Where are we at with film??

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Is film use holding steady or on the decline for big budget and indie use? 

 

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Edited June 16, 2023 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Giray Izcan]

Film use is at niche level at best despite its resurgence. The projects on film tend to be for vanity and artistic music videos and fashion films mostly on 16 followed by s8 sprinkled with a few features on s16 and some 35. 

[Uli Meyer]

29 films at the Cannes film festival this year where shot on film. Those are the selcted films. Not sure how many films shot on film were not selected. Nevertheless the highest number in a while. Film may be a niche but that niche seems to be holding steady.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Uli Meyer

[Aapo Lettinen]

indie productions have the biggest issues with film I think because the logistics and higher lighting budgets are not possible to arrange and the performance benefits of digital greatly outweight the artistic advantages of film origination.

there it the thing though that if using most of the budget for securing true film origination, then there is less money to use for all the other aspects and thus the movie is likely to be lower quality in the end (for not having balanced the budget correctly and thus for example has less shooting days than needed, less lighting budget and crew than needed, etc.)

for ultra low budgets the current camera availability is very problematic, it is just so tough to get a good enough quality sync sounc camera body on a budget. really limits what low budget indie filmmakers can do. Availability of the film stock itself can be an issue as well but much less so than the camera body issue.

On the last low budget shoot I did the lighting budget only allowed shooting at ISO 2000 or more. My regular iso for lit scenes was 4000 and for most indie persons it would be tough to get enough lighting gear and crew to shoot lower than 640 or 800 ISO.  if one needs from 3 to 10 times more lighting gear to shoot on film it really limits what one can do in low budget levels, especially because more gear needs lots more crew as well and there is serious limitations in available electric power one can have on these budget levels (usually one is limited to from 2kw to 6kw maximum in most situations by my experience. If on gennies the maximum power I could have is usually from 1.5 to 4kw and if having 3 phase wall power it can be possible to have from 6 to 9kw. I have about 15kw worth of lights but never have enough power to run them all at the same time).  So I would say, if it is true film and cannot be lit at under 4kw to 6kw then it likely won't happen in low budget shoots and one needs to switch to digital on that scene, questioning if the other scenes make sense to shoot on film then anymore...    I like to shoot multi format so love to use film for day ext and digital for everything else if necessary but it very easily leads to the whole project to be shot in digital if digital is needed for half of it anyway

Edited June 16, 2023 by aapo lettinen

[Giray Izcan]

Luckily, film is holding steady amd I'm grateful for that bit I agree with Aapo. Many projects sacrifice a lot to be able to shoot on film which is a disservice to the film in my opinion. It only makes sense to shoot on film, if you know you can afford to shoot every angle/size you may need without sacrificing from locations etc. 

[Uli Meyer]

Not one to miss a chance to show my latest short ?

We had a limited lighting budget for this two day shoot but with the 500T stock, less was almost more. Luckily I own the camera and some of the gear that was needed. You can make shooting on film work if you plan for it. Most of the time we did one take and moved on. I'm not saying that one should do this on a feature film level but I'm sure that if the story fits, film is always worth considering.

 

[Brett Allbritton]

I love your short, Uli! Very fun.

[Raymond Zrike]

On 6/16/2023 at 1:04 PM, aapo lettinen said:

On the last low budget shoot I did the lighting budget only allowed shooting at ISO 2000 or more. My regular iso for lit scenes was 4000 and for most indie persons it would be tough to get enough lighting gear and crew to shoot lower than 640 or 800 ISO.  if one needs from 3 to 10 times more lighting gear to shoot on film it really limits what one can do in low budget levels, especially because more gear needs lots more crew as well and there is serious limitations in available electric power one can have on these budget levels (usually one is limited to from 2kw to 6kw maximum in most situations by my experience.

I’m confused where all your light is going? I don’t really have much issue exposing for film, even the slower stocks like 200T. Just some rough math—Arri quotes (for the 650W Plus) 110 fc at 9.8’ full flood and 544 fc at 9.8’ spot while Kodak’s spec sheet for 200T says it requires just 50 fc at f/2.8. That seems like plenty to me, even with diffusion. 650W is definitely a budget light—bought a couple for $200 recently. You can have a few of those on a basic household circuit. Add on the fact that Super Speeds are fine at T2+, and I’ve got Ultra 16s which are fine wide open at T1.3. I’ve even shot 500T with household bulbs.

Admittedly, I like my lighting very straightforward and unadorned—I point a couple lights at a person and shoot, basically. Other people may want much more light, much further away, and pointed 180 degrees away from the subject or something, but that isn’t usually the vibe I go for and thankfully that keeps the lighting budget moderately low, even when shooting on film.

And you might run into budgetary issues if you’re trying to light much larger spaces, but then you can’t really call that low-budget filmmaking anymore anyway.

As for camera costs, I’ve had my SR3 with HD tap on Sharegrid in NYC since the beginning of the year at the lowest price I’ve seen in LA/NYC (will be off the market for a couple months now as I shoot a feature). I get about two rentals per month, which is alright, but not a ton. I think it is simply just the cost of the stock that holds low-low-budget productions back. Music videos tend to be able to afford film because they have such short runtimes with low shooting ratios, but narrative work is where it gets tight. But that really is only a problem for the very budgetarily starved (i.e. any production that defaults to shooting on a Blackmagic camera). For a production that is in the Alexa/Venice price bracket, film, especially s16, isn’t much of a budgetary change. That’s why you see so many of these low-budget-but-not-Blackmagic-low-budget movies that go to Cannes pick film.

[Uli Meyer]

5 hours ago, Brett Allbritton said:

I love your short, Uli! Very fun.

Thank you Brett! ?

[Aapo Lettinen]

3 hours ago, Raymond Zrike said:

I’m confused where all your light is going? I don’t really have much issue exposing for film, even the slower stocks like 200T. Just some rough math—Arri quotes (for the 650W Plus) 110 fc at 9.8’ full flood and 544 fc at 9.8’ spot while Kodak’s spec sheet for 200T says it requires just 50 fc at f/2.8. That seems like plenty to me, even with diffusion. 650W is definitely a budget light—bought a couple for $200 recently. You can have a few of those on a basic household circuit. Add on the fact that Super Speeds are fine at T2+, and I’ve got Ultra 16s which are fine wide open at T1.3. I’ve even shot 500T with household bulbs.

I need to light relatively large spaces with limited lighting budget and electric power. the electricity is usually the biggest limitation as for example tungsten lights are pretty cheap nowadays. Sometimes diffusion or bouncing eats up light but in most cases it is just that I need to use a 575 hmi instead of a 4k and light 150m of river background at night with that single 575 , using battery leds and something like one 150w cob led for everything else to cover an 150m times 150m set with only that small kit, etc.  Another issue is extremely small crews which seriously limits how much gear I can haul to difficult to access locations, on the river example I could also have one genny because of that and could only use one 575 hmi when I could otherwise had take 3 of them.The latest project is not ready yet so cannot post images of all the scenes, this is the only one released of it at the moment but you can see what kind of style I am often after for night ints:

 

There is a 2k blondie outside with a small piece of 1/2 diffusion to control the spread and softness and the room has a small bounced tungsten unit on key side ( I think it was a 650 or 800 on this one) and a bounced 575 is for cold ambience/fill on the right side (tuned down by only partially bouncing to get to the correct low-ish level and could get the same fill effect with a 100w led instead). But this is basically what I can get with at iso 4000 and around T2.8 with a 2k outside the window. It is not that much of light in the end, the room eats it all when you try to get it nice looking instead of just using a pointy light without any alteration and very close like would be needed with 200 iso film I could shoot this on... additionally I could not see anything through the viewfinder then ?

Edited June 19, 2023 by aapo lettinen

[Nathan Walters]

I've noticed film starting to make a very successful comeback in my market of Atlanta, due to some very successful efforts from KODAK Film Lab Atlanta. Primarily through heavy efforts to push practical education in how to handle film.  The truth is, most people my generation or later (I'm 32) would LOVE to be shooting on film if there were better resources in how to do so. And it seems those resources are starting to catch up with the next generation.

[Jon O'Brien]

Was in Melbourne the other day and was delighted to see Super 8 film for sale in a vending machine, outside a shop (closed at the time) that specialises in real film. Not just the usual suspects but Tri-X and Ektachrome as well. I hope this business survives and does well. They sell t-shirts promoting real film and many other items too.

https://filmneverdie.com/

Lots of younger people would love to shoot film. The interest is there. The older generations sort of got seduced too much by the digital sirens I think, and in a lot of ways never bothered to look back. In spirit at least film is thriving.

[Jon O'Brien]

Nice shot aapo! Great lighting and framing.

[James Compton]

I'd say film is alright, will be be just fine. Mike Brown, the Southeastern US Kodak rep holds seminars locally to help spread celluloid gospel. Shouts out to Kodak Lab Atlanta for keeping it soupy. 

 Regarding, lighting film on a budget.. Utilize practicals more as accents that boost exposure on a supplemental level. I remember reading an interview with Conrad Hall ASC in ASC mag. He emphasized the importance of getting your T stop at least somewhere in the frame and not fussing about the rest too much. He said you can use a tiny fixture or a big one - it doesn't matter. One neat little trick for extending an light source from outside through a window, is to rig a window stretcher. This is done to boost the light from a 2K outdoors, going into a room. Put a Kino Flo or similar fixture above the window on the inside, pointed at the talent. Apply gels and diffusion to balance the smaller fixture to the outdoor fixture. Et voila.

    Uli mention 29 SELECTED film in Cannes that are shot on film. Then you have TV shows that are shot film. Season 1 of 'WINNING TIME' was epic, and here is the trailer for Season 2, as well as the behind the scenes footage of 'ASTEROID CITY'.

 

 

 

[Raymond Zrike]

1 hour ago, James Compton said:

Then you have TV shows that are shot film. Season 1 of 'WINNING TIME' was epic, and here is the trailer for Season 2, as well as the behind the scenes footage of 'ASTEROID CITY'.

And the best show of the last ten years (in my opinion, since Breaking Bad): Succession. 

[James Compton]

Good show. HBO has a soft spot for film origination, it keeps me coming back for more. Right when people think all the shows have stopped shooting on film, a new one pops up. 

[Tyler Purcell]

My personal observations are of course a bit bias, as I'm pretty heavily involved in the film world. However, I've seen some very distinct changes recently. 

- I'm seeing more decent cameras for sale then we have in a long time, but they are NOT selling.  The prices are crazy and the demand for those crazy prices, are dwindling. 

- I'm seeing rental houses selling inventory again. I have serviced cameras from two rental houses, who are selling film cameras, they purchased a few years ago. Both are dumping their 35mm packages and a few 16mm packages, but keeping some film presence. 

- Kodak has a lot of inventory. This observation may be completely useless, but just a few short years ago, it was difficult to get film at all. Today they have a lot of inventory sitting around. Now they did add more employees, but I believe that's because of some high profile productions needing wide formats and lots of production stock for huge Hollywood blockbusters. I don't think it has anything to do with the typical film crowd so to speak. 

- Still film's increased price has clearly pushed a lot of people away from shooting. I have noticed a precipitous change in the local still film labs business. In years past, they were hammered with work, sometimes a line out the door on a Tuesday afternoon. Today, they're pretty dead. I've spent time conversing with friends who do still film only and they've all been scrounging around for cheap film to keep shooting.

- Fotokem is the number one lab in the US. I spend a great deal of time there and honestly this year outside of Oppenheimer, they've been pretty quiet, according to them. I think they're happy to have the time necessary for Oppenheimer, but at the same time, I'm worried due to how quiet they are. Even last year, they were slamming. You'd hear the processor bells most of the day shooting the shit at will call. I will say Spectra does seem pretty normal, but Doug has diversified the company a bit, so his scanning business is absolutely his bread and butter. Fotokem no longer does telecine one off transfers anymore either. They use to have a great deal for $250/hr to get something quickly transferred to disc. Now it's $800/hr for a scan. Spectra is $525/hr and their machine (DFT Scanity) is excellent.

- The service business is hopping, we've been slammed this year, but as I said above, I'm getting a lot of "let me have someone look over the camera before I sell it" people. Both in the Arri/Moviecam 35mm world and the Aaton/Arri 16mm world. I've done more A Minima's then I can remember and lots of LTR/XTR's. Just in the last few months, bunch of SR's went across my desk as well. Nearly all of them I've seen for sale on Ebay/Forums/Facebook.  It's disheartening to see people sell their cameras, but at the same time, hopefully the new owners will love them. Most of the 35mm cameras are rental houses and private owners who are doing professional shows. That business doesn't go away, it's pretty steady. It's just, the more consumer people, they're getting out in my opinion, trying to get top dollar whilst they can.

So those are my observations and over-all, outside of the million dollar production world, I do see the film business recessing in the coming years. Mainly due to price hikes, which are coming for motion picture soon like they did for still film earlier this year. I also see lab prices increased a bit, which means people can't afford to shoot as much film. I have to say, I fit into both categories myself, so do many of my friends. 

Will this hurt Kodak? No, they make their money on the big shows. Us little guys are such small potatoes to them, the fact they even answer our phone calls is amazing. At the same time tho, I'm worried because it's the young people who are going to keep film going and if they can't afford to shoot on it, then why would they push for it in future? We've had a decade of film resurgence, it's been awesome honestly and I think we have another decade in front of us. But unlike the vinyl record industry which is a finished product you purchase, that can be played back on mediocre hardware and be ok, I don't think film has the staying power of any other analog consumer formats. Digital has come a long way in the last decade, even though many of us prefer the look of film. That may not be enough to keep it going. As the current fleet of top filmmakers start to retire over the coming years, we need to see if the young ones take over their places and continue shooting film. We need to see if there are alternatives to Kodak's monopoly on the market, maybe someone will actually release something competitive in the next decade. But there is a threshold that I believe we have reached, where film is just slightly out of touch for so many people, they don't even try. That is my chief concern. I've seen it more and more as the years have progressed and one could say "get more money" but the reality is, eventually the show just needs to be made and GOOD digital cinema cameras are dropping in price so fast, sometimes it makes me wonder if buying one is a waste of money. 

For the time being, I'm continuing to shoot on film. Even capturing every day life on super 8 on occasion for fun. In fact we just got a EOS 1, something that will up our game a bit in the stills business. We also got a decent 35mm still scanner, so we have an entire workflow in-house. Not a horribly expensive investment, but doubling down on a future of film is something we've done for the last few years and it's paid off, so why not continue? 

 

[Jon O'Brien]

Yeah .... but, .... film was always expensive. It was when I started as a 12 year old. Almost no one shot movies because it was all so expensive. I had a good job in the school holidays so could afford to shoot on Super 8 every now and then. Virtually no one and I mean no one shot on 16mm unless it was a TV station .... or maybe at the Film & Television school at North Ryde in NSW. On extremely rare occasions someone at an amateur moviemakers club would have a 16mm camera and everyone else sat in the darkness as the 16 mil projector rattled away watching on movie nights with jaw-dropped amazement at the crystal-clear clarity of the 16mm ... and dreamed of one day owning such a camera (and a projector, and to be able to afford the film, etc). I actually think there's more young people potentially able to shoot Super 8 today than there was years ago. But on the other hand there's a recession happening .....

I still say film will be fine.

[Aapo Lettinen]

3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

- I'm seeing more decent cameras for sale then we have in a long time, but they are NOT selling.  The prices are crazy and the demand for those crazy prices, are dwindling.

I think the issue with most today's camera offerings is that they are either overly expensive known-to-work ones (pay from 4 to 5 times what the camera is actually worth), OR they are scraping-bottom-of-the-barrel unknown condition or known-to-be-broken-in-some-way ones (pay only two or three times what the camera is worth).

So one either needs to pay 4 or 5 times the money the camera is worth to get a good one + still spend some money to a checkup, OR take a huge risk on still overpriced even when in unknown condition ebay camera which is certainly broken in some way and the question just being if it can be repaired or not. In most cases the ebay cameras are in so bad condition that one would do some very serious restoration work and have a spare body to take parts from to get the mechanics in good condition.... and this is considering that the electronics would work. if the electronics are NOT working then it is shooting in the dark, one never knows if ever getting the camera actually running to shoot with it even if it is mechanically perfect. the old electronics are just a huge PITA and even if managing to getting them repaired they may fail you again next week so one can't plan any expensive serious shoots with the camera unless having a fully working spare body available.

This combination of overpriced cameras which are also in very bad condition at the same time hurts the whole film shooting community I think and is one of the biggest reasons why "young people" may not want to take the risk of trying to get a working 16mm sync sound capable camera setup and instead either go to digital or try to manage with some very simple entry level camera like K3 to be able to shoot even SOMETHING, anything, on film.

Maybe some co-op could restore couple of dozen basic sync sound cameras like NPR or 16BL or similar, maybe as a kickstarter project, to get ACTUALLY WORKING 16mm cameras to the new shooters for relatively affordable price and have some kind of guarantee and warranty that they indeed work and are serviced and tested.

I mean, no one wants to spend his/her years savings to a camera kit which has been in storage for 30 years and needs a month of work and another camera body worth of spare parts to get working well enough to shoot anything with it? If not being able to repair it by yourself the risk is just too huge and it may become very expensive lesson without any guarantee that you would even have a working camera in the end, it can all go to waste too ?

personally I like to try to repair my own camera by myself and can make new electronics for them so it is not necessarily a huge financial risk to purchase a unknown camera body but it is still a serious undertaking and I will still need to purchase two or three cameras to get a single working one mashed up from them.

[Raymond Zrike]

3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Fotokem is the number one lab in the US. I spend a great deal of time there and honestly this year outside of Oppenheimer, they've been pretty quiet, according to them.

Things are slow right now in general. Rental houses I've talked to have said so, across the board (film and digital). There's a strike going on after all. And a quasi-recession.

Regarding Kodak stock, they definitely don't seem to have the shortages like they used to, but 7213 400' has been out of stock at B&H for a while. Kodak hasn't been responding to my emails about the stock either. Will be calling them this week.

[Aapo Lettinen]

another matter is that if the camera kit is lacking in some way and is too expensive for the filmmaker, then it is pretty challenging to plan and execute any actual projects with it and one may end up making just some single roll "camera test short films" which are not actually even movies, just something one scrapes together to get an excuse to shoot at least SOMETHING with the camera.

but yes, if a poor-ish indie filmmaker can manage get hands on a working 16mm sync sound camera after saving and hunting one down for years, it is likely still lacking in some way (bad ergonomics / unreliable / poor viewfinder / noisy / missing important accessories / weird lens mount so one cannot use the lenses one wants / etc) and that limits its usability so much that the said filmmaker will still not have much use for it even when using so much time and money and effort to get that camera kit.

------

Personally I think that mixing film and digital on the same projects is the only way the film can survive in low budget world and it can actually make extremely good use of both mediums

[Raymond Zrike]

1 minute ago, aapo lettinen said:

another matter is that if the camera kit is lacking in some way and is too expensive for the filmmaker, then it is pretty challenging to plan and execute any actual projects with it and one may end up making just some single roll "camera test short films" which are not actually even movies, just something one scrapes together to get an excuse to shoot at least SOMETHING with the camera.

but yes, if a poor-ish indie filmmaker can manage get hands on a working 16mm sync sound camera after saving and hunting one down for years, it is likely still lacking in some way (bad ergonomics / unreliable / poor viewfinder / noisy / missing important accessories / weird lens mount so one cannot use the lenses one wants / etc) and that limits its usability so much that the said filmmaker will still not have much use for it even when using so much time and money and effort to get that camera kit.

Best to rent or borrow a known-working camera in that situation.

[Aapo Lettinen]

2 minutes ago, Raymond Zrike said:

Best to rent or borrow a known-working camera in that situation.

yes it would be better to borrow or rent if one already knows how to use the camera and has used it before, but for new filmmakers trying to get a grasp the basics how to use film cameras it would be needed to have lots more time to just get used to the camera and workflow in which case it would be better to own so that there is time to run tests and learn well enough how to use it and how to build the kit for different shooting scenarios. With rental it is just grab the camera, shoot shoot shoot, return it asap, no time for learning

[Doug Palmer]

14 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

yes it would be better to borrow or rent if one already knows how to use the camera and has used it before, but for new filmmakers trying to get a grasp the basics how to use film cameras it would be needed to have lots more time to just get used to the camera and workflow in which case it would be better to own so that there is time to run tests and learn well enough how to use it and how to build the kit for different shooting scenarios. With rental it is just grab the camera, shoot shoot shoot, return it asap, no time for learning

Agree. It makes a lot of sense to own your camera and really get immersed in it, before tackling a serious project.  Your earlier comments on the non-affordability of sync sound cameras of course are a problem for many of us.  However, I think it should be mentioned that their is always the option of putting a trusted MOS camera inside a blimp.  Bulky yes,  but entirely possible to get good sound if you don't mind a non-handheld camera.  For me the film-look is everything.

[Giray Izcan]

Noone will put up with blimps though... at that point you are slaving yoursepf to the format. Shooting on a format takes a precedence over the film itself..