Film Labs - How many film labs are left?

Robert Houllahan · January 6, 2016

The phone and email are hard to deal with as a lab, allot of the questions are about if the film has arrived to the lab and when it is shipping out. People also want individualized quotes for work and allot of times that information is covered in the lab price sheet but not always.

It can be a difficult balance between customer communication and getting work done, especially when the lab is very busy.

For Cinelab I have tried to make a common info@cinelab mail address and make sure those emails are answered hourly by multiple lab staff.

Simon Wyss · January 6, 2016

All this aside, when I've dealt with labs, I always felt uncomfortable asking anything other than the most pertinent questions regarding my order because their first priority is to properly fill orders.

Bill, you do so rightly. How else would one make progress if not by impertinence, boldness, and courage? You have to attack people, ask them questions, cinch them up. The point is only how you do that. I was also obnoxious when I was young, in fact until I was 47.

Im 54 now and had the opportunity to have a book shop in town dedicated to film, imagine, exclusively to motion pictures, Rohrs Filmbuchhandlung of Zürich. Nobody knows how many hours Ive spent in there and it was not uncommon to meet a filmmaker or a producer between the shelves.

Something else, more on an archival note. The loss of know-how about silent film making and lab practices of, say, the teens or twens makes me scratch my head today. The very base of the first hundred years of cinema have been squeezed out the labs and that is of great concern for me personally. It is not true, for example, that variable density sound tracks are worse than variable area ones. With the stocks available today very good VD recordings can be made. One advantage of VD tracks is their robustness.

Is there a lab left where they do tinting and toning of black-and-white film? Is there a lab, where theyd assemble differently tinted sections? Polyester-base film can be welded, no print mutilation must be feared from there. You see, advancements in materials are not fully exploited. I think that more ideas havent been brought to daylight, yet.

For those after books I should recommend:

Bernard Happé: Basic motion picture technology
Bernard Happé: Your film and the lab
Ernest Walter: The technique of the film cutting room
Milton Lustig: Music editing for motion pictures
Lee R. Bobker: making movies: from script to screen
Kit Laybourne: The animation book
Jerrold E. Kemp: Planning and producing audiovisual materials
René Clair: Réflexion faite. Notes pour servir à lhistoire de lart cinématographique de 1920 à 1950 (translated in German, maybe also to English)

Edited January 6, 2016 by Simon Wyss

Bill DiPietra · January 6, 2016

For those after books I should recommend:

Bernard Happé: Basic motion picture technology

Bernard Happé: Your film and the lab

Ernest Walter: The technique of the film cutting room

Milton Lustig: Music editing for motion pictures

Lee R. Bobker: making movies: from script to screen

Kit Laybourne: The animation book

Jerrold E. Kemp: Planning and producing audiovisual materials

René Clair: Réflexion faite. Notes pour servir à lhistoire de lart cinématographique de 1920 à 1950 (translated in German, maybe also to English)

Thanks for those recommendations, Simon.

Heikki Repo · January 11, 2016

Are there any labs other than Andec here in Europe that list prices on their website? For me the lack of price list signals that the lab is mostly interested in bigger customers and that their prices are also more geared towards those clients. That might be a wrong interpretation, but it does affect my choices.

When six years ago I produced my first serious short film (Super16, 19 minutes, 5:1 ratio, budget ~11 000 Euros), I had to contact a local post house for telecine. At that time there were two bigger post houses here in Finland offering that service. The first one sent me a quote for 14 000 (!) Euros. Instead of only giving a quote for best light telecine, they sent me a quote for 10 days of edit, sound mix and mastering, online and DVD inspection. And the scan was for Digibeta PAL. After my initial reaction, just guess whether or not I took my business there. Quotes -- I try to avoid asking for them until I'm sure I'm somewhat on the same page price-wise with the company I contact for a quote. I don't like surprises.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Heikki Repo

Dirk DeJonghe · January 12, 2016

Heikki,

It is indeed a wrong interpretation. There are other reasons, amongst them: labs don't want the competition to know their pricing, most customers want personalised quotes, prices are more and more complex due to numerous variations and combinations of services.

We always try to work out the 'best' solution for customers, sometimes paying a bit more at the beginning to end up with a superior product at the end, or saving money in different ways.

aapo lettinen · January 12, 2016

one reason is that pro customers usually never pay the list price anyway (personalised quotes and discounts) so you have to pay the list price only if you are developing relatively small amount at the time. most labs also have specialised discounts for student productions and may have minimum order for certain discounts etc.

Combining services (developing+scanning for example) complicates this even more because especially the scanning/telecine step is very work intense and the amount of work varies hugely depending on material and transfer options (1-light, slightly adjusted "almost 1-light", technical grade, best light, etc. + file formats and scanner type and capturing device, reel sizes, etc etc) . can take anything from 1:2 to 1:6 time wise for example so quite impossible to say the final price without seeing the material and instructions

Heikki Repo · January 12, 2016

Thanks Dirk,

I'll contact you for a quote when budgeting for my next project.

Will Montgomery · January 28, 2016

Filmworkers in Dallas finally shut down processing a few months ago. Very sad day.

Matej Pok · January 30, 2016

In Vienna, Austria there is Synchrofilm.at which is working full speed and still will be, "untill film still will being manufactured" (as they say). They're doing ECN-2 and B&W and scanning at Scannity and Spirit.

In Budapest, Hungary is filmlab.hu still working.

January 30, 2016

In Budapest, Hungary we have two labs: as Matej said, the Hungarian Filmlab (www.filmlab.hu) is still fully operational, and we also have Focus Fox, the former Kodak Cinelab (www.focusfox.hu), they still develop and scan ECN-2. No prints though, they got rid of all of their reversal film equipment. They both offer full digital post-production services, the FilmLab became a subsidiary of the National Film Fund, and Focus Fox transitioned into a rental-house/production company, so none of them are likely to close in the foreseeable future.

As a "bonus", we have an "artisan" lab that develops 16mm and 8mm, plus 35mm as long as it's shorter than a 100 feet. It's run buy a great guy who has a main job as a train machinist (I'm not joking).

Edited January 30, 2016 by P

andres victorero · January 31, 2016

I procesed and telecined three years ago in Color by Dejonghe (Belgium)

http://www.postproduction.be/en/

Will Montgomery · February 1, 2016

I miss Video Post & Transfer in Dallas as well as Filmworkers, where I could drop off film and have it processed and scanned by the next day. VP&T used to have a dropbox and a night shift that would process and do dallies overnight. Those days are gone.

I have an upcoming project I'm thinking about using Double-X on since I have to wait for processing anyway (instead of shooting color and desaturating). There's definitely less labs handling B&W negative these days.