Don't rely on the cinema to keep film demand going.

[pico]

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Hi Pico - I realize that personal attacks of this type are something of your specialty at the moment, but I just want to point out that I make no claims at all for my photography, whatsoever. [...]

 

I could say the same for my own work. I haven't made a penny from it for almost two years. No amount of film I might buy will change the industry. (Aside: When I studied the craft decades ago, motion picture negative film was an inter-media with poor archival qualities. Nobody I knew would use it for stills.)

 

No need to try to score what you might have thought was some sort of hurtful point, when you so totally missed the target.

 

Point well taken, Sir.

[CalArts 99]

Here is a short list of recent movies using Kodak films. Despite industry changes, there are still artists who prefer this as their method of working.

 

The Iron Lady, War Horse, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, True Blood, Harry Potter: Part 2, The Artist, The Descendants, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Dark Knight Rises, My Week with Marilyn, Pariah, The Tree of Life, The Help, , Savages, Anna Karenina, We Bought a Zoo, Lincoln, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Men in Black III, Boardwalk Empire, John Carter, Big Miracle, Glee, Snow White and the Huntsman, Bridesmaids, Carnage, American Horror Story (FX), Safe, Breaking Bad... and dozens more.

 

And of course television drama in the US has/had always been shot on film (at least until recently and mostly because of production companies with lower budgets who claim they can't afford film.) Warner Bros uses 3-perf 35mm since its final film frame size is basically identical to the 1.78 aspect ratio of HD. I was on the set of 24 around five years ago and it was on film with Panavision leased cameras. Rodney Charters was the DP and he prefers film.

 

Here's a good interview with Indy filmmaker Sam Fazackerley (Chasing Cotards "the biggest short film of all time." Chasing Cotards (2010) - IMDb ) And although she normally shoots on video because of costs, she was overwhelmed when she saw her production on 70mm film (VistaVision.) She felt there is "just no comparison" and that "it's incredible, the difference." "It is so beautiful." She now claims to be a "fan of film."

 

The following US TV shows are on film (as of a year or two ago): 30 Rock, 24, Breaking Bad, Castle, Two and a Half Men, Ghost Whisperer, Beastly, Desperate Housewives, Fringe, Big Love, The Closer, Entourage, Glee, House, Grey's Anatomy, Mad Men, True Blood, Nip and Tuck, The Mentalist, Private Practice, Brothers and Sisters, Flashpoint, Heroes, Human Target, Copper, Hung, Heartland, Scrubs, Burn Notice, Saving Grace, Lincoln Heights.

 

I'm sure there are others that I can't think of at the moment. And some of them may have now gone to video. An issue is obviously production costs. And that seems to be what's primarily driving video. Although Jeff Lipsky feels that film is actually cheaper in the end:

 

The better film schools (at least in the US) still have students produce a film and learn to work with a film crew (they can also use video, but do have to learn the film workflow.) But some smaller schools have eliminated that exercise altogether and new emerging filmmakers may have never worked with film at all. As Fazackerely mentions, that actually may drive the increase in digital production more than anything else.

 

It will be interesting to see where the industry ends up. I personally feel there will be a healthy mix of all media for quite a while. And film may just never go away, who knows.

[thebarnman]

Recording a movie in the film format is one thing, it's another to have it distributed via film. I was just told by a projectionist movie distributed via film will be obsolete come 2014.

 

Of course, movies can still be recorded on film...there just won't be any film used for the display of the original filmed source. That will be a dramatic cut of film use.