Nachleben Experimental Film Lab

Its official. I hate this thing. Its SOOO unreliable. This time however it might have got damaged when some drilling took place on the frame of the printer. Looks like the bridge rectifier has blown! It can be fixed (my electrical friend tells me) but I hate this box anyway. Ok, it does an important job. It controls the motor which drives the camera on the Oxberry. This requires a stable 18volt DC supply for a duration controlled by the motor feedback. The motor is hugely expensive to replace but modern drivers do exist but they are very complicated to set up. Lots of people just run these machines with modern stepper motors. Also, when I was testing the motor to locate the fault I managed to fry the logic chip on the motor feedback board. Great! So currently no camera!!

I came into work one day and the fairies had been busy. Because there on the lens platform was a new lens x and y stage drive rig. Also it had a T-bar plate so I could mount lots of different lens plate holders.

I immediately marked off all the basic optical processes ie 16(35 to 16(35) which uses same setting. 16 to 35 and 35 to 16. This took most of the day but now its all marked it will be quick to find the settings again.

This is theoretically going to work right?

Ok, its only been about 10 years since I made these negs and never got round to printing. Who cares, I’m in no hurry. Sometimes ideas take a long time to develop as well. The idea here though was quite simple. To make sound recordings on the Eurocord-Klangfilm, then document the machine itself.

You got to admire the lomo spiral. Marvel of plastic engineering and design. I prefer the morse however.

The manual table is really the best and most satisfying method of going through films to catalogue, inspect, repair, select, prepare for viewing or copying or projecting. Its film nearly at its most peaceful.

Ive got loops and stuff but my lens of choice to view strips of film are Bell&Howell 60mm lenses that you find on the 16mm projectors. The table area is a bit cluttered so I am going to make a shelf on the wall for reels, splicers, tape, etc.

My 16mm print of ‘Dream of Wild Horses’ by Denys Colomb de Daunant looks pretty faded. But maybe it wasn’t in full colour originally anyway. So can it be restored photochemically? We will see.

Added the sound head block to the Matipo to check fixings. Slight deviation from the neat film only path but should work once I work out the voltage to the light.

My studio practice, when I get there is going to involve smallish table top stop motion animation, diaramas, mattes, experimental set-ups and lots of rotoscoping. For all this you need lights. Good old BB-list delivered these nice 1k fresnels in the end. Ive got some old Mole-Richardson 2k fresnels on stands, lots of overhead lights like Minim F’s and Preludes, redheads and PAR36’s. All tungsten.

It is well known that flat table editing machines can be modified into contact printers. All that needs to be done is to black out the screen and any light leaks from the cabinet. Make somekind of slit that covers the prism and mask off any light straying out from the prism block. You then load your neg on the mag-stock platters and through the image gate and your raw stock following the usual film path. Emulsion to emulsion. The light passes up through the prism, through the slit, through the neg, through the raw film.

The two sprocket drives need to be engaged so the films run together. Ill document the gate assembly here as it will involve some engineering and adjustable slits. Just changed the fan in this machine. All I need to make it FWO is a new optical sound head. Lew!!!!