[Frameworks] HIGH SCHOOL workflow

[Dave Tetzlaff]

Jeff:

> B&W neg, quite clearly, probably Kodak Double-X


Would they have pushed the stock? My impression has always been that Direct Cinema first generation looked pretty crappy to begin with because they were getting a lot of grain and getting grayer blacks etc, to shoot with available light.

What were the typical doco original stocks at MIT back in the day? What did you guys use for Seventeen? Were you pushing?

I don't remember, does reversal have any advantage over negative in terms of dust etc. that would come up reloading 400 ft. mags in a hurry in the field inside a changing bag? (I only ever shot reversal myself...)
'
IDK what the camera original of 'Window Water' would have been (Kodachrome?), but I'm sure it was slow, tight-grained, deep blacks, etc.

As I'm old enough to go back to the VNF stocks, I remember the world of difference between 7240 and 7250, and just how blah the image became to get that extra speed you needed to shoot doco with a 12-120 without bringing in a shit ton of lights.

.......

The OP reminds me of the old Film/Video debates on FRAMEWORKS, to which I always objected that neither were one thing (though NTSC was pretty blah no matter what). What is 'film'? 35mm, 16mm, 8mm? What is 16mm? Kodachrome? ECO? 7250? What's the print stock? How's the print?

> nobody says anything when they're shown 16mm at its best

Maybe because that almost never happens. It's hard for me to recall seeing a fresh 16mm print of a good film and NOT being blown away. I still remember renting The End from FMC in '83-'84 to show in colloquium at Temple, and getting a very recent print that must have been the result of J.J. Murphy's restoration/revival efforts for Maclaine. There was no visible wear or fading of any kind on the print, and it was absolutely STUNNING. When I rented the same film to show my class in '02 (or so) it was such a let down, washed out, scratched, bad splices that jumped out of the gate. I was always telling the students 'No, it's not supposed to look like this! It's really beautiful. Trust me! ...Just...imagine!.

Didn't have Blu-Ray then, but when I screened 'Garden of Earthly Delights' from the DVD with our 3-chip DLP it looked much better than any of the vast majority of prints I got from FMC or Canyon. HERESY! Yes, I screened 'Mothlight' from DVD too! So I couldn't take the print out of the can and have them look at the individual frames, yada yada yada, and yes that would have been nice, but in terms of the scope of the course the benefit would have been nowhere near justifying the resource allocation.

Anyway, the points are
A. A Blu-Ray of WWBM SHOULD look better than a fresh print of High School because the camera original stocks are apples and oranges. 
B. A Blu-Ray of WWBM SHOULD look better than circulation print of WWBM because it's hasn't been through the not quite clean gate of a cranky Bell and Howell Autoload a dozen or so times.