Kodak, Hollywood talking film guarantees

[Dan Dorland]

 

Elsewhere in the article Universal claimed that their negatives are archived in Philadelphia, but since the prints were what they have for circulation, those would be gone. And getting them to strike new prints from the archived negatives, may be 'problematic', as in, 'need money for such'.

 

Less 'deep pockets' enterprises probably take far less in the way of archives after the project is done.

So is your point that it's too expensive to reproduce movies from archived negatives? Again, we're talking about archiving, as in long-term storage for the future, not the cost of making a bunch of new prints. Archiving isn't nearly as hard as you make it sound. Stick the negs in a fireproof safe, and tuck that in a remote corner of your mother's basement, which will more or less stay the same temperature. 50 years from now, they'll still be there, even if you aren't. OK, not everybody has a convenient mother's basement, but still, it's fairly simple.

[Brian Drysdale]

Currently the best method for long term archiving are black and white colour separations on film. There has been reports on the subject http://www.oscars.org/science-technology/council/projects/casestudy/

 

However, many modern productions will have to take their chances in the digital lottery of hard drive life expectancy and the need for proactive archiving procedures, which may or may not happen. The latter does require ongoing investment of time and money by whoever is responsible and it tends to be larger organisations, which have the resources, However, they don't always make the best decisions.

 

.

[Todd Anderson]

This vintage short documentary / promotional piece showing the manufacturing of film on the Ferrania site may add to David Mullen's quote — the second post in this thread — about why it is difficult to lessen the cost of manufacturing film, beyond the economics of scale and cost of silver, etc. Perhaps there has been some optimization in quality control over the years, but there is no questions it is still a highly sophisticated and costly operation no matter how you look at it.

 

https://filmferrania.squarespace.com/news/the-countdown-begins/2014

 

As an aside, on the same page below the clip, it is also stating that Ferrania is preparing for some big announcements coming in mid-september. So that sounds promising for still and motion enthusiast who have been eagerly awaiting for some new news from italy. I guess at the moment, even with the discontinuation of 16mm A-minima rolls from Kodak, and 200' loads of 35mm, we have some upbeat news from Kodak and Ferrania.

 

-T