Ellen Kuras: Kodak 5017

From American Cinematographer, Psycho Killer by Andrew O. Thompson (June 1999)

For all intents and purposes, 5017 is a still photographers’ stock; the emulsion therefore had to be reperforated so that it could be run through Kuras’s Arriflex cameras. In order to do this work, Kodak required a month’s worth of advance notice, along with a minimum order of 14,000’.

"I really like what Malik Sayeed did with 5017 in He Got Game—he’s a very innovative cinematographer. There was one beautifully shot scene where some guys dressed in fluorescent orange and yellow came into a green room and threw a pair of red dice on the floor. The colors were supersaturated and had a lot of black in the shadow areas. I was struck by the way the colors were rendered, particularly the greens... 5017 is a stock to be reckoned with. The shadow areas will go very black unless there is enough fill. Without the ability to hide big lights in a small location, 5017 is a struggle because of the extreme contrast and slow ASA, especially for night exteriors. We tried to use it effectively, as in the scene where Vinny and Dionna are dancing in the Virgo Club. We used [strobing] Lightning Strikes units as our keys, along with some backlights and a couple of hard sidelights. A few years ago, I did something similar on a music video for the band Lush with director Mark Pellington, but I was using 5245, which is a very slow [50 ASA] stock. I just put in a few effects lights and then used the Lightning Strikes units to reveal what was in the shadow areas."

- Ellen Kuras, ASC

Constantine Makris: Image Control & Post Production

From American Cinematographer, Legal Eagle by Eric Rudolph (October 1998)

While the show is closely identified with its New York setting and production base, it is produced by Universal Television, which is based in Los Angeles. This means that postproduction is done 3,000 miles away. The long-distance marriage has created some problems that Makris has recently taken steps to solve.

"They literally take our unprocessed 35mm negative and put it on a plane to Deluxe in Los Angeles! The postproduction staff began getting a bit creative, changing things I'd done. The squad room walls are green — not blue, as they have appeared to be in some shows. If I say an actor should have an orange half-shadow on his face, well, he should, because I'm the person being paid to light this show. Sometimes I want to warm up a scene with a one-quarter CTO. But when I see the show, the scene is not warm — it's white. For that reason, I started using a 1/2 CTO where I previously might have used a 1/4... Steve Garfinkle, our Kodak rep, suggested using their Grey Card Plus system. Up to that point, I had only been giving post a gray scale. With Kodak's system, with its calibration of the telecine, the colorists' job is to simply match his copy of the Grey Card Plus card to the card we film. If they do that, the show should look the way it was intended to when it reaches the home screen."

- Constantine Makris, ASC

Freddie Francis: Kodak Plus-X Stock

From American Cinematographer, Cinematic Glory by David E. Williams (March 1998)

The Elephant Man was principally shot at Wembley Studios in Panavision, utilizing Kodak's Plus-X stock-- the only monochrome emulsion which met Francis' standards and was available in sufficient quantities. Due to the dearth of black-and-white features, most of Britian's labs had let their processing equipment fall into disrepair, necessitating that the cinematographer do extensive tests with several facilities. Rank finally won the contract. Nopted Francis in the informative tome The British Cinematographer,

"Rank's processing produced a result which immediately filled me with confidence. My first impressions were that the [plus-x] had increased in speed and the grain had diminished to such an extent as to be negligible... above all, it was true black-and-white stock with every minute tone in between."

- Freddie Francis, BSC

Despite the promise, Kodak's emulsion varied in sensitivity (increasing by a full stop at one point), and Rank had some problems delivering the image quality Francis demanded. However, as audiences would attest, the efforts paid off, resulting in an evocative film which retains a haunting, dreamlike textural quality while effectively rendering the gritty reality of the story and setting.

Edward Lachman: Newer Vision Print Stocks

From American Cinematographer, Mad-Dog Englishman by David E. Williams (November 1999)

"A lot of people have been questioning the Vision print stocks because they think they're too contrasty, but I think it's just how you use them. I generally light with big soft sources, so I welcome the contrast, but I suppose it would be more unforgiving for anyone who uses harder light."

- Edward Lachman, ASC

Michael Ballhaus: Visual Effects and Film Stock

From American Cinematographer, Sci-Fi Cowboys by David E. Williams (July 1999)

"I like Kodak's Vision 320T, which I used quite a bit in the film and exposed at 200 ASA, but for the bluescreen work, ILM asked me to use 5248, which has less grain and a better blue layer. I rated it normally at 100 ASA, and because it's more contrasty, I had to use a bit more fill. I also used some 5293, because its blue layer is also better than in the 320T, and I sometimes needed a stock faster than 48. I rated the 93 normally at 200 ASA. However, since all of the effects shots were to be digitized and manipulated, ILM said they would work it out so the contrast in those shots would match the footage shot on the 320T, and they have done a pretty good job with that.

I like the 320T because it has a wide range of exposure, about 6 or 8 stops, and it's almost impossible to overexpose it, which is great. Also you can play with it; the more you expose, the more contrast you get. If you read it at 320 ASA, it's very flat, but at 200 ASA it has good contrast. At 125 ASA, it has even more."

- Michael Ballhaus, ASC

Juan Ruiz-Anchia: Kodak Original to Fuji Print

From American Cinematographer, More Trouble In Little China by Eric Rudolph (March 1999)

In an effort to keep costs down, New Line Cinema primarily makes its release prints on Fuji stocks. Anchia was therefore compelled to experiment a bit in the lab in order to successfully blend his Eastman Kodak camera original with the Fuji print stock for the general release prints. The cameraman says that he and Beverly Wood of DeLuxe Laboratories in Hollywood eventually devised a complex yet cost effective printing strategy that effectively emulates the crisp look of the Vision-printed show reels.

Anchia notes, "We made our interpositive on regular Kodak stock, which we slightly underexposed, and our internegative on slightly overdeveloped Fuji stock. We then printed to Fuji release stock, which was exposed and processed normally. These manipulations, coupled with the inherently higher contrast of the Fuji release stock, gave me the rich, contrasty look I was after for the general release prints."

- Juan Ruiz-Anchia ASC, AEC

Steven Goldblatt: On Kodak Film

From American Cinematographer, Of Loss and Hope by Jay Holben (March 1999)

"I've experimented for the last two years with Kodak's low-contrast negative stock. In its previous incarnation [EXR 5287 200T], before the advent of 77, I really disliked it. It was too flat and grainy, and I just couldn't get on with it. But this time, using [the new 5277 Vision 320T], it really worked. It has a lovely, soft gradation and was my basic choice for daylight interiors at around 250 [ISO]. I found that it gave a very smooth, flattering skin texture which could still be used interchangeably with the other stocks. It wasn't such an obvious difference that it jumped out at you, but it was much nicer than the 5293 [EXR 200T] and the 5246 [Vision 250D], which I used in the hotel scenes. More often than not, Kodak's 46 is far too contrasty for me, and I have trouble with the highlights, which just blow [out] in a breath, whereas the 77 holds them beautifully. My night stock was 79, which I'm really used to. I've developed a t2.5 eye for 79; I can just look and see that it's around 21 or 22 footcandles and bang! I don't need to meter it. I got there with 77, too, but the 93 and 46 puzzle me a bit-- they don't come naturally, and I've got to work harder to get them to look the way I want them to onscreen."

-Stephen Goldblatt, ASC

John Alexander Jimenez: On Kodak Film

From American Cinematographer, Opportunities With Attitude by Holly Willis (March 1999)
Director: Joe Carhahan
DP: John Alexander Jimenez

"For the outside shots, I'd keep using 7245. Even though it was bits and pieces from different cans and different times, I tried to keep it as consistent as I could," he (Jimenez) says. Interiors were shot on the 500asa EXR 7298. Notes Carnahan, "The 45 is pretty much like the vanilla [emulsion] of the Kodak line-- their basic exterior stock-- but it's got incredible latitude. On some scenes, we were overexposed by more than a stop-- some of our exteriors were completely blown out-- but it came out pretty well. Again, with the interiors and the 7298, there was a lot of latitude, and we also got very dense blacks, which I like."

Douglas Koch: Last Night, Lab Techniques

From American Cinematographer, An Elegy for the Earth by Mark Dillon, March 1999

Regarding the film, Last Night

The filmmakers initially considered using reversal film, with either standard or cross-processing but Koch notes, "That seemed fairly risky, and getting local labs to work that way, especially in terms of the cross-processing, was a bit of a problem. Cross-processing gives a nice contrasty image, but the color saturation also seems to increase quite a bit; Don was interested in a more desaturated look." The duo also contemplated shooting color stock, making black-and-white and color inter positives and then re-registering them for desaturation. "By doing that, you can control every shot and every scene precisely," the cinematographer expounds." You can have a higher-contrast black-and-white version and just mix the color in. It was a very exciting idea, but on a film of this scale, we estimated that it would cost an extra $100,000-- the whole film would have become a giant optical."

The technique that seemed most promising during their tests, which were performed at Deluxe in Toronto, was the bleach-bypass process, which Koch tried first on an original negative. "They can do what they call a 'partial' or 'complete' bypass," he elaborates. "The partial seemed virtually invisible-- you couldn't really see any effect from it-0- whereas the full one was quite striking." However, the cameraman decided that applying the process to the original negative would be too much of a gamble. When bleach-bypass was administered at the printing stage, he found the results to be "quite nice, although it created more of a lush look which resembled that of the ENR-type processes." Furthermore, no one in production wanted the film's look to depend so heavily in the printing stage, which could not be controlled outside of North America. Inthe end, bleach-bypass was added at the interpositive stage. Since the process substantially increases contrast, Koch had to light his images flatter than usual and over expose them. According to McKellar, if bleach-bypassing became unworkable, the resulting footage would be "quite garish and flat, because everything-- the characters' clothes and all the walls would be very brightly colored."

Koch shot Last Night on Kodak's Vision 250D 5246 stock. His deliberately over-lit negative was pull-processed two-thirds of a stop in the lab and then underdeveloped slightly to help lower contrast and color saturation. To produce a dense negative with a suppressed grain structure that would allow for greater flexability, he pushed his photography by one stop and then went over by an additional two-thirds-- exposing mostly at a T2 or T2.8.

Matthew Leonetti: On Kodak 5279

From AC magazine regarding Star Trek Insurrection:

For interior scenes, Leonetti selected Kodak's Vision 500t 5279 stock because...

"It's got better resolution and better blacks [than EXR 5298], but the latitude is just as good and it actually has less grain."

-Matthew Leonetti, ASC