Letter to theaters about dropping film projection

[K Borowski]

What worries me about it is just the sheer scale of the industrial plant required to create and process colour negative - it's hardly a trivial thing. It can't really be done on a small scale without an outrageous pricing model - I don't think those factors apply to things like pianos.

 

Phil, you can coat color film and sell it for half or third what it costs and still make a killing at it. Kodak and Fuji aren't the only manufacturers. There are several other small-time operations that could make motion picture film if the market lost a certain key player.

 

As far as a processing machine, there were some very small machines that were made at one time. You need some 35- or 16mm rollers, a pulley, and some tanks, the first two in the dark, water. No "toxic chemistry" (you didn't say it but someone else uttered that line of garbage on here - the heavy metals behind your monitor are far worse, taht's if you don't chuck your computer out the window into the dumpster and dispose of it properly), no massive undertaking.

 

I think you need to process 1,000 feet a week to keep an average size cine processor in control. So you don't need to ruin clothes and dump chemistry all the time, the way some people THINK it is done. Plus, you have the advantage of not having to scrap all of your equipment every three four years, like some other industries.

 

 

I'm sure color film will die out before B&W does (we'll probably have the latter 100 years hence), but there's no shortage of silver, and the technology for making it is now almost 70 years old. You're coating ten to twelve layers of dye and silver onto plastic, not building a computer in your parents' garage :P

 

 

If anything, the most endangered component is SCANNING technology. Camera construction is irrelevant. Once telecine, datacine, film recording technology is dropped from manufacture, there is the real danger of a bottleneck if equipment gets thrown out, breaks down, parts get discontinued.

 

 

Fortunately, there are some excellent companies out there that have diversified into many other fields that cary on the tradition more as a point of honor than relying on it to hold the rest of the company up and drive their investments elsewhere (the Eastman Kodak model). I was very impressed with RFI's portfolio, as well as FujiFilms. There are some serious pieces of infrastructure you guys are going to have to overcome before you start checking our pulse. As long as there is a 10% profit to be made on what is sold, the equipoment is there, it is paid for, it doesn't really need to be improved upon too much more, and it's been maturing and improving now for almost 125 years, so the kinks have really been worked out of the workflow.

[Daniel Smith]

As an owner of a Cineworld unlimited card I see films in the cinema quite regularly, jumping between two cinemas, o2 (digital projection) and Bexleyheath (35mm projection).

 

Sorry but whilst I appreciate films shot on film, I now can't stand 35mm projections. But then again I don't think the cinema helps this, by taking crap care of the print and/or the way it's projected. The number of times the opening of the film looks like the opening of Star Wars with the yellow text travelling upwards in a trapezium..

[Pat Murray]

A little perspective would help here I suspect.

 

The "magic quality of projected film" invariably means something that's at least slightly flickery, a bit unsteady, and riven with noise, sorry, grain. With depressing regularity it also means dirt and scratches, as well as a noticeable jump and flicker and a pop on the soundtrack every nineteen minutes or so. Digital projection, even done quite badly, is objectively better than 35mm projection on several key points of technical ability, and it's probably capable of higher resolution than a traditional film finish even at 2K. Much as I appreciate and understand the nostalgia for the process, I don't think it's particularly controversial to point out that it has been exceeded on more or less every technical level. And it's massively cheaper, and easier to run, and lighter to carry around. The war is over.

 

That said, I too grind my teeth at the way it's so often being done. I've mentioned before that the Odeon Digital logo at my local super-expensive megaplex with the sitting-room-sized screens is supposed to be on a white background, but at least two of the eight screens have such grossly misaligned lamphouses that the ideally white field comes out as a screen full of pink and green blotches. It looks like a badly tie-dyed T-shirt, it's appalling. Now, it's worth mentioning that this is a problem that could - and did - often befall 35 as well, and from what I've seen they're at least capable of winding the masking out and selecting the right optics for the right screen.

 

That's not even remotely close to being my experience with 35mm prints. My experience has been the exact opposite you described and rarely if ever experienced the problems you stated on first run movies, and especially on re-released restored classics. Now, when I watch a rare original 35mm release print of Fulci's "House By The Cementary" at a midnight showing, like I did last Friday, I expect what you described, but that's understandable and I actually enjoy it as it feels like I'm experencing living art - even if it's deteriotating over time - rather than the cold lifelesness of digital.

 

That said, as I've always said, it shouldn't be a zero sum game. To be completely frank, to suggest one is superior to the other is just plain stupid. As stupid as saying oil paintings are better than water colours. It's a completely subjective exercise when it comes to artistic mediums. So it makes me particularly sick that people are being brainwashed into pushing for "Team Digital" by companies who only care about the bottom line over artistic integrity and choice.

 

Luckily for me, there are 4 theaters in my city who have purchased digital projection systems, but will maintain their 35mm projectors, including two of them maintaining 16mm projectors for more rare film screenings.

Edited November 18, 2011 by Pat Murray

[Nigel Smith]

Well it's already happening in London with neg processing.

Deluxe has done a deal with Technicolour that involves shutting their lab in Soho

[soho Film Lab, was Soho Images]. So now all neg goes to Technicolour at Pinewood for processing, then comes back to Soho for TK.

 

iLab has been taken over by Reliance Mediaworks, whose website still offers film processing

in Soho, but they don't respond to enquiries.

 

So it appears that Pinewood studio are the only lab serving central London now?

Edited November 29, 2011 by Nigel Smith

[Phil Rhodes]

It's not like we ever turned much film anyway.

[Brian Drysdale]

What worries me about it is just the sheer scale of the industrial plant required to create and process colour negative - it's hardly a trivial thing. It can't really be done on a small scale without an outrageous pricing model - I don't think those factors apply to things like pianos.

 

It really depends on the through put. I've been in labs which are surprisingly small and not the scale of Technicolor, but are capable of processing many thousands of feet each week.