[Frameworks] Did Kodak almost stop making all film?

[Mark Toscano]

This is what I understand to have just happened.  Kodak still relies on
huge corporate clients to support the continued production of film.
 Apparently, they essentially told the major studios they needed a certain
(fairly massive) film stock commitment to even bother making it through the
end of this year, including print stocks. The studios passed, but then
Tarantino, JJ Abrams, Christopher Nolan, and Judd Apatow told the studios
they would only work with a studio that let them shoot and work on film,
which pretty much literally saved motion picture film from almost certainly
being discontinued by Kodak.  The studios and Kodak renegotiated the
commitments, and supposedly it's now safe until at least 2017.

That said, I don't know what this means for 16mm, but Kodak is set to
announce (apparently this coming month) that they're discontinuing regular
production of certain 16mm b/w stocks:

7234/3234 16mm b/w dupe negative
3366 b/w fine grain master positive
7363 hicon

In my archival work, I rely extensively on 3234 for preserving b/w
reversal/positive films, and semi-regularly on 3366 to preserve b/w
negative films.  I use hicon in my own filmmaking occasionally, and have
recently preserved a couple of films utilizing that stock as well.

There's currently discussion among certain labs and archives about working
with Kodak in a way that enables them to continue to periodically (and in
large minimum quantities) produce these stocks (at least the first two),
since they're not yet discontinuing them in 35mm, and it would only be a
matter of slitting/perfing for 16mm.  Things are looking optimistic in this
effort, but nothing is worked out yet.

But regardless, if you like shooting or working in any way with 16mm hicon,
buy a bunch of it NOW, no joke.  And honestly, I don't know how much
farther behind this trend Tri-X and Double-X negative will be, but it might
be worth stocking up as you can.

Mark Toscano




On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Sean Weitzel <panaflex at gmail.com> wrote:

> The reason Kodak is so challenged to continue making film, is the simple
> fact of the manufacturing process. Kodak has only manufactured film on a
> massive scale. They don't have the means to produce small or boutique runs
> of various stocks. (Side note: Did anyone see that Kodak had some of their
> idled film coating lines up for sale on ebay recently for basically scrap
> prices? the main coating wheel is 4 stories high). What is really going on
> is Kodak has to be able to forecast how much film of a certain type will be
> sold. Once they have that forecast, they manufacture and coat what is
> called a "master roll" 54" wide and 5200 feet long. From that roll, all of
> the individual gauges are cut and perforated and packaged, everything from
> 70mm down to super-8.
>
> This is the reason you see so many stocks going into the discontinued
> notices, or finish to order with absurd minimum quantities is because of
> the need to be sure a master roll will be sold withing the expiration
> period. What I believe has happened is the studios have done just this,
> they've entered into a contract with Kodak to justify Kodak coating more
> master rolls of the various color negative stocks. Nothing has been said as
> to what the availability of other types of stocks, such as black and white,
> recording film, print film, etc will be. I fear some of these lower volume
> items will eventually go discontinued as the prior master roll is used up.
>
> There's a good more detail about the whole process here:
> http://silverbased.org/plus-x-kodak-woes/
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Fred Camper <f at fredcamper.com> wrote:
>
>> http://online.wsj.com/articles/kodak-movie-film-at-
>> deaths-door-gets-a-reprieve-1406674752?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories
>>
>> As I understand this, they were considering stopping all film
>> manufacturing, in all gagues, including of print stock. Does anyone have
>> more information?
>>
>> Fred Camper
>> Chicago
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