Frame lines- a question for the old time filming enthusiasts.

[David Strelitz]

A telecine job came in last week that I started today. its a biggy about 7000ft of Std8 from 50s and 60s mostly shot in Africa.
A couple of 400 ft reels have been driving me mad. The frame line in places, was changing every 10-20ft. But why?
These "jumps" were NOT edits and the film looked to be "1st Gen" and not duplicated.
Thank heavens my swear box is now contactless!
Thoughts dear gurus.
Other reels have been just fine. Usual mixture of kids, Giraffes, Lions, well endowed tribesmen, weddings and even the Queen Mum on a visit to the mudhuts.

Thanks
David

[Maurice Leakey]

Such films were hand loaded. Perhaps the loops at top/bottom of the gate were too small.
OR
Perhaps the gate was not tightly closed.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Probably either faulty camera, or the one behind the camera that caused the fault.

[Lindsay Morris]

Standard 8 is basically 16mm film stock and is shot in rolls of 25 feet and then the roll is turned over and run back thru the camera again and at the processing after it has been given its final rinse & dried it is then run through a slitter which produces two lots of 25 feet that the lab splice together and return to the film maker.
So in the camera IF the claw is not exactly dead centre in relation to the camera aperture on the two passes thru the camera the frame line will be up and down as the two sections go thru from one to the other in the projector.

Nuffin yah can do about it and my suggestion is to watch the frame lines as its rolling thru and slightly adjust the framing so each section is just showing on the top on one bit of the film and the bottom of the next section so you are more or less midway between the two extremities of the frame lines...That make sense?? There is a sort of a sweet spot in that adjustment. NOT helped by telecine gates often showing MORE of the image than a projector gate does so its up to the operator to either reduce the scan a tad or tweak the framing IF there its such a thing on the telecine...dunno as never used one.

[David Strelitz]

I. fully understand how Std 8 was run/processed...hence 25ft Dual 8. The offending reels had shorter than 25ft sections that changed so the suggestion of a camera fault does seem the most likely. Certainly in 35 + years, I have never come across a job quite like it....thank heavens! Fortunately out of 15 400ft and 9 200ft reels only two were badly affected.

[Brian Fretwell]

It would be interesting to know what the frame at the point where the frame line looked like for either shift. That could possibly explain it.