From: Brian Frye (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Sep 06 2005 - 16:55:50 PDT
Michael wrote: "Has any filmmaker every manufactured their own film stock
entirely from scratch?
i.e. not starting with a preexisting base (even if clear leader) or any
other
already produced film-component such as tape with sprocket holes, and them
made
a film of any length with that stock?"
A fair point. I think it's hard to argue with the premise that if making
movies on film required actually fabricating motion picture film oneself, it
would not be a meaningfully viable medium. But I think that maybe you frame
the problem a bit too starkly. It's not at all clear to me that the demand
for motion picture film is now - or ought to be expected to become - so low
as to make supplying it economically unfeasible. Kodak is discontinuing
certain stocks because they are not profitable. But Kodak is *koff* not
necessarily the most efficiently run company out there. Given a reasonable
opportunity to enter a market totally dominated by Kodak (which does, after
all, provide an excellent product at a relatively reasonable cost), I
suspect that smaller, more specialized, lower cost producers could find the
market sufficiently profitable for a long time to come. In fact, such a
change is probably long overdue. Of course, I could be wrong about that.
But I would be surprised. Plenty of other niche markets - many much smaller
than the film world - seem sufficiently well supplied with raw materials.
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Brian L. Frye
Prince Street Station
P.O. Box 253
New York, NY 10012
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