1 The Director of Photography – an overview

The laboratory 87
Figure 8.5 A and B roll negative
cutting
ROLL A
Scene 1
Continuous scene
Cut at end to
Roll B
ROLL B
Black Spacing
So as to make
no Exposure
on Print
ROLL A
Black
Spacing
ROLL B
Cut to
Scene 2
on a paper printout or a computer floppy disk, or perhaps both for
safety.
If a print is required then the negative will be cut in the format
known as an A and B roll. The principal of A and B roll neg. cutting is
that you put all the odd shot numbers on one roll of film with black
spacing between each shot.You then make up another roll of film with
all the even numbered shots on it, again with black spacing in between.
On both rolls you make the spacing the same length as the missing
shot, which is on the other roll.
You can vary this technique to let two shots overlap, so that a dissolve
can be created when the two rolls are printed one after the other.
Figure 8.5 shows how the A and B rolls might be laid out. The first
shot of the film is on the top roll, roll A.This roll is printed to the positive
first. When the shot comes to an end, black spacing is cut on and
thus there will be no exposure on the positive.
When the second roll is printed to the positive there will be no
exposure from it during shot 1, as it only consists of black spacing. At
exactly the frame where the exposure from roll A ends, the exposure
from roll B will start. In this way, one gets a continuous, single length
of film with all the cuts printed onto it.
The sequence continues as scene 3, being an odd-numbered scene,
gets printed at exactly the point where scene 2 on roll B ends. At the
end of scene 3, the editor has decided to have a dissolve to scene 4.The
scenes have therefore to overlap; scene 3 continues longer on roll A
before being cut to black. The incoming scene, scene 4, must start
exactly the same amount earlier. When printing scene 3 from roll A
the printer will fade to black for, say, 20 frames. If a 20-frame dissolve
has been decided upon, then scene 4 on roll B will start 20 frames early
and, when printed, will fade in to full exposure for those 20 frames and
remain at full exposure until the end of that shot.
The cut negative will therefore consist of two rolls of identical
length. Roll A will contain all the odd-numbered shots and roll B all
the even-numbered shots. Where no exposure is required from one of
the rolls there will be black spacing. When both rolls have been
printed, one after the other, the result will be the whole film on a single
roll with no physical joins.
Cinema release prints
ROLL A
Scene 3 – Fades out at end
of overlap with other roll
ROLL B – Black
Spacing
ROLL A
Returns to black
spacing
at end of overlap
ROLL B
Scene 4 – Fades in a
beginning of scene
ROLL A
Cuts to
Scene 5
ROLL B
Cuts to
Black
Spacing
Making cinema release prints is a somewhat protracted business,
made so by the need for many release prints, possibly in the hundreds