Jessica Rosner writes: >Too Vague You have to know the EXACT lengh of footage,what format of >film and the nature of the negative ( new, old, printed on lately, does >it need to be wet gated ? etc) could run from $200 to $5,000 ( ok that's >extreme but I am just trying to give an example). I'd say that Jessica's 'extreme' figure of $5,000 is in fact quite conservative. Two real-life examples that we've recently had done: No. 1 - a reel of local topicals recovered from the attic of a cinema in Tyne & Wear shortly before demolition. The master element is a 35mm nitrate positive, full-gate silent, 922 feet in total. Most of it is b/w, but the reel includes a tinted section of 87 feet. From this we had a 35mm polyester b/w dupe neg for preservation and a 16mm reduction print for viewing. We also had a 35mm Eastmancolor dupe neg and 16mm colour viewing copy made from the tinted section. The original element was in very good condition - there was no siginificant decomposition (float tests taken from all the different stocks which constituted the reel showed negative), shrinkage or perforation damage. It was duplicated by continuous contact printing and the only benchwork needed was an ultrasonic clean before printing. Total cost for this lot - UK£1,326, which I would guess is around US$1,800. No. 2 - a 16mm industrial training film from 1963, 799 feet in total. The elements we had were the triacetate cut camera negative (in a/b rolls) and a combined positive. Both had significant vinegar syndrome and bad Eastmancolor fading. The lab needed to do quite a bit of testing to ascertain which of the two elements would yield the better colour balance in the preservation copy. Optical printing through filters was needed to offset the fading. We had a 16mm polyester dupe neg made for preservation, a sound negative re-recorded from the combined print and a combined 16mm viewing copy made from the new preservation elements. This cost £1,904. The lab advised us that to properly preserve this material in a way that safeguards against future colour fading we would need to have Y/C/M (yellow, cyan and magenta - the subtractive negatives of red, green and blue) colour separations made on three strips of b/w stock. This would have meant blowing the negative up to 35mm, as the special film stock needed to make fine grain separation masters is not available on 16mm. The quote we got for doing this was between £8-9k for a 21-minute film - we couldn't afford that. Leo Dr. Leo Enticknap Director, Northern Region Film and Television Archive School of Arts and Media University of Teesside Middlesbrough TS1 3BA United Kingdom Tel. +44-(0)1642 384022 Fax. +44-(0)1642 384099 Brainfryer: +44-(0)7710 417383 ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]