<\/p>\n
Of all the things I encounter in the film world, vinegar syndrome is one of the saddest.\u00a0 It\u2019s a deterioration that hits acetate film and turns it into a smelly dry plastic that smells of a rancid salad.\u00a0 Once it\u2019s gone, it\u2019s gone.\u00a0 The film gets brittle and unusable.<\/p>\n
The belief system of how vinegar syndrome works and affects prints has become unshakeable. \u00a0It’s much like a religion, the difference being important: real religion covers matters untestable and unknowable. \u00a0Vinegar syndrome is<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>testable and knowable. \u00a0I sometimes post about this in various groups and inevitably I’ll come across someone who just hammers me about it, calls me an idiot, and propagates the same untested beliefs. \u00a0It’s gotten to the point that I get a little sensitive about the whole topic and don’t discuss it much. \u00a0 Lately, however, a bunch of people have asked me to cover it in a long blog.<\/p>\n Now, the problem with this is that film people, almost by definition, are not technical people.\u00a0 They don\u2019t understand the technical aspects of why the film has started to deteriorate.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a problem between the archival and the presentational aspects of film history, too. I\u2019ll discuss that a little as we progress.<\/p>\n I have this problem, you see.\u00a0 I come from a technical background.\u00a0 I\u2019m an engineer.\u00a0 I love to test things. \u00a0 I suspect that there will be a lot of controversy and some people will call me a blasphemer in the religion of vinegar syndrome.\u00a0 If it gets too nasty, I\u2019ll just disable the contents on this post.\u00a0 I love blogs. \u00a0You may notice a bit of hostility here, and I assure you that it’s because I’m really tired of having to defend myself. \u00a0I’ve done the tests and shown the saved films in public.<\/p>\n Since I\u2019m flying in the face of established religion, I\u2019ll steal an idea from Galileo, a guy who flew in the face of established religion in 1632, when he wrote his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.\u00a0 <\/i>He had a character named Simplicio advocate for a earth-centric model of the universe, while saner heads debated him.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll do the same thing here.<\/p>\n Simplicio: What is vinegar syndrome?\u00a0 I hear it\u2019s a disease that spreads from film to film and destroys them<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>Vinegar syndrome is a problem associated mostly with tri-acetate film.\u00a0 As the film ages, it outgases a little bit of acetic acid, which is vinegar.\u00a0 As it accelerates, the film base becomes thin and brittle, and the film may buckle, tear, and become unprojectable.<\/p>\n Vinegar syndrome is not a virus, not a disease, not anything but simple chemical deterioration.\u00a0 It affects different films in different ways.\u00a0 If a film was developed poorly,\u00a0 stored in bad conditions, stored with things that caused it to deteriorate, or is on unstable stock, it will tend to go vinegar.<\/p>\n I have had prints go completely vinegar while sitting right next to other prints that have not gone vinegar at all.\u00a0 I therefore dispute the claim that it spreads… however, exposing prints to vinegar is not a great idea in general.<\/p>\n Simplicio: Why is that?\u00a0 Does that make the disease spread?\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t you quarantine the films that are vinegar in sealed cans?<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>No, vinegar is an acid.\u00a0 In solution (that means the air around the film), it will tend to eat at the film base, like any acid would, which causes the film to outgas more vinegar.<\/p>\n Putting vinegar prints in sealed cans is a sure way to kill them.\u00a0 The vinegar builds up, and eats at the film, causing more vinegar to be expelled, but there\u2019s no place for it to go, and it becomes an autocatalyzing process, meaning it gets worse and worse.<\/p>\n Is this tested?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 For many years I wanted to test the theory and I wondered if there was someone who\u2019d accidentally done the test for me.\u00a0 In 1998, I discovered that someone had done the very test I\u2019d wanted without knowing it.\u00a0 I went to an auction that had a bunch of 16mm films for sale.\u00a0 Many of these were films from the 1930s from Goodyear.\u00a0 They had been stored in a milk crate for 40 years or more, and the auction house hadn\u2019t even bothered to remove them.<\/p>\n What did I find?\u00a0 The films that were in the cans, without exception, had some degree of vinegar syndrome decomposition.\u00a0 The films that had been stored in open air had NO vinegar decomposition.\u00a0 And the films without the cans, in many cases, were older than the ones in the cans.\u00a0 I realize that this is an anecdotal one-off answer, because it does not take into account that this particular set of films may have had a unique temperature\/humidity range for storage that caused this reaction.\u00a0 However, in subsequent years, I have repeatedly<\/em> found this same situation in collections from all over the world.<\/p>\n Simplicio: I was told by my favorite archive that you could put in Kodak\u2019s molecular sieves<\/a> and it will stop this problem.<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>The idea behind the molecular sieves is to neutralize the vinegar in a sealed can. \u00a0Whatever chemicals are in the sieve react with the vinegar and take it out of the air surrounding the film. \u00a0In theory, the molecular sieves are a wonderful idea, but they don\u2019t work out so well in practice. If you have a huge supply of them and you change them every 6 months to a year, then great.\u00a0 It\u2019s perfect and it will help.\u00a0 Otherwise, the sieve and the vinegar end up completing their reaction, and you have a full (now essentially chemically inert) molecular sieve and the vinegar syndrome marches gleefully on.<\/p>\n Simplicio: So when a film gets vinegar, we should just throw it away, right?\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing that can be done.\u00a0 That\u2019s what my friend told me.<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>You can do what you want, but there are things you can do to slow down the progress of vinegar syndrome, regardless of the conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n Knowing about these various methods and working with deteriorating old film, I wanted to find out what worked and what didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I decided to do a control study.\u00a0 That\u2019s where you make a test and change only one thing in the test to find out if it helps.\u00a0 Several years ago, I bought a 35mm print of She Couldn\u2019t Say No <\/i>(a 1950s movie with Robert Mitchum) which was affected by vinegar syndrome and warp. I bought this because I didn\u2019t particularly care about the film, and I figured that I could use it for control tests: one reel left alone, and each reel treated with something else.<\/p>\n There are these things that I have personally tested:<\/p>\n 1) Vitafilm: this is a film cleaner that is quite nice in some circumstances.\u00a0 It has a STRONG <\/i><\/b>pine smell, enough that some people gag at the first whiff.\u00a0 No one is entirely sure what is really in Vitafilm, so I can\u2019t answer for what it does chemically.\u00a0 I can say that in tests, these things happen: 2) Glycerin: this is a plasticizer that evaporates into the air around a film within a can.\u00a0 Again, it does take vinegar out of solution and it does make the film more pliable.\u00a0 Since it\u2019s liquid, it gums things up, and it cannot be put in direct contact with the film (it makes the film mooshy).\u00a0 However, I have successfully used this on a number of films.\u00a0 It was particularly helpful on a trailer for The Robe <\/i>which was so stinky that it would knock a normal human down at 30 paces and was actually getting sticky from base melt.\u00a0 Glycerin stopped it in its tracks and the print is still around.<\/p>\n 3) Camphor (solid).\u00a0 Camphor is used as a spice in Southeast Asian cooking, and it still used (in small quantities) in cough syrups.\u00a0 It is a plasticizer, but in people it is also a vasodilator, which means it causes a person\u2019s blood vessels to dilate a bit. This is great for sinus conditions and coughs, which we associate with camphor\u2019s strong smell.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it is possible to \u201cOD\u201d on camphor (look it up) by ingesting too much of it, so it\u2019s now on the FDA\u2019s bad list.\u00a0 Fortunately, there are a lot of Asian grocery stores that still stock it, and it\u2019s wonderful stuff.\u00a0 Why? Simplicio: My friend at the archive told me that camphor is just a stunt and it will reduce the long-term stability of the film.\u00a0 It really isn\u2019t good for the film at all, and it doesn\u2019t stop vinegar syndrome. \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>This depends on how you define \u201clong-term.\u201d An archive isn\u2019t in the same business I am.\u00a0 I am in the business of saving\u00a0and\u00a0<\/i><\/i>sharing <\/i>films.\u00a0 <\/i>An archive is in the business of saving <\/i>films.\u00a0 The archives were charged with the responsibility of saving copies of films for future generations, not particularly with making them available for anyone to see. (That’s not a criticism… that’s what they were intended to do.)<\/p>\n Archives are also notoriously underfunded, so a print may languish in storage for years until someone gets around to inspecting it and getting it ready for preservation.\u00a0 This means an archive is understandably nervous about any <\/i>chemical coming in contact or proximity with the film.\u00a0 They don\u2019t know what it is, they don\u2019t know what the long-term effects are, and the whole thing is just very, very scary.<\/p>\n Now, again, I\u2019m not in that business.\u00a0 Sure, I collect rare films, and in most cases these are films that are beneath the notice of the major archives.\u00a0 They archives are so busy preserving mainstream history that they miss the little rivulets of the story that fascinate me.\u00a0 This is not intended to slight them: I\u2019m glad they\u2019re out there, and they do a wonderful job of what they do.\u00a0 It\u2019s just not what I do.<\/p>\n For me, if I have a film that cannot be shown, then it\u2019s not of much use.\u00a0 If it\u2019s too shrunken, brittle, or ripped to run, then it may be saved but not necessarily shared.\u00a0 These are the kinds of films I may donate to an archive in the hopes that someday they might be duped or something…<\/p>\n However, if I can do anything <\/i>to extend the projectable life of a film, then I\u2019m on board.\u00a0 Does that mean it might be projectable for another 10 years but it will shave 10 years off the longevity of the print?\u00a0 If that\u2019s so, then I\u2019m still<\/em>\u00a0on board.<\/p>\n Let me give you an example: I have a print of The Ford in Your Future<\/i>, which is a really cool short that promotes Ford\u2019s new 1949 cars.\u00a0 It\u2019s a Technicolor print, and a real stunner in Technicolor.\u00a0 It shows off the process well, and shows why it doesn\u2019t look the same as it does on video.\u00a0 I also am well aware that this is not <\/i>the only print in the world (in fact, I\u2019m sure it\u2019s on YouTube in a highly compressed, muted color version).\u00a0 When I got the print, it was horrible: warped, vinegary, shrunken, etc.\u00a0 Some careful treatment with camphor for a few months, and the whole thing was vastly different.<\/p>\n It was, in fact, so different, that my lovely assistant, Ms. Greiff, said, \u201cWhen did you get a new print of this?\u00a0 It looks so nice!\u201d\u00a0 I informed her that this <\/i>was the same print that has caused focus flutter and heart failure in a projector just a few months before.<\/p>\n If that takes ten years off the overall life of the film, then it\u2019s fine in my book…<\/p>\n On the other hand, I don\u2019t think it probably will.\u00a0 Again, I don\u2019t know for certain, because we don\u2019t have tests, but…<\/p>\n Camphor has been known about as a plasticizer for years and years.\u00a0 In fact, when we get old 1920s prints on diacetate or single acetate film stock, it was commonplace for a projectionist to throw a chunk of camphor in with it.\u00a0 Some cans even had a little holder built in for a chunk of the stuff.<\/p>\n So we know that camphor has so far not particularly hurt the longevity of 1920s safety film.\u00a0 We also know that camphor was used on nitrate.<\/p>\n Does it hurt triacetate?\u00a0 I think probably not, but I don\u2019t know <\/i>that.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to contribute to the hoodoo nature of this by speculating without tests.<\/p>\n Several people have told me that camphor, glycerin, and Vitafilm don\u2019t help because the overall acidity of the print doesn\u2019t change, given that they\u2019ve tested them with A\/D strips.\u00a0 These are little strips of paper (I think… I\u2019ve not seen them) that test the overall acidity of a print.<\/p>\n I have not <\/i>tested this, nor do I know of a good place to get A\/D strips.\u00a0 I know that from personal experience that I\u2019ve gotten years use out of warped, brittle prints, and I can absolutely state that several have lasted 8+ years with camphor.\u00a0 Some have graduated to not being with a piece of camphor all the time and they live out in the open air again.<\/p>\n I know that some people are very nervous about vinegar and so test everything with an A\/D strip before purchase or sale.\u00a0 If someone would point me to a source of these, then I can test them.<\/p>\n Again, I say that the base deterioration may continue, but the print is useful for a long period, and so this is still a good call for me.\u00a0 My untested \u201cgut reaction\u201d is that in some cases the base deterioration slows or stops, but I have not tested this to find out.<\/p>\n Simplicio: There\u2019s a new film cleaner on the market that says it stops vinegar syndrome.\u00a0 What do you think of it?<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>I haven\u2019t tested it.<\/p>\n Simplicio: So you\u2019re advocating against the use of film cans and for the use of camphor, just the opposite of what the archives do.\u00a0 You must hate the archives.<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>No, I love the archives.\u00a0 I also love the safety of what film cans give you, because I\u2019ve had films ruined by external factors that cans could protect against.\u00a0 However, it\u2019s been my experience that films need to breathe and dissipate their vinegar vapors, and so I don\u2019t use cans.<\/p>\n And I\u2019ve explained why I do use camphor.\u00a0 A few little blocks of it in a film can works miracles.\u00a0 I do <\/i>use film cans for camphor treatments.<\/p>\n Simplicio: Has anyone reported problems with any of these treatments?<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film:<\/strong> Some people report a white powder that forms on the film. \u00a0This is probably a residue of wax or anti-line treatment that is dissolving. \u00a0I would advocate a good cleaning if this occurs. \u00a0In no case has this damaged the film.<\/p>\n Simplicio: You\u2019re a radical, mean guy who is dangerous to the world of film and all it portends.\u00a0 You scare me.<\/b><\/p>\n Dr. Film: <\/b>I\u2019ve heard that a lot.\u00a0 Don\u2019t believe it.\u00a0 Test it first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of all the things I encounter in the film world, vinegar syndrome is one of the saddest.\u00a0 It\u2019s a deterioration that hits acetate film and turns it into a smelly dry plastic that smells of a rancid salad.\u00a0 Once it\u2019s gone, it\u2019s gone.\u00a0 The film gets brittle and unusable. The belief system of how … Continue reading “The Religion of Vinegar Syndrome”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207,4],"tags":[163,162,161],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film","category-views-and-reviews","tag-archives","tag-camphor","tag-vinegar-syndrome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\na) The film becomes more pliable and warp tends to flatten out (this may require rewinding several times, but it does work.
\nb) Tape splices (other than Kodak tape) loosen and must be reapplied.
\nc) The cleaner will dissolve most other plastics, including reels, cores, and a lot of projector rollers.\u00a0 Do NOT project a wet print; it could destroy your projector.\u00a0 (Take it from someone who has learned this!)<\/p>\n
\na) Camphor works, like glycerin, as a plasticizer, but does not affect the film if in direct contact!
\nb) It does not dissolve splices, affect other plastics, etc.
\nc) It\u2019s self-limiting, which means that you can throw camphor in with your prints and the camphor will vaporize and be absorbed to just the level that the print needs.\u00a0 A desperate print will suck it up faster than a print with no problem.<\/p>\n