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Film-out is the process in the computer graphics, video production and filmmaking disciplines of transferring images or animation from videotape or digital files to a traditional film print. Film-out is a broad term that encompasses the conversion of frame rates, color correction, as well as the actual printing, also called scannior film recorder.
The film-out process is different depending on the regional standard of the master videotape in question – NTSC, PAL, or SECAM – or likewise on the several emerging region-independent formats of high definition video (HD video); thus each type is covered separately, taking into account regional film-out industries, methods and technical considerations.
Film (sound film, at least) has remained unchanged for almost a century and creates the illusion of moving images through the rapid projection of still images, frames, upon a screen, typically 24 per second. Traditional interlaced SD video has no real frame rate, (though the term frame is applied to video, it has a different meaning). Instead, video consists of a very fast succession of horizontal lines that continually cascade down the television screen – streaming top to bottom, before jumping back to the top and then streaming down to the bottom again, repeatedly, almost 60 alternating screen-fulls every second for NTSC, or exactly 50 such screen-fulls per second for PAL and SECAM. Since visual movement in video is infused in this continuous cascade of scan lines, there is no discrete image or real frame that can be identified at any one time. Therefore, when transferring video to film, it is necessary to invent individual film frames, 24 for every second of elapsed time. The bulk of the work done by a film-out company is this first step, creating film frames out of the stream of interlaced video.
Each company employs its own (often proprietary) technology for turning interlaced video into high-resolution digital video files of 24 discrete images every second, called 24 progressive video or 24p. The technology must filter out all the visually unappealing artifacting that results from the inherent mismatch between video and film movement. Moreover, the conversion process usually requires human intervention at every edit point of a video program, so that each type of scene can be calibrated for maximum visual quality. The use of archival footage in video especially calls for extra attention.
Step two, the scanning to film, is the rote part of the process. This is the mechanical step where lasers print each of the newly created frames of the 24p video, stored on computer files or HD videotape, onto rolls of film.
Most companies that do film-out, do all the stages of the process themselves for a lump sum. The job includes converting interlaced video into 24p and often a color correction session – (color grading), before scanning to physical film, (possibly followed by color correction of the film print made from the digital intermediary) – is offered. At the very least, film-out can be understood as the process of converting interlaced video to 24p and then scanning it to film.
Computer graphics files are handled the same way but in single frames and may use DPX, TIFF or other .
A "film intermediate" is an analog variation of a digital intermediate, where a project shot on digital video is printed onto film stock and transferred back to digital video to emulate film. The term was coined after it was used on the Oscar-winning 2012 short film "Curfew". The process was also used on the films Dune (2021) and The Batman (2022).
In 1966 Technicolor would found Vidtronics, a system that used in the late 60s and early 70s that allowed experimenting with video gear & videotape to make ads and feature-length motion pictures by transferring the videotape to film for final release and distribution. From Kinescopes to Digital Cinema Films made with this process were the 1973 film Why, the 1971 film The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler, and the most famous film using this process, Frank Zappa's 1971 film 200 Motels, which was originally shot on 2 inch Quadruplex videotape, and then transferred to film by Technicolor, being the first independent film originally to be shot on videotape and distributed theatrically in 35 mm.
Also, countless educational, medical, industrial, and promotional videotapes produced from the late 1950s up to the mid-1980s were also transferred to film stock (usually 16 mm film) for widespread distribution, using either an EBR or CRT recorder. This was done due to and then not being commonplace in most schools, hospitals, boardrooms, and other institutional settings, due to their high cost and the multitudes of proprietary (and incompatible) open-reel, cartridge, & cassette videotape formats in the early years of industrial-market videotape recorders starting in the mid-to-late 1960s. But 16 mm projectors were widely available at the time in such settings, making distribution of such video productions on 16 mm film more practical. One company that specialized in the transfer of videotape-originated programming to 16mm film in the 1970s and 1980s was Image Transform, formed in November of 1971 it was a company that specialized in and developed its own technologies for video-to-film transfer by using an electron beam recorder. In 1973 the first movie transferred to film with the system, Santee, was released. Such transfers were the case until the mid-1980s, when the VCR became affordable enough (and much more standardized in the form of VHS and Betamax) to be adopted in such institutional settings on a widespread basis.
Digital video equipment has made this approach easier; theatrical-release documentaries and features that originated on video are now being produced this way. High Definition video became popular in the early 2000s by pioneering filmmakers like George Lucas and Robert Rodriguez, who used HD video cameras (such as the Sony HDW-F900) to capture images for popular movies like and Spy Kids 2, respectively, both released in 2002.
, especially those participating in the Dogme movement of filmmaking, have also shot their films on MiniDV videotape, to be transferred to 35 mm film stock for theatrical release. Some examples of independent movies being shot on videotape are Lone Scherfig's Italian For Beginners (a Dogme film), Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal (which was shot on PAL-standard MiniDV gear in the normally NTSC-prevalent United States, due to its higher resolution of 625 lines and frame rate of 25 frame/s (as opposed to NTSC's 525 line resolution and 30 frame/s frame rate), more closely matching film's 24 frame/s), and Mike Figgis' Timecode. Initially, due to budgetary concerns, Filmmaker Rob Nilsson shot his feature drama Signal 7 in 1984 using Sony portable U-matic format videocassette decks paired with Ikegami HL-79 3-tube broadcast video cameras (a setup comparable to ENG systems used by broadcast television stations at the time). The video hardware & taped footage took the place of the traditional cinema camera and its negatives, which were edited in post-production and transferred to 35mm film for theatrical release & exhibition. Nilsson liked the visual look of video-to-film transfer, and shot several other of his films the same way.
Arrilaser are also used for film-out.
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