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Topic: Boys & Girls problems

Carl King
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 199
From: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 06-17-2000 09:29 PM

I'm playing BOYS & GIRLS at my cinema and I'm getting a strange thumping noise from reel 2 & 3. Sounds like bass. A collegue in anothe province has had problems with a bouncy image.

Just to let you know there are problems to watach for if you don't have this picture yet

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-17-2000 10:27 PM

Yep, we're having problems with registration as well. I didn't watch it straight through, but a couple of reels seem fine while others (#1 seems to be the worst) have a very annoying up/down bounce. I couldn't pull the aperture plate (these was in a multiplex with Cinmeccanica turret projectors and platters), but I'm quite sure that the film was running steady, as the trailers looked fine and tweaking the gate pressure didn't fix the problem with the feature.

Oh, well...it's "color by Deluxe." What do you expect?

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John Walsh
Film God

Posts: 2490
From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 06-17-2000 10:28 PM

Our print was "bouncy", too. Including the credits at the end. A very slow, steady bounce, as if the camera was suspended by a rubber band.

Didn't hear any thumping noises. Maybe it was in the optical track? We ran it in DTS.

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Aaron Sisemore
Flaming Ribs beat Reeses Peanut Butter Cups any day!

Posts: 3061
From: Rockwall TX USA
Registered: Sep 1999

posted 06-17-2000 10:56 PM

The 'thumping noise' is a common characteristic of the poor quality control at DeLuxe Hollywood. I have had MANY prints with bad analog tracks, most of them having the thumping noise, some with big 'booms' in random places (my guess is its the 'big purple blotches' covering the soundtrack area)

The print of B&G I have is a big time shed monster. It was shedding so much magenta dust that the dust was depositing on the PORTGLASS(!) Naturally, i put a media cleaner with freshly Film-Guarded media on the maching and voila... no more dust.

Aaron

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-18-2000 12:58 AM

We've had this problem, on and off, for years. Ever since we opened. We call it the "Spitfire Effect" (After the first movie that we noticed it on. Spitfire Grill

We did a lot of research to find out why it happens. It just like you said, crummy processing. How the heck can a lab make 1,000 prints a week and get 100% perfection? They can't. When you make that many prints and run your machines at 9,000,000 miles an hour, there's bound to be messed up processing.

Just call and get replacement reel(s). If you can prove it's a lab error, the're free. Yes it's a pain in the a** but you don't have to listen to "SCRAPE...SCRAPE...BUMP..."

Mr. Pytlak is the guy who told me (us) about why it happens. You can see it on the film if you look close enough. Purple splotches on the sndtrk. like you guys said.

Do you have "regular" exciter lamps or infrared LEDs in your sound head? That's a big part of the problem. It's because of the impending changeover to silverless sndtrks. When you change over to visible red LEDs (which you'll have to, sooner or later) the problem will go away, if I'm not mistaken.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 06-18-2000 05:12 AM

Anyone know how fast Deluxe Hollywood is printing their films in relation to Deluxe Toronto? I only have this problem on the Deluxe Hollywood prints, and it is getting to the point where virtually every reel coming out of DH has at least one offensively shaky reel.

SLOW IT DOWN GUYS! BUY ANOTHER PRINTING MACHINE!

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-18-2000 06:12 AM

I don't know about printing speeds, but I have only good things to say about Deluxe Toronto. This is quite a contrast to Deluxe Hollywood, which seems to produce the bulk of the crappy prints that make their way into theatrical circulation. Not only is the printing quality poor, but the color in Deluxe prints has historically faded faster that that from just about any other lab.

In general, the smaller labs seem to do better work: Technicolor NYC, Deluxe Toronto, Rank Film Laboratories (UK). Technicolor LA is usually decent, especially for very small releases.

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-18-2000 09:18 AM

Deluxe here prints about the same speed maybe it is the water
actually reverse scan systems with red leds are more suseptable to print noise

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Joseph Pandolfi
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 213
From: Milford, CT.
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 06-18-2000 02:25 PM

I built the print up and did not notice it on the first show of the day. Will check it out more thoroghly when I'm in Tuesday night. I did check the credits at the end (to see if my lights up cue worked) and did not notice the bouncing.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-18-2000 04:58 PM

Where is John P.??? This is the kind of crap that I have been talking about. Pretty typical crud that comes out of todays film labs...and yes, DeLuxe seems to always be at the top of the list. Odd name DeLuxe......wish it really meant something.
Mark

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Carl King
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 199
From: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 06-19-2000 01:20 PM

Scott and Randy;

To answer both of you.... I'm using exciter lamps on the machine in question and yes they are Cinemeccanicas with lens turrets (Victoria IV ES is the machine).

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-19-2000 06:12 PM

I was running it on a V5 with AW3 platter. The soundhead is set up with an invisible LED light source, but I was running the feature in DTS or SRD (I forget which).

Like I said, I didn't watch the movie straight through, but when I walked by periodically to check on the focus, I thought that the registration was pretty bad, especially during the tail credits.

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Brian Grojean
Film Handler

Posts: 3
From: Naperville, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2000

posted 06-19-2000 06:31 PM

You know, we got our Boys & Girls print from Technicolor and we really had no problems with the first to prints. BUT our third print was a print from hell... This print had a scratched 3rd reel (horizontal and vertical green scratches) and the whole print bounced... I'm not sure what to say about that print but, our replacement was much better.

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 06-20-2000 07:27 AM

Randy is correct: if you receive a defective reel, ask for a replacement immediately. The defective reels are returned to the lab for analysis, which will help fix any problems.

"Thumping", "wooshing", or "popping" sounds from the analog track are often due to errors in applicating or washing off the viscous developer used to develop silver in the soundtrack. The analog soundtrack should be dark blue or magenta ("high magenta tracks"), with an even dark stripe of silver covering most of it. If that dark stripe wanders side-to-side, varies in width, or has skips or blotches, there were problems in soundtrack application.

If the print film itself is "rock steady" in your projector (pulling the aperture will usually show part of the perfs on the right hand side), the unsteadiness may have occured in printing. But the problem is NOT necessarily high speed printing. As I noted in other threads, unsteadiness sometimes is introduced in printing the master positive or duplicate negative, if a continuous contact printer was used for printing short pitch to short pitch. If a reel is especially unsteady, ask for a replacement!

Aaron: what was the magenta edgeprint film ID on that "shed monster"?

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

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Joseph Pandolfi
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 213
From: Milford, CT.
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 06-20-2000 09:37 PM

Thought I get back: Ran Boys & Girls last night and it is rock steady on all reels no problems with sound (thumping) other than a much higher error rate on reel 1 on the DA-20 (7.0 to 7.5)than the other reels (steady 3.5).

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