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Deluxe Australia to stop neg processing in two weeks


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From Screenhub, an Australian web news service:

 

"Deluxe, the last significant processor of motion picture film stock in Australia, has announced that it will close its Australian film laboratory on April 19th, 2013. Customers have been told they can access services at Technicolor in Thailand, or send stock direct to Deluxe in Hollywood. Local cinematographers are aghast."

 

So now there will be no commercial film processing service in Australia or New Zealand. It had to come of course, but where does it leave local filmmakers who want to shoot on film. Or are there none?

 

 

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I'm sure there are plenty of Australian filmmakers who want to shoot on film, but the reality is that very few do anymore. The occasional music video, student short or experimental film, but that's about it. I'd be curious to know the exact figures, but in the last couple of years I suspect you could count the number of film-originated Australian features on one hand and have fingers left over.

 

I know several film schools that still teach with film cameras and one here in Melbourne that recently invested in 35mm equipment. No doubt the closure of Deluxe will impact on whether the students get to do anything more than just practice loading with them.

 

What's really sad is that when a lab closes, it seems they have directives to trash the equipment. The rental house I work for (which has the largest locally-owned film camera inventory in the country) tried to rescue some of the processing equipment that was thrown out when Deluxe closed their Melbourne branch, only to find it destroyed in pieces in a skip bin and left to rust in the rain. Even vintage splicers and other old machinery that could have found a place in a museum. They didn't even try to sell it, just quietly trashed the lot. I'll be interested to see if Deluxe Sydney do the same.

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All shut down in Toronto as well. Very very sad.

 

Digital may be "convenient" but it sure as heck doesn't look anywhere near as good as film.

 

R,

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This is just so ridiculous, just about to shoot a film on Super 16.

 

I've kinda felt Australians haven't really liked film that much,

Don't get me wrong I know there's people out there that love film as much as I do,

It's just many of the people around me seem to have no clue about film it's all "Yeah RED camera" and "Look at my 5D MKIII".

 

Shipping out of country is only putting the price up on a already pricey medium to shoot on.

 

I wonder if that makes me one of the last people still developing ECN-2 at home for my stills in Australia.

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Shaw Bros Studios / Lab HK (cheap, good and fast).. and close to Australia.. and the nicest people to deal with...!

 

http://www.shawstudios.hk/

I guess you have to learn to move with the times. In this competitive era of FedEx, eBay and Paypal, you can buy just about anything anywhere, with unbelievably fast turnarounds. I regularly buy stuff direct from China with very few problems. I've had custom printed circuit boards made in China in less than a week, for a small fraction of cost of buying just the raw materials in Australia. But when the last local custom PC board manufacturer closed its doors here a few years back, there was endless wailing and gnashing of teeth, it being the end of local electronics manufacturing and so on.

 

Generally, China is a voracious market for big, noisy and colourful images, and it's hard to get that clean hyper-saturated look with anything but film, so I don't seem them abandoning 35mm negative anytime soon. And I don't see a HK lab being any more or any less careful with your precious footage, since they will be used to dealing with big-budget productions.

 

So let's not start wearing the sackcloth and ashes just yet. You may well find that shooting on film becomes more of a practical proposition if you get the processing done offshore.

 

There's a bit more about Deluxe in this Inside Film article:

http://if.com.au/2013/04/04/article/Deluxe-to-close-doors-on-Australian-film-lab-as-the-industry-has-moved-on/KFRFAUASKY.html

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