Film: A sudden end

[swmcl]

Hello all.

In a recent phone call to one of Australia's best labs I was able to speak to one of this country's most venerated E6 technicians. In the course of the phone call he made a remark that the film industry was pushing to go to a digital format. This would in a short span of time dissolve the need for a huge chunk of the film business.

Is this true? Could we be a moment from the loss of film completely ? I guess it would be the colour film manufacturers - Kodak and Fuji in particular. I do know they are restructuring or in fairly serious trouble ...

Rdgs,

[Daniel Stone]

maybe e-6 processing in Oz will go away before the rest of the world, but I'd imagine that E-6 and especially c-41 processing will be around for a good long while elsewhere, so you can mail-order your film for processing overseas.

Yes, movie studios are pushing for digital OUTPUT(digital projection), as making "prints"(film to be projected) is expensive. Digital projection makes their costs lower. Problem is, a lot of theater owners can't afford the $250,000+ investment PER SCREEN(one projector for each screen), so film projection will be around for a while. Capture(as in the scene being originally recorded on set) is still done on major productions with FILM a lot of the time(or so most of my contacts in the film industry tell me), but digital is definitely making in-roads into that sector as well. But its not at the "take over point" just quite yet IMO... Film still can handle more latitude, and most DP's that have "grown up" on film, and built their reputations and repertoire by shooting film stock, will continue to do so. "IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT"...

And also, FILM has been shown to be an easy, affordable method of BACKUP for studios. They shoot film, digitize it, edit/color-grade, do all their whiz-bang whatchamacallit stuff to it, so its screen-ready, then the RE-BURN it to FILM, and then after processing, store the film in refrigerated/humidity-controlled warehouses w/ the original film negatives. That way they have a HARD COPY backup if the sh*t hits the fan and all the servers that hold the digital files crash and burn... Cheaper(and much easier) than re-shooting the whole thing over again :p

there have been a good # of threads here and on APUG regarding this same topic, so no need for us to get all hoo-hawed over it again ;)

film will be here for a while, but it might be harder to find a place just "down the road" to get it processed in the future.

-Dan

[Sevo]

Is this true? Could we be a moment from the loss of film completely ?

The future of colour film is hard to predict - it would have quite a few niches left, but in the past, it was entirely a matter of a huge industry. Downscaling from billions to thousands is not easy. Nobody can tell whether any of the existing makers can or will successfully restructure for that shrunk market, nor whether anybody else will take up production at the new small scale. Some archival and print films will certainly survive - film still is the only long term archival medium for the motion picture industry - but YMMV as to their photographic uses and availability.

Black and white film is entirely a different matter, and there is little doubt it will survive, just like you can still buy oil colours. It has been a niche product for something like 25 years, with a correspondingly downscaled culture of makers beside the obvious big ones, neither the consumer market nor the motion picture industry have any stakes in black and white, and there even are high volume niche markets that will continue to grow for a long time to come (microfilming digital documents for archival purposes is a boom industry). Besides, it has no psychological competition from digital - the one solitary black and white only digital Leica seems to have been a limited 500 piece item only.

[swmcl]

Thanks guys for the replies.

I have found a few other threads on similar topics so I should think this one doesn't add to them.

Cheers,

[Andrew O'Neill]

Is this true? Could we be a moment from the loss of film completely ?

No.

Saddles and spurs are still made. People still ride horses.

[Drew Wiley]

You can make saddles and spurs in a barn with straw and horse poop for the floor. I don't
think I'd want any color film made under those conditions.

[Sevo]

You can make saddles and spurs in a barn with straw and horse poop for the floor. I don't
think I'd want any color film made under those conditions.

That said, outdoor daguerreotype and wet plate pioneers made "film" under just about these conditions, and often succeeded...

[Sylvester Graham]

Here's the thing. The only way to get a film seen by more than a handful of art house patrons, or to make a profit, is to get a distribution deal with a major studio. The studios have a lock on the distribution infrastructure--and that includes marketing and communications avenues, not just theaters. Studios are also publicly traded companies. If you want to make a successful movie, you're going to have to go through some sort of studio system, even if it's just for distribution. If the studio says they are going digital, so are you. You don't have to shoot or distribute digital if you don't want. But go ahead and enjoy being 50 million in the red and enjoying the single screen your films plays on at sundance.


I SUPPOSE if you are one one of the three directors in the world who makes enough money, you could start your own production company AND distribution company that shoots film--but will you be able to A) turn a profit if you can't distribute your film to digital theaters because you refuse to digitize your print? B) be a large enough economic force to allow the film manufacturers to stay open?

Kiss 35mm prints goodbye. But, honestly, the new digital cameras they use to film big budget productions (and some small ones, actually) are not you're grandmothers camcorder. Go see "prometheus" and tell me it "looked bad" with a straight face. I dare you.

[Drew Wiley]

So Sevo ... do you plan to revive Kodachrome manufacture in a stable, or just something
analogous to E100G, which should be a little simpler?

[Jim Galli]

No.

Saddles and spurs are still made. People still ride horses.

You can buy more parts for a Model A Ford now, than you could in 1955.

[Curt]

Will the last one to leave the darkroom turn the lights on.

[Drew Wiley]

I can just see it now ... J.Galli revives the Technicolor film process by precisely aligning three wet plate cameras, each with a P&S 42" lens on the front. Meanwhile, Bain Capital
buys out the North Pole, all of Santa's elves are left unemployed, so Jim hires them cheap
to scurry back and forth coating and developing the plates. Looking for suitable subject
matter, he also successfully secures an NEA grant to make a documentary film of continental drift in the vicinity of Tonopah.

[Jim Galli]

I can just see it now ... J.Galli revives the Technicolor film process by precisely aligning three wet plate cameras, each with a P&S 42" lens on the front. Meanwhile, Bain Capital
buys out the North Pole, all of Santa's elves are left unemployed, so Jim hires them cheap
to scurry back and forth coating and developing the plates. Looking for suitable subject
matter, he also successfully secures an NEA grant to make a documentary film of continental drift in the vicinity of Tonopah.

Uh oh! They're on to me. Don't tell them about the $14,000,000,000 government grant of chinese money. No.

[Michael_4514]

Will the last one to leave the darkroom turn the lights on.

Three points!

[Drew Wiley]

Jim - There's an important reason we borrow money from China. That way if the value of
the currency completely fails anyway, we'll at least be able to eat it if it's printed on rice
paper. Maybe we should do the same with film base.