[Frameworks] Resources on history of 16mm technology

[Jeff Kreines]

For those overly interested in lab history in the late 70s, I just stumbled onto this:



http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7242420


Only geeks need apply.


> On Jul 13, 2016, at 6:55 PM, Jeff Kreines <jeff at kinetta.com> wrote:
> 
> Color negative in 16mm was used in Europe, especially the UK, before it caught on in the US.  The stock from 1968 - 1973 — 7254/5254, the last of the ECN-1 stocks, was quite lovely.  Kodak replaced it with the hideous 7247/5247, and really pushed 16mm “producers” to switch to it because it was more “professional.”  It was easy to expose (just overexpose a stop) but you lost many of the advantages of color reversal — easy supers and fades with A&B rolls (if you like that sort of thing), fewer problems with dirt/dust/scratches, and the ability to push film and shoot in very low light.  (The right lab could push 7242 three stops to EI 1000 — whereas 7247 did not push well, which begat chemical flashing processes like TVC’s Chemtone.)
> 
> One big advantage of reversal stocks was the ability to make dupe negatives and release prints in two generations (interneg and release print) — color neg required an interpositive, a dupe neg, and then a print — adding expense and reducing quality.  (CRI is another tale — good idea poorly done — so save a step by essentially using ECO to dupe negatives, but it was a disaster and didn’t last.  But I digress.)
> 
> Pretty much all color theatrical documentaries, starting with Monterey Pop, were shot on glorious Ektachrome, often a mix of 7255/7252 (ECO), and 7242.  Woodstock, Gimme Shelter too.  Color negative invaded this world around ’73 or so, slightly earlier in the UK.  (Gray Gardens was an early color neg documentary.)
> 
> Kodak worked hard to shoot themselves in the foot (their area of expertise) and kill off color reversal.  They lost the world of TV news after the Hunt Brothers’ Silver Bubble — using it as an excuse to raise prices even after the bubble burst — and TV embraced clumsy expensive video rigs earlier than they would have.  Of course they also killed off all reversal print stocks…  don’t get me started.
> 
> There were other stocks, too.  Anscochrome, as Mark mentions, was a cheaper alternative to Kodak stocks, and Geva’s color reversal stocks were interesting because they were low contrast — their 16mm color print stock Gevachrome 9.06 was great for printing Ektachrome 7242.  Kodak did not have an equivalent low contrast color print stock until they did a little industrial espionage at DuArt, a major Geva lab at the time.
> 
> And then there was a  much larger world of B&W stocks.  Agfa, Ansco, Dupont, Ilford, Ferrania, and many more.  Back then, they slathered on the silver with a trowel.  Today, not so much.
> 
> Jeff “remembers a lot of useless information” Kreines
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jul 13, 2016, at 5:51 PM, Mark Toscano <mrktosc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> My one counter to David's comments (if I'm reading you right) would be that the vast majority of artists working in 16mm from the '40s through the '60s did in fact use Kodachrome and Ektachrome, among other stocks.  Color negative didn't even exist in 16mm until 1964, and very few "experimental filmmakers" used it much until the later '70s or even early '80s.  And throughout some of this period, you could get your stocks edge numbered if you wanted, and plenty of people did.  Even Gimme Shelter was shot on Ektachrome.  Plenty of other filmmakers didn't bother workprinting, or did so without using edge numbers for matching (Brakhage never workprinted, for instance).
>> 
>> The basically forgotten Anscochrome was a popular stock in the '50s and '60s too.  Brakhage shot Window Water Baby Moving and several of his other early color films on it.  Kodak introduced a lower contrast stock called Kodachrome Commercial in 1946 specifically to target people wanting to shoot color more professionally.  Curtis Harrington shot The Assignation on it.  It was replaced by Ektachrome Commercial (ECO) in 1958, which was a lower-contrast, slow Ektachrome designed to be printed rather than direct-projected.  ECO was absurdly widely used until the early '80s.
>> 
>> Mark T
>> 
>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Dave Tetzlaff <djtet53 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm writing about the use of 16mm in experimental filmmaking of the 1970s and am looking for texts that deal with the history of film technology, scholarly sources that look, for example, at the emergence of 16mm as an amateur/documentary/artists' medium.
>> 
>> Hmm. If we distinguish 'amateurs' from 'artists' 16mm emerged as an amateur medium decades before the 70s, and was all but submerged for amateurs by the 70s, in favor of Super-8. You'd be hard pressed to find any artists who worked with the 'amateur' 16mm cameras that were made at least through the 1950s: Kodak K100, B+H 240, Reveres… and only spare use of 'amateur' Kodachrome and Ektachrome stocks that didn't come back from the lab with edge numbers.
>> 
>> The history of documentary tech is a whole 'nother creature -- all 16mm up to the 70s -- but marked by advances in blipping, sound sync, battery power, coaxial magazines, reflex finders, etc. etc. (I have an AC-power only Yoder-style chop-top in my closet, if anyone wants one…). Only in the 70s did portable video emerge as a documentary medium, e.g. in the ½" open-reel 'Four More Years' by TVTV.
>> 
>> Experimental filmmaking was not articulated to 'amateur' filmmaking as much as industrial/educational filmmaking. Experimental filmmaking was dependent on the wide availability of cameras, projectors, stocks, labs etc. primarily used by the 'A/V' market. Once that market moved to video, those sources began to dry up, posing ever-increasing difficulties to photo-chemical experimental work. A tech history of experimental film in the 70s should also look at it's intersections/oppositions to technologies used in 'video art', e.g. in Scott Bartlett's 'Off/On', and computer graphics, e.g. John Whitney.
>> 
>> All that said, for the history of 'amateur' film, it would be remiss not to mention the work of FRAMEWORKER Patti Zimmerman, noted on the CHM site Buck linked.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> FrameWorks mailing list
>> FrameWorks at jonasmekasfilms.com
>> https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> FrameWorks mailing list
>> FrameWorks at jonasmekasfilms.com
>> https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
> 
> Jeff Kreines
> Kinetta
> jeff at kinetta.com
> kinetta.com
> 
> 

Jeff Kreines
Kinetta
jeff at kinetta.com
kinetta.com