by Rick Wise           

It’s certainly true that an experienced DP can take any one of these stocks, and with the right lighting, the right filtering, and the right Rank colorist, achieve just about any "look." But by beginning with a stock that already approaches a desired style, the DP starts out ahead of the game and saves the production time and equipment.

The following paragraphs concentrate on striking choices from Eastman and Agfa. At present, the vast majority of commercials and features are shot on Eastman, but as this writer has found, Agfa offers stunning alternatives. To cite just one example in the public eye, televisions most dazzlingly photographed series, NYPD Blue, is shot entirely on Agfa.

5298 and 7298

One of the newest of Eastman Kodak’s negatives, 5298 and 7298 are luminous in low-light, and wonderfully fine-grained. At EI 500, they pose a serious challenge to the DP: they show changes in light levels so subtle the meter can hardly read the differences — but the negative does. Here is where an experienced eye will make a big difference. (See accompanying story, Turner Classic Movies, on right.)

5296 and 7296

In its 35mm version, ‘96 has rich blacks, fine grain, and extraordinary latitude. As wonderful as it is in 35mm, this stock is unacceptably "noisy" in 16mm unless you are trying to get grain, when it becomes the medium of choice.

When the ‘96 negatives first came out, they were a great improvement over various high-speed Kodak stocks, but now they are largely replaced by the ‘98 stocks described above.

5293 and 7293

Relatively recent emulsions, 5293 and 7293 are both gems. They are medium speed, EI 200. They are even more fine-grained than the slower 5248 or 7248, yet give you an important additional stop of exposure. The stock is especially useful in 16mm where lighting budgets are often limited, and that extra stop of film speed is most helpful. I had begun to use this stock as my main choice in both 16mm and 35mm until Eastman released EXR 5287/7287.

5287 and 7287

The newest of Eastman’s stocks, 5287 and 7287 are micro-fine grained and carry the luminous detail in shadows of their new high-speed cousins described on page one. Like ‘93, they are rated at an EI of 200. Since colors photographed on this emulsion are less saturated than those shot on ‘93, this stock will be most useful in situations where fine nuances are important, while the ‘93 will serve better for bold, splashy images.

5245 and 7245

These ‘45 stocks are daylight-balanced, EI 50. They are extremely fine grained. And they have very, very high contrast and deep color saturation. When you want to shoot large vistas and keep detail, they are the stocks of choice. If you want to drive your shadows deep into the black they are also first choice.

But if you want subtlety, if you want lots of gray values, a gentle rolling into the face's folds, and you are stuck with either of these negatives, then you need to "schmutz" up the lens.

To do that, add stocking or fairly heavy suprafrosts to the lens, perhaps smoke the room, and soften the light. Not even the Ursa Rank can undo the harshness of this stock without help from the cameraman.

Because this negative is so fine-grained, it is especially attractive for 16mm shooting, where grain is always exaggerated at the transfer to tape. With this stock, and with the right diffusion and lighting, you can make 16mm look incredibly close to 35mm. It's a wonderful tool, tricky to use.

Agfa XTR 250

I shot a feature with the old version of this stock, and loved everything about it except its grain. It was a noisy stock, and so not suitable for commercials, or for 16mm. What it did do -- as "Out of Africa" so beautifully demonstrated -- was provide incredible latitude. You could expose a person sitting by a window, and keep detail outside. It reached into the hot areas and held detail unlike any other stock I have ever used.

This stock also had a delightfully different look from Kodak's. Instead of bright, saturated primary colors, it was rich in earth tones.

Because it was so incredibly "soft" you needed to light it with harsh elements to bring snap to your picture. It ate up hot streaks of light. I found that combining very hard light with swathes of soft produced a rich, lush image. Except for extreme close-ups, I used no diffusion; the stock is so gently soft down to its molecular structure that diffusion tended to make the image mushy. It is the polar opposite of Kodak's '45.

Now Agfa has come along with a fine-grain version of this stock: XTR 250. Agfa claims XTR 250 is exactly the same as the old 320 except that the grain is much much finer and the apparent contrast higher. I expect that XTR 250 will be a means to a very different look from either XTS 400, XT 100, or any of the Kodak stocks. It will tend toward earth tones and pastels, and provide subtle color nuances. It will also be a tool to handle severe contrast.

Agfa XTS 400

I've only used this stock in 16mm, and it was a marvelous choice. At the time 7298 was not yet available. I found that Agfa’s is more crisp, fine-grained and color saturated than Kodak’s 7296. The pilot and first eight episodes of NYPD Blue were shot on XTS 400, as were many segments of Civil Wars. Blue is now shooting on a mixture of XTR 250 and XTS 400.

Motion control photography sometimes seems like motionless death. But not on a recent shoot at Colossal Studios in San Francisco, where Heidi Hollman directed and Rick Wise DP’d the openings for Turner Classic Movies and Turner Classic Movie Shorts.

"Once in a while you get to make something that’s fun," commented director Hollman after viewing dailies, "and once in a great while you get to shoot something that’s really fun and that turns out even more beautiful than you imagined. This job was one of those times — thanks to a great set, and thanks to Rick Wise’s inventive lighting."

Ms. Hollman devised a sweeping motion control move through the night streets of a model town, up to a towering billboard that proclaimed "Turner Classic Movies."

"Abundantly helped by our gaffer Frank Straz-elkowski," Wise reports, he hid dados and tweenies around the set to simulate night street-lights. The grips, keyed by Joe Carl Parsons, flew a twenty-by grid cloth overhead. Wise bounced a single, scrimmed and blued 10-K into the cloth to simulate the glow that every large city creates as its own lights bounce off overhead clouds.

"Everything was either in zone two, three, or seven," Wise observed, referring to reflective light values. "I don’t think anything on the set was a middle gray. And the results, shot on the new 5298, were delicious."