1 The Director of Photography – an overview

88 Practical Cinematography
for worldwide distribution, all of which must originate from the single
camera negative. Even if one were prepared to try and print all the
release prints from the camera negative, it would simply not be
mechanically strong enough to make that many prints.
What is needed therefore are a number of duplicate negatives, of
very high quality, from each of which a sensible number of prints can
be made, or ‘struck’ as the process is often referred to.
The process starts with the A and B roll cut negative. This will be
graded and a trial print will be struck; this is known as the first answer
print. It may take several answer prints before the director, the DP, the
producer and the laboratory are all happy with the finished result.
When they are happy a fine grain, graded, interpositive will be struck.
From the interpositive, an internegative will be struck and a print
made from this and checked by all concerned.This process is shown in
Figure 8.6.
If the test print from the first internegative is considered to be all
that is expected, then further internegatives will be made. From each
of these internegatives many release prints can be struck.
It is in everyone’s interest that the camera negative, now cut as
A and B rolls, must be run through a printer as rarely as possible, for it
now represents the whole of the producer’s investment.There is much
relief when a successful internegative has been struck, since only then,
for the first time, is there an alternative to the master camera negative
should something unfortunate happen to that master.
On very big budget pictures, when all the required internegatives
have been approved and, perhaps, a safety copy of the original interpositive
has been made, a single print may be struck from the camera
original A and B roll cut negatives. This is known as the premier copy
and will be used for the one-off showings at international premieres.
As we have seen in the earlier part of this chapter, there is a slight loss
of quality as the image goes through the various prints and negatives
that come between the camera negative and a normal release print. In
order to make the premiere showing as special as possible, these premiere
prints will occasionally be struck.
The ‘long-handled’ negative cut
When shooting film destined only for television transmission, many
people believe the finest quality is achieved by directly transferring
the camera negative to a digital master tape. If the negative has been
exposed with this in mind, I am a great advocate of this process.
Providing a print is never going to be required, then the A and B roll
neg. cut can be a hindrance rather than an asset. In order to transfer an
A and B roll cut, each roll must go through a telecine machine on its
own, which produces two master tapes that are automatically, using
the EDL, conformed into a single master tape. The disadvantage is
that it is very difficult to grade the film when you cannot see the shots
one after another.
If both a print and a neg. transfer are required, a compromise is usually
to grade the A and B rolls as best you can,conform the tape and have
a final grading session from tape to tape.This has a huge disadvantage for
the cinematographer. Once the image is transferred to tape there are only
the five stops of the tonal range of television to work with. Tape-to-tape