Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

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:
1) Was our own dissatisfaction with the new print unfairly swayed by
conceptions of what the work has historically looked like?
2) Was Baillie’s judgment, while in one sense authoritative, to be taken as
the last word on the topic?
3) If so, are historical notions of the film incorrect?
4) If not, can several versions be considered authoritative?
and lastly,
5) Are there any other printing methods that merit attention?
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
53 Journal of Film Preservation / 53 / 1996
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