How much of current digital movie production is archived on film stock?

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. · January 2, 2018

I was reading on the 8mm forum where they discussed archiving digital movies onto film.

"I work for the industry actually and i can assure you that all the digital files are transferred to film, all the serious people in the industry and some serious executivein Hollywoodknows that digital files dont last. Film is the only way to go for preserving for centuries,actually we work with fuji eterna that can survive for more than 300years,to record digital images on black and white film, the images are first separated into red, green, and blue signal data, which are then exposed and recorded onto three separate films. In other words, one digital master is saved onto three black and white films. The full-color images can be easily and precisely reproduced to the exact standards as the originals by scanning and digitally compositing the separate images or optically exposing them directly onto film."

http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=004640

What about archiving the indie digital movies on films? It must be expensive and only practical for the major productions.

Did they ever develop something similar for making negs or chromes from digital still photos to archive? I know they have inkjet film, but I am talking about wet process film.

Thanks

Edited January 2, 2018 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

Robin Phillips · January 2, 2018

does Fuji actually still manufacture the B&W separation film?

typically an indie/low/no budget will do anything from spitting back to a DCP hard drive (usually when they dont know better) to doing 3 copies that more or less always need to keep spinning (has its own costs, but otherwise you risk the click of death) to doing an LTO backup of the final assets / DCP (25-50yrs). The catch with the last option is you really need to actually buy and keep a compatible LTO deck, since in 25 to 50 years odds are youre not gonna find a drive that can actually get to your files.

maybe someone with more experience on bigger shows can chime in?

Dirk DeJonghe · January 2, 2018

In France, if you receive any kind of government subsidies, you are required to deliver a 35mm film element for archiving. I also work for the Danish/Swedish Zentropa group where many recent digital productions are recorded to 35mm digital intermediate for archiving.

David Mullen ASC · January 2, 2018

LTO is the most common storage method, and ideally in two separate archives and ideally migrated to a new tape every five to seven years... but we know how rarely is the ideal method used.

I’m watching a blu-ray of “Forever Amber” (1947), shot by one of the greatest color cinematographers, Leon Shamroy, who was the lead cinematographer at 20th Century Fox. Despite a 4K restoration, the image quality is mediocre for the simple reason that Fox destroyed all of their original 3-strip Technicolor negatives in the early 1970’s, so there will never be a great copy of this movie unless you are lucky enough to see a well-preserved dye transfer print in a theater (which I have.)

Tyler Purcell · January 2, 2018

Firstly, the final product in most cases will have separation's made and yes Fuji still makes B&W separation film. It will also be stored on LTO in various capacities, made both internally at the post house and also made at content aggrigate. These content aggrigators are paid by the studio's to store finished products and they use companies like Iron Mountain to deal with the IT side of things.

Second, the raw material will be backed up onto LTO tapes as well and stored either in a studio vault and/or at a company like Iron Mountain, who every year or two, will move the media to new tapes. This practice is extremely expensive and has only become common place after so many movies raw material had been lost or damaged. Prior, most tapes sat on shelves and that's not a good way to store them at all thanks to the ever changing IT infrustructure.

In a lot of cases the post houses will retain finals in their vault as well for X amount of years on tape as part of their contract with the studio's.

Yes, if you were to create a DCP file of your still images, you could probably convince someone to make a separation negative for you. IDK how it would help... as being able to combined them later, would be tricky, plus it's much lower quality than the source in most cases. It's one thing for moving image, but for stills? Probably not a good idea. You'd have to laser them out to large format.

Frank Hegyi · January 3, 2018

We just have to survive another 50 years. Then we'll have DNA archiving that'll last for 10 million years and save all the movies ever made on something the size of a thumbtack.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/dna-could-store-all-worlds-data-one-room

Edited January 3, 2018 by Frank Hegyi