech prints specifically designed for theatrical presentation, or were they printed for either venue, (library, theatrical ect.)

I bear in mind that many theaters (even up to just recently) would project 16MM prints for they're presentations.

Posted by Jean-Christophe Deblock (Member # 792) on March 27, 2013, 06:18 AM:

I have "the 10 commandements" in 16mm IB Technicolor and VISTAVISION, and it's great great great great great.....

Posted by Oemer Yalinkilic (Member # 86) on March 27, 2013, 02:12 PM:

Osi, 16mm IB Tech. prints were struck for TV stations, librarys, military, schools and also for theatrical use too.

Jean@
I had in the past few different 16mm prints of Ten Commandments and still I have few reels of a print and the quality was on some prints very good and some gorgeous. I have also a 35mm print and Vista Vision prints are always better in 35mm, because the image of 16mm prints is cropped.
Here is a screenshot from a 16mm print:

And here is (unfortunately a bad picture) the same scene from my 35mm print.

The 35mm print is not so bad as it looks on the pic above, so here is another one from the 35mm print.

[ March 27, 2013, 04:13 PM: Message edited by: Oemer Yalinkilic ]

Posted by Hugh Thompson Scott (Member # 2922) on March 27, 2013, 05:49 PM:

To watch these films in your cinema must be a treat indeed
Oemer, that last picture is stunning.

Posted by John Hermes (Member # 1367) on March 27, 2013, 07:44 PM:

I've had 16mm LPP CRI Eastman prints and IB Tech prints of the same title, and many times the CRI print has better quality. It is almost always sharper (since it is fewer generations from the OCN), with color and contrast at least as good as the IB print.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on March 28, 2013, 06:44 AM:

I refer to my copy of "Technicolor Movies" by Richard W. Haines (McFarland 1993).

Technicolor made 16mm dye transfer (I.B.) release prints for non-theatrical markets, including the armed services and universities. In the 1950s it was possible for universities to purchase some Technicolor titles for their own screenings, thus many film collectors legally own 16mm dye transfer copies of classics like the "Adventures of Robin Hood".

With regards to television, networks usually played 35mm Technicolor prints, while the syndicated stations aired the less expensive 16mm dye transfer copies.

Posted by Oemer Yalinkilic (Member # 86) on March 30, 2013, 10:13 PM:

I agree, Richard W. Haines is one of the best Technicolor experts and that´s true for the US marked, but here in germany they used definitely 16mm also in theaters.
Paramount had a lot of technicolor prints in his cataloge for 1959 and they exist also theatrical technicolor trailers for this titles too.

Posted by Lars-Goran Ahlm (Member # 1908) on April 07, 2013, 01:14 PM:

Another question are: when did they stop printing Technicolor on 16MM? I believe that the last film both shot and printed in tech on 35MM was "The Godfather". Did they stop print 16MM tech around that time too, or was it later? As Thechnicolor prints have no datecode it's impossible to know when a specific title are printed by looking at it.
Does anybody know when the printing ended?

Posted by John Vidler (Member # 3314) on April 07, 2013, 01:47 PM:

Hello, this is my first post.

I think that Technicolor printing ended in the US around 1971 but continued in the UK for a few more years. Certainly a number of British Transport Films were printed by Technicolor England in the early 1970s. I have an ICI advertising film that dates from 1975 and it is on stock marked 'Technicolor'. However, I have never seen another print later than this.

Posted by Hugh Thompson Scott (Member # 2922) on April 07, 2013, 03:41 PM:

Technicolor was revived in 1994, the company announced plans to update the 3 strip dye transfer process perfected by Dr Kalmus
for use with polyester based film. Four years later films like
"GODZILLA","BULWORTH" & "TITUS" were released in IB TECH.
Of the 6200 prints made of "GODZILLA", 1000 were in IB TECH.

Posted by John Hermes (Member # 1367) on April 08, 2013, 06:01 AM:

The last film printed in 35mm IB Tech in the U.S. was "The Godfather Part II" in 1974 (until the 1990s version of Technicolor mentioned). It was not "shot" in Technicolor. The last film shot with the 3-strip Technicolor camera was Universal's "Foxfire" in 1955.

[ April 08, 2013, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: John Hermes ]

Posted by Hugh Thompson Scott (Member # 2922) on April 08, 2013, 01:24 PM:

The last 35mm printed in IB TECH were the three mentioned above.

Posted by Larry Arpin (Member # 744) on April 08, 2013, 03:47 PM:

There were also prints of Pearl Harbor I remember reading an article in American Cinematographer. Also re-releases of Apocalypse Now Redux & Funny Girl. Saw Funny Girl it looked beautiful. I seem to remember The 13th Warrior also had Tech prints made.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 1183) on April 12, 2013, 03:02 PM:

Not counting the short lived re-introduction of IB tech in the late 1990's...

For 35mm, 1974 was the last year in the USA, 1977 was the last year in England. There are British IB Tech 35mm prints of Star Wars from 1977.

I believe that 1971 was the last year for 16mm IB Tech prints in the USA.

A while ago Richard Haines sent me some photo's of his Trip to

When Technicolor shut down USA IB printing, the equipment was sold to the Beijing Film Lab in China. In 1989, Richard Haines went to China to have his film Space Avengers printed in IB. He went back a few years later for a subsequent film, but the IB line had been discontinued.

Original release 35mm prints of 10 Commandments were IB Tech here in the USA.

VistaVision went though the projector horizontally, not vertically, and were shown with a VistaVision projector. As very few theatres installed VistaVision projectors, Paramount converted all VistaVision films to regular vertical 35mm 4 perf film, and from that it was printed down to 16mm. Therefore, a regular 35mm or 16mm print is not VistaVision, even though the title was shot in VistaVision.

With the exception of pornography and repertory, I can count on zero fingers how many theatres in the USA ran 16mm. In the mid 1980's, AMC Theatres in the USA experimented with 16mm, and Elmo built optical stereo 16mm projectors, but the project was discontinued and considered a failure.

A while ago, Richard Haines sent me some photos of his trip to Beijing in June 1989. The first is Richard Haines, the second picture are the dyed matrices, the third and forth picture are other parts of the lab.

Posted by Thomas Murin, Jr. (Member # 1745) on April 12, 2013, 05:23 PM:

Batman & Robin (1997) was actually the very last movie to use the dye transfer process.

Posted by Hugh Thompson Scott (Member # 2922) on April 12, 2013, 07:12 PM:

I understand that when the Technicolor process was done by
the Chinese, the results were questionable due to not very
clinical conditions in the lab work.

Posted by Winbert Hutahaean (Member # 58) on April 12, 2013, 10:58 PM:

When a movie poster says "TECHNICOLOR", does it mean always it was shot on 3 strips Technicolor (that is know to be expensive) ?

Posted by John Hermes (Member # 1367) on April 13, 2013, 01:28 AM:

"When a movie poster says "TECHNICOLOR", does it mean always it was shot on 3 strips Technicolor (that is know to be expensive)?"
Not necessarily. It generally means the print is by Technicolor, which after the IB period was simply standard Eastman color printing and processing. The three-strip cameras were phased out during the early 1950s when single-strip negative became available.

Posted by Robert Crewdson (Member # 3790) on June 15, 2015, 05:06 PM:

Just screened my first Vistavision print, and it's IB Technicolor. The titles were cropped on the left side of the screen. I presume this is normal.

Posted by Dave Groves (Member # 4685) on June 16, 2015, 03:24 AM:

Mitchell, you mentioned that Elmo built 16 stereo optical projectors. Is there any info on this and why did it fail?

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