Charlie Productions : 35mm Transfer

Our first experience of transferring video to 35mm film came with Russell Square. We were ushered in to see the technical bods at CFS, who we thought would make us feel very small by going on about gamma curves and the like (something we're still not completely au fait with). Instead, we were told these magic words:

"This won't look like a polished feature film when you print it to film."

"Yes. We weren't expecting that. What will change, what will it really look like then?"

"It'll look like that. But bigger."

"Like that, but bigger?"

"Yes."

"Right."

Apparently since getting the machines they'd always had the problem of people working with video hoping that their project would suddenly change from looking like shaky camcorder footage into Top Gun. They obviously thought we were amateurs. I don't know what gave them that impression. Perhaps the five minutes of credits which would end up costing us £1250 to print to film.

After that we steered well clear of 35mm in any form, because it costs so much. Until Free Speech, that is, and then we got to see how things had moved on. Molinare did a stand-up job, and actually the print has a look and feel all of it's own, which we like very much indeed. Things are slowly but surely moving down this route, but that's not to say it's not with out it's own problems on the way - the first print we had from Moli had an extra frame inserted every second by their grading machine, which was sometimes noticeable and sometimes not. Just as worrying as Crowd Scene having it's neg cut in the wrong place and then glued back together again...

Charlie Productions believe passionately in doing things and always trying to stop in time for tea.
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