[Richard W. Haines]

Chas,

It's going to be a mess, that's for sure if they don't have a final cut negative in 35mm, just
a mass of camera rolls that they shot on set or location. The way they do it is to put each reel
into the digital scanner and then just scan in the portions of the shot they need leaving out the
slate and extra footage. It's done a frame at a time and extremelly expensive.
You're charged by the frame. In conventional film printing you're charged by
the foot and the machines are fast. When they just scan in the individual shots, they end up with a digital master but no cut negative. What they do
is to output a 35mm printing negative from the digital master for release prints but when you make
between 2000-4000 prints from it, it becomes very scratchy and worn out so for the
long run the 35mm internegative derived from the digital master is worthless. That leaves them only
with the digital master for the future or going back to all of those little camera rolls and scanning in
each shot from scratch to make a new digital master. Really, really stupid. For one thing, they
keep upgrading the scanners. Until a couple of years ago, they were scanning everything in at
2K. Those masters are worthless now because they've been upgraded with 4K. Those look fine,
for the time being, but they are already developing a 6K scanner for sharper results.
If you have a cut camera negative, you can use it to make all future materials from color
interpositives to color internegatives (for release prints) to any digital format or hard drive developed
decades from now. It's not that difficult or expensive to keep track of 5 reels of film but somewhat
overwhelming to keep track of hundred of little camera rolls per feature film. Think of the amount
of storage that would require.
In any event, I think I found a lab that can match my negative so I have a cut one for all
current and future use.