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Black Magic Design aquire Cintel!


Freya Black

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Interesting times!

 

Black magic have just acquired telecine manufacturer Cintel.

 

Blackmagic acquire cintel

 

This obviously means they are now in a position to bundle cintel scanners with Da-Vinci Resolve.

 

I'm very curious to see how things pan out. Obviously acquiring such a film based company could be seen as just grabbing hold of a bunch of old iron. It depends on how long film can hold out for under the relentless drive of digital.

 

OTOH if Black Magic are successful at quickly bringing the black magic camera out there, the ubiquitous nature of digital camera technology might leave certain parts of the market scrambling for the high end and to assert themselves as quality producers of content. It could make for a great 2 pronged attack!

 

Guess we shall see!

 

love

 

Freya

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I think it is a great 2 pronged attack-- not to mention the fact there probably always will be some market for archival film scanning which they could focus on-- though I doubt that's really a profit generating area.

 

Also this comment on the page is really interesting and true:"What is hurting film is the one thing that should have been saving film, low budget filmmakers cannot always afford the highest quality film to digital transfers. It will be interesting to see if BlackMagic can overcome this one issue for younger filmmakers who get that making a film, with film, will give them an edge over those who never shoot film."

 

 

 

 

If they can bring out low cost film scanners which even marginally OK 1080P, I think you could see a lot of people getting back into film. I can't tell you how many times We've been great to shoot film, until we have to factor in the cost of a Telecine-- which can often eclipse the entire budget for stock and processing.

 

 

 

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until we have to factor in the cost of a Telecine-- which can often eclipse the entire budget for stock and processing.

Have I not been saying it for years. It's less true in the UK where the availability of short ends is effectively zero and everything's more expensive anyway, but the cost of telecine is always a significant chunk of the cost of shooting film.

That said, I'd be cautious about the assumption that BMD are going to make telecine hardware dramatically cheaper in the way they've done with software. There is a real engineering effort in doing even marginally acceptable film handling which is not easily reducible without compromises in the results that many people would find unacceptable.

P

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That's quite true Phil; but I still hold out a bit of hope-- a bit. They seem to be a company very interested in producing quality at a good and fair price (for the most part). And honestly, a lot of the engineering work has already been done on these particular scanners, so perhaps it's something adaptable. Then again, I am no engineer nor businessman, so I don't know.

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That's quite true Phil; but I still hold out a bit of hope-- a bit. They seem to be a company very interested in producing quality at a good and fair price (for the most part). And honestly, a lot of the engineering work has already been done on these particular scanners, so perhaps it's something adaptable. Then again, I am no engineer nor businessman, so I don't know.

 

It did occur to me that if they could come out with a super16 scanner bundled with resolve at a low price that maybe that could also do interesting things... but we shall have to wait and see.

 

love

 

Freya

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This has to be the best news ever.

 

The whole telecine market has bothered me for years. Both manufactures and actual post houses not listing their price but always the -- request quote BS, wasting everybody's time, I can't stand it. And pushing for tape transfers when we should have had the hard drive option long ago.

Even if the scanner is not going to be super cheap, we will at least have list prices, finally. Thank God or perhaps Grant Petty for that ;)

 

The cost of shooting/developing film is not that big considering the cost for a whole production, and you have always been able to find these prices, so you can actually budget for it.

 

So for us who still prefer film, this is surely a day to be celebrated.

Edited by Alex Lindblom
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This has to be the best news ever.

 

The whole telecine market has bothered me for years. Both manufactures and actual post houses not listing their price but always the -- request quote BS, wasting everybody's time, I can't stand it. And pushing for tape transfers when we should have had the hard drive option long ago.

Even if the scanner is not going to be super cheap, we will at least have list prices, finally. Thank God or perhaps Grant Petty for that ;)

 

The cost of shooting/developing film is not that big considering the cost for a whole production, and you have always been able to find these prices, so you can actually budget for it.

 

So for us who still prefer film, this is surely a day to be celebrated.

 

Ah you are using London based facilities I suspect? Actually I have a bigger issue with the film labs who you contact and you are like, "how much would it cost to develop 4x400ft rolls of 16mm and are there any lab minimums" to which the reply is something like "well what exactly are your requirements?" then telling you what telecine they have. ;)

 

Once you tell them what kind of format you would consider telecine on, they give you an all in one price! ;)

Kinda clear they don't want to process your film unless you buy telecine too.

Result I either go elsewhere or shoot on video.

 

Actually those are the good companies. The others are like "the guy who does film stuff is out today, so I can't give you any prices, ...if you come back tommorow...."

 

Thankfully I think the insistence on weird tape formats seems to be drifting away.

The whole wardour street thing is just a bizzare thing from another time tho.

The kind of companies that proudly list their fax number.

 

love

 

Freya

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I agree that post houses could be massively arrogant, often forgetting who's in charge in a business-customer relationship. Their stubborn refusal to provide scan-to-disk services has been the straw that broke the camel's back on several occasions for me, with the pointless, quality-sapping bounce to tape serving to do nothing more than bulk out the coffers of the facilities house involved.

 

That said, I'm not sure this is going to create a renaissance of film shooting, even if some Chinese plant does start turning out cheap stock for mail order. Not only is there the concern about the minimum possible price for precision engineering, which I mentioned above, but it seems to me that Blackmagic was in a position to acquire Cintel because Cintel's value was comparatively low, and Cintel's value was low because its market was dying.

 

The market is still dying, and this makes me wonder if Blackmagic have other plans for Cintel than the obvious cheap telecine gambit.

 

P

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Hi Freya well this is basically true for every post house in Europe, I have spent several hours going through them all.

 

Yes the old market is definitely dying I mean who in their right mind would go through all this hassle to shot film with all the great affordable alternatives available. And we also have a new generation which actually seem to prefer the digital look, which is beyond me, but that's another question all together.

 

Phil I agree that a renascence is unlikely, but I think, that they at least can build a stronghold, if we get affordable scanning everywhere.

 

I have a 2009 Arri Price List where Arriscan is listed for 330.000 euro and if you want 16mm gate ad 27.500 and Kodak Ice (scratch removal) ad another 40.000 euro, so of course there is no low budget/aspiring market for that.

 

But I also think there are a lot of young people out there that has been inspired by Nolan's Batman trilogy, that would nothing more then shoot film if they just could get their hands on it for relatively affordable price.

 

All that said, I have a feeling that maybe it's little too little too late, the Alexa is getting rally close, and when Fringe changed from film to Alexa last season, I really did care it was close enough, and when I don't care film is going to have a though time...

 

And yet the Great Deakins shot "In Time" on it and it doesn't look bad but it doesn't look quite right either. Is the difference enough to warrant the price of film?

 

I don't know but if I'm on the fence who absolutely love the look of film, then I'm afraid that the days of film starts to look like their last, at least in mainstream TV and Cinema.

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They may have snapped it up just to get their hands on their patents.......

 

precious precious patents!

 

That and to be honest they may just figure that by getting it at a cheap price because it is a market in decline, that in a worst case scenario they can bundle resolve and get more resolve seats out there. Make resolve the standard across the board from high end to low end, and even make something of a profit as the company runs down...

 

love

 

Freya

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The market is still dying, and this makes me wonder if Blackmagic have other plans for Cintel than the obvious cheap telecine gambit.

 

 

I do wonder about that too! It wouldn't surprise me to find that Cintel has some interesting technologies we don't know about. For instance what is Cintel Image Mill?

 

Blackmagic seem like a smart company and I'm sure they will come up with all kinds of synergies.

 

love

 

Freya

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I do wonder about that too! It wouldn't surprise me to find that Cintel has some interesting technologies we don't know about. For instance what is Cintel Image Mill?

 

Blackmagic seem like a smart company and I'm sure they will come up with all kinds of synergies.

 

love

 

Freya

 

 

Okay looked into it and found this article:

 

BMD acquire Cintel

 

So it would appear that not only do cintel own a ton of software technologies but they also went into complete liquidation (didn't know about that!) earlier this year, so Blackmagic almost certainly had a serious bargain price. Probably a no brainer for them.

 

love

 

Freya

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As I briefly mentioned in my other post, it is very much a pipe dream, but how interesting would it be if Black Magic also made a bid to acquire Kodak's film division in bankruptcy courts? Seeing how the missing link for a cost competitive, "film acquisition / digital workflow", for the independent has always been the lack of cost effective high-end scanning and / or high-end telecine solutions (and in some ways, I wish Kodak would have found a way to bundle those two technologies years ago for the pro market). But a company as progressive as Black Magic could have something interesting on their hands if they added Kodak to the mix in their recent acquisition. No? And at least, as opposed to a company like RED for instances, Black Magic are still "pro-film" (I liked the positive statements about film in their press release on the Cintel purchase). And they don't hide behind the fact that film is still the best acquisition material from a grading stand point. They seem like one potential prospect to carry the film torch ... who's up for a petition directed to the CEO of Black Magic?

 

-T

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  • 6 months later...

Happy to find this post. Seems gr8 news.

BMD is surely taking over the Indies market. And hopefully they will manage an affordable scanner for 16mm film.

I own some 16mm cameras and llenses. Still thinking to acquire a BMC when they launch next model.

 

I believe in the importance of both film and digital. And honestly a bit sick of all this DSLR mas****ation that is going over and over. Time to change the game and make Nikon and Canon rethink their strategy. And prices.

Edited by flavio filho
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I agree with everyone who mentioned that telecine/scan is the bottleneck. Although I think it is also still a bit of a problem on the processing end as well. Labs are to blame and they have done nothing to make new filmmakers want to shoot on film.

 

Case in point: I shot a 100' test roll last night just to make sure my camera is fine and check out my new lens. The only place that I found to process it without paying a ridiculous minimum was Pro8mm. Ive heard bad things about their transfers but I dont mind trying them out for processing since they appear to be the only one.

 

I emailed VideoFilmSolutions about their services about two weeks ago and never got a reply. Very nice customer service there. lol

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  • 4 weeks later...

An affordable 16mm film scanner could be a game changer. I know a lot of people interested in shooting film but seem intimidated by the whole process. I think it could bring in a lot of folks who are on the fence. It seems like if Kodak were a little more on the ball they could have done something like this years ago. I sincerely have my fingers crossed, I would pre-order one tomorrow if it were announced.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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I agree with everyone who mentioned that telecine/scan is the bottleneck. Although I think it is also still a bit of a problem on the processing end as well. Labs are to blame and they have done nothing to make new filmmakers want to shoot on film.

 

Case in point: I shot a 100' test roll last night just to make sure my camera is fine and check out my new lens. The only place that I found to process it without paying a ridiculous minimum was Pro8mm. Ive heard bad things about their transfers but I dont mind trying them out for processing since they appear to be the only one.

 

I emailed VideoFilmSolutions about their services about two weeks ago and never got a reply. Very nice customer service there. lol

 

 

??

 

Most labs (Like ours) have a 100' minimum and an order form on the web site, fill out the form, send it in with the film and in a day or two we send it back, I think AlphaCine, Tom at VFS FotoKem etc. all are fairly similar in pricing for 100' of film.

 

100' of Tri-X (for example) will cost you $17.00 to develop at Cinelab plus shipping. We have a 200' minimum for Print so if you want to do a lens test that would be $14 to develop and $40 to print, reasonable considering the price hikes in print stock these days. And a transfer minimum is something we often waive for camera tests. I think labs bend over backwards to help people out shooting film these days. We don't have a fleet of sales people like Tech or DeLuxe or big post houses, I think that economic model is evaporating and with smaller labs when you email or call you are generally talking directly to the technician(s) who run the lab and we are often very busy trying to get work out the door in a timely manor so communication may be delayed compared to a big shop with a ton of sales staff.

 

As to scan cost I think we are all doing as much as is possible to get the cost of scanning down as newer technologies emerge.

 

_Rob-

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