Elegy for (ciné) film

[giordano]

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On BBC Radio 4 this morning, an interesting, sad, sometimes irritating half hour programme by Tacita Dean about some film-makers' love of the physical medium and the danger that soon it will no longer be possible to practice their art. BBC Radio 4 - Tacita Dean: Save This Language

 

Two things struck me in particular. First, Dean's statement (which seems believable) that when the UK Film Council and Arts Council decided to spend £12 million helping 210 cinemas install digital projection equipment, they didn't consider the effect this would have on the economics of film labs that would lose the income stream from making all the no-longer-needed release prints of the films that would now be shown digitally.

 

Second, that Kodak has discontinued the opaque black film leader that's used between shots in A/B roll editing/cutting/printing (http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/PCN030214_Q.pdf). Which means that the traditional all-analogue workflow is just about killed in 16mm (where A/B rolls are needed to avoid visible splices) and not much healthier in 35mm. Shame.

[luigi bertolotti]

Can be sad... but any business related to film processing is at risk, and not from today... the trend has been clear for some years, and savvy business people have taken their measures to stand up in a changing environment (same has happened in MANY other sectors, in the last decades)

 

I think also that it must be considered that a global decrease in the Km/miles of film processed has a positive impact in the environment : it has always been a chemical waste source.

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[chris_livsey]

I think also that it must be considered that a global decrease in the Km/miles of film processed has a positive impact in the environment : it has always been a chemical waste source.

 

Balanced against the environmental cost of manufacture of the digital devices replacing them. Remember, the incredible density of material in a chip means its manufacture cost in environmental terms is very large compared to its physical size.

It is a tough call looking at lifetime costs of both routes.

[plasticman]

One of the very significant factors is that suddenly the large multinational media conglomerates have almost complete power over what's shown in these cinemas at all times. Previously your local cinema might decide to have an 'art-house' weekend and show some French nouvelle vague movies from the 60s or have a Pasolini evening. That will probably never be possible ever again, when digitizing those movies for large screen display will probably never happen.

This is progress apparently. We accept it because it is a 'changing environment' and 'savvy business people' have seen it coming for a long time.