The international photographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

Ut's qet Touqh * filivi Fifteen years is a long time . . . long enough for a kid to go through grammar school and high school and most of a college stanza . . . long enough for several crops of stars to grow bright in Hollywood, dim, and be forgotten . . . long enough for a number of cycles of film stories, and for the talkies to have come along and revolutionized an industry . . . long enough for the appearance of a wide range of technical developments which have marked the growth of the movies. Fifteen years is just about the length of time there has been in existance a process of film preservation which has almost spectacular claims. Because of the absence of ballyhoo and of any sustained promotional drive, few outside the industry — and not many within it — know anything about the O'Sullivan Film Process, whose inspiration lay in a desire to protect the sound tracks of the first experimental talking pictures. Fortunately it was discovered that application of a liquid to a given film area could not be wholly controlled. It was impossible to protect only the sound track, for the liquid spread. With further research it became evident that the spreading of the chemical was benefitting the entire film surface: further study revealed that it was also penetrating to become part of the base of the film, and that the result was a film that was tough — inside and out. Damage to film from any of a number of sources is familier to most cameramen and other technicians within the industry. Usually carelessness or inexperience is responsible for the enlargement and breaking of sprocket holes, the marking of sprocket teeth on frame or between the holes, or the marking of sound tracks. Breaking of film as the result of an over-tight take-up reel or looping of film around a stationery object is another familiar cause of damage. Accordion-pleating, coming from loose winding of film on the reel followed by pulling of the loose end to tighten it, or from uneven winding on the reel is yet another; similarly, film may be crushed or have its edges ruffled. Scratching of emulsion, resulting from improper cleaning — or total absence of cleaning — of the projector before a showing is undoubtedly one of the most serious forms of film damage directly attributable to human negligence, and it is one of the first things the O'Sullivan Film Process overcomes in large measure by reason of its cover-coating the emulsion protectively without adding any measurable thickness to the wound reel of film. Hair-line scratches, which come from faulty mechanism or from an accumulation of particles of dust and dirt lodged in the film gate, may still appear on the coating, but because the emulsion is protected, projection remains perfect. The same protective factor virtually eliminates peeling and blistering of emulsion. Moisture has long been a bugaboo. Creeping to the surface, it produces watermarks on the film, ultimately this sweating results in the rotting of film; excessive humidity causes emulsion to slime off. Sweating is also a factor in the bleeding of color, and with light from projection which causes fading, is equally responsible for the destruction of color film. Again the O'Sullivan Film Process, with its inner and outer toughening which "ties" notably unstable dyes, claims to prevent this deterioration, and also to prevent rainbowing as a result of splicing. Capt. John D. Craig of New York, a Landers Camera Rentals CAMERA RENTALS SERVICE Blimps, Dollies, all Accessories * DAY PHONES NIGHT Hillside 6373 De Longpre Ave. HEmpstead 8333 Near Ivar Street 13H HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA By Harry Murchison writer I "Danger Is My Business"), explorer, photographer and lecturer, is one of those who verifies the laboratory's claims, asserting that he uses his Kodachrome originals in all his lectures, and reporting that "it would take an expert to pick out the new print shots from the old ones" when he had occasion to intercut new film with a year-old O'Sullivan-Processed reel which had been used 82 times on 16mm arc projectors and 37 times on incandescent lamp projectors during his series. "I attribute this color brilliancy and resistance to scratching," he declares, "entirely to your process of film preservation." In other tests of color film, a 16-inch strip of processed film was boiled for two hours, dried, examined, and neither fading of color nor drawing of emulsion was discernible; letting film stand in a jar of water for 48 hours likewise produced no change. Acetone solutions, largely used for splicing, must be handled with considerable care in order to avoid smearing the emulsion. Yet application of pure acetone to a strip of color film resulted in dissolution of the base long before the emulsion appeared to be affected. Carbon tetrachloride is another agent which may draw and smear emulsion when applied too freely or too roughly; rubbed with a coarse cloth a very liberal application of carbon tet showed no damage — a further indication of the risistance of film to dirt in the projector. Protection against excessive humidity has already been named as one of the things the O'Sullivan Process overcomes. The same thing applies to excessive dryness, and to changes in temperature. As one test, a strip of film was left in an open box under the porch of a mountain cabin where temperatures ranged from below freezing to some 122 degrees, for six years. The film itself is now at least a dozen years old, for it had been discarded for some time when it was processed in 1931. Yet today it is still pliable, neither warped nor shrunken, and is still projectable. At the same time film resists oil and grease, which the U. S. Bureau of Standards says is its worst enemy. True, it does not shed these foreign elements, but neither does it permit any penetration into emulsion or base, and any standard solvent will clean it off easily, without harming either film or the effectiveness of the treatment itself. As for pliability, tests have shown the possibility of securing more than 3000 projections from O'Sullivan-Processed film. A continuous loop has gone that long without breakdown. An early user of coin-controlled continuous projection equipment saw a single processed reel take in over .1110 in nickels, for a total of 2800 show(Continued on Page 27) 18