Tweet Printing from camera neg (was Phantom of the Opera)

If the definition of original print means shot from camera negative, we could say there is no original print for modern movies, since all prints today are made from interpositives, that are shot from internegatives that are shot from the camera negative or negative created from digital intermediation.

I imagined the term original print refered to a print from the the original run.

During Chaplin keystone era a camera negative could be in bad shape after only 50 prints be shot from that. How could in the 20's 300 prints be shot from a camera negative ?

How much cinema theater arounf the world would get only a print shot drom a primitive internegative? I it was not possible to produce prints from camera negatives for the entire world. With the use of 3 cameras, creating 3 camera negatives, maybe could be almost possible, but for a single negative...

Run a camera negative, visking futher damages, just to make a 16mm for one person watch ???? Or the m,achines to copy for 16mm could copy into multiple 16mm prints in a single run ?

[Christopher Jacobs]

An "original print" is typically used to refer to a positive printed off an original negative. For 16mm prints this is sometimes stretched to include prints made from a 16mm negative that was reduced from a 35mm finegrain positive made off the camera negative, but the Kodascope and Universal Show-at-Home and other 16mm prints made in the 1920s and 30s were indeed direct positive reductions struck off the original 35mm negatives after theatrical prints had been made (hence the more frequent printed-through white scratches and dirt than in the slightly softer but cleaner 16mm prints made from 16mm negatives reduced from 35mm prints struck earlier in the camera negative's life). There are even Kodascope 8mm prints that were reduced directly from the 35mm negatives, and they usually look amazingly sharp for 8mm, just as 16mm Kodascope and Show-at-Home original prints often look just as sharp or sharper than a modern archival preservation print on 35mm film, which would have been struck from a new negative made from a surviving print, and sharper than many theatrical 35mm re-issue prints, which were struck from dupe negatives made from fine-grain positives made from the camera negatives. Film labs used to be quite careful about their work in the days before they were forced to grind out as many prints as quickly as possible. Theatres also tended to be more careful in their projection when they still had dedicated projectionists instead of manager/doorman/concessionaire/projectionists, so prints would often run hundreds of times before any visible wear became evident. When I ran TITANIC, it looked virtually the same on the screen six months after it opened as it did during its opening week. Other theatres can destroy a print on opening night.

It's true that over the past 30 years of wide releases with simulateous openings of 1000-2000 prints, movie theatres rarely have showed what is technically an "original" print from the camera negative, but a "release print" made from one of several dupe negatives struck from an interpositive made from the camera negative. However the major theatres in NY and LA might get one of a few "showprints" that were actually struck from the camera negative and look noticeably sharper than release prints, so there may still be a few "original" prints of relatively recent films. The past 10 years or so the use of Digital Intermediates scanned from the camera negative can eliminate a duplication generation or two, but at only 2K resolution they're still close to what a typical release print would probably look like (yet another reason people may see no real difference between projected Blu-rays and a modern theatrical presentation). And nowadays, fewer and fewer commercial theatres are even running 35mm anymore.

Up until the 1970s, most movies had releases of maybe a few hundred prints, often less than 100, so there was less concern about the negative wearing out unless it became a huge hit and went through various re-releases. During the silent era there were indeed two or three or four "original" negatives prepared to supply the world with prints, some by using two or more cameras to shoot each scene (with slightly different camera angles) and some by using alternate takes. That is one reason prints of the same title found in various world archives are rarely if ever identical to what American audiences saw in theatres.

This thread should definitely be split off and moved to the Tech Talk forum if it continues further along these lines.

If all --|Univaersal Show at Home Pints-- were shot from camera negative, why this is the first quality one we see??
All others suriving prints are from poor 16mm, like generations away... So the other editions was not Universal Show at Home, but prints made from those prints, couple generations aways...

Accoording Kodak, the best fine grain, (intermediate film) if very well produced (good lab work and good step contact print machines) can produce a internegative, from original camera negative, that would produce prints almost as good as prints from camera negatrive that only very skilled eyes would notice some difference at a comparative projection side by side. At least is what I saw on Kodak's site about B&W fine grain duplicate film.

If a modern copy from a modern interpositivew looks quite softer compared to one copy from the opriginal negative, I can presume that or the color film fine grains are not so god as B&W fine grain, or the lab work was not perfect. Remamber many labs use not prime film stock for create internegatives and interpositives, since fine grain it's very expansive. Also, if a fine grain it's not copied by a step printer, but in a continuous printer, the image details get more loss, cause the film get micro dislocation, while in contact one to other, during exposure. Step contact printer it's slow, cause move every frame one at his time, so it's expansive to copy that way, while continuos printer moves the film in hight speed, in contant velocity, while it pass into a light source to expose.

An "original print" is typically used to refer to a positive printed off an original negative. For 16mm prints this is sometimes stretched to include prints made from a 16mm negative that was reduced from a 35mm finegrain positive made off the camera negative, but the Kodascope and Universal Show-at-Home and other 16mm prints made in the 1920s and 30s were indeed direct positive reductions struck off the original 35mm negatives after theatrical prints had been made (hence the more frequent printed-through white scratches and dirt than in the slightly softer but cleaner 16mm prints made from 16mm negatives reduced from 35mm prints struck earlier in the camera negative's life). There are even Kodascope 8mm prints that were reduced directly from the 35mm negatives, and they usually look amazingly sharp for 8mm, just as 16mm Kodascope and Show-at-Home original prints often look just as sharp or sharper than a modern archival preservation print on 35mm film, which would have been struck from a new negative made from a surviving print, and sharper than many theatrical 35mm re-issue prints, which were struck from dupe negatives made from fine-grain positives made from the camera negatives. Film labs used to be quite careful about their work in the days before they were forced to grind out as many prints as quickly as possible. Theatres also tended to be more careful in their projection when they still had dedicated projectionists instead of manager/doorman/concessionaire/projectionists, so prints would often run hundreds of times before any visible wear became evident. When I ran TITANIC, it looked virtually the same on the screen six months after it opened as it did during its opening week. Other theatres can destroy a print on opening night.

It's true that over the past 30 years of wide releases with simulateous openings of 1000-2000 prints, movie theatres rarely have showed what is technically an "original" print from the camera negative, but a "release print" made from one of several dupe negatives struck from an interpositive made from the camera negative. However the major theatres in NY and LA might get one of a few "showprints" that were actually struck from the camera negative and look noticeably sharper than release prints, so there may still be a few "original" prints of relatively recent films. The past 10 years or so the use of Digital Intermediates scanned from the camera negative can eliminate a duplication generation or two, but at only 2K resolution they're still close to what a typical release print would probably look like (yet another reason people may see no real difference between projected Blu-rays and a modern theatrical presentation). And nowadays, fewer and fewer commercial theatres are even running 35mm anymore.

Up until the 1970s, most movies had releases of maybe a few hundred prints, often less than 100, so there was less concern about the negative wearing out unless it became a huge hit and went through various re-releases. During the silent era there were indeed two or three or four "original" negatives prepared to supply the world with prints, some by using two or more cameras to shoot each scene (with slightly different camera angles) and some by using alternate takes. That is one reason prints of the same title found in various world archives are rarely if ever identical to what American audiences saw in theatres.

This thread should definitely be split off and moved to the Tech Talk forum if it continues further along these lines.