Recreating/manufacuting old Film stocks

[James Daggy]

Hi guys,

 

I've been burning to ask this question for sometime and see if anyone would actually know about it.

 

There's so much diy going on around here these days.

 

Not that I beleive this could be diy'd completely or could it? doubt it... But maybe a potential kick starter project etc.

 

Some of us just still cant give up the search for that wanted and genuine vintage film look be it from the 80's 70's etc.

 

From my research it's is mostly the stock which can't be had now. Everything else such as lighting, cameras/lenses are still available.

 

Knowing this is probably a task for a small or big manufacture with the tools but would it even be possible to or is it just a dream and something to wait for in the future years of emulation software.

 

Thanks

 

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I believe someone made a DIY coating machine in their garage a few years back. You can do it-- and Kodak I believe still does it. The problem is you can't do small runs and make any kind of profit/do it in any way economically. It only gets mildly affordable with an economy of scale.

[Robert Houllahan]

Kodak has talked about making "vintage" emulsions available, as long as they will run in current chemistry I don't see why a major production couldn't order enough to make it happen.

[James Daggy]

This is great to know it's not something impossible, but what about the chemistry involved? Can this be easily replicated?

 

Is the formula out in the open or can it be got from somewhere?

 

Do you have any idea of figures where talking or can you point towards the person who has already attempted this Adrian?

]

I have done a quick google search and found nothing on this.

 

For peoples interest -

 

A list of film stock history.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motion_picture_film_stocks

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Pretty much any stock which'll work in modern chemistry could be whipped up by any company with the machines. However you're probably not going to get the formula out of Kodak for any of their older stocks.

Also many of their older stocks which used long past processes of development (like VNF) wouldn't be any good unless you also built your own lab.

 

Here's the Flickr of the DIY coating machine:

 

[Robert Houllahan]

Some of the older chemistry is now illegal, especially older color reversal stocks which used Chromium bleach and Cyanide. I will have to ask about ECN-1 and if it would be possible to reproduce, many older color negative stocks will run fine in ECN-2.

 

-Rob-

[David Cunningham]

Kodak has talked about making "vintage" emulsions available, as long as they will run in current chemistry I don't see why a major production couldn't order enough to make it happen.

 

I don't think you'll see Kodak doing that any time soon. Their casual announcement, now a few years ago, that they would produce any film stock requested as long as the request was for a large enough volume, was from before the bankruptcy. Now they are getting away from and downsizing their film production business and focusing on the future of sustainable products such as camera negative film. I bet in the next few years you will even see the demise of intermediate and print films.

 

 

One example of that is the demise of 5272/7272 internegative and replacement with 5273/7273 which is just 5203/7203 camera negative film perfed for internegative printers.

 

Soon you will see the demise of many of the print films as more and more studios refuse to even print their films.

 

One thing we might get lucky with is reversal. Hopefully the new Kodak Alaris group will realize the mistake of discontinuing E100D and bring it back in 35mm so that companies like Pro8mm and Spectra can cut it down to Super 8.

[Steve Switaj]

I don't think it was common knowlege, but Kodak actually used to be pretty good about custom runs.

 

I was on a project years ago, before the era of common high-speed stocks, and we had them cook up a batch of what was, essentially, their new TMAX800 still stock with a rem-jet backing and perfed for cine cameras.

 

I don't think we had to do a ridiculously large run, either. IIRC, it was maybe 80 or 100 thousand feet.

 

And, of course, they were always good about the various specialty VFX stocks, many of which were made in small runs and really weren't part of the "official" catalog.

 

But I think the key back then was that they maintained several coating lines, and could make individual "master rolls" (I think that was the term) that were about 5 feet wide and a couple of thousand feet long.

 

If I recall correctly, all but one coating line is gone now, and the one line that's left in Rochester is tooled to make and use enormous rolls tens of thousand of feet long, so they really don't have all that much capability to do specialty runs anymore.