Digital film-out negatives and prints(c.1976–Present)

The film-out process began in earnest in the 1980s as a means for transferring computer-generated visual effects (VFX) and commercials onto 35mm negative film. Later, from the late 1990s onwards, as digital scanners and film recording technology advanced, entire feature films were edited and graded in digital form and then recorded back to film for making theatrical release prints. That process became known as the Digital Intermediate (DI). Following the demise of widespread film distribution in favor of Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) in the 2010s, direct film-outs to negative or print have become scarcer, although the practice continues for high-profile festival screenings, boutique theatrical events and film preservation.

Prior to the development of digital film-out technologies, videotape-to-film transfers were not uncommon. These were often accomplished by filming a video signal directly from a high-resolution CRT-type monitor. From the 1960s into the early 1980s, Technicolor operated a subsidiary known as Vidtronics that could transfer video footage to film. A notable example in this area came with the nascent film-out work on Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982) that was photographed natively on videotape. Through the efforts of Image Transform in Universal City, California, the production was filmed-out in its entirety on 16mm B/W negative using the successive exposure technique (red, green and blue frames captured one after the other on a single strip of film), before being recombined on 16mm color print film for theatrical release in select markets. The work performed by Image Transform included frame-rate conversions from video to film. 

Early examples of film-outs of computer-generated imagery include select shots in Futureworld (1976) and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and a substantial portion of Walt Disney Productions’ Tron (1982), directed by Steven Lisberger (Rodríguez, 2025). Another early example of a digitally rendered sequence appeared in director Barry Levinson’s 1985 live-action feature, Young Sherlock Holmes – with VFX produced by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). As computational power increased over the decade, matched by a maturing visual effects industry, arguably the most stunning example of early digitally-created imagery for a theatrical feature was the hydro-pod sequence of director James Cameron’s Academy Award-winner for VFX, The Abyss (1989) – the sequence was also created and filmed-out by ILM, under the supervision of Oscar recipient John Bruno. Around this time, ILM collaborated with Eastman Kodak on a prototype film scanner (Joshua Pines, pers. comm., Sept. 2026). 

A number of animated short films produced in the mid-1980s were filmed-out in their entirety and first publicly presented at the Siggraph Electronic Theatre – a computer animation film festival. One very striking milestone was Pixar’s Luxo Jr. (1986), created by director John Lasseter and producer William Reeves, and filmed out to 16mm color negative. To accomplish Pixar’s achievement, the company created a proprietary film-recording system in collaboration with Agfa. Beginning with The Rescuers Down Under (1990), and lasting until the early 2000s, all major Disney feature animation releases were completed using the studio’s Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), which included digitally applying the colors to hand-drawn animation and recording to 35mm B/W successive exposure negative using a CELCO Film Recorder.

In 1992, Eastman Kodak formally launched its groundbreaking Cineon System (first developed with ILM in the 1980s), an integrated suite of hardware and software, consisting of the first high-resolution digital file format designed for moving images – known as Cineon (.cin) – along with the Cineon Film Scanner and Cineon Lightning Laser Film Recorder. This system was a conscious attempt to improve upon and replace Kodak’s Color Reversal Intermediate (CRI) printing film with a digital equivalent that avoided generational loss of image quality through multiple steps of printing. This was initially named Color Digital Intermediate (CDI) and later shortened to Digital Intermediate (DI). The first installation of this Cineon equipment was at Cinesite (a subsidiary of Kodak) in Burbank, California. It was capable of capturing and recording a Super 35 frame at a maximum resolution of 4K (4096 x 3112 pixels), at a rate of three seconds per frame (Eastman Kodak, 1991). The first motion picture scanned and recorded back to film in its entirety was Disney’s 1993 restoration of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

The introduction of the Cineon file format is considered a watershed moment in the evolution of and transition to digital. Companies like ILM created departments within their VFX pipeline dedicated to scanning and recording – known as Scan-Record. The game changed for the motion picture industry when VFX vendors could produce results of such fidelity that their work became seemingly invisible. The best examples of this are found in two projects handled (in part) by ILM, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Jurassic Park (1993), mastering VFX shots and recording these out to 35mm film at approximately 1.7K resolution (Joshua Pines, pers. comm., Sept. 2026). Industry color scientist Joshua Pines noted that the scanning of imagery for digital manipulation and the filming-out back to motion picture negative stock were essentially two sides of the same coin. Pines further noted that once the digital genie was out of the bottle, the post-production and VFX industries had to up their game considerably to accomplish a seamless transition to digital (Joshua Pines, pers. comm., Dec. 2024).

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Søren Kloch at Herremagasinet Film & TV (and subsequently at Hokus Bogus) in Copenhagen, Denmark, developed a makeshift film-out-to-35mm workflow using an Agfa Alto Film Recorder, originally intended for making 35mm stills and slides. This advance was spurred by the Dogme 95 movement, launched by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, whose films – like Festen (The Celebration, 1998) and Idioterne (The Idiots, 1998) – were shot on standard definition digital video but exhibited on 35mm prints. “It was a slow and laborious process,” recalled Kloch, “stressing the equipment [...] and the operators to exhaustion.” In recording to 35mm Eastman Color negative, each frame took between 45 and 90 seconds to record. “We literally slept next to the computers making sure the process was running smoothly – and offloading and loading [...] vast amounts of image data into the system” (Søren Kloch, pers. comm., Jun. 5, 2026). 

A watershed moment came in 2000 with the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? – recognized today as the first feature to go through a full digital intermediate. This work was completed at Cinesite in Burbank and was the first real demonstration of DI’s future capabilities. The following year, Technicolor launched Technique, its first incarnation of digital intermediate post-production, enabling, among other productions, the digital post-production and grading of the stylistically eclectic Panic Room (2002), the Kill Bill films (2003/2004) and The Aviator (2004), achieving aesthetics that were not possible using traditional photochemical means. At the same time, EFilm began its DI service to the industry on films such as We Were Soldiers (2002), for Paramount Pictures, and Frida (2002), directed by Julie Taymor. The first European feature scanned, digitally graded and output back to film in its entirety was Aardman Animation’s Chicken Run (2000), using Computer Film Company (CFC) in London, while Laboratoires Éclair in Paris was another early adopter in Europe, completing the digital post-production of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie in 2001. In Australia, Atlab was a pioneer in digital services, beginning in the 1990s.

The last incarnations of the Harry Potter franchise in 2010/11 witnessed the production of over 20,000 theatrical international release prints – to go out “day and date” – manufactured by Technicolor from its release printing operations in Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Bangkok and Rome. Twenty 2K 35mm printing negatives were filmed-out by Technicolor on its Cinevator recorders – for prints made exclusively for theatrical release, with one 4K 35mm film-out negative created on an ARRILASER to create prints for prestige presentations.

As the digital revolution consolidated, by 2012 the entire release printing pipeline at Technicolor (and later at Deluxe) was wound down in favor of the new industry DCP standard for digital projection – as such, the need for 35mm film-out negatives decreased dramatically and eventually ceased almost outright. As a result, making 35mm film prints has become a boutique service – outside of the ambitious recent works by Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson – limited mostly to single “direct-to-print” copies made directly from digital files for festival screenings and single theater engagements.

Today (circa 2026), film-recording is also found in various restoration processes including the recombination of digital YCM masters (printed on 35mm film) for quality control purposes – the process being commissioned by studio management to archivally protect and preserve newly produced and selectively designated assets. Similarly, new restoration master elements will selectively be shot to celluloid for preservation purposes.