From: Jeff Kreines (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Aug 31 2006 - 09:40:35 PDT
On Aug 31, 2006, at 9:55 AM, joel stern wrote:
> sally is also interested in creating a print from her original
> reversal master reel while we are in town. this is a ludicrously
> expensive thing to do in australia..
> if anyone has any tips for good labs in sf, do tell...?
Our friends at Kodak have discontinued ALL reversal print stocks,
color and black-and-white, and most labs have exhausted whatever
hoard of these stocks that they had on their shelves.
That means you'd need to make an internegative and a print from
that. The advantage is that you can then make multiple prints
cheaply, without wear on your reversal original, but the
disadvantages are cost and an additional generation lost.
As a less-expensive preservation option, you might consider making an
HD video transfer (pillarboxed, preserving the film's aspect ratio).
If you do this to a good format like HDCam SR (not HDCam) or to disk,
it could be used in the future to create a film master, and could
also be used for other purposes. It's not as good as scanning the
film, but it's probably the least expensive alternative for you, as
an interneg/print is going to cost you around US$2/foot -- and if you
do a simple HD transfer without much grading you might get by for
less, depending on running time.
Have a good time at MadCat. Ariella wanted to show my partner Joel
DeMott's film Demon Lover Diary at El Rio this year, but we were
concerned about the fact that it's outside projection without a booth
-- meaning whatever gets in the air gets on the film... dirt, dust,
bugs. Having been through this in the past, we demurred. Prints are
too costly and precious these days. I'd have them leave your film
tail out, and you should carefully hand-clean it yourself when
rewinding. That ways the dirt won't get cinched into the film as
much. I love outside projection, but prints are expensive, so when
projecting precious prints or even more precious reversal originals,
I shudder.
This is one place where video projection may prove useful!
Have a good show.
Jeff "paranoid about prints" Kreines
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