From: amanda christie (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Feb 13 2006 - 18:24:02 PST
i just got this thread now, and contact printing has
been my thing for the past year... so i'll post a few
other suggestions if it's not too late.
re: steenbeck printing.
i think alex is actually on this list, but i didn't
see that he responded. i was just talking with him
about this two weeks ago, and hopefully he doesn't
mind me paraphrasing him here. the thing with the
steenbeck, when printing onto 7378 or 3378 (ISO 6 or
12), that the light is too bright so you can put in a
dimmer bulb or use ND filters and run the film at high
speed... do tests of course. and then make sure that
you have cute little boxes over top of the raw stock
with little slits cut for film to pass through... and
that's all it takes... super simple.
pins on a board method: (my fav)
i built myself a registration board last year with
sewing pins (later switched to small brad nails) that
i could use for 8 foot long strips of film. this way
i could prefectly line up images in the dark. the
only problem was that certain print stocks and neg
stocks have different pitches and over the course of
even just 8 feet... some buckling did occur... you can
work with this though... if you buckle the top film up
and bring it back down, your film pulls apart
vertically, fall out of focus, then comes back
together... beautiful.... you can also weave the film
around the nails side to side to reveal the sound
track and the sprockets....
tape on a counter method:
eventually i got sick of the nails and just started
taping my film down to the counter and eyeballing it
(when working with orthochromatic filmstcocks with a
red safe light).
bipacking in a synchronizer:
kerry laitala from sanfransisco does this... and i've
seen her create a little black cone with a flash light
inside to focus the light, and cranks the bipacked
film through the synchronizer.
glass and an enlarger:
this method works for short peices.
bipacking in a camera:
animation stands are great for this... especailly the
oxberry 16/35 masters series... it's practically made
for bipacking film and making contact prints (or so
i've been told).
i think that's it... my preference is the reg pins on
a board and the tape method... because it allows for a
much goopier original (no worries of clogging any
machine parts with ink, paint, or other fluids), and
it allows for more play with moving outside of the
frame in terms of what you see and what you don't (my
films are a projectionists nightmare as they always
look like they're popping out of the gate when they're
not).
hope that's helpful.
amanda dawn christie
vancouver, b.c., canada... no kids... mfa student,
filmmaker, dancer, performative projectionist, anxious
academic... magic bean buyer.
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