From: andrew lampert (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 13 2004 - 08:33:01 PST
I've been looking into super-8 printing and whatnot
for some preservation projects and have found that it
is not going to happen. The only way you are going to
be able to A/B roll is bumping up to a larger gauge.
Or you can do something akin to A/B after transferring
to video. There are only a handful of labs that will
even make prints today, and those are contact prints,
which means that whatever splice you make will be
visible. This isn't a problem if it doesn't bother
you. (Some people like dirty splices, some don’t- big
deal). And, sadly, there does not seem to be a way to
make reduction prints to 8mm/S8 anymore, as was
pointed out by Bill Brand. I've searched high and low
and haven't found one lab in the US or Europe that is
still equipped with the proper gates to go from big to
small. In fact, I was told that it is “impossible”.
After inquiring with a few big wigs about producing
such a gate for preservation purposes, I was told that
this wasn’t likely and that no archive would be crazy
enough to make super-8 prints (with accompanying
negatives) in this day and age. Plus, Kodak isn't
producing the stock for this purpose anyway. There
may be a very obscure person in a dark basement
somewhere with an optical printer capable of such a
task, but unless he/she pipes up, this is essentially
and unfortunately a dead practice.
Andrew Lampert
Anthology Film Archives
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