From: Fred Camper (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jan 07 2004 - 08:29:26 PST
Paul Williamson wrote
"....But I did not misunderstand anything, cutting the neg on it's
frameline would render the excersise useless..."
Before you start calling other posts "retarded" you might want to learn
some basic English. "Exercise" is a good word to learn how to spell, and
you really should learn the difference between "its" and "it's." It will
make your attacks more credible if you don't make high school level
mistakes.
Now, as to the substance, I didn't say anything about cutting the
negative on the frameline, so in fact you quite clearly have
misunderstood me. I wrote, "you need a cement splicer that cuts right on
the frameline." Not only is this correct, it is useful advice. More than
once people trying to A&B their negative for the first time to hide the
splices have started out with splicers which cut neither end of the film
on the frameline, thus ruining one or more frames of their original by
splicing it improperly before figuring out what's wrong.
You further wrote, "Fred should have specified a splicer that cuts the
leader right on the frameline, not the negative." I know you say that
you have been making films since the early 60s, but have you ever done
your own A&B rolling? It sure does not sound like it. Most people who
A&B roll figure out that they have to use one side of the splicer for
the leader and the other side for the negative. It's not like there's
one side that can only be used for the leader, and another that can only
be used for the negative. "A splicer that cuts right on the frameline"
is reasonable shorthand for "a splicer one side of which cuts right on
the frameline," especially since a cement splicer both sides of which
cut on the frameline would make no sense because it would fail to
produce usable splices at all, and as I wrote earlier at least at one
time phrases like "a splicer that cuts on the frameline" were in common
usage because a large number of splicers cut neither side of the film on
the frameline. The poster had already received a book recommendation
that will, I trust, inform him of the basic fact that it's the black
leader you need to cut on the frameline.
By the way, sometimes camera framelines are out of alignment, so that
when you shoot film the frameline does not appear exactly between the
two sprocket holes. Filmmakers planning to A&B roll their films to hide
the splices should check their cameras before starting to shoot, because
if your frameline is off you'll be out of luck when you try to A&B to
hide the splices.
I trust that when I make factual mistakes, as I surely will, others on
this list will correct me. And perhaps someone will try to incorrectly
correct me again, requiring a response and a retraction, and perhaps I
will make the mistake of posting an incorrect correction too, or perhaps
I already have. The problem with your post is in its pairing of an
incorrect correction, which is no big deal in itself, with your use of
the word "retarded," followed by your failure even now to recognize that
there was nothing wrong with my original post, but rather that it
offered good advice.
Fred Camper
Chicago
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.