The international photographer (Feb-Dec 1929)

Forty The INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER December, 1929 EMORY HUSE Value of Mating 'Duplicates By EMORY HUSE It is customary, when things are running smoothly and production is at a high level, to think in terms of the present more than terms of the future. However, there are times when nature takes a hand and upsets the course of events, leaving in our minds the feeling that we should have prepared for the future. The motion picture industry has recently been confronted with a fire of major proportions, which affected very strongly certain producing companies. Valuable negatives were lost and the money tied up in these negatives is lost with them, unless by chance there are duplicate copies of the negatives in possession of the producing units suffering the loss. It is the purpose of this article to bring to the minds of those engaged in the production of motion pictures the necessity from an insurance standpoint of making complete high quality duplicates of each finished production prior to the release printing. In the past the making of duplicate motion picture negatives presented certain difficulties from the standpoint of attaining good photographic quality, which difficulties have been overcome to a marked degree by the present high standard of photographic emulsion manufacture. The unsatisfactory quality of duplicates has been due to the fact that there were not available films designed specifically for this type of work. To this must also be added a lack of understanding of the conditions under which the best possible duplicates can be made. During the past year there have been available on the market two films manufactured by the Eastman Kodak Company for the sole purpose of making high quality duplicate negatives, prints from which duplicates compare very favorably with prints from the original negative. These two films are Eastman Duplicating Positive and Eastman Duplicating Negative. The cost of these two films together per foot is exactly the same as a single foot of Panchromatic Negative film and these films offer to the trade an inexpensive insurance against the loss of the original negative. It is safe to say that a complete duplicate negative of any picture can be made for a small percentage of the cost of the original picture. If every finally cut negative is duplicated and the duplicate negative is stored in a vault far removed from the place of storage of the original negative, the protection guaranteed by this arrangement is certainly far more important to the producer than the expenditure for the preparation of this duplicate. The dlladdin^s Lamp of the Movies NUMBER TWO ■BY JOHN CORYDON HILL BONANZA CITY LIVERY STABLE •^^Vi-^v In this simple fashion began the meteoric cinematographic career of an unknown small toivn livery plug P* j .THE EQUINE STARS PALATIAL PRIVATE COACH f£k *££> £w* **$ CZI\A 0OC6S PUBLICITY DIRECTOR SCENASlST PERSONAL DliPCmtO tN-C«[ff VSTtRINARJ iehold noiv his lordly and affluent state and the glittering aggregation for which he is the meal ticket We should not only look ahead to the possibility of destruction of original negatives by fire, but we should also be prepared in case the original is otherwise damaged. A good duplicate negative should be capable of giving a print almost undetectable from a print from the original negative ; it should reproduce the tones of the original accurately; it should be as sharp as the original; while the increase of graininess should be negligible. It is quite possible to fulfill these con ditions by using the two previously mentioned films. Instruction in the use of these films will be very gladly given upon consultation with local representatives of the Eastman Kodak Company. Frederick Kaifer HE-1128 HO-7101