Ross Lipman
Summary
The independent artist's film - made, received, and valued in a context outside industry standards - poses a unique challenge to the archivist. While many basic principles of preservation still hold, their practical application is often so transformed as to merit only passing resemblance to conventional work. The common wisdom is often inappropriate, and unique printing methods are frequently needed. Ethical issues are similarly transfigured, to illuminating end. In preservation, as in aesthetics, the artist's film can serve as vanguard; highlighting issues of technique and philosophy that impact beyond its specialized sphere.
Introduction
When Kodak announced the discontinuation of its ECO color reversal film stock (1 in 1984, it heralded the end of an era in independent filmmaking. In so doing, it also left behind a kind of acetate standing stone for archivists. This was the death-knell for professional reversal work as well as for those artists clinging to its coattails. Reversal stocks continued to exist, but the negative/positive system was in essence canonized, leaving an effective void of printing methods for untold numbers of "direct-positive" films. Like the haunting formations at Avebury, Lewis, Stonehenge, those old images now please us while implying a logic whose order we've alas forgotten - and their preservation may be altogether more precarious.
Today's intermediate stock 7272 is ideally designed to print from ECO. Yet the simple fact is that most extant reversal images are not in fact ECO, but higher-contrast materials like Ektachrome or Kodachrome. When one prints an internegative from these films, or in fact any non-ECO positive material (2), the contrast is boosted to the effectual quality of mud.(3) Anyone who has seen an old black and white film that seems very dark to the eye, with almost no delineation of greys, can imagine the look. One is faced today with an industry that has on the one hand canonized the internegative system, while simultaneously leaving behind a massive body of films that are unprintable within this system. (4)
Artists' Films
Prominent among these are the works of independent artists. Independents have historically gravitated to the reversal film for reasons economic, practical, and aesthetic. There is something lovely and elegant in the camera-original that, bypassing the negative, simulates directly the tones and colors of the world as seen to the eye. No negative means less expense, and therein allows more experimentation - an attractive package for the artist/filmmaker. But while appealing to the artist, it presents a minefield for the archive preserving the work.
Not only must archivists consider the vital issue of image contrast, but they must be aware of any peculiarities in the piece itself. As often as not, the iconoclastic artist will be working at cross-purposes with industry standards. As an introductory example, one might take Larry Jordan's recent H.D. Trilogy. Jordan, the acclaimed animator and restorer of Joseph Cornell's films, had his black-and-white reversal originals for this work printed - via black-and-white internegative - onto Kodak's special low-contrast color television film 7385, with an amber tone added. Now one could emulate an amber tone easily enough, but without instructions to print onto 7385, the results would be horrendous. Jordan himself ran no less than seven entirely different printing tests before settling on this path. And rare is the case when a preservationist has access to coherent, detailed printing instructions.
To make things more difficult, the renowned "artist's temperament" can come into play as one attempts to faithfully render a meticulous vision. The Pacific Film Archive was recently involved in the preservation of Bruce Conner's Crossroads; a reworking of U.S. government footage of the atomic bomb tests at the Bikini Atoll. Conner, a great activist for the artist's film, periodically helped out with the project. After failing to remove a visible smudge in the original by say, the fifth answer print, one member of the preservation team amiably noted that it might be easier to blow up the atoll again and to refilm it, than to satisfy Bruce Conner.
Color, Grain, and Format
Conservers of this work must develop a high level of resourcefulness and invention in their craft, often developing unique solutions on a film-by-film basis. For their current project preserving small-format artists' films, the San Francisco Cinematheque and New York Museum of Modern Art ran a series of tests to determine possible printing methods. Using the Canadian firm Optimage, which employs several techniques of contrast reduction(5), we printed outtakes from the works of Joe Gibbons, Ellen Gaine, and Scott Stark. Each piece suggested a different method.(6)
Gaine's films, all Super-8, feature delicate tones and spectacular swirling grain fields. The delineations of grey were lost entirely and the granularity increased to a state of blotchiness in the first test, which consisted of a traditional blow-up to 16mm internegative and a positive print. As there is no low-con stock for B/W material, and as we have strong reservations regarding its use with color (to be discussed shortly), we requested that Optimage run a new test, in which they decreased the developing time/temperature combination, and increased exposure. This technique of over-exposing and "pull" processing is somewhat accepted with color internegatives, where it does not entirely eliminate the contrast boost, but rather gives it a good nudge in the right direction.(7) With Gaine's work, it did just the trick, adding some fine detail in the greys, while reducing the clotting of grain.
Stark's piece was made by respooling Standard-8mm Kodachrome into a 35mm still camera, and exposing still images of his garden across the film strip without regard to its perforations. Again Optimage's standard blow-up - which included a low-con 7385 print - did not do justice to the rich detail of the images. While their method did reduce contrast, the attendant decrease in saturation diminished both the color intensity of the Kodachrome and the flickering effect caused by the irregular frame line. While a conventional 16mm optical internegative would have too much contrast, we found that we could thread the needle by using the special diffusion within Optimage's printer, and striking a standard 7386 positive release print.
It is worth noting that Stark's method of making this film renders notions of a standard 24 (or 18 or 16) frames-per-second projection speed somewhat meaningless. In fact, Stark would often present the piece as a projection "performance" on a variable speed projector, varying the playback rate from 24 fps all the way down to 6 fps. While this effect could be simulated by step-printing, it should be pointed out that the perceptual effect of watching a single frame repeated is different than that of watching that same frame once(8) with an extended shutter-time. Similarly, step-printing an 18 fps original to 24 fps for 16mm viewing creates a subtle stutter every sixth second. As the only alternative is often to blow-up frame-for-frame and project at heightened speed, many small-format film artists forsake blow-up entirely.
Gibbons' Punching Flowers raised other considerations. Here the low-con 7385 stock's desaturation effectively rendered the muted tones in Gibbons' original work. While this stock, intended for video-transfer prints, has too little density and richness for most purposes; in this case the subject matter demanded exactly these qualities. In fact, however, this led to another question. A companion test on regular 7386 print stock, while boosting contrast, showed such an improvement in saturation that both project coordinator Steve Anker of the Cinematheque and myself agreed it in fact looked better than the original. The issue then became whether in fact our aim as preservationists were best served by faithfully rendering the qualities of the original work, or in fact enhancing them. Mr. Anker, a meticulously dedicated professional with an exacting eye, preferred the more saturated ("enhanced") version, while I myself found the muted 7385 more in keeping with the work's wry meditations on nature and beauty. This is not to say that I would always opt for "preservation" over enhancement; but simply that I preferred it in this case. Of course neither interpretation is right or wrong in absolute - they remain judgments. And it is just this sort of precise judgment which is demanded of the preserving archivist.
Now, Punching Flowers, shot in handheld Super-8, is in many ways an archetypal amateur film. The physical conditions of screening in 16mm, as well as a variety of social constructs, create more of a sense of professionalism in 16mm work than in the small-format underground or basement-screening genres. While some home movies or "actualities" footage, viewed primarily for image content, may benefit from blow-up, it is quite conceivable that other works would actually suffer in blow-up.(9) In fact, one quickly runs into a philosophical impasse when pondering the very preservation of works whose strengths lay in their rejection of traditional notions of the permanence of art, or else were grounded in their own physical form and/or temporality..(10) Mr. Anker, I think rightly, felt that this piece is ideally viewed in an intimate, less formal small-format projection. Yet as preservationists, we ultimately opted for the more stable medium of 16mm.(11)
Historical Considerations
Perhaps the most puzzling project of this nature I have come across recently is the preservation of Bruce Baillie's All My Life with the Pacific Film Archive. Mr. Baillie, an internationally recognized artist whose Castro Street has been included in the Library of Congress National Film Registry, and who along with his Canyon Cinema(12) co-founder Chick Strand, is one of the American experimental movement's great sensualists, produced a body of works in the 1960's and early 70's renowned for their visual richness and use of color. Among his most famous pieces is All My Life, a short (3 minute) single-shot film consisting of one elegant pan across an archetypal California country field in summer, followed by a weightlessly gentle tip skyward at the end. Ella Fitzgerald sings the title song, adding a sense of timelessness to this simple piece, which perching at a very narrow intersection of "structural" and "lyrical" film movements, has a grace and rigor beyond categories.
I got involved with this project after an internegative had been struck at W.A. Palmer Films in Belmont, California. Palmer's has long been a leading force in experimental film lab work, and their color grader, Lewis Motisher, has arguably among the best eyes in the business. Palmer's produced a second answer print with a degree of detail, softness, and color "accuracy" entirely absent in older copies of the film. There was only one problem. It looked awful. All My Life was originally shot on an Ansco reversal stock, described by Lenny Lipton in the first edition of his classic Independent Filmmaking as among "the best color films ever made available for the 16mm worker".(13) While perhaps lacking a range of values within a given hue or spectral range, the colors it does render have a striking deepness and vibrancy. Indeed, one scholar has referred to All My Life's color as being something akin to the experience of a psychedelic trip on LSD. All of which is to suggest that the color for which the film is renowned is in fact heightened and non-naturalist; its strength lying precisely in its extraordinary saturation.
The question, then, was what was the experience of this new item, produced from the internegative? Certainly it looked more "realistic" in terms of a 1990's palette(14), with the flat muted tones of current stocks, but it lacked the older version's dynamism. To answer the question, we sent the new answer print and an old release print to Baillie himself, who lives in seclusion on an island in Washington state. His answer, however, only deepened the nature of the dilemma.
Baillie decidedly preferred the new print, stating that it came much closer to the color and quality of light at Paul Tulley's home in Caspar, California, where the film was shot than did the original prints. Yet to most other eyes it was clearly inferior. We were then faced with the following questions:
and lastly,
In consideration of the first issue I took up the highly subjective task of viewing as many different prints as I could find at hand. Upon repeated screenings of the new answer print I eventually satisfied myself that the new print was in fact unsatisfactory. A unique feature of original prints of All My Life is that - in no small part due to the film's conceptual structure of the linear pan - each time a new color appears on the screen, in the form of say, a flower, brush, or sky, it takes on the dramatic weight of the entrance of a new character in a narrative work.(15) In the new print, however, the slightly muted colors reduced perceived color contrast; thereby creating a more monotonous sensation of horizontal movement in a single direction; without articulation or emphasis. More "accurate", maybe, but entirely less evocative of mood and expression.
Is that not conceivably exactly what Baillie sought to achieve with the film? Perhaps. But I find it equally possible that Baillie's views now are something different than they were thirty years ago. Regardless, the older prints' historical associations have generated an authority of their own, which merits consideration. There are numerous examples in the history of art wherein works exist in multiple version, and many of the preferred versions are not the creator's final draft. To cite just one well-known example, no less than three editions of Wordsworth's "Prelude" are considered distinct works; with the middle draft, presented to Coleridge forty years before completion of the final draft (published posthumously) being the version of choice for many - precisely because readers find the revised draft to have diffused the earlier's most radical poetic and metaphysical statements. Perhaps an even better example comes from film history itself, with Teinosuke Kinugasa's legendary rediscovery of A Page of Madness in a barley barrel. No sooner had he recovered this masterwork, than he destroyed it by authorizing a vulgar modern soundtrack in what was perhaps an attempt to make it palatable to contemporary audiences.(16) The older artist's vision, while entitled in name, did not retain hold over the work's qualitative essence, which, in arising, had acquired a force of its own.
If one then took the new "authorized" answer print of All My Life as one version, it remained to find a way to salvage the other, older one. I had recalled seeing an unusual print through Canyon Cinema, which still distributes Baillie's work, several years previously. As part of my research, I visited Canyon to look at their copy and review printing records. I had imagined the print to be a 7399 reversal print, because my memory of it had strong saturation but a substantial difference in hue from original prints, which were likely to have been on 7388 or 7389, 7399's predecessors.(17) I was surprised to find that the print had been struck from an internegative, also made at Palmer's, and graded by Mr. Motisher! I called Palmer's to inquire as to the difference between the two internegs. Apparently, the distinction was actually just a result of grading and the different positive stock batches. Yet this difference, which gave the Canyon copy a slightly surreal cyanic cast, was enough to make this less naturalist rendition more appealing to my eye.
What was even more interesting were the facts Mr. Motisher revealed on the original prints of All My Life, which he himself had graded. It seems that rather than using the aforementioned gamma-1 stocks, he had opted to have the projection-contrast Anscochrome printed onto the more contrasty print stock Ektachrome 7390.(18) Thus the unique color for which All My Life was renowned was in fact the result of a variant printing technique which in fact boosted contrast. For the preservation internegative, however, he had chosen an entirely different strategy; seeking instead to emulate the qualities of the original. He felt he had largely succeeded; yet when pressed, admitted that he too personally preferred the more deeply saturated older prints.
We were back to square one. The 7390 and 7387 stocks no longer existed, and the only major alternative involved attempting a reversal print. Copying onto Kodak's gamma-1 reversal 7399 material might potentially best preserve the tonal detail of the original, and more closely approximate the color of the old prints. Yet there are many obstacles to this approach.
It seems ironic that the 7399 stock, intended exactly for printing from projection-contrast materials, should not enter this discussion until so very near the end, but prejudices against its use in professional work are so widespread that it is very rarely employed. Such was the case here; the thinking being that reversal stocks are not viable as a professional or archival medium, primarily because the industry does not support them.
There are technical considerations. 7399 has a slightly higher RMS granularity than do negative stocks. More importantly, it produces a nearly unusable soundtrack.(19) It should be remembered, however, that the operating needs - and assets - of archives are qualitatively different than those of film productions. What would be in practice unthinkable for a release print might be curiously efficient for a preservation project. The printing of All My Life, a film known for its color, might be just the case where traditional factors became secondary, and unusual alternatives could be considered.
Regarding the audio of All My Life, Baillie himself has said the Fitzgerald song, which played constantly at the Tulley cottage when he was visiting, "...had to have the same sound it had at Paul's with a potato sack over the speaker. It's supposed to sound a little scratchy."(20) Now, a review of Baillie's other major films of the era shows an incredible dexterity in the use of audio collage, with extreme attention paid to the flow and movement of mood. It is in part the simplicity of All My Life's soundtrack, relying only on the qualities of Fitzgerald's singing, and the precise sense of listening to a beat-up record, that distinguishes the film from Baillie's other works. It is evocative, but audio fidelity is not as crucial to its success as color. In this case I find Baillie's judgment to be sound, and further; to serve as justification for a possible reversal print.
The problem remained, however, as to just how to print the sound in a reversal scenario. Several possibilities existed, all of which were plausible only because the project's intended purpose was preservation, with screening always occurring within an archival context.
All of these involved a variation of double-system sound. In terms of audio fidelity, the striking of a new, separate magnetic track would actually improve quality over the best possible optical configuration(21), while being playable on any standard interlock projector. In addition to this one might consider the production of a black-and-white optical sound master(22), which would have all the preservation advantages of a silver-based medium.
The concept of dual-system printing opens up one final, unique method meriting mention. If one has accepted the idea of a separate physical sound strip, one is then free to conceive the absolute best possible avenue for image rendition. In terms of a deep saturation most like the old classic prints, the most appropriate stock to try might actually be Kodachrome camera stock, which normally would be unthinkable due to its higher contrast and lack of a sound process. But as All My Life already was known to print well in high contrast, and sound was being preserved separately, it may well prove to be an extraordinary alternative.(23)
All of these methods offer high-quality image preservation possibilities, as well as acceptable (and in some cases, superior) audio accompaniment. As in any delicate printing operation, testing would be required to determine which methods were effective and which were not. The verdict? None, as PFA had no funding with which to continue the project. Which leads into the last issue I would like to address.
Longevity
Lack of resources, a problem common to all archivists, is perhaps even more pronounced in the field of the art film. As a result, some special considerations arise regarding the physical conservation of an item. Proper storage conditions are widely acknowledged as the single most important aspect of moving image preservation, yet remarkably few facilities housing independent works come close to meeting recognized standards in this area. When funding is scarce, one must then recast the question: how can one best preserve a piece with the resources at hand? If proper storage is not feasible, emphasis should be placed on reproduction methods that build longer life into the physical materials themselves.
Reversal prints on 7399 may have one interesting, if slight, advantage over negative/positive systems in terms of long-range durability. The 7272 internegative stock has not been significantly modified in many years, while the Ektachrome line, including 7399, has undergone various changes that include improvements in dye stability. Also, it seems that the "low-fade" technology(24) introduced by Kodak in 1979 was incorporated into release print stocks, but not negatives of that era. This is because the principle agent in dye fading is usually not so much age as repeated projection under a high-intensity lamp, and negative materials are deemed to be infrequently used items which are never projected. 7399, which doubles as an intermediate and projection film, should incorporate the technique. One may therefore infer that 7399 prints will exhibit a slightly greater dye stability than 7272 internegatives, when used as preservation materials.(25)
Another consideration is the film's base material. As vinegar syndrome is now ravaging several generations of safety film, it is probably practical to start thinking of using polyester-based stocks in pre-print as well as print materials. Unfortunately, Kodak only offers polyester-based internegative film in large quantities as a special-order item, and polyester reversal materials are not available in 16mm at all.(26) It would be necessary for archives to cooperate in group purchases of stock to make this a feasible alternative. The extended life polyester stocks can offer to viewing prints and/or preservation materials(27) would then enter the field of variables considered in choosing a printing path, alongside other technical and aesthetic issues.
Conclusion
It is important, even inspiring, to note that reversal film has continued to survive as a medium. The very nature of its workings as a one-piece imaging system implies a wholly different approach to film production than does negative, and the works made with it merit serious attention both in themselves, and as historical records. While a print stock exists for it, that stock, 7399, has attendant difficulties, and is essentially an unsupported item. Because it understandably represents a small market, this reflects not so much a bias on Kodak's part, as actual industry trends. In point of fact, reversal currently functions as an "amateur" medium(28), within which the striking of prints does not factor. But film art perseveres in disregard of standards, and the pool of positive materials is only growing.
Steps must be taken to ensure the life of these works. Several measures may be undertaken by Kodak or Fuji; and in fact some of the groundwork may already have been laid. Two items would be of immediate use:
1) a fine-grained, polyester, gamma-1 reversal print stock, with high-quality sound recording capacity
Either an improved 7399, or a new stock would be appropriate. This would not only serve to preserve the works themselves, but also increase the viability of reversal film as a medium.
2) a low-fade, polyester, low-contrast internegative
A suitable material may already exist in the new 7287 and 7277 (Vision 320T) camera stocks. It is unorthodox to consider the use of production materials for preservation, but as great strides have been made in emulsions in the last ten years, either is very likely to be an improvement over the 7272 interneg. These new stocks both exhibit fine grain and strong dye stability, as well as reduced contrast. Ideally, a low-speed variation of the newer 7277, intended specifically for printing from positive, would be designed. This would ensure the preservation of many, many works, and also allow low-budget filmmakers to continue using reversal films as a front-end production medium.
Archives can contribute by lobbying for these items, pooling resources, and by working closely with laboratories. As 7399 sound printing would be a low-volume service, it seems that one or perhaps two labs dealing with archival and independent work might be encouraged to offer it on an occasional-run basis, thereby making it economically viable; with all such jobs channeled to them.
In the meantime, archivists preserving independent films are left to their own ingenuity. Even with ideal printing systems, the unusual nature of the art film presents unique considerations which arise from each individual work. When printing from positive, any method involves some kind of trade-off. An infrequently screened reversal-originated piece may be best preserved in terms of audio-visual accuracy and long-term stability with a dual-system strategy involving a reversal print and separate sound master, but frequently screened works with critical audio may demand a negative/positive scenario, which heightens image contrast.
In all cases, one must delve into the specific qualities of the film at hand, and ask how best to preserve them.
Under current conditions, most restorations from positive source material are probably not so much preservations as translations to another medium, which vary widely in quality. A translation may be expedient, but should not be mistaken for actual preservation. If no conventional route is appropriate, then one must modify the function of existing materials to meet the situation, rather than compromise quality. Otherwise, we will be left in the position of those latter-day druids conducting rituals at Stonehenge: paying well-intentioned homage to a reminder of what we do not know.
Footnotes
1. Eastman Commercial Original 7252.
2. At one time, ECO's lower contrast was a standard system, so that in point of fact, other stocks, such as Agfa's Gevachrome 6.00, offered similar properties. A more specific term than "non-ECO" might therefore be "non-commercial film".
3. A film's contrast is measured by a "characteristic curve", which is basically a plot of the emulsion's density (the thickness, or darkness of its tones) against its exposure, using logarithmic scales. Of most relevance to this discussion is the curve's straight-line portion, or "gamma". When the slope, or gamma of a film is 1, as is ECO's, the film reproduces the tones of its subject in direct, one-to-one proportion. Gammas of less than 1 reduce contrast, while gammas greater than 1 increase it. Thus, to print a still picture, the final image should ideally have gamma 1. But with motion pictures, the cumulative conditions of projecting in a darkened room demand a higher image contrast; of gamma 1.6 - 1.8 (or 1.3 - 1.6 for black-and-white) to give the appearance of "natural" tonality. Since gammas multiply in printing, gamma 1 ECO's corresponding print films had a gamma of 1.8. It's internegative, 7272, has a gamma of .65, similar to a camera negative's. Therefore, printing ECO (gamma 1) onto 7272 (gamma .65), and then striking a positive release print (gamma 2.6 - 3), produces a gamma 1.8 image--ideal for viewing. Here then, is the crux of the problem. Current reversal materials like the Kodachrome and Ektachrome lines--and in fact any positive print intended for projection--already have a 1.8 gamma. Thus, printing them onto the 7272 material and then the 7386 print stock (or an Agfa or Fuji equivalent), results in a final image gamma of around 3, which is unsatisfactory by any standard.
4. Kodak has a gamma 1 reversal stock intended for these materials, which will be discussed later. But because "... the print stock...must have extraordinary latitude to capture the range of image tones in a projection-contrast original(,) high gamma original is an irrational course, if prints are intended. Also if an internegative is intended."--Dennis Couzin, "Dear Film Artists", Experimental Film Coalition Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2, June 1984, pp. 2-3.
5. Optimage regularly utilizes the aforementioned low-contrast stock, in combination with "alterations" to their optical printer. I suspect their alterations allow the placement of a strong diffuser or opal glass near to the printer projector's film plane, while retaining a high level of illumination.
6. These tests took place in December, 1994. At the time of this writing (May, 1996), the Museum's intention is to use an East Coast laboratory; I believe John Allen's. To my knowledge all parties were very pleased with the test results, and the change was primarily due to the attendant difficulties of a long-distance lab relationship. Clear communication channels with one's technical services are obviously of utmost importance in any non-standard printing operation.
7. Black-and-white films generally pose less of a problem in this area, for a variety of reasons. Contrasty subjects reproduce better in black-and-white than color, partially because colors suffer saturation loss in reproduction, and color print stocks are accordingly designed to work best with low contrast subjects, or "flat" lighting. (see Russell Campbell, Photographic Theory for the Motion Picture Cameraman, London, Tantivy Press, 1974, p. 122) In this system, lack of inherent tonal contrast is compensated for by color contrast. But it poses another problem for the film artist who may not like the "soft light" quality favored in the mainstream film. Also, limitations exist within the overexposing/pulling method. There are often bottom-ends to development time on conventional lab machinery, as well as bottom-ends to ideas of accepted practice. Most labs which offer pull-processing seem unable to successfully correct the process by more than 1/4 to 1/2 stop, when the printed neg is actually measured densitometrically. Forde Labs in Seattle has apparently perfected a system along these lines which results in an ideal projection-gamma positive, but I have yet to test it. A general word of caution comes from Sam Bush, the excellent optical printing technician at Western Cine in Denver, who has printed most of the renowned artist Stan Brakhage's works. He fears that many labs would "cheat" in their pulling by merely speeding up the machine and not lowering the temperature. This would result in an insufficient bleach time. Despite these qualifications, however, overexposing and pulling remains one of the better available solutions.
Western Cine, for their part, has developed a special process called LGN (for Low Gamma Negative). This technique, involving flashing, approaches the problem not so much by altering a film curve's straight-line portion as by modifying its toe and shoulder; giving an impression of lower contrast. This is more pronounced an alteration than overexposing and pulling, but may not be appropriate for many subjects which need deeper color saturation.
8. Super-8 projector shutters are cut to show a frame three times. A single frame step-printed twice would therefore flash six times upon projection.
9. From a purely visual standpoint, the crucial issues are reproduction method and projected image size. If 16mm and 8mm copies of an 8mm original are projected to the same dimensions, the 16mm will often be superior--depending on the optics of the blow-up system. When the 16mm print fills a larger screen, as is often the case, the effectively greater image dispersion can increase perceived graininess.
10. A striking case is the Song series by Stan Brakhage, which was made in 8mm for a variety of aesthetic, personal, and practical reasons. While 16mm copies exist, many feel the only true way to appreciate the Songs is in their original 8mm prints.
11. One option consisted of doing a preservation 16mm interneg, and a Super-8 reduction print for viewing. Logistics prevented us from pursuing this path further.
12. One of two major independent film distributors in the U.S.. Canyon Cinema is located in San Francisco; the Film-makers' Cooperative is in New York.
13. Lenny Lipton, Independent Filmmaking, San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1973, p. 82.
14. It could, and should, be argued that notions of visual verisimilitude to "reality" are not only subjective, but to a large extent also socially determined. Today's standard is often tomorrow's obsolescence, or charming artifact.
15. In conventional dramaturgy, the shift of direction when a character leaves or enters the stage is called a "French scene". The comparison seems quite relevant in the case of All My Life.
16. A similar example within the independent film tradition would be Harry Smith's Early Abstractions. Smith essentially made the ornate visual rhythms of these works unviewable when he slapped on an overpowering "needle drop" soundtrack of (otherwise excellent) Beatles recordings, in some ill-conceived alchemical strategy.
17. Other possibilities, though slightly less likely, also existed at that time, including Ansco 2470.
18. The occasional print may also have been made on Kodachrome print stock 7387.
19. Until a few years ago, inferior but just about passable silver tracks were printable on 7399. When environmental regulations made the already difficult application nearly impossible, no new techniques were pursued, and the printing of 7399 sound prints ceased. Technically, a dye track could still be made on the film, but as these silver-less tracks would pass infrared radiation, they would yield a low signal-to-noise ratio on standard 16mm projectors, which are primarily red and infrared sensitive. Despite this impediment, this method has a few proponents in the independent sector. In such instances, boosting the gain in projection is necessary. I have not heard a dye track print, but suspect it would only be plausible for film artists working with a rough aesthetic.
20. Bruce Baillie, interviewed by Scott MacDonald, in A Critical Cinema 2--Interviews with Independent Filmmakers, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992, p. 121.
21. Mag striping would offer similar quality, but as this practice is essentially obsolete, it seems to offer no practical advantages over dual-system. Striping is also disadvantageous from a preservation standpoint, as the magnetic coating may cause earlier deterioration of the film itself.
22. One would then have the choice of whether to make a negative or reversal master. While neg is the standard procedure, here the direct positive method offers some advantages. As positive image tracks play better than do negatives, a reversal track would offer playback potential in some double-system set-ups. It also might allow more avenues for sound prints to be struck in future reversal scenarios, should either new printing stocks or optical readers become available.
There are some considerations unique to the reversal method, however. Neg/pos optical systems are effective because image spread in the variable area track of the negative is effectively cross-modulated by image spread in the positive track. In cases where a direct positive is desired, the cross-modulation occurs between the two developments of the reversal process. Tests may be required if the lab is not accustomed to processing sound stock reversal. Also, as in the striking of any optical master, one should remember to consider film wind in relation to one's overall printing needs.
23. Slight variations exist between camera stocks, which are designed to render the tonal range of the world, and printing stocks, designed to render the tonal range of a film image, so it would certainly be an experiment. But stranger things have been known to work. Also, while I have not studied the changes made to Kodachrome materials over the years, I know from many viewings that the older Kodachrome stocks exhibit a strong advantage in the area of dye stability.
24. It should be noted that this term is frequently used by archivists, but not professionally recognized by Kodak. The technique falls among those improvements in stock design too variable to cite as a standard, and hence does not feature in the company literature.
25. This argument assumes that the modifications to the dye couplers in the low-fade stock will have an effect on rarely screened or printed items. The technology is considered a trade secret, and hence information on it is rather scarce on the ground.
It is worth noting that the new EXR negatives and their intermediate 7344 are also designed with strong dye stability. While the 7344 would have too much contrast for printing from positive, the EXR camera stocks may present their own advantages in this regard.
26. Direct positive 5360, a 35mm reversal stock, is available in polyester, but it is probably not the best archival choice in terms of image rendition. Kodak's new 7378 sound stock, which may be processed reversal, is available in polyester as stock number 3378E.
27. While extensive studies have not been made in all aspects of polyester use, most signs point to significant stability advantages. The disadvantages--including legends of broken projectors, etc.--seem for the most part to be exaggerated.
28. Artists and archivists will understand that this is not necessarily a pejorative term. One of the best works on the topic is by Stan Brakhage, who (at the time he was making the aforementioned Songs) wrote eloquently of those works which, unencumbered by professional constraints, were free to express a truly open and honest vision. (Stan Brakhage, In Defense of Amateur, written circa 1967; Filmmakers Newsletter 4 (9-10), Summer 1971, in Brakhage Scrapbook--Collected Writings 1964 - 1980, Documentext, 1982.