NitrateVille.com

Just saw a DCP presentation of Man in the Dark...in 3D at MoMA...I'm looking for any angle to criticize the process, but I really can't. As it was explained to us, the DCP is better than 35mm for 3D films because of registration issues.

Okay I get it.

But if it can do such a great job (and I've seen other DCP's from this era that looked as good)...

Why not set up a DCP file to replicate the glistening silver that nitrate can give us? Is there a technical reason that makes this hard to do?

My opinion is that the technology we have now still has a ways to go to duplicate the luminousity of old cellulose nitrate black and white film. Since most film negatives of old films are either gone or in less than pristine conditions, the conversion of existing prints from analog to digital can't capture the total look of the original movie, even with digital processing and tens of terabytes of storage for the digital image. In the 1917 movie "A Modern Musketeer," there is a scene of fast riding horsemen on a desert plain flanked by rocky outcrops. That scene must have looked great to New Yorkers watching the movie at the Rivoli theater. Almost a hundred years later, there is no way now to duplicate that viewing experience unless someone finds not just a print of this once lost Douglas Fairbanks movie but a print in mint condition. Such a fluke film discovery is unlikely.
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"The luminosity of the blacks caused by the stock's high silver content means that black-and-white movies have an extraordinary lustre and richness that can create a contrast between light and shade similar to that seen in the paintings of the renaissance artists using their chiaroscuro method."
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The dangerous beauty of cellulose nitrate film

Will Gompertz | 11:54 UK time, Thursday, 10 June 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/there ... ellul.html" target="_blank

Imagine if Steve Jobs' next trick of innovative brilliance was a whole new 3D-movie experience that was ten times better than the current offer, which didn't require you to wear faux-1960s specs and that had the aural sensation of a hundred-piece orchestra. I think we can agree such a notion is not particularly far-fetched.

What though, if there were just one small problem with his new, funky iCinema: if the state-of-the-art movie play-back hard-drive was prone to burst into flames that couldn't be put out with water, that emitted disgusting poisonous smoke and that might turn not only the film you were watching to ash but also the cinema and you? Would it be stretching believability to suggest that in our world of Health-and-Safety executives, the iCinema would be given the go-ahead on the basis that, barring this notable imperfection, it was otherwise terrific? Reckon so.

Go back a hundred years or so, though, when Health-and-Safety executives still worked as bank clerks, and you'll find that's exactly what happened. From 1895 to the early 1950s, all commercially available 35mm film, stills, negatives and even X-rays were made out of cellulose nitrate: a fragile, combustible, unstable, highly-flammable substance that was also used in explosives. And those are just some of its drawbacks. It can also give off a toxic vapour, turn into a brown sticky glue and disintegrate into a pile of dust as it has done on countless occasions, thereby obliterating swathes of film history.

Not that that deterred directors. Quite the opposite: it brought out the mad professor in them. Nitrate film has had at least three starring roles. The first was in Michael Powell's The Love Test (1934), where a young scientist tries to discover a method for making nitrate fireproof. Then in Giuseppe Tornatore's poetic Cinema Paradiso (1988), the cinema is razed to the ground due to a projection room fire. And in Quentin Tarantino's movie Inglourious Basterds (2009), the projectionist stands in front of a huge heap of nitrate film smoking a cigarette - cool / stupid - before flicking the butt onto the pile, starting a fire that destroys the Nazi high command. Any idea why this movie didn't win the Best Picture Oscar?

But there's more to nitrate film than a fiery nature and odour issues: it has a sensitive, artistic side. According to the eminent curators at the British Film Institute (BFI), cellulose nitrate film is the most vivid film stock ever created. In a short summer season this July, the BFI at London's Southbank is running a programme called Dangerous Beauty: The Joy of Nitrate Film [97Kb PDF] in which five films will be shown including the Oscar-winning The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) directed by Alexander Korda and starring Charles Laughton, and the John Boulting-directed Brighton Rock (1947), which stars a young Richard Attenborough. The phrase is always "a young Richard Attenborough"; the older version is called "Dickie", a luvvies' gag on the mercilessness of the ageing process.

All of the movies will be all shown on their original nitrate film stock from a specially designed projector room replete with metal shutters, fire extinguishers and projectionist with a keen interest in dangerous sports. It is the first time in a decade that films have been shown in the UK on their original nitrate stock and the BFI is now the only venue in the country licensed to do so.

I asked Robin Baker, Head Curator at the BFI National Archive, whether the friction of the film going through the projector's gate could cause one of the movies to ignite. "Oh yes, absolutely," he said with the kind of alacrity normally associated with gung-ho 19th-Century explorers who consider a limb-to-limb mauling by a lion as jolly good fun.

And as Spinal Tap memorably demonstrated and as Four Lions is now mimicking, the idea of something spontaneously combusting has a certain frisson.

Robin is captivatingly passionate about nitrate film and says that the real allure of this film stock is its aesthetic attributes; that it exhibits a quality never matched by modern safety film stocks. The luminosity of the blacks caused by the stock's high silver content means that black-and-white movies have an extraordinary lustre and richness that can create a contrast between light and shade similar to that seen in the paintings of the renaissance artists using their chiaroscuro method.

Nitrate film consisted of nine strips of colour film recording simultaneously, resulting in the "truest, purest colour you will see" and the BFI says the vibrant colour of an original dye transfer Technicolor nitrate print is unforgettable. For Robin, this season is about learning to look, to gain an appreciation of the difference between film stocks which he says is a marked as the difference between oil and acrylic paint. It's about the medium as much as the message.

The season is also about conservation. It marks 75 years of the National Archive, which boasts over 180,000 cans of nitrate film, making it one of the world's largest holdings. But don't let any of this deter you from a trip to the Southbank: all the films are kept out of harm's way in bunkers - due to their explosive nature and also because of the BFI's determination to preserve them for future generations. The plan is to create a special microclimate to radically slow down their deterioration process. Ideally they would be stored at -5C and 35% relative humidity. Me: "What's that?" Robin: "Very dry."

Conservators tend to be the unsung heroes of the arts. Few will think of or thank them when they sit down and watch an original nitrate film and amaze at its quality or when they buy a new copy of the recently restored Powell / Pressburger classic The Red Shoes (1948) - you can read about that Martin Scorsese-backed project here [925Kb PDF]. But they don't do the job for the plaudits: they do it because they love film - even when it's temperamental, noxious and potentially fatal. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the BFI's conservators spent their weekends lighting cigarettes with fireworks. Just for fun.

Manufacturers aren't making crts anymore. In a few decades, the only place you'll be able to see the unique glow, flicker, and scan lines of a television picture tube will be in a museum. And I'd argue that's an integral part of seeing 50s and 60s television programs preserved on 2" Quad and 1" videotapes - there was a reason that the medium of television seemed so hypnotic and compelling.

Digital reproductions of manuscripts, books or paintings can give you an idea of the visual content, but it can't preserve the unique look, feel or even smell of the original artifacts.

Technology moves on and allows us to preserve objects, but it's always something of a compromise. Digital can help preserve and disseminate the content, but there will always be aspects of the original experience that are going to be lost forever.

Could we have an explanation for the statement "nitrate film consisted of nine strips of color film photographed simultaneously"? This sounds like a misunderstanding of the Technicolor 3-strip process.
Also consider that many of the surviving nitrate prints were made from the original negatives, carefully supervised by the film makers. Whether it be nitrate or safety, prints from dupe negatives of varying quality, and with possibly sloppy lab work aren't beautiful just because the stuff burns.

Dick, I was tripping over that odd statement, too...

-Craig

To replicate the image of cellulose nitrate film, you have to find a way to duplicate the way silver nitrate reacts to light. Just as it is still impossible to duplicate exactly the sound of a Stradivarius violin (or cello for that matter),
IMHO, you can't exactly duplicate the image quality of silver nitrate based film without having that silver compound in the mix. Maybe Eastman Kodak can create a new batch of non-safety silver nitrate film and then strike off a new print using this old fashioned highly flammable film. Then you do an 8K scan of the new silver-nitrate based print and see if the physical characteristics of the silver in the film medium creates a more luminous image after scanning.
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The Silver Screen And The Gray Convertible
Daryl Chin (2005)
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/articles/ ... screen.htm" target="_blank

Article excerpt:

In the case of Wuthering Heights, something equally distressing had happened. I noticed it near the end, when the famous close-ups of Merle Oberon’s face, as Cathy is dying, came on the screen. The absolute luminosity of Merle Oberon’s face was missing. The reason for this became apparent: film is no longer processed in the same way as it was in 1939. For one thing, the film stock is no longer the same: since the 1951, film stock shifted from nitrate to safety acetate. And the processing of acetate is different from the processing of nitrate in terms of the concentration of silver used. Safety acetate film stock is also faster than nitrate film stock, in that it does not require as much light to register, but it also means that acetate film stock does not register as deeply. Nitrate film stock, literally, would shine; the amount of silver required to generate an image had been quite extensive, and the wattage required to project the image from an old-fashioned professional 35mm projector would be exorbitant. But now, projectors are more reasonable in their electrical requirements, film stocks are not nearly as volatile, but they’re also not nearly as glowing. The amount of reflective silver overlay is much less with acetate safety stock. But all this means is that the actual glow which used to be part of the experience of seeing a movie is missing. When movie stars such as Merle Oberon, Greta Garbo, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn were discussed in terms of their luminosity, their radiance, their “glowing” qualities, these qualities were literal: in an old 35mm nitrate print of Wuthering Heights, properly projected, Merle Oberon’s face was lit so that the highlighted contours would actually radiate a silvery glow. And now, that silver is gone, it’s been faded to gray. Though her face is still highlighted, it’s no longer irradiated, no longer luminescent, no longer truly an image of the silver screen. So the magnificent lighting of Gregg Toland’s astonishing cinematography in Wuthering Heights will never be seen as originally intended, now that the degree of luminosity is no longer possible.

Not that I expect this to happen given that film barely survives at all, but couldn't you make slow, extra-silvery safety stock?

I hate to bust a bubble for anybody, but ANYTHING relating to "making" film stocks is going away. We should be thankful that there are preservation stocks still available. As far as designing any NEW film stocks....that time has past.

Um, yeah, that was the point of how I phrased the question. Nevertheless, IN THEORY, couldn't you design for the characteristics of nitrate today?

Unless you represent Eastman Kodak, it is presumptious to make comments about what EK will do regarding 35mm motion picture film. If EK can get a client, why wouldn't it manufacture high silver content cellulose nitrate film. Transferring an existing pre-1950 black and white movie on old film stock (whether film negative or 35mm print) to newly manufactured silver nitrate 35mm film would be expensive, sure. But 20th Century Fox is reported to have spent more than a million dollars on its "The Black Swan" technicolor restoration. A restoration that still has some timing problems on my DVD copy (fast forward to the final dueling scene and the sudden color shift with George Sanders' close-up). Phototone, you needn't make statements on Eastman Kodak's future plans. EK would love it if it could get museums and film companies to employ silver nitrate based film to make archival masters for new black and white film restorations.

Please, someone tell where all this nitrate film is being projected because I want to get in on seeing this stuff.

And for those who think they are seeing something different in nitrate which doesn't exist in any other film stock. Please provide some details. I have seen both projected many times and do not see any discernible difference.

I agree with you, Louie to the extent that there is no clear distinction between nitrate and safety stock. However, there is tremendous difference in various processing methods and it may well be that the style of print-making that yielded that B&W nitrate shimmer is largely no longer practiced.

Bob

boblipton wrote:I agree with you, Louie to the extent that there is no clear distinction between nitrate and safety stock. However, there is tremendous difference in various processing methods and it may well be that the style of print-making that yielded that B&W nitrate shimmer is largely no longer practiced.

Bob

I think the shimmer you're seeing is lighting, lens, and/or perhaps gauze or filter on the camera and not anything to do with film stock.

I am not an expert on 35mm film manufacturing unlike others here. The fact that Hollywood studios used silver nitrate based film for over 50 years would indicate that this film did a good job. The element silver has unique physical properties that make it ideal for use in film. Sure, cellulose nitrate film has the potential to behave like gun cotton. Especially in the silent film era, movie makers were really concerned with image quality, as you can see watching the Byron Haskin segment on Rex Ingram in the Brownlow/Gill documentary series HOLLYWOOD. That is my blanket generalization. Saying that when developed, safety acetate film will have the same look as silver nitrate based film seems to me to be a great stretch unsupported by any facts.

I am not an expert on 35mm film manufacturing unlike others here. The fact that Hollywood studios used silver nitrate based film for over 50 years would indicate that this film did a good job. The element silver has unique physical properties that make it ideal for use in film. Sure, cellulose nitrate film has the potential to behave like gun cotton. Especially in the silent film era, movie makers were really concerned with image quality, as you can see watching the Byron Haskin segment on Rex Ingram in the Brownlow/Gill documentary series HOLLYWOOD. That is my blanket generalization. Saying that when developed, safety acetate film will have the same look as silver nitrate based film seems to me to be a great stretch unsupported by any facts.

RIght out of the gate, calling these stocks "silver nitrate" stocks is incorrect. Silver Nitrate is a compound that has nothing to do with photography.

Silver halides are the compounds that are the basis of photography. Cellulose nitrate was just the plastic base that a mixture of gelatin and Silver halide crystals was coated with as an emulsion.

It's illogical to say there was ever a "nitrate look." The medium and art changed between 1895 and 1950 so much that to compare a film photographed in 1925 to one twenty years later would prove my point.

This thought that cellulose nitrate has some effect on photography is absurd: the light in the camera hits the emulsion before it does the base.

On prints, we can actually demonstrate that this myth is nonsense. All one has to do is yield a print from a nitrate camera negative on safety stock to the same timings as that of a nitrate release print. Running them in synchronization will prove my point.

As has already been mentioned, printing from the camera negative and good labwork are the primary reasons original prints look great. Then, on top of this, you have lighting techniques, uncoated lenses, orthochromatic and panchromatic film stocks, anti-halation backings, and camera pin registration to generate different "looks."

You're right about it being incorrect to use a phrase such as "silver nitrate film stock." But what is the big deal? At another site, cheresources.com, I read the following: "The silver halide process is by far the most important of all of the radiation-sensitive photographic systems in use today. The principal reason for this superiority is the high sensitivity of the system - the amount of radiant energy required to produce a useful image and the extreme flexibility of the system in terms of adjusting sensitivity, contrast, tonal range and other such aspects of the product." If you want to say it is nonsense to think that there is anything special about the optical qualities of cellulose nitrate film, feel free to do so. But then, you might as well say the same thing about the current 35mm film made by Eastman Kodak for movies in relation to digital movie cameras. 20th Century Fox tossed all its Technicolor film negatives because its executives figured that the copies of these movies onto safety film made the original Technicolor film negatives redundant. Nothing special about those Technicolor negatives nor about old films on cellulose nitrate that can be digitally scanned and stored as digital images. To say anything else is nonsense, right.

By the way, I don't think Eastman Kodak will continue for much longer making 35mm movie film for much longer, even considering that recent story in the Wall Street Journal. There is not that much of a market now for 35mm film to be used for archival purposes. Making backup copies of existing cellulose nitrate films onto new cellulose nitrate film stock would retain all the physical characteristics of the original and would probably reduce the chances of spontaneous combustion compared to the source print or negative. All you need is funding to carry out such a limited project, a project right up Eastman Kodak's alley. That won't happen, there is no difference between cellulose nitrate film and film copies made using new 35mm film stock according to everyone here. The same attitude that existed 30 or more years ago when old movies were transferred to cellulose acetate film, a real success story.

What would a nitrate print of a film looked like to it's cinema audience back in the 1920's? I would think, not unreasonably, that technological advances would render what we see today to be vastly superior. Were the images as bright as they should be? Did the projectors works as well? Although the screen size was smaller than the huge sheets that are now strung up even in shoe-boxes - there was still a huge throw from the bio-box in those vast cavernous auditoria.

Guessing is not the same as knowledge. Eastman Kodak could probably find out, since it can still access former EK technicians who retain the institutional knowledge of manufacturing cellulose nitrate film. Once Eastman Kodak closes down its 35mm film production line, end of story.

momsne wrote:Guessing is not the same as knowledge.

Right, and you've proven you don't have that knowledge

end of story.

I wish it was but people like you, when confronted by fact and explinations, just tend to go on and on about things which have no relevance at all.

momsne wrote:You're right about it being incorrect to use a phrase such as "silver nitrate film stock." But what is the big deal?

It's really not a big deal, but it seems like if you're going to debate this, you should at least know what you're talking about.

momsne wrote: At another site, cheresources.com, I read the following: "The silver halide process is by far the most important of all of the radiation-sensitive photographic systems in use today. The principal reason for this superiority is the high sensitivity of the system - the amount of radiant energy required to produce a useful image and the extreme flexibility of the system in terms of adjusting sensitivity, contrast, tonal range and other such aspects of the product."

So what? What does this have to do with your argument here? Emulsion and base are not the same.

momsne wrote:If you want to say it is nonsense to think that there is anything special about the optical qualities of cellulose nitrate film, feel free to do so. But then, you might as well say the same thing about the current 35mm film made by Eastman Kodak for movies in relation to digital movie cameras. 20th Century Fox tossed all its Technicolor film negatives because its executives figured that the copies of these movies onto safety film made the original Technicolor film negatives redundant. Nothing special about those Technicolor negatives nor about old films on cellulose nitrate that can be digitally scanned and stored as digital images. To say anything else is nonsense, right.

Where is the logic here? Fox junked their three-strip negs because they didn't want to pay storage on nitrate film, so they duped them onto a single-strip CRI stock that eventually faded. Apples and oranges here. What's your point?

momsne wrote:By the way, I don't think Eastman Kodak will continue for much longer making 35mm movie film for much longer, even considering that recent story in the Wall Street Journal. There is not that much of a market now for 35mm film to be used for archival purposes. Making backup copies of existing cellulose nitrate films onto new cellulose nitrate film stock would retain all the physical characteristics of the original and would probably reduce the chances of spontaneous combustion compared to the source print or negative. All you need is funding to carry out such a limited project, a project right up Eastman Kodak's alley. That won't happen, there is no difference between cellulose nitrate film and film copies made using new 35mm film stock according to everyone here. The same attitude that existed 30 or more years ago when old movies were transferred to cellulose acetate film, a real success story.

Sounds like the Film Anti-Preservation Society:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4q7YGegZRc" target="_blank" target="_blank

I wish it was but people like you, when confronted by fact and explinations, just tend to go on and on about things which have no relevance at all.

What facts did you bring to the table?

This discussion is academic, the infrastructure needed to manufacture and process 35mm print film is rapidly being shut down. Film labs closing. Film preservation efforts dwindling. If not for the efforts of Ted Turner when he took over the MGM film library and started TCM 20 years ago, most of those older movies from the early 1930s we are familiar with now would remain buried, many stored in underground salt caverns in Kansas.
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With 35mm Film Dead, Will Classic Movies Ever Look the Same Again?
Daniel Eagan Nov 22 2012, 1:11 PM ET
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen ... _page=true" target="_blank

Correction appended

This year, Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese's editor for the past 40 years and a three-time Oscar winner, called Grover Crisp, the executive VP of asset management at Sony, for a 35mm print of Scorsese's 1993 film The Age of Innocence for the director's private collection.*

"He told me that they can't print it anymore because Technicolor in Los Angeles no longer prints film," Schoonmaker recalled. "Which means a film we made 20 years ago can no longer be printed, unless we move it to another lab—one of the few labs still making prints." (Age of Innocence has since been printed in another lab).

Welcome to the digital world, movie version. With major studios like 20th Century Fox switching to digital prints by year's end, businesses that used to make and support celluloid—labs, shippers, and suppliers—are shutting down or shifting gears. Fuji is ending its production of film stock, while Kodak, in the throes of bankruptcy, is cutting back on its film products.

What does this mean for classic-movie buffs? More low-resolution screenings of DVDs in repertory theaters, fewer old films overall to see, and the potential loss of a wide swath of our cultural heritage.

Only a fraction of repertory titles have been transferred to Digital Cinema Packages (essentially hard drives with files of movies). Warhorses like Singin' in the Rain and Lawrence of Arabia will always be upgraded to the latest digital format, of course. But how about a B-thriller by Anthony Mann? Or a Western by Budd Boetticher?

Curators, programmers, and repertory schedulers are scrambling to find versions on film of titles that used to be easy to acquire. Warner Bros. won't rent titles unless it has at least two copies in its vaults. So if a theater wanted to show Sky Full of Moon or Fearless Fagin, WB films from the 1950s, it would have to project a DVD—with an accompanying drastic drop in sound and image quality. Twentieth Century Fox no longer has prints of Miller's Crossing or Barton Fink, as Doc Films Programming Chair Maxwell Frank found out when trying to assemble a Coen Brothers retrospective at the University of Chicago. However, if a collector will supply a print, Fox will be happy to charge its usual licensing fees.

But studios and archives are also reluctant to loan films because projecting them eventually destroys them. Each pass through a projector, no matter how well maintained, leads to scratching and fading. When I tried to screen 35mm materials at the Library of Congress, Mike Mashon, head of the moving image section at the Library's Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia, told me that, "Every 35mm print now has to be considered an archival print." In other words, they can't run through a machine.

"I was used to hearing, oh well, maybe films made in the '40s or '50s, but our film?" Schoonmaker said, referring to titles that have become unavailable. "And it's not the only one of our films that is in this situation. What really worries me are the lesser-known movies."

And film buffs are worried not just about the lack of digitized titles, but how they are being converted. Schoonmaker for one has been appalled by some of the digital "restorations" she's screened.

Warhorses like Lawrence of Arabia will always be upgraded to the latest digital format. But how about a B-thriller by Anthony Mann? Or a Western by Budd Boetticher?

"I saw a digitized version of a film that David Lean made during World War II, and it looked just like a TV commercial that was shot yesterday," she said. "It was wrong, the balance was completely off. Originally it had a slightly muted look, and now here were all these insanely bright blues."

Schoonmaker believes that the colorists who have been trained in the last 10 or 15 years "have no idea what these movies should look like anymore." But she isn't opposed to DCP's on principle. Technicolor films like The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp couldn't have been restored without digital methods. The Red Shoes looks the way it does now because Scorsese, Schoonmaker, and Bob Gitt from the UCLA Film and Television Archive could take the time to compare their work to prints from Scorsese's collection and the BFI archives.

"We do the same thing on our films today," Schoonmaker said. "When we made Hugo's DCP, of course everybody is in there tweaking the color: the cinematographer, the editor, the director. But what happens with films that weren't made just recently? Who's going to supervise these DCP's if the filmmaker's dead, and there's nobody else like the cinematographer or the editor or somebody who knows what the damn thing looks like and can go in there and work with the color timer after he's done his first pass?"

"Timing" used to be a crucial step in preparing a print for release. Film is a photochemical process based on many variables. The stock itself could change from batch to batch. Chemicals used for processing, the temperatures at which they were used, even water used for rinsing were different from lab to lab.

Once a film had been edited, and its negative was ready to be printed, the lab's timer would work with the cinematographer, and in some cases the director and other filmmakers, to "time" or expose each shot and scene. As in still photography, the timer could brighten or darken a shot or scene, and manipulate to an extent its colors. Detailed notes were made for each scene; they would be referred to if the lab needed prints in the future.

Switching from one lab to another, or from one stock to another, would necessitate a completely new timing and a new set of notes, one of the reasons the process is so expensive.

Instead of timers, digital post-production has colorists who perform many of the same functions, including adjusting exposure and color levels. When films were first digitized for broadcast and home video markets, colorists aimed for standards of brightness and color saturation that were often at odds with filmmakers' choices. They opted for less contrast because TVs had trouble reproducing highlights and shadows, for example. Films that looked good enough seen on a VCR in a consumer's living room suddenly displayed errors in other formats. In some cases those early transfers are all today's colorists have to go by when digitizing repertory films.

Even films protected by copyright are in trouble. The UCLA Film & Television Archive has made a public appeal for money to preserve films starring Laurel and Hardy, one of cinema's most famous comedy teams. RHI, which currently owns the rights to the films, reportedly refuses to fund their preservation.

For film distributors, it's hard to justify the $5,000 to $10,000 it now costs to print a 35mm black-and-white feature*. When Bruce Goldstein, director of repertory programming for New York's Film Forum, complained about the astronomical costs of B&W film prints, his friend Hade Guest of the Harvard Film Archive replied, "You're no longer in the film business—you're in the Fabergé egg business."

Digital formats change so rapidly that restorations can quickly become obsolete. 2K scans used to be the industry standard; 4K, which offers more visual information, has become more prevalent. But at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas this past spring, vendors were showcasing laser projectors, a format that will be available commercially in a few years. "Think about the theater owners who have just spent $2 billion converting to digital," Schoonmaker said, "and now they're being told they'll have to convert to laser in five years?"

Film archivists face additional problems. Digital has turned out to be a fragile archiving format. Information can be lost if hard drives aren't maintained properly. Data has to be transferred, or migrated, as hardware specs and software change.

Digital archiving is also more expensive than film. One study found that a 2K scan of a feature film would require just under two terabytes to store. In fact, digital archiving is so difficult and costly that Kodak has just announced film specifically designed for archiving digital formats.

Here's an indication of how dire the situation has become. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars, held "the first-ever 'Film-to-Film' Festival," from September 27 to 29. It is an outgrowth of the Academy's "Project Film-to-Film," an initiative designed "to take advantage of the current, but threatened, availability of film stock."

In other words, a film festival celebrating film itself.

In the meantime, it's viewer beware. To celebrate Cinerama's 60th anniversary, earlier this fall Arclight Cinemas showed 12 Cinerama productions, some in the original three-strip process, at its Cinerama Dome theater in Los Angeles. How The West Was Won was screened in authentic Cinerama. 2001: A Space Odyssey, on the other hand, was a DCP presentation of the 2K scan: not exactly a Blu-ray, but the master used to make the Blu-ray. As author Mike Gebert put it to me, "Is that all there is to project 2001 with these days? That's sad."

* This post originally stated that it now costs $50,000 to print a 35mm black-and-white feature. It also incorrectly stated that Sony can no longer print The Age of Innocence; it can, just no longer at the original lab, Technicolor. We regret the errors.

The first paragraph of the article has also been rewritten to reflect that Schoonmaker later said that her request to Sony for an Age of Innocence print was for Martin Scorsese's personal collection, not for a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image. A screening of the film was held at the Museum of the Moving Image using an archival print provided by Sony.
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Deluxe To Close Hollywood Lab
March 6, 2014 | 04:56PM PT
Company's film services dwindle to New York, Barcelona labs
http://variety.com/2014/film/news/delux ... 201127272/" target="_blank
[excerpt]
The essential infrastructure for production with film, however, is withering. Only Kodak still manufactures 35mm motion picture stock. As the amount of stock purchased per year by the industry dwindles, the price per foot is likely to increase. As the number of labs also dwindles, lab services are likely to become dearer and slower. At some point, film will simply become un-economical, no matter how much Nolan and other champions of the photochemical medium prefer it.

Nolan spoke at the Sci-Techs to present an Oscar statuette honoring all the film lab employees who have served the industry for a century. The award was understood as the industry’s valedictory to celluloid. With the demise of Deluxe’s lab, the film era is fading ever-faster into history.

I would bet that there is no one on this forum who has seen more 35mm nitrate film, B&W, Cinecolor, Technicolor, tinted, toned, tinted and toned, that I have. I spent virtually every day of my life for five years looking at and/or projecting nitrate prints made from the 1910 through the early 1950s. Most of these were Fox and Paramount titles, but there were things from other companies, as well.

There are a number of misconceptions when this topic comes up that need to be dispelled.

First nitrate release prints struck from the camera negative, especially in the silent era, were far grainier than prints you could make today from that same original negative. This is especially evident in reiterations, such as UCLA's "Humoresque" (1920) which are derived from both original neg and nitrate print source material. The stuff duped from print is much grainier that the original negative material, even though the neg has been printed to fine grain master positive and a dupe neg struck from the fine grain. Even though the generational difference is the same, the print-derived stuff is immediately recognizable by the heavier grain structure of the vintage prints.

Today's duping stocks are infinitely superior to what was available even in the 1970s, and provide excellent result. With an original negative and proper timing, prints today will look better than any nitrate print made in the 1920s or '30s. Not to say that those prints didn't look great, just that today's prints can look better.

So there is no inherent reason why a DCP cannot look like a nitrate film print depending on how the original film elements were mastered, cleaned up, and compressed.

So Bob, what would you say is the quality that you'd be trying to replicate from nitrate, if any? I've wondered this for years, I remember watching Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog, perhaps the best-shot of modern B&W films, and thinking, what more could you get out of black and white? How much richer saturation or better contrast or finer level of gray detail is possible? I've seen a little nitrate, not a lot, and I just don't know what it is we're theoretically missing.

I've kind of always suspected that the idea that nitrate offered this uniquely lustrous image had a lot to do with it being compared to the somewhat washed-out prints being made for TV stations in the early years of safety stock. It's perhaps significant that it was always in relation to much older, often silent films-- nobody looked at a new, particularly good-looking black and white movie in the 50s and said, "Boy if only The Night of the Hunter or The Sweet Smell of Success had been on nitrate instead of safety stock!"

I don't see any reason why a digital print can not look like nitrate or anything else. What you're seeing up on the screen is just shadows being cast by images fed into a projector, and you can do ANYTHING to images in the digital realm. Want them softer? No problem. A little glow around the hot spots? No problem. Super saturated? No problem (projector-dependent, of course). More grain? Less grain? Bigger grain? Smaller grain? Only grain in the grays and blacks? All no problem.

Mike Gebert wrote:So Bob, what would you say is the quality that you'd be trying to replicate from nitrate, if any? I've wondered this for years, I remember watching Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog, perhaps the best-shot of modern B&W films, and thinking, what more could you get out of black and white? How much richer saturation or better contrast or finer level of gray detail is possible? I've seen a little nitrate, not a lot, and I just don't know what it is we're theoretically missing.

I've kind of always suspected that the idea that nitrate offered this uniquely lustrous image had a lot to do with it being compared to the somewhat washed-out prints being made for TV stations in the early years of safety stock. It's perhaps significant that it was always in relation to much older, often silent films-- nobody looked at a new, particularly good-looking black and white movie in the 50s and said, "Boy if only The Night of the Hunter or The Sweet Smell of Success had been on nitrate instead of safety stock!"

Even if nitrate cellulose film stock offered more "luminous" light transmission it would largely have been lost in theaters of the 1930s and 1940s which generally had cloth mesh low gain screens (mesh to let the sound out) that sucked up a lot of light, or rather let a bunch of light fall backstage behind the screen.

The notion that Nitrate was somehow different from safety film largely grew in the 1970s. Most films at the time were released in 1.85:1 and lab work was rather indifferent so grain (or the "essence" of bleached out silver halide grain in color film) and the added magnification of the image and often indifferent lab work, especially obvious then in work out of Deluxe and Movielab (Deluxe later improved their lab work immensely, Movielab never did), while in revival (although M-G-M had converted their library to safety and there were always a few perennials or rediscovered titles like the films of the Marx Bros., Humphrey Bogart and W. C, Fields) most available 35mm museum and archive screenings were with nitrate studio prints printed from original negatives. Of course they looked better than modern films of the era.

Beyond this, in the nitrate era most Hollywood lighting was more "painterly" and the images more carefully composed. Also the issue of Technicolor came up. Forget that nitrate Tech prints were often not very sharp, they exhibited extraordinary color when compared to Eastman Color of the 1970s. There is no question the old prints were often better, and some assumed this was due to the medium of nitrate stock, and so the legend began and grew.

I've seen UCLA's nitrate copy of Scarlett Empress, and it looks like dynamite. If anyone was going to use an example of how a nitrate film can look better than a safety stock film, that film seems to be exhibit A.

But maybe more knowledgeable people can educate me. Is UCLA's copy so fabulous for reasons other than being a nitrate film? I"ve seen other screenings of Scarlet Empress with very good, even pristine prints and nothing I saw got close to the same 'shimmering' quality.

If if that shimmer, or glow is NOT from the nitrate stock, where is it coming from?

And finally, to sort of re-think the question -- forget about nitrate vs. safety film...in regard to digital manipulation for DCP screenings...how would one make a B&W DCP look like a reel of The Scarlet Empress?

Lokke Heiss wrote:I've seen UCLA's nitrate copy of Scarlett Empress, and it looks like dynamite. If anyone was going to use an example of how a nitrate film can look better than a safety stock film, that film seems to be exhibit A.

But maybe more knowledgeable people can educate me. Is UCLA's copy so fabulous for reasons other than being a nitrate film? I"ve seen other screenings of Scarlet Empress with very good, even pristine prints and nothing I saw got close to the same 'shimmering' quality.

If if that shimmer, or glow is NOT from the nitrate stock, where is it coming from?

And finally, to sort of re-think the question -- forget about nitrate vs. safety film...in regard to digital manipulation for DCP screenings...how would one make a B&W DCP look like a reel of The Scarlet Empress?

It's not the nitrate, Lokke, it is the fact that that UCLA print is the only known surviving print from the original negative, which has been lost for years. Emka made a finegrain in the 1950s, which turned out to be NSG. As a result, the dupe negative and prints struck from it are also less than spectacular. In recent years I believe Universal used the UCLA print as a source for a new dupe negative, and UCLA has preserved the film as well using their nitrate as source material. You would get a much better result today scanning the UCLA nitrate to 4K or 6K, doing some clean up and going out to DCP, and you could make it look like the original print. But the Criterion DVD, for example, was transferred from material at least two or more generations away from the original negative.

Okay, Bob, thanks, very helpful...but to pursue this a bit, I can see why the UCLA print looks so fantastic. But in this MoMA series, there were some DCP prints (that looked good) that were from camera negatives (or as close to them as the SE UCLA print) but they didn't look anywhere near as good as the SE UCLA print.

I think what you are saying is that I should see a DCP 4K version of the UCLA SE print back-to-back with the nitrate UCLA print and that would be the best available test for what I am talking about.

But back to my original point, why does the SE UCLA print look better than other B&W films with the same quality of elements...is there some reality to this , or is it my imagination? And whether it's my imagination or not, is there a way to tweak a DCP print to make it look more like this?

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.

Lokke Heiss wrote:Okay, Bob, thanks, very helpful...but to pursue this a bit, I can see why the UCLA print looks so fantastic. But in this MoMA series, there were some DCP prints (that looked good) that were from camera negatives (or as close to them as the SE UCLA print) but they didn't look anywhere near as good as the SE UCLA print.

I think what you are saying is that I should see a DCP 4K version of the UCLA SE print back-to-back with the nitrate UCLA print and that would be the best available test for what I am talking about.

But back to my original point, why does the SE UCLA print look better than other B&W films with the same quality of elements...is there some reality to this , or is it my imagination? And whether it's my imagination or not, is there a way to tweak a DCP print to make it look more like this?

Can you name some of the titles that were on DCP?

As for Scarlet Empress, Bert Glennon's cinematography may have had something to do with it.