film is dead… i don’t think so.

You do know they give looks that are completely different? Even super8 is not dead and it’s actually bigger than it was 5 years ago.

Posted by georgemanzanilla  on  11/08  at  05:39 PM

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Film cameras have not been manufactured for several years now.

Digital projection is finally making major inroads, in part thanks to the 3D trend. Without the projection prints market, manufacturing film doesn’t make sense.

Kodak is investigating bankruptcy as a solution to their problems.

You can say film is alive and kicking, but I am reading tea leaves here.

Posted by Terence Curren  on  11/08  at  09:21 PM

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that’s probably because film cameras last much longer than any digital camera and there are plenty on the used market to last another century. I have shot commercial projects for national brands on a cameras made in the 60s. Film transferred to 1080P with a good colorist and minor grain reduction still looks better than many of the newest cameras, and that’s only using super16, IMO.

Unfortunately everyone gets completely caught up in tech toys and forgets that in actuality shooting super16 can cost less than shooting digitally. The point is that it’s a choice. If we as artists, cinematographers didnt have that choice, we would be the ones to lose.

Kodak is one company and i asure you that if they were to go down there would be many others waiting to feed that market. Look what happened to super8. did it die?

Posted by georgemanzanilla  on  11/08  at  09:44 PM

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George,

i am not arguing with you about the value of film over other formats. I too am a film snob from a long ways back. Unfortunately, economics and technology have won. For a comparison, an LP has a much nicer sound than the average MP3. Does that matter when price and convenience are involved? Not anymore. But that is the subject of another debate Philip and I had over what is “Good Enough”.

Posted by Terence Curren  on  11/08  at  09:49 PM

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true, but have LPs disappeared? good artists still release their records on vinyl, i just bought one last week. I think saying that film is dead when its still superior in some aspects and people are still using it is, is a bit of a stretch. I think there will be other companies that will feed that market if kodak were to disappear. The market of people shooting film globally is still quite large. It always comes down to management. The problem is Kodak is a beast of a company that has not been able to adapt quickly.

I just think we’re probably looking at just one side of the scale here. There are still many artists and producers that shoot film and prefer to shoot film, to say it’s dead is just not right and a bit too dramatic. Call it what it is, don’t make it a soap opera.

Posted by georgemanzanilla  on  11/09  at  08:31 AM

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