Ken Loach puts out appeal for rare analogue editing tape

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/25/ken-loach-jimmys-hall-appeal-editing-tape

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Film director Ken Loach is making his final feature film – and he needs your help to finish it. According to Screen Daily, Loach has put out an appeal for fast-vanishing stocks of old-style analogue editing tape as he works on postproduction for Jimmy's Hall.

The veteran film-maker has eschewed digital editing equipment, and is cutting Jimmy's Hall on a traditional flatbed editor – and is running out of numbered tape, which helps synchronise picture and sound.

Loach told Screen Daily: "We're making a start and putting the scenes together. But we're finding that one or two of the support services are fading and one of those is in supplies of numbering tape.

"We're scratching around to find if some numbering tape still exists so we can identify the sound and picture so the film remains in synch."

According to Screen, Loach and editor Jonathan Morris are after 25-30 rolls of 13mm dry transfer tape, for Acmade Film Edge Numbering (or edge coding) machines. They are due to run out by the end of next week.

Jimmy's Hall, set in Ireland in the 1930s, follows an Irish communist who returns to the country of his birth and reopens the dance hall he used to run. In the summer it was suggested that it may be Loach's last full-scale feature, and that the 77-year-old will concentrate on documentaries in the future.

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