John Gorski

Budgeting is always tough. However, I would guess you'll get your best value staying with a single source. The lab that can process and transfer should be able to distribute their costs and provide you with the best value. You should be able to get the 3600' processed and transferred to hard drive for $1500 to $2000. You don't mention if this is 16 or 35 (16 might be a little cheaper, not much at the lab, just less in stock and package rentals). We would be happy to talk with you, discuss budget, determine the best way to do the project and meet your budget. I would think most labs would be open to the discussion. Good luck.

I'd agree with Rob. The labs currently standing have come through challenging times. If they're still around, they have staying power. But, most importantly, if they're still around it is because they continue to deliver a great product. We continue to deliver a very tight processing line with clean film. We also deliver standard def dailies up to 2K selects. The big labs will give you pricing from $.08 to $.11 but then get you on dailies production. I'd recommend you look at your entire project, let the lab give you a "total" project cost for processing, dailies, sync, final scans. When you the see the bottom number, I will bet the smaller labs (like ours) will be very competitive and probably offer better service and product. It's certainly worth quoting the labs that cater to independent production and don't have the large studio contracts. They will all be happy to talk with you.

I wound 40,000 feet down to two 400' and one 200' for a feature that got a special deal from Fuji. Most of the feature was hand-held, so the need to convert. The trick for us was to roll 600' across (we measured with a frame counter on proper camera cores), can and bag the remaining 400'. Roll back another 400', can and bag. Then we took a few feet and twin checked, placing back in the original can, processed to assure no fogging. Then rolled back the final 200', cut a piece off the front that would get exposed to light, processed for scratch test. We figured that part was handled the most and if we did anything to damage the film, it would show here. When we canned the rolls we labeled with the lot number etc. from the original roll. It was a lot of work, but worked great. All the safety checks we built in became unnecessary. If you count real well in the dark, you can do this.

All good suggestions. They are correct, the lab will supply cores, bags and cans (as we do). We clean the cans, check the bags and put cores in as we process 16 and 35 film. Fotokem, and others, are all great labs. You can also check us out at www.deldenfilmlab.com, 952-888-8855. Sorry for the promotion, just couldn't help myself. We're always looking to help folks in film projects.