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EXCLUSIVE: Fujifilm won a Sci-Tech Oscar this year for its contribution to motion pictures, but Deadline hears the division of the company that produces motion picture film is set to close by December 31. A Fuji spokesperson said they were unauthorized to answer any questions. However, industry sources say they are aware of the plans. “They clearly are going around telling people,” one says. Fuji film is used for about 20% of studio business with Kodak repping the other 80%, I’m told. While there remain stalwarts, fewer movies are shot on film today and eventually, a source opines, no one will be manufacturing it. However, film is still considered the best medium for archival preservation given the unknowns surrrounding the future of digital archives. In that regard, there’s a bigger general question facing the industry as it tries to work out what will be the best long-term solution.
Fuji To Cease Motion Picture Film Manufacturing By End Of The Year?
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Fuck.
RIP FILMmaking.
Production stops in 2 weeks apparently
Going to miss those greens and blacks Fuji Film uniquely has.
It is a shame…but the only reason movie and tv production even exist is for the benefit of the distributors, certainly not for the benefit of the artists behind and in front of the camera. And fewer and fewer people have the juice to insist on film like Chris Nolan. Everyone employed might just as well be assembling car or making shoes. If the studios ever discover a way to create entertainment without writers and actors they will go as well…just as celluloid has.
Amc regularly shows silent films that are remastered from negative, and they look beautiful. I wonder what people will think of current films a 100 years from now?
Thank goodness for Castle, Enlightened, Glee & American Horror Story. Film baby.
Gary Kurtz and myself are currently casting on a film named “Panzer 88″, which we hope to be shooting within the next several months. Like myself, Gary — a twice Oscar nominated producer for “American Graffiti” and “Star Wars” — is a staunch supporter of film.
We back Christopher Nolan’s efforts and call to continue the production of celluloid negative for the filmmaking community. I personally have no qualms with digital projection, but I want to source my projects on film negative.
FILM is the ONLY long term storage medium. Digital is NOT.
So if there is still a market for archival masters, what happens when Kodak goes belly up? Where’s the stock coming from? China steps in?
let’s hope so.
Super-8mm cameras can be a hoot to shoot with. Several brands of cameras offer special effects in a simplified design, time-exposure, time-lapse, single frame, slow motion. The optical viewfinder is lots of fun as well.
With the advance in film transfer technologies, some of you digital shooters should experiment on super-8 film and have some fun, you might even fall in love with some of the film stocks that range from black and white reversal to color reversal to motion picture negative film stocks. Really an amazing array of choices.
Well, this is good for Kodak – they finally WON’T have to compete with them for the remaining film business.
The bad news is, who knows how long Kodak will be around!
I would only shoot on film if I were directing because I simply do not trust digital’s ability to remain safe over time. Anybody want to take bets on the first blockbuster’s digital master files to get corrupted, lost or erased? Given Hollywood’s history of ineptitude at preserving its own legacy (this is someone who recalls original film scores being dumped into the LA River…really), I would start to get very scared about the future.
The demise of “film” makes me very sad. I love the FEEL of film while editing or threading up the projector. My films of the 60′s and 70′s would be long lost were it not for the archival geniouses at the UCLA Archives in Hollywood (thanks Todd).
The thought of saying aloha to film stock is appaling- but what can I do? I shot two films in Super8-sound and they’re now being restorded, remastered, and made ready for redistribution to a new public audience.
Long live FILM (I hope). May it NOT go the way of three strip Technicolor.
Pat Rocco
Fuji will apparently continue manufacturing a b&w color- separation stock called “Eterna – RTS” designed to capture either sequential exposure RGB images for the indefinite future. Akin to Kodak’s 2238 Pancromatic color sep stock http://www.theasc.com/magazine/apr99/newproduct/index.htm . While this is cold comfort to those who wish traditional post production on film, at least there will remain an archival medium for both film and “born digital” moving images. Ironically, ORWO, a German concern in Wolfen (a legacy of post Soviet reunification) , continues to offer camera original negative, intermediate, sound recording, and print stock in 35 and 16 mm gauges, in B&W only! http://www.orwona.com/about-us/
Price of Silver is not the reason that studios and labs are not going to distribute prints on film.
99+% of the silver that is in color photographic film is recovered by the lab when the film is developed. The film in the theaters has essentially zero silver content.
Yes, the labs pay more for the film because of the increased price of silver but they sell the silver they recover. The silver they sell is of high purity and they are a large supplier so they get a good price.
Our single screen independant cinema in NSW, Australia has made the change a few months ago to digital.
I miss making up the films and the sound of the projector starting up when you are sitting in the theatre.
At 25 years of age, i like to embrace the digital age but we are to quick to get rid of things that already work because of cost savings. I cant wait to see when these savings are passed on to those who contribute so much into making these films.
“The End of an Era”
For all those that value cinema, be on the lookout for a sustainable future in spite of this unpleasant period of uncertainty! Look at it as a beginning, not an end.
Recall it was not more than 25 years ago, the music industry decided vinyl records should be sent to the grave. Twenty years before that, the electronics industry decided vacuum tubes belonged there too.
Today there is a booming niche market for tubes and vinyl…and there are other examples I’m sure…but the point is, there’s a special quality to these “archaic” technologies, something our eyes and ears tell us, that science will not quantify and measure.
Small companies are springing up to pick up where the behemoths leave off, and film is no exception. Sure, the future won’t look the same as today, but it’s already starting and I look forward to putting some of these new, and possibly exciting, emulsions in my Bolex. Orwo, Adox, Ilford are just a few that are getting ready. In a twisted sort of way, Kodak should probably bow out now too and let the future begin.
AFTRA, which was a sleazy little labor union, that no one had any respect for, can be blamed for killing film.
In 2008 AFTRA made a deal with producers, who were negotiating with the Screen Actors Guild, that if they shot in their TV shows in the digital format, rather than film, they could use AFTRA contracts rather that SAG contracts. They undermined actors, killed their union and probably killed two great companies and eliminated an artistic choice for DPs.
All to screw over SAG actors and force them to join AFTRA.
In 2009 almost all the new TV shows were shot digitally and under AFTRA contracts. Then Arri which used to be a big film supported realized that they had to concentrate on digital cameras. When Arri came out with the Alexa, almost all TV shows switched to that camera.
Now, to add insult to injury, I have to look at the president of AFTRA Roberta Reardon’s, grinning face in my new unions magazine. My new union is called SAG-AFTRA. Roberta is now the president of this new abomination of a union. There were six pictures of her in the union magazine this quarter! Made me want to puke.
Then the movie producers started using the Arri Alexa.
The producers are being short sighted. Digital is way more expensive to archive. Look at the results of restored 100 year old 35mm film, remastered in High Def. Film is still unsurpassed. How many hard drive will last 100 years? New archival film will last 1000 years. Then you can theoretically just re-scan to a new roll of film.
Digital codes change very frequently. Anyone tried to get images from the Viper Camera hard drives recently? Anyone tried to print a simple text document that was written in Word Perfect? Gone and Gone. So those Viper images are now being archived on Fuji’s new nano-tech archiving film stock. (Sci-Tech Oscar) With 122 years of cinema and television shows captured and archived on motion picture film, all around the world, the motion picture film channels MUST always be open and available. Fuji may perhaps stop making certain types of film stocks — but their archival film business is booming. Castle, Enlightened, Glee, American Horror Story, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, 30 Rock, 2 1/2 Half Men, etc, etc. All TV shows still shot on film. Hmmmmm. I wonder why?
Were it not for the vocal support of Nolan, Tarantino, and others, the studios most probably would have nixed the use of actual film some time ago. Despite all the digital ballyhoo being slung from every direction, thankfully, there are those who value the organic, unquantifiable nature of film itself. Those, who, like Lang, Murnau, and Welles before them, still revel in the wonder of light embedding itself within the silver halide. Imprisoned, sequentially frozen flashes of time borne through the power of alchemy. A still remarkable process that a cold stream of 0s and 1s can never truly replace.
Sadly, theatres have all but banished film from their projection rooms, leaving us with, essentially, glorified big screen TVs hardly better than those populating any neighborhood sports bar. A dim, pixelated reminder of what once was. As for this injustice, the deed is done, but why must film itself fall by the way to make room for a vastly inferior impostor? After nearly two decades of R&D by the digital camp to mimic all the intrinsic qualities that define film, these pixel-pushers now wish to eradicate the very resource that unfathomable amounts of time and money went into emulating. I find this not only deeply disturbing, but highly suspect as well. I have to wonder if the mass annihilation of all equine life ever crossed the mind of Henry Ford?
This disheartening exodus from film to digital has led to one positive development. As a fledgling filmmaker, the sell-off of previously high-priced cine equipment has afforded me the opportunity to shoot 35mm for the first time. Now, with a micro-budget feature in the works, and, hopefully, others to follow, I would like to look forward to a future where film and digital can peacefully co-exist.
“When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man” ? Anthony Burgess
RIP. Filmmaking?