06/27/2019
Hi folks. I haven't been able to properly monitor and update the page, so apologies for that, plus, I really don't have any more cool pics or anything to add. As I keep getting reminders in my email to post on this page, I decided to do so and comment about the old film based technology and how things that can now be accomplished with a mouse click, used to require an entire staff. Here are 2 examples of such jobs that today, would pose no issue, a different story in the 70s. One client I worked with at RFL back in 1978 was Glen Lau, a producer of outdoor sporting TV shows such as the Outdoorsman and Sports Afield. Back then, most TV shows were not only shot on film, but were distributed on film prints as well. We had an episode of the Outdoorsman that contained old footage shot by an amateur in the late 40s/early 50s era. 16mm Kodachrome and boy, do I wish I could've kept the old reels and film boxes they came to the lab in! They were home movies shot at 16fps and the final print was a 16mm, optical sound at 24fps. You had 2 choices, live with speeded up, "Charlie Chaplin" movement or have it optically "stretched." The latter was chosen and I had the assignment. We used a custom built optical printer that was built by Gerden Russell, a veteran projectionist, cameraman and producer from the silent era. Carried IATSE union card number 1! The camera side of the optical printer was a Mitchell, chosen for its superb registration and picture steadiness, a favourite of animators. The projector side was a gutted Keystone projector, the film was loaded in backwards so it would be orientated properly in the camera that was photographing the original film one frame at a time. Since it was to be stretched to 24fps, every 3rd, or 4th frame, don't remember which now, you do the math if you're interested, was copied twice. It was all day job in what amounted to a little over 20 seconds in an hour long show. The film then had to be processed and cut back in with the rest of the original footage.The resulting image was slowed down to "normal", but had a very strange and choppy look, but was acceptable as you knew it was old footage, but didn't want the comic effect of a Keystone Kops movie. The second example was a PBS documentary on the Apalachicola River where, for whatever reason, half was photographed on negative stock, Eastman Color Negative 2, 7247 and the other half was shot on reversal film, which was Ektachrome Commercial (ECO as it was known then)7252. Have no idea why it was done this way, but it was an extreme headache taking this project to a final print. Not only do the 2 film stocks look nothing,like each other, but they must be printed on completely different print material. Furthermore, the editor had footage going back and forth, which, let me tell you was nightmare on the conforming table. All scenes had to be pulled and spliced together separately and then copied onto an intermediate stock and then conformed to the workprint. I ended up working with film that had no readable edge numbers and had to be, for the most part matched by sight. It took me about a week. The man who timed the original, Bill Allen, who had also worked for Barton before coming over to the lab had the impossible task of colour grading and matching the two completely different looking images into as seamless as possible finished project. All things that could be fixed in a few minutes by one person with the right software today.
