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Author Topic: help in identifying a kind of print Luciano Brigite Master Film Handler Posts: 277 From: Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-10-2006 08:49 PM                     Hello, A few days ago a friend of mine got a lot of old trailers and some feature reels ( no complete features, just random reels we couldn't identify wich film is wich) while sorting out the trailers we found many of them ( most of them are at least 14 years old and a few never met a projector!) that has the perforations and edges all black, the soundtrack area brown and the overall image tends to red/yellow. there are some blue but it while seems consistent over the image, has that washed appearence and black isn't really black, but a dark brown/reddish brown ( sometimes with lots of streaks(?) along the image area). Since he,nor me has a scanner for positives ,we tried taking a picture, shown bellow. We'd like to know what kind of process was used for it that made the prints looks that way and why such process was used and if it's still used for some prints. Thanks!  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 07-11-2006 09:32 AM                        You may have some "dirty dupes". Some labs offered color reversal processing (sometimes putting regular color print film through a reversal process) to make prints of prints. Usually "dirty dupes" were made of edited workprints, to provide extra copies for musical scoring, Foley, dubbing, and other post-production operations.  |  IP: Logged Luciano Brigite Master Film Handler Posts: 277 From: Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-11-2006 07:35 PM                     Thanks for the information John! When I started in all this, 14 years ago ,the theatre I worked at got many prints made that way,everytime we got one of those, complaints were constant about image and noisy sound ,it lasted a relatively short time and normal prints came back. the print shown in the picture is a trailler reel,new but some 10~12 years old ( it's still acetate, orwo stock I believe, the name is hardly readable on the perforation area because it's very dark l) and looks like a well faded print of at least twice that age . So this is one of those "reversed prints" as I heard some people say.Am I right to think that it was done that way because of printing/processing costs and delivery time or a solution to get prints done for exibition when a negative is not available or both of them?  |  IP: Logged Peter Mork Expert Film Handler Posts: 181 From: Newton, MA, USA Registered: Jun 2002 posted 07-12-2006 12:02 AM                     Or, maybe they're bootlegs? I don't know what the exhibition business in Brazil is like, but suppose some shady distributor cranked out some cheap dupes of prints and leased them out off the books...  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 07-12-2006 05:19 AM                        How would making a reversal dupe produce that yellow background on the track (unless it was on the original)? Also, if it is reversal, I presume it has to have been optically printed - if it was a continuous contact print over the whole film area, then presumably the area around the perforations would be clear. I've only ever seen a print like that once or twice before, and it was on an unususal coupler colour system from the '50s or '60s - Ferraniacolor, possibly.  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 07-12-2006 05:34 AM                        Doesn't the sound track on the sample in the foreground look like a variable density track?  |  IP: Logged Robert Burtcher Expert Film Handler Posts: 194 From: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Registered: Jun 2005 posted 07-12-2006 06:44 AM                     It looks like a negative to me. If you look very carefully at the soundtrack area, you can kinda see the dark vertical lines with the light area around it. That, combined with the black edges instead of clear, make me think that it's a negative. I dunno much about how film is printed or processed, so... take it with a grain of salt.  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 07-12-2006 09:05 AM                        quote: Leo Enticknap How would making a reversal dupe produce that yellow background on the track (unless it was on the original)? Also, if it is reversal, I presume it has to have been optically printed - if it was a continuous contact print over the whole film area, then presumably the area around the perforations would be clear. Normally, the picture head in a contact printer only exposes the area between the perfs. So the unexposed edges of the film would be opaque if processed in a reversal "dirty dupe" process.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 07-12-2006 05:30 PM                        Is that a feature of relatively recent continuous contact printer design, then? It's not at all uncommon to find older elements with two or three generations of edge marking on it. This can cause particular confusion with late 40s/early 50s stuff, as a 'nitrate' mark can be printed through onto an acetate dupe, and vice-versa, leading less experienced people to misidentify the base type. One of the first things I was taught as an archiving student was not to trust the edge marking alone when trying to determine whether a reel is nitrate or safety, for that reason. Presumably the multiple generations of edge marking must have got there by contact printing.  |  IP: Logged Luciano Brigite Master Film Handler Posts: 277 From: Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-12-2006 08:09 PM                     Exibition busi8snes ( depots and distributors) are very cautios here,even more in the past few years after they split the distribution depot into many small places , also it's about impossible to get anything from htem, like a random reel for testing projector and sound, traillers and so on. as I told everything now meets the fire a little after the prints get back to them. Don't think it's a bootleg tho I can't tell wich company put it out. was my friend who came with the traillers he found tossed around in a hteatre he was dismantling, only 2 or 3 has head/tail leaders, but they doesn't have any name for distributor only has the date and place where it was processed wich turns to be a major lab from here, surely a bootleg would be noticed there. The soundtrack is SVA, mono ( both areas are alike) and it's brown, not yellow. The picture doesn't show it right. Just wanted to know about why the print is that way ( BTW it's only a trailer, *not* a full feature film) all the stuff will be spliced together and then used to test projectors not to be shown anywhere.and all of it is acetate, the scent of VS is starting to show up, being test stuff it'll be in a dumpster by the end of year all torn apart. Thanks all for the info!  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 07-13-2006 01:24 AM                     Leo, I think it changed with the introduction of SDDS. --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 07-13-2006 04:01 AM                        Many thanks John; that would make sense. However, if Luciano's film is at least 14 years old, that would just about predate SDDS and so the mystery remains. However I totally take John P's point that reversal stock and printing would explain the opaque perf areas; and if these are trailers of relatively low budget films I guess it's just feasible that they were made by cutting up a release print, adding a crude commentary track (which would have been printed from a fine grain track pos, presumably) and then duplicating by reversal.  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 07-13-2006 09:47 AM                        Contact printers do have edgelights to print through the edgeprint ID, but the picture head can only print between the perfs. Today's release printers print SDDS along the edges with a separate aperture on the soundhead. But the edgelight is optional, so an opaque edge on a "dirty dupe" would not be surprising.  |  IP: Logged

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