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Supply and demand - the future of film


GeorgeSelinsky

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I have an interesting question. It's a bit hard to determine, like the stockmarket in a way, but I figured I'd venture a discussion of it.

 

As we all know, HDTV is not too far from being introduced on a mass scale as a home viewing format, making that horrid SDTV NTSC obsolete (too bad they still retain 60i in the HDTV spec!). Unless this is followed by the introduction of relatively low cost, high performance HDTV cameras, and the price of high quality digital to film processes seriously plummet, I predict the demand for 35mm film will stay the same or even more likely, go up.

 

In view of higher demand for filmstock, does this mean more or less expensive short ends/recans? I suppose that depends on the price that Kodak sets for its film (which steadily but surely increases at least once every two years), and its given that higher demand always increases price. By that logic it would seem the price of film will go up, therefore the filmstock will become more expensive in short ends and recans, and there will be a higher demand for short ends/recans thereby increasing their price.

 

Anyone else care to comment on the price of ends/recans relating to production situations?

 

- G.

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I predict the demand for 35mm film will stay the same or even more likely, go up.

 

By that logic it would seem the price of film will go up, therefore the filmstock will become more expensive in short ends and recans, and there will be a higher demand for short ends/recans thereby increasing their price.

 

Anyone else care to comment on the price of ends/recans relating to production situations?

 

- G.

I can definitely see prices across the board on film going up, so therefore recans and short ends will go up as well.

I notice alot of film projects apparently being abandoned sadly by the amount of 16mm and 35mm film for sale on ebay.Not just student films either, many of these are coming from film projects that lost funding at the last minute and so forth.

If you are correct,George,if prices continue to rise I predict there will be more HD productions and a bigger push for electronic display at theaters,which is already happening.

There will be a bit of quality suffering, but the hype of HD and electronic projection to a non film savvy public will mean another acceptance of lower quality hyped as progress with all of the buzzwords like "digital" and "High Definition" being tossed around.

Marty

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I can see one thing happening actually, now that I've thought about it. The price of short ends might go DOWN because I'm not sure indie filmmakers would continue shooting film - and they're mostly the ones who buy short ends.

 

I also think it's possible that some more competition might move in. I know that there's a Russian company, Swema, that still produces 35mm MP film (mostly B&W though, they might do color). I would rather shoot that than HDTV, any day (although I hate the look of the older Swema color films). Their B&W filmstock works out to about $0.12/ft new.

 

- G.

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FWIW:

 

Kodak sold a record amount of motion-picture film last year. Well over 10 BILLION feet of film.

 

Kodak Entertainment Imaging still invests about 70% of its R&D budget in FILM related projects, with several new VISION2 films being introduced shortly, and more in the pipeline. B)

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I think you have to look at it in terms of how many new film makers are around. I am sure that there are more film makers on the scene now than say 10 years ago and in 10 years time there will be more too. You also got new channels popping up all the time and more music videos and what-not.

 

35mm will not die anytime soon because of the amount of projectors out there but I would question the validity of 16mm in the years to come. To be honest with the way things are going at the moment in the digital world I would not envisage 16mm being used much at all in 10 years time simply because 35mm will probably drop a little in price as HD cinecamcorders becomes better and more popular. I think 35mm will become the standard where 16mm projects would have done well before.

 

Remember Kodak have also gone into the digital market with DVD production especially. They certainly have not got all their eggs in one basket and that does speak volumes.

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With the risk of sounding luck a stuck record: No film, whatever gauge, will disappear as long as there's a visual difference between it and its so called

replacement. HD is just a new format, not a replacement for anything that was there before.

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John--

 

I'm curious. Of that 10 billion feet of film, how much is negative and how much print stock? 3000 prints of a 10,000' movie is 30,000,000'. With the wider release patterns of movies, I imagine this accounts for a vast portion of the film stock. On the other hand, most film use goes straight to video transfer not theatrical distribution. Just wondering how these numbers break down.

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Is 9.5mm negative stock is still around.

A couple years ago in Paris you could even get Velvia in 9.5mm.

 

35mm's appeal here in 21 Century is not just that it is also the theatrical projection standard, but that it's bulletproof in terms of *all* the display formats one might end up on, including those which don't exist yet.

 

I thin 16/S16 and its future has to be seen somewhat in that light also (2003 was a pretty good year for S16 getting into US movie theaters - more S16 origination than HD origination happened...)

 

OTOH, HD is mounting a real challenge in made-for-TV, and some new stuff is gonna break through in Electronic cameras in the next year.... I think EK & Fuji WILL have to keep some kind of lid on pricing...

 

-Sam

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16mm is not going to go away for a while for the same reason that standard def video cameras are not going to go away even after hi-def arrives. Because whenever there is a standard -- lets' say, 35mm and Hi-Def -- there will be someone wanting to use a cheaper alternative to that standard.

 

Plus modern emulsion designs and modern telecines, digital intermediates, etc. all keep making 16mm look better and better. Look at all the TV shows shooting in Super-16 instead of 35mm, like "The O.C.", "The Shield", "The Division", "Scrubs", etc. -- they didn't all switch to 24P video when they decided to not spend the money on 35mm. As long as they are saving money over 35mm, there is not a big incentive to save even more money by using consumer standard def 24P video such as the DVX100.

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mmm an intiresting topic. pretty much all i could add is, is i look at it this way film has had about 100 years to be perfected and digital is relatively new compaired to the age of digital. if it has lasted this long, no mater the format, ide say its still gonna be around for quite some time. however that is not to say that digital formats do not provide a bad source to creat film on, rather a different look. about prices, ide predict a slight increase in the codt of both 16 and 35mm. but hey im just a guy. :)

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As i think scanning technologies is just a matter of computer growing.

4k technology will be edited in a personal computer without compression in a near future.

Nearer than you could think.

this means in very few year we will be able to scan s16 to a 4k, 6k or 8k quality.

i don´t think sony will be able to make a HHHD camera with this results.

S16mm will become a regular production standard and S35 will be a luxury for big budget.

everything will have a digital intermediate method

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As much as I'm fond of Super-16, I hope it doesn't become the standard over 35mm. I've been hoping for years to see the return of 65mm and now I've got to be worried about Super-16 replacing 35mm as the standard???

 

No, we've got to aim higher and look to see better stocks improve both formats. Anyway, I've shot features in 35mm with budgets of $100,000 so I can't see Super-16 becoming the norm for everything but the biggest budgets.

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I get alot of questions about the future of film and Digital and the best analogy i can think of is this:

 

You can go out and buy a Roland Digital Keyboard for $3000 and 99.9% of the population will not be able to pick that they're listening to a keyboard and not a live piano. But pianists all over the world still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Bosendorfer and Steinway pianos. That's not to say Roland Keyboards aren't any good - they're great, but they exist to satisfy a different market.

 

Film is the only art medium that hasn't had an industrial revolution. Painting had it at the turn of the century, music had it in the 50s and neither medium is worse off for it.

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Certainly the majority of the film volume is print film. But the same machines coat both products, so the economies of scale come from ALL film products. Motion Picture Color negative film is still a very healthy market.

... and I'm sure Kodak, naturally, is doing its best to keep it that way. Does anyone have an idea on Fuji's market share?

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I get alot of questions about the future of film and Digital and the best analogy i can think of is this:

 

You can go out and buy a Roland Digital Keyboard for $3000 and 99.9% of the population will not be able to pick that they're listening to a keyboard and not a live piano. But pianists all over the world still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Bosendorfer and Steinway pianos. That's not to say Roland Keyboards aren't any good - they're great, but they exist to satisfy a different market.

 

Film is the only art medium that hasn't had an industrial revolution. Painting had it at the turn of the century, music had it in the 50s and neither medium is worse off for it.

Interesting analogy. While piano music for centuries required an actual piano, various synthesizers have replaced a huge part of the market. Yet there are many classical mechanical pianos still made every year, although the numbers are far smaller than in the past. And far more people have access to a form of keyboard then ever before.

 

Before the mid-1800s, the only was to reproduce an image was by painting (or drawing, sculpture, etc.). With the photography suddenly the need for portraiture painting dropped dramatically, and the "industry" as it was declined greatly. There were still some but relatively few that made a living painting portraits. Painters were also freed to use their skills in other ways and this gave birth to the various art moments of the last 150 years. And while it is decidedly fewer, there are people who paint.

 

When motion picture technology first came about, it took a relatively short time to become an exibition industry. But its use by the masses took until the mid-thirties, largely with Kodak's introduction of the 16mm format. I'm sure David & John can correct me with details here, but the point is the same. While 35mm never was of much use to the consumer as an aquisition format due to the expense, 16mm thrived as a consumer format for about three decades. 16mm declined as a consumer format with the introduction of 8mm and then Super-8 film formats in the fifties and sixties. Yet people still worked in 35mm and 16mm was widely popular as an industrial format for research, low-cost distribution and newsgathering. 16mm remained popular for these industrial purposes up into the early eighties, when portable video gear finally began to overtake it. Portable video equipment was first introduced in the early seventies and some consumers and artists did use it, but it took more than a decade before consumer-level equipment became available. Super-8 sales declined as consumer video became affordable.

 

Film as an art medium certainly has had an industrial revolution, and each format of the medium keeps getting bumped up as a new, generally lower-quality and lower-cost format comes along. People made feature films in 35mm until 16mm came along and then they tried to make feature films with that. Then Super-8 came along and they tried to make features in that format. Then video and people tried to make features in the new medium. But the older formats continued to improve along the way and people continued to make movies in them.

 

There was a time where all motion image capture was in 35mm film -- feature films, newsgathering, industrial/scientific, even some home movies. Now 35mm is generally reserved for the most expensive commercial production of entertainment and certain scientific uses. In all the other areas, cheaper technologies have replaced it, and arguably for the better (such as the immediacy of newsgathering in video). So 35mm use is now for the elite few, just as is a Steinway piano.

 

Perhaps a better candidate for industrial revolution is the exibition technology and paradims currently in place. 35mm as a projection format is bulky and expensive. Film prints cost thousands of dollars each and are expensive to ship. Digital projection technology continues to improve, although it also exacerbates a huge issue with piracy. As John freely noted earlier in this thread, the much larger portion of Kodak's motion picture product is in print stocks. A large Hollywood production may use 300,000' (30:1 shooting ratio) of 35mm film to shoot a movie, but then use 30,000,000' to distribute it (3000 prints @ 10,000' each). This is an area ripe for a technological revolution, and everyone in the industry including Kodak knows it.

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These are interersting analogies but i would not compare

film stock production to piano production

 

first of all digital keyboards like rolands and kurzweils depend

on real pianos because they make sound samples from

recordings of a real piano...

so for every new keyboard there needs to be a piano

to make it work.Digital cinematography does not need

film for it to exist.

 

Secondly,pianos are used by individuals,or schools,and they

don't expect pianos to pay off directly,

whereas film studios expect that this exposed film stock will get

them large amounts of money,and they invest millions in films.

And digital would get them much more money in some cases.

This is the problem.

 

And pianos are not made in a mass production,plus

a piano is something that is made because of the tradition,

and it is made in a traditional way.Nobody is going to try and find

new ways of making a piano lighter by using some plastic materials instead

of wood,and nobody is going to introduce an electrical hammer

mechanism that would be ajdustable to play lound or soft no matter how hard

you hit. Why?Because pianos are ment to be manufactured the way they

are traditinally done as long as they are manufactured.

Film's goal is not to produce a softer 70's look image,its goal is

to be improoved in the future making pictures look more close to realitty.

Piano indsutry does not have an ultimate goal.

 

I would compare film vs digital more to technicolor vs. eastmancolor.

the outcome might not be the same,film could (i sure hope so) end up

as a moving image grand piano,in other words continue to be used but

by those who can pay for it.

Of course technicolor had far weaker chances to continue to exist

than today color negative film does,but i think there is an analogy there.

 

Because again we have studios that could possibly settle for less

in order to get more money.

 

The most optimistic scenario of the future i think,would be that

the digital "revolution" grows until it has an even share of the

production as the film has,so whoever prefers what,can use it.

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The thing that is always ignored in these types of discussions, is the dramatic rise in human population.

 

All these "film vs. video" arguments, about what is going to die, how many people are shooting on what format, and who prefers what, always assume a constant population of shooters (and audience for that matter) being split up amongst the different shooting standards, equipment, etc., and this goes for all art & technology.

The population of the planet as almost double in my lifetime, and I'm 46.

This is why a Britney Spears' song can outsell a Beatles song, even though the beatles song has had a 40 year window of opportunity to sell.

Those of you that are my age, know that damn near EVERYONE was buying Beatles records when they came out, yet Britney Spears sells to a fairly narrow demographic, yet sells multi-millions of units. There is simply a larger pool of buyers, so a smaller percentage of them outweighs the fact that maybe 70% of the population in 1966 bought a Beatles record.

(I'm pulling these numbers out of my a** for demostration purposes, but you get the point.)

 

I'm not saying that the population increase is directly proportionate, to the point that it's a wash, but the fact is there are many, many more people doing EVERYTHING on the planet, and you have to factor that into the equasion.

 

That's why in spite of the fact we have all these new DV cameras, etc., there are still tons of people shooting film, and even people starting out that are picking up Super 8 and 16mm cameras for the first time; people younger than the cameras they shoot on!!!

And the piano business is doing quite well I might ad, not just Steinway's, but low end student instruments.

(by the way, you might not be able to tell a real piano from an excellent digital one on a recording, but you can tell when you're sitting there playing one).

 

Matt Pacini

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Trouble is if you're hoping for theatrical distribution, there hasn't been an increase in the number of features being distributed -- in fact, it is MUCH lower than it was in the height of the studio system.

 

And as the population increases, the more expensive it gets to advertize a film just to get people aware that it's out there -- so you run into the same problem with the home video market. It's larger in terms of titles released than the theatrical market, but it's nothing compared to the number of people making movies. Because, ultimately, what's the point of merely stacking every title ever made in your video store if no one rents it because no one has ever heard of it? So we have more and more "micro-markets" for films, which is a good thing, but it's harder to market to them and it's harder to make money from them.

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Good point David.

I forgot about the fact that up to the 50's, there was something like 5 times as many films distributed as there are now, which is amazing, and even bizarre, really.

 

Maybe we should bring back the studio system, eh?

har har!

 

I can think of several reasons why not as many studio films are made:

 

1. TV has cut into a lot of it, because you can sit at home and watch mind numbing sitcoms or reality shows or whatever instead of going to the theater for visual entertainment.

 

2. Ticket prices are WAY too expensive!!!

 

3. Under the studio system, stars were on salaries, so films cost much less. Now, it's just ridiculous. I mean, Julia Roberts $20 million, Be Afflect $11 million (might be more now), etc.

I read about when they made The Beach (horrid movie, by the way), half the budget was DiCappria's fee.

 

Matt Pacini

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