Getting back to the main concern, which is the demise of Kodak, I
almost think that it would be preferable if Kodak ceased to exist
right now. The reason is that there is still a limit comercial
interest in celluloid. For example, India still mainly uses celluiod
in its film production. Also, the conversion to digital projection is
not as of yet complete.
What I think is going to happen is Kodak will be bought out by some
private equity firm, which will cut up the assets and sell them off.
The most viable property accoring to the article is the digital
intellectual property. The film assets and intellectual property is
not the main viable concern for Kodak. Yet with some commercial
viability left, they could be useful to some company, such as Fuji or
to a completely new concern.
Kodak is a large corporation which views its business as a whole.
Because it has all of these other areas to worry about, it will not
consider its film business by itself. A concern which only
concentrates on film would be able to more fully concentrate on this
sole enterprise rather than taking everything else into consideration.
It would be free of the burden of a history where film was a much
larger part of itself business. Kodak is struggling to maintain its
former position.
If a buyer is not available for the film intellectual property, than
there would be no interest on the part of the private equity investor
in the film concern. Stuck with a worthless asset they would be
inclined to forget about it. When this is the case, I think that
their best option would be to donate the rights to the intelllectual
property to a nonprofit organization for a tax write off. At least
they would get some value out of the asset.
Unfortunately, I don't think that the government would step in to save
celluloid because, as mentioned, there is no economic lobby to press
for this, such as the Big Three and the UAW in the case of the auto
industry. I believe that this is culturally suicidal because
preserving many great works of art. Digital archiving of film is not
an option due to many reasons (the essential nature of the work is not
preserved, digital storage is considerably more vulnerable in the long
run, etc.)
What I think should happen is that there be a conference, symposium,
or whatever on the future of celluloid. We should gather experts in
many different fields chemists, machinists, scholars, artists, etc. to
ask the questions of what is possible considering the situation. If
we just ask what is the reality and what can we do to preserve our
artform perhaps we can come up with answers. I don't think worrying
about events we can not control is productive. If someone wants to
share thoughts on organizing an event such as this, please email me
off list.
Jay
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Received on Sat Aug 20 2011 - 06:10:39 CDT
