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Techie's Corner

Seven Wonders of Motion Picture Film

posted by MIAN on October 12, 2011

By Brian Guckian

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“I’ve always believed in the magic of movies…and to me, the magic of movies is connected to 35 millimetre…because everyone thinks – you can’t help but think – that when you’re filming something on film, that you’re recording movement. You’re not recording movement – you are just taking a series of still pictures…there is no movement in movies at all – they are still pictures. But when shown at 24 frames a second through a light bulb, it creates the illusion of movement…so that, as opposed to a recording device…when you’re watching a movie – a film print – you are watching an illusion. And to me, that illusion is connected to the magic of movies.” – director Quentin Tarantino, in an interview with Sir David Frost

Motion picture film is currently being replaced in theatrical exhibition with digital video. Yet motion picture film – and motion picture film projection – have many unique characteristics that are difficult to emulate by electronic means. …MORE >>

Categories: Main Features • Of Special Interest • Techie's Corner

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How Nitrate Film Burns: The State of Research

posted by MIAN on March 30, 2011

While archivists know all too well that nitrate film stock can catch fire, “understanding of the relationship between nitrate decomposition and combustibility remains weak.” That’s the thesis that Heather Heckman develops in “Burn After Viewing, or, Fire in the Vaults: Nitrate Decomposition and Combustibility,” an article in the Fall/ Winter issue of The American Archivist (Vol. 73, pp. 483–506).

Heckman, a doctoral candidate in film studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is preparing a dissertation about the short- and long-term implications of Hollywood’s conversion to Eastman Color in the 1950s.

In her article, she surveys what she calls “the contradictory descriptions of decomposition and combustibility of motion-picture film in current archival and safety literature,” and she evaluates their sources, and compares them to descriptions by image-stability researchers and chemists.” Throughout, she says, she argues “that the dialogue among the archival, safety, and scientific communities is inadequate and that no community has satisfactorily established the evolution of flammability as nitrate decomposes.

Link to the article, or download and unzip: heckman article.pdf

Reprinted with permission from the Society of American Archivists. Visit www.archivists.org.

Categories: Techie's Corner

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AMIA Tech Review Review

posted by MIAN on November 4, 2010

OK, this is not a review, but a strong suggestion that you check out the second installment of AMIA Tech Review, an Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) free online publication.

Here is some of what’s covered:

Tommy, The Who’s rock opera from 1975, was the predecessor to “modern multi-channel stereoscopic experience” and was the only film ever to be exhibited in Quintaphonic sound. Find out about its restoration in Tommy, Can You Hear Me? The Quintaphonic Restoration of a  “One Hit Wonder.”

Legacy Analog Optical Recordings: Then and Now describes Aeolight “toe” recordings. This early sound-on-film recording technique was used on hundreds of Fox newsreels way after the industry began implementing more forgiving sound-recording technologies, for its feature films. “Fox-Case single system cameras went around the world to records clips that would otherwise be silent.” If you handle film with variable area and variable-density optical-sound tracks, check this out.

Note the article on Digital Cinema Projection: Digital Cinema Technologies from the Archive’s Perspective. It describes the process of how “D-Cinema” files are created and segmented, and offers a warning that once these generally encrypted cinema files are delivered to archives for long-term storage, the code or key that ensures their readability needs to be included as well.

The Visionary Archive Process describes a new, proprietary, digital-encoding system that enables color films traditionally archived on three separate strips of black-and-white film to be archived using two-thirds less film, since it removes the need for a separate strip of film for each color record.

Other articles:

Film Preservation at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation

A Quick Tutorial on Color Separation Systems

A New Colored Movie Process

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