Why not make a DCP look like nitrate film?

[Bob Birchard]

Lokke,
UCLA screened their print a year or two ago, and I agree with you, it was one of the most gorgeous film prints I've ever seen. Most digital is so cold and harsh, it has no warmth, and it's just black, you don't get the huge range of black like you do in these films.

In my experience scanning actually brings out more shadow detail, but mileage may vary depending on who does the work and how it is processed.

[Paul Penna]

In my experience scanning actually brings out more shadow detail, but mileage may vary depending on who does the work and how it is processed.

Here's a question I've been wanting to ask an expert: Have we reached the point where digital imaging can match the dynamic range (ratio of brightest to darkest) of projected film, in projection if not in a flat-screen display?

[Jack Theakston]

Here's a question I've been wanting to ask an expert: Have we reached the point where digital imaging can match the dynamic range (ratio of brightest to darkest) of projected film, in projection if not in a flat-screen display?

Yes, although the average installation is not going to have the equipment to do this.

[Christopher Jacobs]

The shimmering, glistening quality of nitrate B&W prints that's missing from most modern (post-1970s) B&W prints is partly due to the lighting style as others have mentioned, and largely due to the silver content of the emulsion and the processing labwork, rather than using cellulose nitrate vs. acetate vs. polyester plastic for the film base. I've got some safety film prints made in the 1940s and 50s that have that same rich clarity associated with original nitrate prints. I remember seeing Peter Bogdanovich's PAPER MOON when it first came out and marveling at how authentic it looked on the screen, and went back to a reissue a few years later where I was bitterly disappointed in the muddy-looking print apparently struck from the same camera negative.

Just last week I saw Hitchcock's REBECCA in a beautiful original 35mm nitrate print at the Eastman House. Two years ago I saw not a DCP but the new Blu-ray of REBECCA projected on a large screen. DCPs have less digital compression than Blu-rays, but the Blu-ray still looked extremely close to what the nitrate looked like as far as sharpness and contrast (possibly even with a slightly wider contrast range, or better gamma), but the nitrate had a sort of warm, organic quality that isn't quite there on the Blu-ray. On the other hand, there was some minor wear, dust, and light scratches visible along the edges of the nitrate print, and the ends of many reels were a bit jumpy in the gate, probably due to shrinkage.

Other nitrate prints I've seen vary from incredibly crisp, clear, and rich in contrast (or color) to rather flat in contrast, heavily worn, or with colors that are not quite registered or properly timed. Not every nitrate print was perfect. As noted above, the lab work is no less critical than the film emulsion, and both are drastically more important than the chemical content of the plastic film base. That said, nitrate film that's in good condition has a much nicer and more robust tactile feel than either acetate or polyester film base when you're working with it on rewinds and a splicer. Acetate film feels positively fragile in comparison to nitrate, though neither is as tough as polyester (which can be either good or bad, depending on the circumstances).

[Lokke Heiss]

Lokke,
UCLA screened their print a year or two ago, and I agree with you, it was one of the most gorgeous film prints I've ever seen. Most digital is so cold and harsh, it has no warmth, and it's just black, you don't get the huge range of black like you do in these films.

Thanks for your vote of support, Missdupont. I've seen several DCP's from the MoMA Columbia Crime series that were clearly done with pristine elements and with beautiful high contrast lighting, but I can vouch for their lack of what the UCLA SE had. So Bob, I still can't understand why the SE UCLA print looks 'better' than all these other top-rate DCP's.

Here's a thought: Just read an audiophile essay about the return to records from CD's, this expert was saying the 'warmth' of the records is really a result of the inherent issues of a vinyl track recording in bass frequencies, resulting in what is basically a mistake, or an error from what was really recorded..but the human ear hears this distortion as a good thing.

So could this 'nitrate effect' be sort of like a vinyl record effect, causing a pleasing distortion to the image? If that's the case, let's find out what it is, so we can have a knob on our machines and just turn the 'nitrate effect' up to 11.

[Donald Binks]

If I can add my two bob's worth?

I think that the picture quality relates in some degree to what type of screen is utilised. Talkie screens by necessity had holes in them so that the sound could get through them. I've read that a number of types of screens were tried out in the silent era that added to the quality.

[Mike Gebert]

Well, there's definitely a difference with digital that has resulted in a preference for super-sharpness. I saw the new 70mm print of 2001 last year and had a hard time not spending the whole movie thinking how much better my blu-ray looked. Well, one certainly gives the impression of razor sharp detail more than the other, probably deceptively (one of course is projected much larger than the other).

So we are getting something different than before. It will simulate some things well, offer new things, lose old things. It's just a fact.

[Jack Theakston]

Perceived sharpness is subject to a) the operator's focusing, b) the steadiness of the film in the gate, c) the speed of the lens and d) the fact that on the first flash of the frame, it's going to be out of focus from heat shock in the gate.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Perceived sharpness is subject to a) the operator's focusing, b) the steadiness of the film in the gate, c) the speed of the lens and d) the fact that on the first flash of the frame, it's going to be out of focus from heat shock in the gate.

The heat problem is most noticeable when shots alternate from very dark to very light scenes (especially black title cards to live action footage), and has less effect when contrast is consistent from shot to shot or when silent films use art titles. But with older prints, there's also often the issue of print warping and gate pressure.

[Daniel Eagan]

I'm not smart enough to discuss the science, but I can repeat what filmmakers have told me. Greg MacGillivray, who directed IMAX movies like To Fly, felt that because grain was different in every frame, it made the image more organic. He felt that digital froze the image, like watching something through a screen door. Both Thelma Schoonmaker and Alexander Payne told me they liked the flicker and weave of film projected onto a screen (Payne: "Flicker is better than glow.").

Today's NY Times has two separate articles about digitizing film libraries. In "Digitizing Warhol's Film" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/arts/ ... ve-it.html" target="_blank), MoMA film curator Rajendra Roy says "the right way to see Warhol’s films should always be on film," and added, “I get really grumpy sometimes when things can’t be shown on film."

Whether they're right or wrong, these are expert professionals who not only detect a difference between film and digital, but prefer the film experience.

[Lokke Heiss]

I just saw another film on TCM that I'm sure was from a DCP - lock solid registration, robust dynamic range, not a spot or blemish ANYWHERE on the film....not a scratch, not a hair.

So what is there to complain about?

The film looks and feels FLAT to me. It just lies weirdly inert on my TV screen. Now the MoMA DCP print problems are clearer too me.

They're too good.

So maybe they're getting this digitalization a little too perfect, and in this, maybe the comparison between DCP and CD aren't so off after all.

Maybe we need to put the shmutz back in these digitalizations. Have a knob that gives the frame jump a little, a knob that puts a little more grain back in the film...and oh yes, that knob that gives a little silver glisten to an image even though it wasn't there to begin with.

[wich2]

Lokke, you sound a little like some Old Time Radio (Gad, I hate that cutsie-poo phrase!) fans that I've heard...

After hearing the clean, full-ranged restorations of classic shows that we sometimes now get from original discs, they say, "you know, I miss the pops and clicks!"

In both cases, video and audio, I'd best most of the folks who slaved hard to create these works, would be thrilled to know that we can finally see and hear them as they made them, w/o years of wear and general schmutz!

-Craig

[Mike Gebert]

Some DVDs and blu-rays have been overcorrected digitally. The problem is not just that it becomes too perfect but that you lose detail and introduce new digital flaws. You get smeary color (Spartacus on blu-ray), everything looks like it's made of vacu-form plastic (Predator... okay that was kind of true anyway)... the difference between that and clicks and pops on audio is that grain is not a flaw. Too much grain is, but grain is texture. It was part of the look of films, an impressionistic softness that is part of what made film (and actors and actresses) beautiful. It's like saying polished oak is flawed next to polyvinyl.

There were the same problems in audio on laserdisc versions of old movies. They'd use something called, I think, CX processing to clean up noise on the soundtrack. But sometimes they'd kill all the room tone, and wind up with each line sounding isolated like a radio transmission from space. Very unnatural and unnerving.

[momsne]

On the subject of the movie "Predator," there have always been problems transferring that movie to DVD and Blu-ray. From a review at Amazon of the Blu-ray: "The last word from Fox on the Predator UHE blu-ray comes from Vincent Marcais, Sr. V.P. for International Sales in a taped interview. "The film stock (source for the transfer) was poor. The criticism is unfair. The filmmaker's were consulted, which we always do while they are alive. The UHE is how the filmmaker's wanted it to look."

To compensate for the bad film source, Fox sometimes applied excessive digital noise reduction to DVD and Blu-ray versions of "Predator," making characters' faces look botoxed, like Nancy Pelosi. The plus side for Fox is that fans of "Predator" would buy a new version of the movie with the hope that Fox had cleared up the image problems of the version they already bought.

[Lokke Heiss]

Lokke, you sound a little like some Old Time Radio (Gad, I hate that cutsie-poo phrase!) fans that I've heard...

After hearing the clean, full-ranged restorations of classic shows that we sometimes now get from original discs, they say, "you know, I miss the pops and clicks!"

In both cases, video and audio, I'd best most of the folks who slaved hard to create these works, would be thrilled to know that we can finally see and hear them as they made them, w/o years of wear and general schmutz!

-Craig

Craig, see Mike Gebert's comments, which I can't improve as a explanation of what I was trying to say. There are lots of specific examples of this, like getting the War of the Worlds movie so clear that you see the cables holding up the ships, or more widespread, getting the images so clear that the toupee lines of the actors become painfully obvious.

The point of a restoration is to get the product like it was when it released, and more specifically, released in the best theater and best projection facility existent at that time. Or to put it another way, you are honoring a filmmaker of the past, and you need to use artistic judgement to know when you are doing too much, and making the product look bad, not good.

Taking crackle out of a old time radio program could never be a bad thing using the same kind of criterion (of using best conditions, etc.). But I could see if further monkeying with it, like losing the room tone, could push the restoration into same kind of problem.

For these radio shows, PLEASE get out the crackles and pops. And do whatever you can to get Quiet Please into a more listenable state.

[Frederica]

Craig, see Mike Gebert's comments, which I can't improve as a explanation of what I was trying to say. There are lots of specific examples of this, like getting the War of the Worlds movie so clear that you see the cables holding up the ships, or more widespread, getting the images so clear that the toupee lines of the actors become painfully obvious.

The point of a restoration is to get the product like it was when it released, and more specifically, released in the best theater and best projection facility existent at that time. Or to put it another way, you are honoring a filmmaker of the past, and you need to use artistic judgement to know when you are doing too much, and making the product look bad, not good.

OMG. I've never noticed any of this and I'm so glad about that. Well, except for the toupee lines of the actors. That has always been painfully obvious.

[wich2]

Lokke, to be clear (pun intended), I'm not talking about added problems from mis- or over- restoration. I agree that those things are a problem.

But optimum possible picture and sound, I will always prefer. I don't want to move back away from the sometimes wonderful standard that has been reached there with the best classic redos. If it makes me feel that a Barrymore is almost right here with us, well, as Martha Stewart says, "that's a GOOD thing!"

>And do whatever you can to get Quiet Please into a more listenable state.<

I wish! Bad news there...

One story goes, that Ernest Chappell's widow had a set of discs. She had them (indifferently, alas) transferred to tape (cassette, alas) - then destroyed the discs. Many copies in circulation are apparently generations-removed copies of those cassettes.

I seem to recall reading that the Library of Congress holds some material on this series. I've also heard that the Paley Center holds some stuff (some say Chappell's) - though they only allow listening on-site. The best up-to-date digital restoration, of the best currently available material, could probably tease better than what we have now out of them. But as with vintage film - where's the wealthy patron to undertake this project?

Best,
-Craig

P.S. - There is a show-dedicated board, where more info may be found. I know many collectors have done what restoration they can on their own, based on what they had: http://www.quietplease.org/forum/" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

[David Alp]

So the upshot of this thread then is decided is it?? I mean by everyone?? That those old Nitrate films did NOT actually have "Shimmer" and "shine" and the "Silver fluorescent" quality that some folks claimed that they used to have! Are we all agreed then that nitrate was just yet another means of showing film; and was not special in any way at all??

If so; I wonder what all this fuss is about regarding "The Summer Under the Stars" thing in London this year?? Where they are showing Nitrate films?? And making a big thing about it all!?!?? Most confusing!

[filmnotdigital]

David: Don't pay much heed to these revisionists. Nitrate was indeed something special, based on the prints I have been lucky to see. It's too bad there are no longer enough places left that can present it. In the mid 1970s New York's Museum Of Modern Art would regularly show such prints from their vault. When word got out among the buffs, the really serious ones would stop whatever they were doing and go to see nitrate.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Nitrate film's "glowing" reputation comes from the fact that at the time when nitrate was the standard film base, film stocks had a much higher silver content (yielding darker blacks) than they did by the 1970s, and film laboratories actually took pride in their work and were highly skilled at working with black and white film stocks and chemicals. Safety prints struck from the camera negatives on 1940s and 50s-era stocks are essentially indistinguishable from nitrate prints made at the same time. It is the film emulsion and lab work that have an exponentially greater influence on the picture quality than the composition of the plastic film base. There have been many good and bad prints made on nitrate film as well as on acetate and polyester film. It's just that more good-looking prints were made on nitrate film than were made of the same films on later safety film stocks, and another primary reason for that is because the nitrate prints were typically struck from the camera negatives, while the safety film prints of the same films are usually two or four or eight generations removed, degrading the quality and adding to the reputation of nitrate as the preferred viewing medium. Brand new safety prints that are actually struck from original nitrate camera negatives (like Paramount's 1928 FORGOTTEN FACES, shown at Capitolfest a couple of weeks ago) still can have the look on the screen of an 85-year-old nitrate print if they're made on high-quality print stock and properly exposed and processed.

That said, the feeling and texture experienced when handling nitrate film that's still in good condition has a certain quality that just seems more pleasing than acetate or polyester film.

[Bob Birchard]

So the upshot of this thread then is decided is it?? I mean by everyone?? That those old Nitrate films did NOT actually have "Shimmer" and "shine" and the "Silver fluorescent" quality that some folks claimed that they used to have! Are we all agreed then that nitrate was just yet another means of showing film; and was not special in any way at all??

If so; I wonder what all this fuss is about regarding "The Summer Under the Stars" thing in London this year?? Where they are showing Nitrate films?? And making a big thing about it all!?!?? Most confusing!

I think we only mentioned that there is no reason why digital projection cannot equal the quality of original nitrate prints. While not dealing with nitrate, I attended The Reel Thing conference sponsored by AMIA this past weekend and saw several examples of more recent films (Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, among them) in which new prints struck from original negatives were compared tones digital prints (DCPs), and in every case the DCP presentation was superior to the film presentation. Everyone commented on it during the breaks.

[momsne]

Part of the reason why not all nitrate films are equal is because they were not all created equal. The amount of silver used in the film production process went down through the first half of the 20th century, thanks to advances in film manufacturing methods. Even though much of the silver used to manufacture black and white can be recovered from the developing solution, in the good old days, the upfront price of the 35mm motion picture film was a big consideration. Recycling silver was not a big concern until World War II, AFAIK. Reducing the amount of silver used to make the film was a cost control method. The downside could have been that a film's silver content would have functioned as a limiting reagent for the photochemical properties of the film. What that threshold amount is doesn't matter as long as the silver content was well over this level of silver halide concentration. Thanks to reducing the amount of silver used in film stock, the image quality would have changed.

There are other examples where a change to save on the price of a metal led to unforeseen events. One is the homebuilders who used aluminum wire instead of more expensive copper wire in the 70s and 80s, which sometimes led to house fires if the wiring was not properly installed.

The best people to ask about the silver halide content of old 35mm film stocks would be the retired film production technicians and chemists who worked at Eastman Kodak.

From Internet article on silver halides: "Extensive research efforts led to the development of grain precipitation processes that produced flatter "tablet" grains in which the crystals possessed a more asymmetric geometry, and in which a larger surface area was presented for exposure for the same given weight of silver halide."

[bamolm]

How utterly impossible would it be to try and make your own nitrate film?

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

Would there be any record of whether films shown at London's NFT were nitrate or not? When I was a member (1974-90) I didn't really think about it to be honest, unless there was a mention in the programme notes. And, being a film society member, I probably assumed that many were on 16mm, especially as there would have been safety regulations in place and that imported films would have probably been on safety particularly if they were new prints.

[telical]

This sounds like the same reason why people prefer vinyl over CD's. There is something about the actual physical impression of sound material on a groove that has a tangible reality to it that digital 0's and 1's can't give. There is something about the nature of projecting light through a film that contains certain chemicals that can't be replicated otherwise.

[All Darc]

I prefer a good quality flat CRT than all LCDs (or LCDs with LED backlight). No LCD technology it's good for me. It don't worth any money and are all are a crap. Poor dynamics range, destroy tonalities detais in highlights if increase contrast adjust, distort images with any angle change (even IPS are not good and get darker), have problems if response time and fast movemnts. It's horrible.
Try to watch something recorded in VHS on a LCD screen. It will look like sh... while on a CRT it's acceptable.

And yes prime LP it's better than a CD, in frequency and in bits. And MP3 are worse than CDs.

This sounds like the same reason why people prefer vinyl over CD's. There is something about the actual physical impression of sound material on a groove that has a tangible reality to it that digital 0's and 1's can't give. There is something about the nature of projecting light through a film that contains certain chemicals that can't be replicated otherwise.