NEGATIVE CUTTING
After the film has been completely edited and the sound mixed, the optical effects done, the titles (opening and ending) finished and ready, now you're ready for negative cutting.
Negative has to be kept very clean, and at optimum temperature and humidity (cool and dark place with normal humidity.)
Negative is handled with lint-free gloves and is conformed exactly as the work print and spliced with cement glue
splicers.
The edge numbers of the work print (you made sure that the lab printed clear and readable edge numbers off the negative when they printed your workprint, right?) OK, now, you use these numbers to match your negative frame by frame to the work print as edited. Don't worry, film manufacturers endlessly shuffle the numbering codes, so that you'll never see any identical numbers in your life time as a film maker.
If you bought all your film at the same time, the numbers will be somewhat similar, since the batches are numbered consecutively; but, you'll always have different numbers to work with.
Nowadays the manufacturers are using computer bar codes. These, they hope, will be used in the future for negative cutting and even printing. There may even be some systems now in operation. I honestly don't think that in this Century the bar codes are anything you have to worry about with respect to film technology!
There's no money in it, the engineers aren't going to touch it. The technology has been around for over five years, so that, theoretically, nobody had to do any negative cutting. You could just put the edge numbers on a computer list and punch a button and the "not invented yet" printer would then just print those sections of the negative that you've selected and in the order you selected them!
But, just forget about it, we don't have it -- everything is video-video-computer-computer -- just be thankful that negative cutting the old-fashioned way still provides a practical and cost effective way of finishing your films and storing them in metal cans in film vaults, (and Eastman Kodak guarantees stable color characteristics for ninety-nine years, with Fuji scrambling to make it one hundred!)
The first thing you do after you lay your cleaned workprint into the synchronizer, is that you go through the whole film and make a list of all the scenes according to their beginning and ending edge numbers.
For example,
Roll 1,
1) F23x055433 + 2FR to F23x055438 + 7FR, (which means you've got a shot that starts at that number and frame count and ends at the next number and frame count, making it exactly five feet and five frames long, because film is numbered every 16 frames per foot, remember?)
After you've completed a list for every picture roll, you then proceed to pick the negative from every roll, which you should've had them clearly marked and placed on racks. Each negative roll will have the beginning and ending code numbers recorded on it.
Studio and professional negative cutters, go through the whole film and separate out all the shots used by the editor, in their entirety, making a log of scene, take numbers and beginning and ending edge number of each shot. All shots are then placed in consecutively numbered boxes and placed on racks for easy-access negative selection.
You then proceed to selecting and, I prefer taping, all the negative cuts into rolls, exactly as the workprint edited rolls. Make sure you use the right tape (you can't use masking tape or whatever.) The right tape does not leave glue deposits on your negative. If you get glue on your negative, you'll become a very unhappy camper!
Then you turn over all the rolls to a negative splicer, who'll use a foot splicer to cement your negative sections together.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot: allow two extra frames at the beginning and end of each negative section in your negative selection and cutting process!
If for some reason, you can provide only one frame, through mistake or the fact that you needed that frame for editorial reasons, make sure you leave a note for the negative splicer. Also mark the reminder on the tape with a sharpie, so that the splicer cuts away only one frame for splicing purposes and you don't end up going out of sync with respect to your sound track!
Your finished negative rolls will then be ultrasonic cleaned (in a static-removing cleaning solution,) placed in clean plastic bags and canned, ready for the printing stage.
If you do your own splicing on a hot splicer, be sure to exercise extreme caution that you make good splices that won't come apart in subsequent cleaning and printing stages. The foot splicer makes better splices than the hot splicers. It's a matter of economics.