Re: Plan 9 from Outer Space

Kip Williams <kiptw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>> One thing I've noticed about very old (e.g. 1910s) films is that
>> their brightness varies randomly on a time scale of half a second
>> to several seconds.

> I've always supposed that this had to do with copying the movie by
> some optical process that wasn't synchronized perfectly.

No, that would cause a regular variation, not a random one.  I've seen
that too, when the copying is done badly, e.g. by pointing a standard
TV camera at a standard movie screen or a standard movie camera at a
standard TV screen.

> One thing that interested me is that many old films have had the
> contrast badly blown and seem to be largely white with ghostly
> little shapes moving around in them, but at the very end of a scene,
> it gets dark, and a couple of frames have a nice,normal range of
> lights and darks, way better than the rest of the movie.

It could be that the whole film was overexposed, but it's more likely
just bad copying.  It's true that old films had very little dynamic
range, meaning it was very easy to either overexpose or underexpose.
Or both at once if there was too much contrast in what was being
photographed.
-- 
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
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