2022-03-29, 05:32 PM
It's been a while since this has been discussed but I thought I'd start a new thread regarding the various types of silver retention processes for colour positive projection prints, obviously the most well known are the Technicolor ENR and Deluxe's CCE/ACE.
As I understand it ENR/ACE had adjustable levels of silver retention whereas CCE was a fixed process. In any case the prinicipal photography had to be such to accommodate the extra contrast, shadow level and colour shifts which the process created (ie flashing the negative, production/costume design etc), simply putting a conventionally-shot negative through a silver retention process would wreak havoc on shadows/skin tones etc. Basically the silver grains which acts as the precursor to the colour dye cloud forming remain in various levels according to density. This has the effect of blocking light, reducing saturation and adding extra edge definition due to the metallic silver having cleaner edges than dye clouds.
I guess the most famous features which got silver release prints would be Se7en, Saving Private Ryan, Alien: Resurrection, Sleepy Hollow, Fight Club; I'm sure there are many more but those are the ones that spring to mind. In most cases the majority of prints were standard colour prints which attempted to approximate the look, very few true silver prints were struck due to the costs involved. There are of course features which used skip bleach/bypass on the o-neg which is it's own thing that introduces different characteristics, Minority Report being such an example but I believe there were ENR prints made for that film too.
Has anyone here been fortunate enough to see a true silver retention print out in the wild? I believe a privately-owned CCE print of Se7en gets shown occasionally around the world and by all accounts it is DARK to the point that the frame literally disappears into the masking.
It seems mad to me that digital hasn't really been able to emulate the look yet, but then again digital promised more than it could deliver in general. It's worth remembering that unless a display is capable of something approaching close to true black then no matter how good the source is the result won't be as effective, if anything it will look worse than not as the milky blacks will overpower the image. I guess the films crying out the most for a regrade would be Alien: Resurrection and Se7en, I know there's a custom of Se7en out there but that is a regrade to the Criterion master which was based off a low-con print. I think the A:R LD being taken from a silver print was debunked long ago.
As I understand it ENR/ACE had adjustable levels of silver retention whereas CCE was a fixed process. In any case the prinicipal photography had to be such to accommodate the extra contrast, shadow level and colour shifts which the process created (ie flashing the negative, production/costume design etc), simply putting a conventionally-shot negative through a silver retention process would wreak havoc on shadows/skin tones etc. Basically the silver grains which acts as the precursor to the colour dye cloud forming remain in various levels according to density. This has the effect of blocking light, reducing saturation and adding extra edge definition due to the metallic silver having cleaner edges than dye clouds.
I guess the most famous features which got silver release prints would be Se7en, Saving Private Ryan, Alien: Resurrection, Sleepy Hollow, Fight Club; I'm sure there are many more but those are the ones that spring to mind. In most cases the majority of prints were standard colour prints which attempted to approximate the look, very few true silver prints were struck due to the costs involved. There are of course features which used skip bleach/bypass on the o-neg which is it's own thing that introduces different characteristics, Minority Report being such an example but I believe there were ENR prints made for that film too.
Has anyone here been fortunate enough to see a true silver retention print out in the wild? I believe a privately-owned CCE print of Se7en gets shown occasionally around the world and by all accounts it is DARK to the point that the frame literally disappears into the masking.
It seems mad to me that digital hasn't really been able to emulate the look yet, but then again digital promised more than it could deliver in general. It's worth remembering that unless a display is capable of something approaching close to true black then no matter how good the source is the result won't be as effective, if anything it will look worse than not as the milky blacks will overpower the image. I guess the films crying out the most for a regrade would be Alien: Resurrection and Se7en, I know there's a custom of Se7en out there but that is a regrade to the Criterion master which was based off a low-con print. I think the A:R LD being taken from a silver print was debunked long ago.
