A Few Words About Wide Screen cinematography shot in camera... (1 Viewer)

[Robert Harris]

True that 16mm sound film is single perf for sound projection, and I think single-perf for shooting news film with the old magnetic track used for sound-on-film for TV news departments prior to the coming of light weight & portable videotape cameras for news.
Still, outside of sound-on-film for immediate use on newscasts, standard 16mm films were usually shot with 2-perforations (one perf on one side and another perf on the other side). As with 35mm motion pictures, the sound track was recorded on a separate recorder (again, with the exception of news film).

In the 1980s, Super 16 with the single perf on one side of the film was a bit more expensive than standard 16mm with perferations on both sides.
After the turn of the century, it seemed that single perf became more common, but, in the 1970s & 1980s, single perf for filming in Super 16mm had to be special ordered. I went through this on a film in the mid-1980s that considered shooting Super 16, but that was abandoned as at the time there were not many camera houses that had the format (so, if you had camera problems or needed multiple Super 16 cameras, you might not have backup cameras available).

Also 16mm Auricon, with optically recorded track.

 

[Robert Harris]

This is a release print. Virtually all Disney spherical films from the late 50s throughout at least the 80s had 1:75:1 hard matte superimposed on the 35mm prints but were photographed open-matte for showing on 4:3 TV and 16mm non-theatrical.

Fox and Hound, as I recall, was full open dye transfer.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Don't know if it was dye transfer, but the prints are definitely open matte.

 

[aPhil]

And movies that are shot in 35mm typically shoot 3-perf, which has a native widescreen ratio.

Vincent

No,
most movies in 35mm used 4-perf pulldown. Even some Super 35mm films were 4-perf.

You had to request a 35mm motion picture camera specially modified for 3-perf pulldown if you wanted the advantage of shooting 25% less film stock for a Super 35mm shot film.

I only worked one film with Super 35mm 3-perf pulldown, and that was in 2008 --
And that film was composed for 1.85.
Beyond that, the world was migrating to shooting digital acquisition rather than film.

 

[rdimucci]

Why would Disney bother hard matting prints when projectors soft matte as a matter of course?

 

[Robert Harris]

Why would Disney bother hard matting prints when projectors soft matte as a matter of course?

Control

 

[Will Krupp]

Fox and Hound, as I recall, was full open dye transfer.

Dye transfer in 1981?

Am I missing one of your jokes or are you being serious?

 

[Alan Tully]

No,
most movies in 35mm used 4-perf pulldown. Even some Super 35mm films were 4-perf.

All the Super 35mm films I remember were 4-perf (maybe some were 3-perf, but it was a long time ago, I forget).

 

[Robert Harris]

Dye transfer in 1981?

Am I missing one of your jokes or are you being serious?

You’re correct. I’m confusing with another animated feature. I’ll have to figure out which one.

Thank you. Except for China, and the short-lived Burbank reemergence (1996-2000), dye transfer ended c. 1977

 

[Vincent_P]

No,
most movies in 35mm used 4-perf pulldown. Even some Super 35mm films were 4-perf.

You had to request a 35mm motion picture camera specially modified for 3-perf pulldown if you wanted the advantage of shooting 25% less film stock for a Super 35mm shot film.

I only worked one film with Super 35mm 3-perf pulldown, and that was in 2008 --
And that film was composed for 1.85.
Beyond that, the world was migrating to shooting digital acquisition rather than film.

I meant to write "these days". Shooting 3-perf became much more common when DIs became the norm.

Vincent

 

[Lord Dalek]

When Peter Jackson found out he had to crop off 30% of his negatives for the Lord of the Rings DIs, that was pretty much the nail in the coffin for 4-perf.

 

[Henry Gondorff]

Actually, Disney didn't start hard matting until Oliver & Company in 1988. All 35mm cells I've seen of Rescuers, Fox and the Hound, and Great Mouse Detective are full frame.

Mary Poppins and The Absent Minded Professor were 1:75. Other live-action films had it, if I can recall possibly Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Barefoot Executive, I think Bedknobs and Broomsticks. If they didn't do it with all, they did it with a good number of them.

 

[Robin9]

Ah, Super 16, I'm almost an expert on that. It's just single perf negative stock. In my film lab days I graded what I think was the first feature to be filmed on that format (it probably wasn't), it was called Secrets (1971), & the lab engineers had to go through all the lab kit (synchronizers, rewind machines ect.) to make sure they didn't scratch the soundtrack area. It didn't really catch on much until the early nineties, when widescreen TVs came in & they started filming TV dramas in Super 16. I graded hundreds of programs right from the negative on telecine, all in 16:9. The cameraman would always shoot a line-up chart at the start of the production (usually along with the lens tests), you needed that chart to line up to, as you had to lose a bit of picture from the top & bottom of the frame (Super 16 being 1:66, so we had to lose a bit of picture to make it 16:9). Happy days.

I'll bet you enjoyed working on Jacqueline Bisset in Secrets! I'd like to have that film on a good disc.

 

[Alan Tully]

I'll bet you enjoyed working on Jacqueline Bisset in Secrets! I'd like to have that film on a good disc.

Oh yes! My memory is a bit hazy, but I can still remember a topless Jacqueline, & she did went on to do rather well in Hollywood. The lab were very excited about Super 16, we were a 16mm lab & this was a way to get into features, but the format sort of petered out, with just the odd production coming in. Twenty years passed before it came storming back with the introduction of widescreen TVs.