What went wrong with this 35 mm scan and post?

[von_Runkel]

A client of mine submitted an uncompressed source that he wants to deliver to digital theaters. The film is a short art film, which is scheduled to be shown at film festivals worldwide.

I'm confident about the delivery format and it will be a mix of x264 encodes, probably some Blu-Ray iso's and maybe some "uncompressed" formats too.

However, I'm not confident at all with the quality of the scan/post. The film is shot on 35 mm film (!) with anamorphic lenses and scanned to digital media.

My client's pipeline is probably like this:
Film scan -> Final Cut -> Export to Prores 444 -> Post & effects -> Export to QTRLE RGB -> Me

Here is a 10 s AVI, which is 7z compressed:

ftp://doom9@vonrunkel.chickenkiller.com

To me, it looks awful, artefacts à la a DV-Video! The source should be clean and all analogue "artefacts", like film grain should be visible in the uncompressed source. Side note: my client is very retro and wants the analogue "feeling" in the final digital delivery.

Please look at the sample and tell me what went wrong.

[manono]

When I click the link it says I need a password.

[Guest]

Works fine for me.

[manono]

Okay, thanks, Guess I'll stay out of this one then.

[Mug Funky]

havent' seen the vid (i has a distro downloading at the moment and didn't want to slow it down).

from the sound of things, this is an offline edit you're looking at.

the workflow (old school):

35mm lab reels > telecine to crappy SD source > edit suite (FCP or avid) > offline edit > EDL file and neg pull list.

then:

35mm lab reels > hi-res scan of just the used shots > post effects > conform and colour grade > online edit/master

just check that they'll provide a better source because you're probably looking at the end result of the first chain above. this is how it was done when space was costly and computers were slow. it's still the best way on long-form things.

[von_Runkel]

@manono
Open the link in Internet Explorer or Chrome and then "Save target as". Or use Filezilla with host name vonrunkel.chickenkiller.com, user:doom9 - no pwd.

[von_Runkel]

from the sound of things, this is an offline edit you're looking at.

Well, that was my first feeling when I saw the material, an SD offline edit. Since most of the people involved works pro bono in this project, that could be the answer - "We ran out of money/resources and scaled the SD offline edit to HD".

Thank you very much for your reply.

[Mug Funky]

hopefully a master exists. if they managed to shoot in 35mm anamorphic, they will have seen it through to the end i'd hope because 35ana is so pretty. certainly i'd scrape all i could together to make it happen if it were me.