Techniscope

The Techniscope was developed in 1963 by the Italian branch of the Technicolor company, as a production format for shooting widescreen films, followed by optical printing of anamorphic film copies with special film copy machines ^[1] . The negative frame, identical in location and width to the CinemaScope frame, but with a lower height, underwent a double vertical anamorphy when printing ^[2] . The result was an anamorphic wide-screen photocopy with a standard frame pitch of 4 perforations, similar to a contact- printed method from an anamorphic negative ^[3] .

The standard filming and projection frequency for the format is 24 frames per second. The Techniscope frame size is 22 mm wide in both negative and positive. The height, equal to 9.47 mm in the negative, in the positive increases to 18.6 mm by vertical anamorphy with a coefficient of 2.0 ^[4] . The aspect ratio of the frame, which is 2.33: 1 on the negative, is transformed on the screen to 2.35: 1 due to insignificant cutting from the top and bottom when printing ^[5] . Optical printing is also possible without anamorphic large-format film copies on a 70-mm film with a close aspect ratio, or in cached formats with a loss of part of the image when panning . For shooting in the Techniscope system, filming machines with a specially adapted tape drive and grapple are required due to the non-standard frame pitch. Compared with the CinemaScope system, for which cameras of the classical format are suitable, this complicated the filmmaking , but provided significant savings on the cost of the negative film and its processing. At the same time, the resulting film copies coincided in size and characteristics with the rental anamorphic formats , which made it possible to demonstrate them in most movie theaters .

The need for optical transformation during printing was complicated by the low quality of color counter - type films of those years. Any intermediate copy during the production of the picture reduced the quality of the image on the screen. Therefore, the Techniscope technology was originally designed to print from the original negative of three color-separated anamorphic interpositives , which were later used in the manufacture of matrices for hydrotype printing of film copies ^[6] . Another feature was a very narrow inter-frame gap, which made it difficult to glue the negative during installation . In order to avoid its imprinting on counter-types and film copies, 8 additional frames were left on the negative, 4 before gluing and after it. The cinema copier was set up in such a way that it automatically skipped extra frames, however, this technology complicated installation by working positive and phonogram synchronization ^[7] . The format went out of use in the late 1970s at the same time as Technicolor rejected hydrotype printing and the emergence of high-quality anamorphic optics, devoid of most of the characteristic flaws.

The Techniscope was designed for spherical optics, more compact and faster than the anamorphic one that existed in those years. For two decades of popularity, the cinema system has been used to shoot more than 1000 films , mainly by European film producers . These were mainly westerns and horror films with small budgets , since the format allowed to significantly save on film and deductions to the owners of the CinemaScope system ^[6] . The premiere of the first film “ For a Fistful of Dollars ”, shot in this format, took place on August 27, 1964 ^[8] . The founder of the spaghetti western genre, Sergio Leone, shot the entire dollar trilogy and most of his other films using the Techniscope system ^{[9] [10] [11]} .

In addition to the twofold saving of the film, the Techniscope made it possible to reduce the noise of the film camera due to the lower speed and lower accelerations affecting the details of the clamshell mechanism and perforation. However, in addition to advantages compared to the expensive anamorphic negativity, the Techniscope had a number of drawbacks, the main of which was a more noticeable graininess of the image due to the smaller frame area. In addition, with the same accuracy of the clamshell mechanism, the vertical stability of the Techniscope frame was twice worse than the similar parameter of the CinemaScope system.

Nowadays, the Techniscope system has been replaced by the Super-35 format option with the same frame pitch and 2.39: 1 aspect ratio ^[12] . With the departure of film technology from film production , wide-screen cached formats have become more popular due to their greater convenience when working with Digital Intermediate technology. A significant improvement in the photographic quality of films over the past 20 years has made formats with a large frame size unused. In its original form, the Techniscope was used to shoot underwater scenes of the film Titanic in 1997 ^[13] and to shoot part of the working material “ Fear Rooms ” in 2002 ^[14] .

In the USSR, the system did not find application because of the low quality of photocopies printed from intermediate counter-types, which are necessary for obtaining large circulations ^[7] . A proprietary UFK cinema system was developed, some features of which are similar to the Techniscope format. For this reason, the UFK variant with a step of 3 perforations is called Sovtehniscope . The shooting was also carried out with spherical optics, but per frame of an increased area, occupying the entire width of the film between perforations without reserving the space for the phonogram ^[15] . The further technology for producing the film was completely different from the original Techniscope. The mounted negative was increased by the 23MTO-1 optical film copy machine to a large-format master positive , with which the 23LTO-1 machine with anamorphic optics produced a widescreen double-negative . As a result, due to the use of wide-format intermediate positive, it was possible to obtain film copies that were not inferior in quality to those printed from a negative shot with anamorphic optics ^[16] . In addition, the interframe gap in the Soviet cinema system was wide enough, allowing for editing to glue the negative using conventional technology ^[7] .

• Super 35
• Widescreen cinema

• N. D. Bernstein, M.Z. Vysotsky, B.N. Konoplev, A.P. Ivanov. The technology of production and duplication of widescreen films with anamorphic images without the use of anamorphic optics when shooting (rus.) // " Technique of cinema and television ": magazine. - 1971. - No. 10 . - S. 23-29 . - ISSN 0040-2249 .

• M.Z. Vysotsky. Cinema systems and stereo sound / Eisymont L. O .. - M .: "Art", 1972. - 336 p. - 3500 copies.

• I. B. Gordiychuk, V. G. Pell. Section I. Cinema systems // Directory of the cameraman / N. N. Zherdetskaya. - M .: "Art", 1979. - S. 18.19.

• B. N. Konoplev . Chapter II Classification of films // Fundamentals of film production / V. S. Bogatova. - 2nd ed. - M .: "Art", 1975. - S. 31. - 448 p. - 5,000 copies.

• N.A. Mayorov. Widescreen cinema systems (Russian) // "World of Cinema Technology": journal. - 2012. - No. 4 (26) . - S. 35-44 . - ISSN 1991-3400 .

• Page of fans of the Techniscope format (neopr.) . Facebook Date of treatment March 25, 2015.