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2022 Film Stock Price Increases?


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5 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

But in terms of expense, to get a really nice look out of digital you need something like a Sony FX9, and even though you're not buying film for it there's the massive drop in value of that camera body as newer models are released.

Let me play devil's advocate: isn't that a good thing? You're telling me I can get really nice images out of a camera whose price is always falling? Sold, mutha**(obscenity removed)**a!

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7 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

The popularity of film seems to be increasing. Not just in stills. I was in a big camera store a few days ago and overheard the staff saying that "We're going to have to do something" to respond to this strongly growing interest in film.

That trend appears to be here too, but it's mostly what I call "onsie twosie" customers, these you can't rely on. They are people shooting a few rolls a film a year, maybe spending $300 - 500/year + a low-end camera. You can't really stay afloat with those people as a business unless you have huge profit margins, which will have to increase as the recession starts to hit.

Here I've seen a dramatic decrease in professional work on film this year so far.  

Australia may also be a bit late to the party recession wise. It will eventually hit ya, but it may just take longer. 

7 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Their whole store is chock a block with digital gear. I heard one staff member say to the others "It's about our jobs!". They said a customer comes in, enquires about a film camera or service, finds out the shop has nothing to offer, and walks out saying they will do business with such and such an online firm that does offer film equipment and services.

Yea, we have that issue here, very few stores that specialize in film, but they exist. We got our Rebel 2 from one of them, I was shocked how cheap it was. They seem busy, every time I'm there, I see another customer, which is good. Low overhead too. I hope they survive the recession. 

7 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

This trend has been growing long enough for it to look like more than just a flash in the pan. People want something that their mobile phones can't already give them. I still think that film will survive. Prices and supply might be a bit worrisome for a while. Just keep shooting film if you can afford a bit every now and then.

Still film isn't going anywhere, it's very profitable. They could DOUBLE the price of still film and it wouldn't phase anyone because it's already so cheap. So $20/roll and each roll is 8ft ish? That's 125 loads off a single 1000ft roll. That's $2500 bux! Close to triple the cost of a 1000ft roll of 35mm motion picture film. The problem isn't still film, we are cinematographers, the problem is motion picture film. 

If Kodak isn't selling 80M feet a year, if the demand drops to 40M feet let's say, they will not find it profitable to make motion picture film anymore. I'd love to keep shooting film, but even the 40k + feet of film I buy yearly, has no impact on the grand scheme of things. They need more people and they will lose customers as the price increases. 

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As a side note. 

I'm an idiot and I forgot about Oppenheimer. 

Kodak is making millions of feet of black and white negative and print stock for this movie. Maybe that's why color negative has been so hard to come by. They probably haven't made a few million feet of black and white negative in decades. Usually they make small batches of black and white, but with 65mm, they have to make A LOT more of it. 

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.......is there a case for saying the cost of a mayor film shot on digital is escalating at a rate higher than people care to admit given the amount of people and hardware needed to run those big cameras......

interesting that the film v digital debate brushed aside as 'boring' by some of the top dogs is just always always there.....

.....perhaps the future of motion picture film is brighter than we dare think...

Edited by Stephen Perera
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5 hours ago, Giray Izcan said:

Stephen, all the hardware and people to run these cameras are still substantially cheaper than film. Also, you really don't need all that much stuff to shoot with digital. 

By 2016 the cost and quality of digital was good enough where shooting film was not as important. 

Today, especially with all the new cameras, digital's benefits outweigh the negatives, especially with the ability to record back to film and project that way if you so choose. "Joker" really opened so many filmmakers eyes to how good digital acquisition and film projection can make a movie look. I had hoped that model would have taken off, but alas looks like it hasn't yet. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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3 minutes ago, Giray Izcan said:

I didn't know they printed Joker on film. Do you know if they scanned the ip for blu ray release? I knew about Dune but not the Joker. Dune's blu ray is from the ip for example. 

They made film prints of Joker, it was not part of the finishing process like Dune. They did not capture the IN to make the bluray. 

The 70mm prints of joker were part of the deal the director made to compensate for lack of shooting on 65mm, which was their initial intent. The prints were one of the best 70mm record-outs I've ever seen. Tenet was the 2nd best of all time, just incredible record-out's. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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On 6/9/2022 at 7:46 AM, Giray Izcan said:

Stephen, all the hardware and people to run these cameras are still substantially cheaper than film. Also, you really don't need all that much stuff to shoot with digital. 

There's always exceptions though and in some situations film can work out at lower cost. Just recently Jim explained in another thread how he was doing a shoot for a high-end ad and brought along his IIC 2-perf. It ended up having a great look and cost him less than hiring an Alexa. Because it was a small amount of film stock used it didn't amount to much cost to the client. It depends on the situation, but sure digital in general is going to be less money. If you've got a good film camera already and don't need to hire it can affect the economics of the situation. I'm just saying that digital isn't always in every situation going to cost less to film with. You don't need much gear to shoot with real film either. Every time I'm tempted to look into it it seems to me that high quality digital is a pretty expensive field too.

Edited by Jon O'Brien
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17 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Every time I'm tempted to look into it it seems to me that high quality digital is a pretty expensive field too.

I would buy a decent digital cinema camera, if there was one I really liked. The older Alexa's aren't high enough resolution and stupid heavy. The smaller cameras need huge rigs to really use on the shoulder. Most of the good ones have super expensive and proprietary storage media, just so they can make a few extra bux. All the decent price, decent color science imagers, are in bodies which suck. List goes on and on. I really liked my original pocket cine cameras, horribly flawed, but somehow if ya worked hard, you could get an amazing image out of them. I'm hoping someday there will be a perfect low-cost camera. I was hoping the Komodo would be it, honestly it could be the closest thing, but scalpers have ruined any hopes of getting one. 

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8 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I would buy a decent digital cinema camera, if there was one I really liked. The older Alexa's aren't high enough resolution and stupid heavy. The smaller cameras need huge rigs to really use on the shoulder. Most of the good ones have super expensive and proprietary storage media, just so they can make a few extra bux. All the decent price, decent color science imagers, are in bodies which suck. List goes on and on. I really liked my original pocket cine cameras, horribly flawed, but somehow if ya worked hard, you could get an amazing image out of them. I'm hoping someday there will be a perfect low-cost camera. I was hoping the Komodo would be it, honestly it could be the closest thing, but scalpers have ruined any hopes of getting one. 

I agree. I never manage to get over the line, into the territory of: yeah, that's for me. Maybe one day the perfect camera will appear. Until then I think I will stick with film.

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1 minute ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Until then I think I will stick with film.

At least with film I don't feel like I'm losing money. With digital, I feel like every second I own a camera, it has to be used or it'll just be irrelevant. 

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I like the economy of film shooters. They know deep within their souls that each frame costs money. They shoot accordingly - and are so efficient. Pretty easy on the color science side of things, too. And film look? It's already in the can.

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4 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

 I really liked my original pocket cine cameras, horribly flawed, but somehow if ya worked hard, you could get an amazing image out of them. 

A lot of people testify to this. I assume you're referring to the Blackmagic 2K Pocket. I almost bought one to use as a DSMC (i.e. a stills camera that is always recording). But it didn't quite have the features I needed.

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13 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

A lot of people testify to this. I assume you're referring to the Blackmagic 2K Pocket. I almost bought one to use as a DSMC (i.e. a stills camera that is always recording). But it didn't quite have the features I needed.

Yea, the 1080p model, they sadly never made a 2k model. 

For 2013 (when I first got it) the damn thing was nuts. Nothing like it on the market, still really isn't honestly. 

I shot so much with mine, they're both beat to crap. I've done dozens of micro doc's, my motocross YouTube series, tuns of short narrative and even a few feature documentaries. I really used them for every ounce until I was just done with 1080p. I actually just started using them again for my current YouTube channel Cinema Repository because they're the only digital camera I had (at the time) of shooting that series. Now I have an R5 that will be eventually replaced with an R5C that takes the mantle for our current shooting. 
 

 

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Tyler, I enjoy your cinema repository episodes, but always wondered about the purplish grade - wondered if it was an aesthetic choice, or if you use some ND that doesn't cut off IR.

Would be great if you could correct (just with an overlay text) some errors, like when you talk about 1.5 min run time at 24fps of a S8 cartridge instead of 2.5 mins. (many young filmmakers now flock to your channel, so it's important to get things right)

Edited by David Sekanina
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10 minutes ago, David Sekanina said:

Tyler, I enjoy you cinema repository episodes, but always wondered about the purplish grade - wondered if it was an aesthetic choice, or if you use some ND that doesn't cut off IR.

Do you mean the set shoot? Yea, haha I only had a 3 week window to shoot 60 episodes. I lit it very fast and in doing so, I made a slight error. My key light which is to the right of the image, I used a silk two feet in front of the 1k source. The silk was reflecting light directly into the lens of the camera. The Rokinon DS lenses are already SUPER pink/warm already. So when you mixed that, with the lack of IR filtering and light directly hitting it, holy crap it bloomed. The viewfinder on the pocket was set for "film" mode, so it was a flat image, with little to no color. I shot for over a week before I checked any footage and whoops, I saw the problem and made a little shield to block it. You'll see some episodes don't have that pink problem, those were shot later in the series. I think I've only published 15 or 16 out of 60, so it will get better over time. For sure not a creative choice. I tried to fix it in post, but it makes the skin tones look bad. I also had another problem, which is the tripod I used, which is designed for 40lb cameras, doesn't quite fit the pocket properly. So sometimes you'd put the camera on the tripod after changing the card and it would shift the iris slightly. I was in such a frantic hurry, I simply didn't notice. So some shows are over unintentionally over exposed and under exposed by several stops. 

Sadly, in the 60 episodes I shot, only around 52 of them are going to be workable. A few of them, I had a camera glitch on one of my cards that I never noticed which damaged the media. I also had two shows where the audio failed mid show, so when I checked the taping in the camera it was fine, but in the middle it wasn't. It's ok, I talked enough and sometime in 2023, I'll start shooting season 2. I hope by then I'll have season one all released! It's a bear to edit because I talked for sometimes multiple hours PER SHOW. So I need a lot of coverup footage. 

10 minutes ago, David Sekanina said:

Would be great if you could correct (just with an overlay text) some errors, like when you talk about 1.5 min run time at 24fps of a S8 cartridge instead of 2.5 mins. (many young filmmakers now flock to your channel, so it's important to get thingsright)

Oh yea, I noticed that mistake fast and replaced the video shortly after I published it with a proper one. You can't add annotations to YouTube anymore, so you have to replace the entire video. 

There are a few other minor glitches here and there in the series, but if there is an error like that, I've fixed it. IDK what happened, I must have mistyped my notes, its happens. It's hard to research in the garage with 4 lights blasting on you, sweating because. the door is closed and there is no AC. So I kinda had to talk fast, work fast from memory. ?

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in general if there is a budget over 5,000  (I'll shoot on film) using kodak film is amazing ...and really I can't describe what it is ..except it's amazing to shoot on..and the feeling you get

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2 hours ago, dio zafi said:

in general if there is a budget over 5,000  (I'll shoot on film) using kodak film is amazing ...and really I can't describe what it is ..except it's amazing to shoot on..and the feeling you get

Budget over 5000 to shoot what tho? A 60 second commercial? 

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