VFA : scanning whatever film I want since 2015!

Valeyard

Hi everyone I thought I might explain a bit about what VFA does as people often make mistaken assumptions, or they just don't don't understand how this stuff works. I myself have been involved in one way or another since around 2013 in the private film-transfer stuff... back then there was really nothing of commercial quality available to us (we're talking pricing that's in the cents per frame or roughly $20-30,000 per movie done to the proper standard) but that's changed a lot now thankfully due to advancements in the tech (proper tech is now cheaper, faster, and much better quality). We've been transferring our own stuff since 2015, most with proper professionals that believe in what we're doing and give us scanning time at a steep discount off commercial rates.

There's other "scanning groups" out there doing dodgy things, so don't get the wrong idea. This is film we're talking about - there's literally hundreds of dodgy "companies" out there let alone what people are doing privately. Along with some friends we now decided we wish to create a private invite-only forum to bring in our buddies and whatnot, and we're using Flarum for that on the VFA VPS. I've invited over some professional friends of mine too, and we'll be progressively inviting over good people we know who have a passion for film and are like-minded/believe in what we're doing whatever their background. Obviously with our forum privacy is very important for a great many reasons that are quite varied really.

VFA is also passionate about helping others out where we can. One of my mates even credits me with being the "deciding factor" between him deciding to buy a $150,000 scanner or a $40,000 one! Yes that's crazy, but it's true (I just helped with the information about them - but to an outsider that info's not all that easy to obtain; hard to separate objective facts from opinion).

I'm also a fan of Privacy Tools so if I can be of assistance with the forum let me know. I do hope to start developing my own Flarum extensions soon - everything I've coded on my one is just a bit of vanilla Javascript and CSS right now.

Valeyard

↑↑↑

This means my topic spawned a whole new category just for me. Awesome. It should have been called "FILM"!! 😆

In terms of the need for privacy I was wondering what examples I should give, so for one example one my friends just did a scan for someone and the film is currently listed on ebay for sale. We don't really want people knowing we scanned it (until it sells) as it may interfere with the value of the film or the sale. Mind you we cleaned it professionally so the buyer's getting a nice free clean which a lot of old film like this one badly need (depending where you go the price for cleaning alone can be as high as .09/ft! which is over $700 for a 90 minute feature on 35mm 🤯).

PrivacyTools

Haha yes, you've just spawned a whole new category! Even now with the requested film icon.

On a side note, at some point in the future AwesomeAlternatives.org will not only cover software, also TV-Series and Movies if that's something you're interested in. Basically hand picked similar movies, since algorithms usually suck when it comes to related movies.

But can you please tell me what exactly film scanning is?

Valeyard

PrivacyTools But can you please tell me what exactly film scanning is?

It's exactly what it sounds like. Analogue film goes in, digital files come out. These days it's really as simple as there being a camera taking a single photo for each frame. Lots of photos. The tech has come a very long way, digital scanning used to be exclusively for Hollwood special effects like in Terminator 2, and back then I think they worked much the same way as a telecine with flying-spot CRT and a single photosite diode (just imagine scanning 2048x1556 frame-by-frame with a single "pixel" on your sensor, no wonder it cost a fortune and took forever). They switched over to line-sensors and Xenon lamps at some point, but even that's archaic now. Telecine's only had to be broadcast quality standard def, so they transferred straight to what we'd know as 8-bit colour doing all the adjustments in the scan and with no digital work whatsoever, like this basically:

Even that doesn't explain how limited those things are. The film had to be printed low-contrast specifically for telecine transfer, it cost something like 5 or 6x as much as normal projection print to make in the film lab, and if you tried to put regular prints through them you'll crush the blacks and highlights like anything. You can see this on old DVDs that have theatrical trailers transferred by telecines using normal prints (occasionally you'll even see full features transferred that way to abysmal quality). Thankfully times have moved on, prints are no longer a problem for proper modern tech! Matt from Kinograph posted a nice video recently here:

That explains a little bit about how it all works including the "capstan" rollers which are the rollers that some of the modern scanners use to drive the film rather than the traditional sproketed rollers like a projector (they're made from the same material as the P/T rollers). Interesting to see he's going to manufacture the Kodak P/T rollers himself - that's honestly not a bad idea, though they're quite limited in their ability to clean film.