Negative cutting was a process of post-production editing before the switch to digital editing in the late 90s to early 2000s. The process involved using what is called a ‘film splicer’, which would physically cut the film and join two other pieces together. Now, in class today, we were looking at all of this old media technology that was used in the process of film making, and what stood out to me the most was the film splicer. When Dave (the media dude who was showing us all of the stuff) said “this was used for editing”, I Vietnam War flashbacked to semester 2, the days of working on Cleaned Out (our comedy web series from the Good Form studio), and sitting up until 6am every morning for a week straight. Basically, what kept me up all those hours was watching through all of the footage, and cutting it all together. So looking at this film splicer, I could only imagine how much of a bitch this would’ve been to work with.

Film splicers are made in various types for various sizes and types of film (Single-8, Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm).

• Cement Splicer – The cement splicer joins two pieces of film together using something called ‘film cement’, which is film base dissolved in solvent
• Tape Splicer – As the name suggests, this splicer uses a thin piece of tape to join two pieces of film together. Apparently, it could also make perforations (the holes placed in the film stock during manufacturing and used for transporting and steadying the fillm)
• Ultrasonic Splicer – This splicer physically melts two pieces of film together using an ultrasonic signal, and are generally used with polyester film
• Thermal Paper Splicer – These are used in film processing labs to join film into large rolls before processing. A plastic coated tab is heated and the plastic melts, bonding to the film. The tabs are often printed with a number or bar code to identify the film after processing.