Came across this snipet re: X-rays.

[otzi]

'Lost' film lost to airport X-ray—The hit television drama 'Lost' chronicles the lives of a group of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island, and is filmed in Hawaii. But because film shot in Hawaii is generally sent to the mainland for processing, a day's worth of 'Lost' shooting was recently destroyed when, despite warning labels on the canisters, the unprocessed film was *accidentally* put through an X-ray machine at Honolulu International Airport. Reportedly this happened because the film canisters were *mistakenly* mixed in with passenger luggage en route to be X-rayed. (Film of a television commercial for Bank of Hawaii was also *accidentally* X-rayed and ruined on the same day.) Although apparently the loss of the 'Lost' film will not affect the broadcast schedule, re-shooting the scenes could be expensive—a re-shoot means additional costs for actors and venues, easily $100,000 or more for a commercial and possibly two or three times as much for one day of shooting a major TV show. The Hawaii Film Commissioner said procedures are now in place “to make sure it doesn't happen again.”

Believe that, just about believe anything. What hope have we got?

[Donald Qualls]

Worth noting that this film was being shipped as cargo, not as a carry-on bag with a paying passenger. As such, I think the story that it got mixed with passenger luggage and X-rayed in a cannister (at which point labeling on the package wouldn't have been visible) entirely believable.

This is a baggage/cargo handling problem, pretty broadly unrelated to any issues we might have with TSA and international equivalents concerning film carried on.

[Brian Ellis]

Maybe there's something I don't know about weight or bulk of the film cannisters for an episode of "Lost" but couldn't they just have bought a plane ticket for a gofer and had the gofer carry the film on the plane? It seems beyond stupid to just ship film that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce as cargo if there was any alternative at all. Surely they weren't just trying to save the cost of a plane ticket.

[Nick_3536]

Supposedly 1 minute of 35mm film is over 100' of film. You have to figure between everything a day of shooting would be hours? Add the weight of the film can. Of course I'm sure they could have bought a first class ticket for "Mr. Film" and a second ticket for the gopher.

[Donald Qualls]

As Nick suggested, a day's film for a multi-day production is *far* beyond what can be handled as a carry-on, and airlines don't generally sell seat tickets for what they consider cargo. Buying extra tickets also doesn't go over well with producers, who likely already complain daily about the cost of shooting in Hawaii as opposed to nearby locations in California.

35 mm wide-format film, assuming it's not shot with an anamorphic lens, runs about 16 inches per second at the standard 24 frame rate; that comes to 80 feet per minute, and a standard can holds 400 feet, or about 5 minutes of film (though production is often done with large reels that hold 1000 feet). A commercial will typically generate 3-6 hours of film (to be edited down to one minute!), which is 36 to 72 standard cans. Definitely well out of carry-on range, and if the stuff were checked as passenger baggage, it's *guaranteed* a high-dose x-ray or neutron-activation bombardment, if not both.

[Sylvester Graham]

35 mm wide-format film, assuming it's not shot with an anamorphic lens, runs about 16 inches per second at the standard 24 frame rate; that comes to 80 feet per minute

Yeah, or you could try this handy thing...

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/filmCalculator.html

And I've never heard of "wide-format" 35mm film. Do you mean shooting super35 and cropping? I'm sure as soon as I start correcting you you're going to tell me you're a big time DP working out of LA... in that case, no seriously, what's wide format film?

[Donald Qualls]

As I understand it, the wider format used in HD broadcast TV is shot on regular 35 mm double perfed film, with the cine standard 18x24 frame, and cropped -- and HD is the main reason to shoot on 35 mm film as opposed to direct to digital or in Super 16 mm.

There may or may not be larger frame formats for cine 35 mm -- it would seem sensible to use a frame oriented along the film, like the Leica standard still frame (24x36) or even longer, to get a more grainless image for high resolution scanning to HD, but after all, HD is "only" about 3 megapixels at the highest current standard, and I get 7+ megapixels from a 24x36 frame with my eight year old flatbed scanner; a top quality scanner should be able to pull 3 megapixels from a cropped 18x24 frame.

I calculated the footage based on 24 frames per second at 3/4 inch (19 mm) per frame -- both figures pretty standard for cine 35 mm. It's very possible film intended for HD broadcast might run at a higher frame rate, but there's no larger frame unless the film transport is along the frame rather than across it. Given it's been about ten years since I've even seen a 35 mm cine camera, much could have changed...

[Jack Flesher]

I am *REALLY* surprised to hear they shoot LOST on film and not digitally...

[Nick_3536]

Why? Lost seems to be a big budget production.

[vinny]

Not much has changed in 10 years except that HD broadcasting is slowly becoming a standard. Something that's broadcasted in HD doesn't mean it's shot on HD video, it's just shown in the high definition format that happens to be a 1.78 to 1 aspect ratio. That ratio has nothing to do with an appealing aspect ratio but more to do with the number of pixels they could fit in. It's unfortunate that they couldn't have stayed with 1.85 to 1 like many films that you see in the theater or most dvd's you rent that aren't originally captured in the 2.35 to 1 ratio.
As for the "wide-format film" that Donald mentioned, i think he means super 35. Super 35 exposes less film by changing the cameras "4-perf movement" to 3-perf movement. The result is the same width of film exposed but a wider aspect ratio anywhere from 2.35:1 to 1.78:1 or "HD", and the standard television format we've had for years 1.33:1 by cropping off the sides in post.
As for other wide format 35mm film, there is the Vistavision format that does expose the film horizontally, yielding much more image area. It's used for background plates on stuff like Star Wars Episode 1 even though principal photography was shot on HD video.

Footage:The show i work on frames for standard tv but "protects" for HD. The viewfinder has two sets of frame lines for the operator to follow. It sucks because it's more difficult to make both look properly framed but operators also make $50/hr. A and B cameras are set up with 3 perf movement and each "mag" of film holds 1000ft of film. The 3-perf conversion saves production 25% in film and lab costs each mag lasts about 15 minutes as apposed to 11minutes with standard 35. Our show burns about 10,000ft/day when both cameras are in use. It depends on the director's style. Smaller 400ft mags are usually only used for hand held, high speed arriflex cameras, or steadicam work.
You can't generalise commercials since they may be one to 10 day shoots. It also depends on the need for high speed work and the # of cameras. The first commercial i loaded on shot 6000ft in about 10 hours with one camera running at 150fps half the time. I ran my ass off to the darkroom and back all day. Has anyone seen the gatorade commercial with the track runners taking off in slow mo? That was kodak 500T film pushed 1 stop shot at 1500 and 2000fps in daylight. The camera would reload after each take.

Most big budget films are projected at a 2.35 or 2.40:1 aspect ratio. The used to all be shot with Anamorphic lenses that expose the entire frame of film by squeezing the image onto the square frame and then unsqeezing it via the projection lens in the theater. Now, many films use super 35 cameras and 2k or 4k digital intermediates to ouput the scanned neg back onto film which yields a very high quality image but i prefer the anamorphic look since the resulting depth of field is much less since a "normal" lens is 2x longer in that format then regular 35.

Often film is shipped via fedex overnight to the lab. LOST may have been using another carrier that loads cargo in the belly of passenger planes. Kodak had manufactured a special run EIR for the production of the feature "Alexander". They lost some film via x-ray as well. That's what insurance is for.
Hope that helps.
vinny