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Any film labs in New Orleans?!!!!!!!


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Hey everyone,

 

 

I might shoot a short movie in New Orleans early next year and I want to shoot on film, super 16 or 2 perf 35 mm, and I saw that Cineworks over there had done the film dailies on 12 Years A Slave, Oldboy, etc, but when I saw no new film projects since then in their credits, I sort of wondered if they shut down their film lab and only do digital. I thought I was maybe pessimistic but one of the guys over there just told me they did shut down and only do digital because of lack of work.

 

Great, I saw that Fotokem has a New Orleans office/lab, it says on their website that they do film dailies, all that, but it doesn't say anything about their NOLA based facility, I just sent them an email, but does anyone know if Fotokem NOLA does film dailies? If not, is there a film lab ANYWHERE in Louisiana or close to New Orleans or Baton Rouge, in that vicinity?

 

If not, that would be a goddam shame, and I'm not really comfortable with shipping the film too far away or whatever since this is my first major thing, first time on film, it's important for me to shoot on film but I've been keeping in mind the Alexa, I kinda dread having to wait for a few days to get the film back, in case there's any f**** ups.

 

 

Thanks !

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Thanks for the info, I looked it up late last night and I'm floored, there's only Cinelab, Fotokem and Company 3 basically, THAT'S IT ! This is unbelievable, I looked up some of the latest movies shot on film like Black Mass, and for example, that one had its film dailies done at Deluxe New York, but they closed.....

 

So yeah, for the US, that's it, at least for the main big ones. I have to ask: most of the big movies, like for example lately, they shot most of The Big Short (Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, etc) in New Orleans, how do they handle the film dailies?! Do all those big movies ship the film cans via Fedex or have a guy deliver it directly (when possible) at Fotokem or Company 3?!

 

I thought about the option maybe, but it scares the crap outta me to be shooting down in NOLA, on my first big thing, ship the film over, not having anything for two or three days, with an inherent risk there, what if the film gets flashed even if indicated it shouldn't be, what if it's lost, what if someone screws up?! Atlanta is like a one hour flight from NOLA, so this could be viable, but still not comfortable.

 

Sigh....... Looks like it's going to be the Alexa, this is depressing, thank god Nolan, Tarantino, Scorsese, PT Anderson, JJ and all those guys are keeping those last two big labs and Kodak alive, we need more of those mobile film labs as well. You want to shoot film without being a big production? You better shoot close to Burbank and co.......

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Manu,

 

We're still shooting AND processing ALOT of film here ( The Walking Dead and feature films) in Atlanta. Sure There are only a handful of BIG labs still around. CINEFILM Lab in Atlanta is a legit lab, that is not that far from NOLA. Don't make the mistake of overlooking quality smaller labs with a dedicated, passionate staff to deliver you project on time.

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I actually found your lab after looking all over Kodak, but couldnt edit my post.

 

Tried sending you a PM, but it doesn't work, I'll just put it here:

 

I've seen that you're processing The Walking Dead, so yeah, no doubt that you must be a quality lab.
I'm still uneasy with the notion of sending the film cans away, and having to wait a few days to have dailies.
There's another lab in Atlanta, and they indicate 4 DAYS via UPS from NOLA to Atlanta, and 4 days back, I don't know what your turnaround times are, but unless it's something like sending the film cans at the end of the day and getting dailies online (or on a server or something) the next day or the day after, I don't think I can take the risk.
I really want to shoot film but looking at the Alexa (that can look great, no doubt, and with a nice film-based LUT (with Fotokem there in NOLA), it would probably work just fine, but still, the Alexa is not film, it's just not.
Still, I find the idea of having the convenience, the direct availability, feedback, and peace of mind of digital pretty reassuring.
Edited by Manu Delpech
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There's only Cinelab, Fotokem and Company 3

 

Company 3 doesn't process (Deluxe did processing for them).

 

Also:

Video & Film Solutions

Continental Film Lab

Colorlab

 

Alpha Grip's mobile lab is a great solution to labs closing - for the bigger budget jobs mostly, but they're very friendly and approachable if you have something you'd like them to do. If you reach out to them you could see if they would work with you on processing for your film. Otherwise, it's very very common for shows to overnight dailies to Fotokem. If you got negative insurance you'd be safe in case of error.

Edited by Kenny N Suleimanagich
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FOTOKEM also has a satellite office here in Atlanta. CINEFILM is the only functioning 16/35 mopic lab in this area. A 4 day turnaround is CRAZY. You can ship your film on Monday for delivery on Tuesday morning at 8am and have it processed that same morning. Then telecine or scan and FTP the files to you that same day

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Sigh....... Looks like it's going to be the Alexa, this is depressing, thank god Nolan, Tarantino, Scorsese, PT Anderson, JJ and all those guys are keeping those last two big labs and Kodak alive, we need more of those mobile film labs as well. You want to shoot film without being a big production? You better shoot close to Burbank and co.......

 

I recommend putting in some legwork and research – making some phone calls – for viable options before writing it off completely. Negative insurance and shipping rushes is very common practice today. You can set up an account with UPS and have labels and boxes ready for the end of each shooting day.

Edited by Kenny N Suleimanagich
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FOTOKEM also has a satellite office here in Atlanta. CINEFILM is the only functioning 16/35 mopic lab in this area. A 4 day turnaround is CRAZY. You can ship your film on Monday for delivery on Tuesday morning at 8am and have it processed that same morning. Then telecine or scan and FTP the files to you that same day

Thats kinda what I thought as well. Labs stay in business because they have quick turn arounds.

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We have our 35mm / 16mm 100ft./min ECN-2 PhotoMec (we acquired from DuArt) running and have 15fps Xena data scanning at 2K or UHD resolutions for 8mm 16mm and 35mm film guages.

 

The PhotoMec processor is made in London and Alpha Grip has a PhotoMec in the truck, it's the Bentley of film processors I don't think there is a better machine made to run film on.

 

We are acquiring two Digital Vision Nucoda systems (we have one running now) so we can make same day Process and Data dailies.

 

We are cuurrently running 35mm ECN for several budgeted productions.

 

-Rob-

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I shot my last project on 16mm and sent it from NYC to Burbank (FotoKem) with overnight shipping via UPS. I had absolutely no issues and the turn-around time was very good, but make sure you budget for the shipping. You may even get better turn-around times with smaller labs considering FotoKem is busy processing all of the big Hollywood projects that are still shot on film.

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Thanks you guys, I contacted Fotokem, and they told me this:

 

There are two options:
The first would be with FedEx and meeting their final drop off time to get the film you have exposed for the day back to our lab in Burbank for morning run develop.
The second is to use a courier to pick when you wrap and get the exposed film one the last flight to LAX and then courier to FotoKem by mid nite for our night bath.
Once film is developed we will transfer the film to the files you request and we can ftp or use our own software called globalDATA to get the files back to our office in New Orleans and we can lay your dailies off to a drive which you can pick up ~
So yeah, it's really fast. I looked up Cinefilm Lab, I'll look up Filmworkers, it's just that I'm naturally more inclined to go to Fotokem.
Shooting will probably be 7 or 8 days, I wonder how much that would cost in shipping.
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