plasticman Posted January 20, 2016 Share #41 Posted January 20, 2016 Advertisement (gone after registration) Feel like this is a bit of a sideline on the thread. Sorry. Just a quick explanation of what I wrote. One of the things that led me into my earlier career path in advertising was digital video post-production, so I've maintained that interest. I keep an eye on cinematography discussions, and still watch a lot of films with a 'critical' photography eye. I remembered the film/digital discussion that happens pretty much every time David Fincher makes a movie - he's used the same photographer for the last 4 or 5 films - and had it in mind both the time I originally saw the footage, and when I watched it again the other day. Like I said, haven't seen Gone Girl on the big screen, but at 4K it really didn't look to me like it was even trying to look like film. Some of the shots are very beautiful, and the look is very intentional, I just personally never thought it looked like film, or was even intended to do so. Anyway it's just a sideline to the thread. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 Hi plasticman, Take a look here Kodak predicts film business to be profitable in 2016!. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
AlanG Posted January 20, 2016 Share #42 Posted January 20, 2016 @AlanG - your argument is a bit specious, in that it confuses cause and effect. Because Kodak cut back on staff and other costs as film sales plummeted, and dropped specific emulsions/formats that could not carry their own weight, they managed to keep the film division profitable most of the time. I don't understand how you can define this division as profitable. It is the legacy from the film division that dragged the company down as sales of film, paper, processing chemicals, etc. fell of a cliff while corprorate costs and overhead remained high. The pension obligation alone forced Kodak to give away part of its company to the UK pension fund. Kodak had around two hundred buildings at Kodak Park... most of which were no longer needed by Kodak and many were demolished. They had sales reps, technical reps and managers in offices around the world and eventually had massive staff reductions due to lack of film sales income. Marketing, corporate, pollution abatement and many other costs for this giant company were still needed even if scaled back. Several times Kodak tried to diversify... copiers, Sterling Drugs, sensors, digital photography, home inkjet printing all with the goal of keeping Kodak a large company. Most of these plans failed and they are banking on a new one. I can't even see the small current film division being viable without support from the overall infrastructure of the current larger company that is making printing and other stuff now. If Kodak were to stop making film, do you think another company could build new properly scaled facilities to profitably take over the market? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herr Barnack Posted January 20, 2016 Share #43 Posted January 20, 2016 Oh, come on guys - wake up and smell the coffee! Film is dead! They have been saying that since 1996! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted January 20, 2016 Share #44 Posted January 20, 2016 Profit = income - costs - per operating unit. The accounting can get much more complex than that, but the bottom line (in all senses) is that if you spend X-dollars a year (counting everything attributable to that division) and receive X+n dollars (n being a positive number) from that division's sales, then that division made a profit of n. Other corporate costs have to be assigned pro rata to each division. Once they went bankrupt, the clock reset to zero. The costs from the past were written off or fullfilled by asset sales. Believe me, if Kodak, now, was losing even one-tenth of a penny per roll in the film division as a whole, they would cut it off at the knees immediately, just as they did E6 films and Plus-X. They have not. It pulls its own weight - it doesn't pull the weight of the whole company. It's like LIFE magazine - TIME/LIFE was happy to run it so long as revenue was higher than expenses by any amount, however small. The instant the trend lines crossed, they pulled the plug (photographers in the field on assignment got telegrams - "It's over. Come home.") Why throw money away? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted January 20, 2016 Share #45 Posted January 20, 2016 Kodak's CEO says film was losing $100M a year, recently was close to breaking even and hopes to soon be profitable. What part of this don't you believe? His words are the premise of this thread. Not sure what Time Life's business decisions have to do with this. Did they need to demolish 100 buildings? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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