Treating VS Film With Filmguard

[Rob Clarke Tucker]

I have a couple of prints with VS which i am currently airing out which i have done so for around a month. While the smell is not as bad as when they were in shipping cases. I am now in the process of getting these on a rewind bench and applying some Filmguard to treat the film.

Does anyone have any tips on the best way in doing this along with how much should be applied. Apart from the print that smells of VS there is no physical decay or warpage at present. So i am hoping with treatment and keeping the film aired hopefully it will keep the film runnable for a few more years ?

Thanks all.

[Brad Miller]

You don't need to go crazy with the FilmGuard. Assuming you are not trying to do this by hand, saturate the cleaning media on the Kelmar film cleaner and pass through the "wet" media a couple of times and make sure you are storing it NOT super tightly wound, but not loose. Just generally snug. Also get rid of the shipping cases and various cans. Make sure there is actively air moving around in the storage room.

If the prints are not IB and are highly valuable to you (enough to keep in mind the shipping costs) we can properly outgas prints up to a "2" on the A-D strip scale to set the clock back 5-10 years in our lab. Once a print starts hitting that 2.5 measurement, it cannot be outgassed and is effectively in hospice and nothing can really be done except to keep it a bit wet with FilmGuard and try to get as many shows off of it as you can before it gets past the point of being able to project. Since you don't see physical decay or warpage, I'm quite sure it's not reached that "2" marker yet.

[Rob Clarke Tucker]

Hello Brad, unfortunately i will be doing this by hand as i don't have a Kelmar film cleaner to do this, hopefully one day i will find one at a reasonable price ?. These are not IB, so not that valuable to be honest but it's nice to know you offer this service which i did not know about. So will keep you in mind for any prints that i find that are worth saving on the "2" scale on the A-D strip scale.

Thanks for the tips which i gather would be the case so that the film can breath so these are stored not super tight.

[Brad Miller]

Correct, super tight storage will make things worse. Also in most instances you won't even be able to smell the VS breakdown until you unwind it, so that makes it worse since you can't even do a general "sniff test" from time to time with reasonably accurate results of if it's starting to break down to any noticeable point.

Also keep in mind if you go to unroll a film and hear any sort of peeling sound, stop right there. That's blocking and the unwinding action is creating permanent damage to the image that cannot be reversed. (We can unblock most prints that haven't gotten too extreme on the blocking as well.)