Highlander 2 - 35mm Scan

[deleted user]

Well you might not make a profit, but you may at least get a little bit back if you can ship to Europe cheaper. Since you don't seem keen on keeping the print yourself.

[Bigrob]

Waiting for my Jan payslip and what outgoing i have but will try and donate what I can next month.

[HippieDalek]

Waiting for my Jan payslip and what outgoing i have but will try and donate what I can next month.

There's no rush just yet. Thanks for the help : )

[HippieDalek]

One of these images you posted says "CBEMA" on it, which seems to indicate a company from Russia called Svema which produced film stocks, so not actually Orwo it seems. I don't know anything about them, I just googled it, so I can't say anything about whether that's good or bad. Some of the images look a bit low contrast (not very opaque blacks) however that could just be the way the photo was taken/processed.

I found this blog entry on CBEMA which says most examples (but not all) exhibit pretty bad fading:

https://blogs.harvard.edu/hfacollections2/2015/05/26/cbema-film-stock/

However in response to my question the seller described this print as having "great color." In another post from the same user talking about a badly faded print of Aliens he says:

This print is from 1994. Yes, pre-1982 technologies. I even heard about John Carpenter's "Vampires" with Dolby sound and same color. There was no system in stock distribution. "Highlander 2", "Dr. Mordrid" and "Godfather" was on low-fade stock in the same era and this movies definitely not equal. But "Terminator", "Aliens" and many other expensive or low-budget movies were on fading stock.

I think what he means here is that it was pretty much random what films would get low or high fading stock, so "low quality" films like Highlander 2 would get a good low fade print while a "high quality, big budget" film like Aliens would get a poor quality fading print. Not quite sure why he's lumping Godfather in with Highlander 2 though...

Here's an example of his fading stock Alien:
   

The Highlander 2 shots don't seem as detailed, but certainly show better colour. However like you I have no idea how he's going about capturing these shots or how consistent they are. It also doesn't help that all the pictures are 30-40 KB jpgs for forum use so not the best of quality.

[deleted user]

Well I think it's reasonably safe to say that that HL2 print isn't really faded, or hardly faded at all in the sense of going magenta. My point was rather that the colors may not be representative of what a US/European cut might look like because each film stock typically tends to have its own "look" so to speak. And I was thinking - again, I'm completely ignorant about film chemistry so I may be talking nonsense - that that particular stock may fade differently, in the sense that it may simply lose density. However that would still probably be a lot easier to correct through color grading than a print turned pink.

[HippieDalek]

Well I think it's reasonably safe to say that that HL2 print isn't really faded, or hardly faded at all in the sense of going magenta. My point was rather that the colors may not be representative of what a US/European cut might look like because each film stock typically tends to have its own "look" so to speak. And I was thinking - again, I'm completely ignorant about film chemistry so I may be talking nonsense - that that particular stock may fade differently, in the sense that it may simply lose density. However that would still probably be a lot easier to correct through color grading than a print turned pink.

You certainly know more about it than I do so I appreciate the help and information. I did notice that the sample frames from this print aren't as vibrant as the $1000 print on eBay, a bit more of a muted look. Whether that's the print or the capture method I don't know. However the colours of the German DVD look very similar to the eBay print so I could maybe use that as a guide for correcting the Russian print.

[deleted user]

Yep, that's also a thought I had, but I never tried such an idea. My thinking is if they all use the same internegatives, it should theoretically be possible to do just that, as you would correct one frame with a reference and all others might just "fall into place". Just a theory tho.

[HippieDalek]

Looks like tonight I'll be talking to the person who will most likely be scanning the print. If all goes to plan that means soon I'll have a final price for the whole project and might soon be able to set the whole thing in motion. Suddenly everything is moving very fast!

[HippieDalek]

I managed to have a quick chat with the scanner tonight and he was able to answer my basic questions and give me the important information, so thought I'd give you guys an update.

When I look at the pledges we are just a few dollars short of covering the full cost of scanning, so I think I'll buy the print myself and use the pledges to cover the cost of scanning. After that the last expense would be the postage, so if anyone wants to donate towards that it would be great!

So I'll probably be asking people to confirm their pledges sometime in the next few weeks, probably sending to my PayPal account. Next time we talk I'll confirm with the scanner about when he'll need payment. I know life happens so it's ok if you can no longer commit to what you've said before

The scanner seems pretty happy with what he's seen of the print and the information the seller has given us, and I've heard nothing but praise about his abilities so fingers crossed we could end up with a lovely scan. I've seen screenshots of some of his other scans, some of them also Russian prints, and he seems to always bring out the best of what's there.

So far the only technical spec I have is that it will be a 2.5K scan. This will include things like the audio channels and sprocket holes in the picture (useful for stabilisation) so the final image will likely be 2K.

Like I said it was just a quick chat tonight, we'll hopefully got into more detail tomorrow.

[alleycat]

Did he give any indication as to what file format it will be and the size? I presume he’ll have to deliver it on an external hard drive?