From American Cinematographer, In the Company of Men and Women by Eric Rudolph (September 1998)
Schreiber's ability to dramatically light this key location was facilitated by the use of Kodak's Vision 500T 5279. Before committing to the stock, she tested the emulsion all the way through to the Super 35 IN/IP {Internegative/Interpositive} stages; she underrated the film at 400ASA to obtain a thick negative that would hold up to the optical step process required for Super 35 formattting, ensuring that she would retain deep blacks.
I read, discuss, and discover new things about cinematography everyday. Most of it, I consider incredibly interesting. Everyday I will share one of those things, maybe more if I have time.
Showing posts with label interpositive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interpositive. Show all posts
28.5.09
Antonio Calvache: 'Negative Diffusion' & Flashbacks
From American Cinematographer, Industry Town Embraces the Indies by Holly Willis (July 1998)
The flashbacks were originally slated to be shot in Pennsylvania (the location of Tom's hometown), but the film's budget prohibited the production from moving to the East Coast.
"Because there is nothing nearby L.A. that looks like Pennsylvania, we had to forget the realistic approach and substitute the lack of information in the landscape with the increasing emotional effect of the scene, achieved by a visual approach unique to these flashback scenes. I had experimented in still photography with a technique I term 'negative diffusion', which is using diffusion in the printing process from negative to positive, as opposed to diffusion used in the camera during exposure of the negative. I had used it for music videos during telecine, but it gets more complicated with film. We had to use an optical printer, and place a diffusion filter in front of its lens for that same footage. We increased the contrast by using a mix of interpositive and release stocks in the duplicate process."
- Antonio Calvache
The resulting effect is a series of images that seem simultaneously brilliant and washed-out, like an overwhelming memory that is being painstakingly repressed.
The flashbacks were originally slated to be shot in Pennsylvania (the location of Tom's hometown), but the film's budget prohibited the production from moving to the East Coast.
"Because there is nothing nearby L.A. that looks like Pennsylvania, we had to forget the realistic approach and substitute the lack of information in the landscape with the increasing emotional effect of the scene, achieved by a visual approach unique to these flashback scenes. I had experimented in still photography with a technique I term 'negative diffusion', which is using diffusion in the printing process from negative to positive, as opposed to diffusion used in the camera during exposure of the negative. I had used it for music videos during telecine, but it gets more complicated with film. We had to use an optical printer, and place a diffusion filter in front of its lens for that same footage. We increased the contrast by using a mix of interpositive and release stocks in the duplicate process."
- Antonio Calvache
The resulting effect is a series of images that seem simultaneously brilliant and washed-out, like an overwhelming memory that is being painstakingly repressed.
Antonio Calvache: 'Negative Diffusion' & Flashbacks
From American Cinematographer, Industry Town Embraces the Indies by Holly Willis (July 1998)
The flashbacks were originally slated to be shot in Pennsylvania (the location of Tom's hometown), but the film's budget prohibited the production from moving to the East Coast.
"Because there is nothing nearby L.A. that looks like Pennsylvania, we had to forget the realistic approach and substitute the lack of information in the landscape with the increasing emotional effect of the scene, achieved by a visual approach unique to these flashback scenes. I had experimented in still photography with a technique I term 'negative diffusion', which is using diffusion in the printing process from negative to positive, as opposed to diffusion used in the camera during exposure of the negative. I had used it for music videos during telecine, but it gets more complicated with film. We had to use an optical printer, and place a diffusion filter in front of its lens for that same footage. We increased the contrast by using a mix of interpositive and release stocks in the duplicate process."
- Antonio Calvache
The resulting effect is a series of images that seem simultaneously brilliant and washed-out, like an overwhelming memory that is being painstakingly repressed.
The flashbacks were originally slated to be shot in Pennsylvania (the location of Tom's hometown), but the film's budget prohibited the production from moving to the East Coast.
"Because there is nothing nearby L.A. that looks like Pennsylvania, we had to forget the realistic approach and substitute the lack of information in the landscape with the increasing emotional effect of the scene, achieved by a visual approach unique to these flashback scenes. I had experimented in still photography with a technique I term 'negative diffusion', which is using diffusion in the printing process from negative to positive, as opposed to diffusion used in the camera during exposure of the negative. I had used it for music videos during telecine, but it gets more complicated with film. We had to use an optical printer, and place a diffusion filter in front of its lens for that same footage. We increased the contrast by using a mix of interpositive and release stocks in the duplicate process."
- Antonio Calvache
The resulting effect is a series of images that seem simultaneously brilliant and washed-out, like an overwhelming memory that is being painstakingly repressed.
26.5.09
Eduardo Serra: Bleach-Bypass
From American Cinematographer, True Luminaries by Stephanie Argy (June 1998)
In postproduction, Serra took steps to further enhance the differences between the two cities, such as treating sequences involving Venice with a bleach-bypass process. "There are many kinds of [silver-rentention processes] with many different names," he says, explaining that he used the technique for two main reasons. First, when shooting wide open, as in the carnival sequences, he wanted to ensure that he would have very good blacks. But he also wanted to maintain the warmth of the scenes. "I used the bleach-bypass process to keep it a little more close to earth," he adds.
A beach-bypass process is one of the most personalized services a lab can provide, with as many variations as there are cinematographers. Like many Europeans, Serra prefers to do the process on an interpositive. "I don't like to do it on the prints, as Technicolor does," he says. When the bleach-bypass process is done on the print, it means the whole movie has to be processed that way. Doing the process on the interpositive, on the other hand, allows the cinematographer to use it just on selected sequences. "It's very common, very easy, and allows you to choose which scenes you want to have," Serra says.
He says that not only is the process not appropriate for every scene, but the expense of doing it on an entire film makes it so costly that producers are often unwilling to pay the price for each print. Serra believes that it's better for the process to appear in only a few selected scenes, rather than to have it in every scene but on only a few release prints.
- Quotes within text, by Eduardo Serra, AFC
11.5.09
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
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
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.
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.
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