American Cinematographer - March 1993 - 70

f@ftS*'The Lab, Parti
by Benjamin Bergery
Cinematography is above all a collaborative
art. The director of photography's interac¬
tion with his operator, gaffer and assistants
is evident

the set. The work of the film

on

laboratory, however, takes place behind the
scenes, transforming the camera negative

he would watch up to three films a day. He
started working at Eclair at 22 and has con¬
tinued there for the past 20 years, working
his way up from apprentice to color timer.
He is now responsible forfilms "from when
the negative enters into the lab to the first

batches: circled takes and outtakes. The
circled takes are spliced together on to a
reel that will be used to make the dailies.
The outtakes are stored for possible future

into the release

print that we will
see

the negative from the day's shoot¬
ing. The developing machine uses a process
of baths defined by Eastman Kodak, re¬
ferred to as ECN (Eastman Color Negative).
The processed camera negative,
now visibly imaged, is separated into two
cesses

in movie the¬

aters.

The world of
the

laboratory is as
variegated and
complex as what
goes on in front of
the camera. Like the

film stocks them¬

selves, laboratory
processes are the
the world
over. All labs use
the same stocks,
the same development process,
same

Clockwise from

the same
design of development and printing ma¬
chines. We approached Eclair Laboratory in
Paris to help present an initial overview of
the process; future articles will address

upper left: Olivier
Chiavassa in front of
a

major player in Europe.
time of diminishing world¬
wide theatre attendance, expansion may
seem a risky move. Alain Cornudet, the lab's
director, defines the challenge: "Everyone
a

a

is amazed, but we believe in the future of
cinema. But cinema has to differentiate it¬
self from television in order to get people
back in the theaters. This means quality in
the movie theater, from the comfort of the
seat, on up.

And this

means

production,
Olivier Chiavassa, acted as our guide
through the basic film chain. Olivier, as he
is known throughout the industry, began his
obsession with film at the age of 11, when

American

footage and the
printing lights;
Patrick Thevenet at
the contact printer,
his hand on the

trimmer controls for
the printing

above;

release

print, but I'm also involved in test
screenings in the theaters and in the very
important area of video transfer." Olivier's
position allows him to watch more film than
the rest of us, and to get a feel for the pulse
of filmmaking. "A position in the lab allows
you to meet everyone involved in film-mak¬
ing. You're at the center from pre-produc¬
tion, through production and distribution.
It's a great job."
The first intervention of the lab
is

Eclair's director of

68

document the

the best qual¬

ity prints."

Cinematographer

a

computer screen to

detailed aspects.
Eclair is something of an institu¬
tion in Europe. It was founded in 1907, and
has been managed since its beginning by
members of the Dornloy family. Recently
Eclair invested in a huge state-of-the-art
release print facility, a move that reaffirms
its role as the leading lab in the French
At

analyzer,

which has

more

market, and

Color Master

video

creating dailies. The modern cinematog¬
rapher exposes negative film in the camera.
On the set the director decides which takes
of each scene will be a "print," and these
chosen take numbers are circled on the
camera

report. Every evening the lab pro¬

March 1993

use.

In

our

illustra-

,

tion, the negetive
used is
at

a

standard

one

lights

of the

many baths that the
negative goes

through during
development.

Eclair, known

only as "the woman's head". This reference
footage appears throughout the lab, and no¬
tably at the head of each release print run.
Before printing, the negative is
loaded on to a video analyzer to pre-visualize the positive image. The analyzer renders
a positive video image whose red, green
and blue components can be manipulated
by the timer and interpreted by his trained
eye. The resulting values for red, green and
blue, called timing or printing lights, are
stored by computer and recorded onto a per¬
forated paper tape.
American Cinematographer - March 1993

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