The First Look at the Final Film
In the traditional photochemical film finishing process, the answer print represents a pivotal moment. It is the very first composite print made from the fully edited and conformed original camera negative, combined with the final audio soundtrack. This print includes all the film’s visual elements—scenes, dissolves, fades, titles, and optical effects—all physically spliced together. It is then sent to a film laboratory for a first pass at color grading, or ‘timing’. The lab technicians use a device called a Hazeltine analyzer to determine the ideal color and density values (known as ‘printer lights’) for each shot.
The resulting print is called the ‘answer print’ because it is the lab’s first ‘answer’ to the filmmakers’ creative intentions. It is then screened by the director, cinematographer, and producers for approval. This screening is a critical quality control step. The team meticulously checks for any errors: scratches or dirt on the negative, mistakes in the edit, audio sync issues, and, most importantly, the color timing. Typically, the first answer print is rarely perfect. The director and cinematographer will provide detailed notes on a shot-by-shot basis—‘make this scene warmer,’ ‘crush the blacks in this shot,’ ‘reduce the magenta in her skin tone’—which are sent back to the lab. The lab then incorporates these changes and produces a second answer print. This back-and-forth process may repeat several times until a final, approved print, known as the showprint or check print, is created.
The Bridge to Mass Production
Once the answer print is given final approval, its corresponding color timing information becomes the master guide for all subsequent prints. The approved printer light settings are used to create the interpositive and internegative, which are the intermediate elements used for striking the hundreds or thousands of release prints that get sent to theaters around the world. Therefore, the answer print is the crucial link between the creative post-production phase and the industrial manufacturing phase of a film’s life.
With the industry’s shift to a Digital Intermediate (DI) workflow, the physical answer print has been replaced by a calibrated digital projection. The color grading process now happens on a computer, and the director and cinematographer approve the final look in a precisely calibrated digital screening room. However, the terminology lives on. A final color-graded digital screening is still sometimes colloquially referred to as the ‘answer print’ stage, as it serves the exact same purpose: the final creative sign-off before the creation of the distribution master (now a Digital Cinema Package, or DCP).