Does anyone know what this is ?

[Jason Moffatt]

I have a 400ft film in good condition and about half way in for around 30ft the sprocket area looks like it has been coated in something, this makes it slightly thicker in that area and it plays ok but makes a bit more noise.Ive checked the sprocket holes and there is no damage.I can’t see a reason for this, does anyone know ?.

[Steve Lee]

Hi Jason.

I must say I have never seen this done to a 16mm print before but this was the norm for 35mm back in the late sixties right through the seventies when long play systems were introduced. Some bright spark thought it would be great idea to paint a tram line down sides of the film at the beginning and the ends of the reel change overs, so they could see where the joints are in order to plate it back off to send it back, quickly usually late at night after the last house.
I have run many prints that have been ruined by this stupid lazy way of handling a film, that seemed to be passed onto the next generation of projectionists during this period in time.

Steve

[Maurice Leakey]

It looks like pre-perforated adhesive repair tape designed to cover damaged perforations on the film. It should run OK if accurately applied.
Perfo repair tape 16mm, transparent, 1 roll -WITTNER SHOP (wittnercinetec.com)

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Interesting indeed.

A few inches of perf tape to repair sprocket damage is totally understandable. But 30FEET of repair tape for no obvious reason? Still can't think of any logic behind this.

[Terry Sills]

That’s exactly what it is. I have a 16mm reel of film that has this repair. I assume that instead of making several small repairs on a damaged section it was easier and perhaps more beneficial to do this. It runs fine by the way.
I would guess that film libraries would have used this major repair system. I can’t see that an amateur film collector/user would have had the skill or facilities to take it on.

[Jason Moffatt]

I’ve looked all along and there does not seem to be any sprocket damage underneath, i think you would be able to see it as you can still see the printing along the edge underneath it.

[Dominique De Bast]

Looks like being Per-fix, repair tape. It works with a small machine. There are transparent and white tapes. I DO NOT RECOMMEND AT ALL THE FOLLOWING SELLER, I just put the link because it has the name of the make Perf Fix 16mm - Réparation encoches (cinemantika.fr)

This is the machine :

[Terry Sills]

Jason
quite often the damage would be ‘stretched’ perforations which when pressed back into place would be undetectable after the perfix tape had been applied. If the film runs ok why worry? It’s a perfectly acceptable repair and most probably far better than having many individual splices.

[Lindsay Morris]

That is Perfix or similar and on 16mm with only perfs on one side a film that has damage done to the perforations often by allowing a film to keep running when the bottom loop gets lost the projector claw will tear the perfs and they can be carefully pressed back into position and then held there by applying Perfix.
I have one of the machines and it will do 16 & 35mm film and I have repaired many films of both gauges with either the 16 or 35mm tape. If applied carefully and accurately it can save having to remove sections that had been badly damaged.
Usually as that section runs thru there WILL be extra noise due to the added thickness but the image is usually quite stable on screen.

As to marking the edge of the film to facilitate marking reel splices in very early days it was common to use the White Out correction pens but after multiple passes thru a projector the material would start shredding fine particles which then would stick to the image area.
So most then moved to only marking the SPLICE area itself with a permanent Felt Pen marker so that as the reels were broken down (IE pulled apart) the splice as it passed through your fingers could be felt and accurately identified as being a reel change splice and then the splicing tape would be removed OR IF you were a slacky then simply tear the splice apart and re-attach the head or tail of the reel and move on continuing to break down the program.

Trouble was with a 35mm print that had passed through many cinemas there could often be quite a fat area of torn apart splicing tape as each reel join went through. On a 35mm machine with film travelling at 90 feet a minute it was quite a LOUD thud as a splice would go through and the image would very noticeably JUMP on screen.
I would often say many rude words about the people who before me had simply ripped splices apart on a print and left then then useless tape still on the film.

Wherever I could I would remove as much as possible BEFORE I spliced reels together at my cinema and always sent the print back with MY splicing tape removed apart from the one piece just securing the head or tail onto the reel to ensure reliable reel ID for the next operator.

[Jason Moffatt]

Jason
quite often the damage would be ‘stretched’ perforations which when pressed back into place would be undetectable after the perfix tape had been applied. If the film runs ok why worry? It’s a perfectly acceptable repair and most probably far better than having many individual splices.

Yes the film runs ok in that area, just a bit more noise.The thing is i want to sell the film on ebay and will have to somehow describe this in the listing.

[Maurice Leakey]

Why not say:-
"The film has a 30ft section which has applied repair tape. This allows a perfect run but does give a slight extra noise when going through the projector"