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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Print Buying Cooperative
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 12-22-2013 12:24 PM
> The first is that the infrastructure to create 35mm prints seems to be collapsing.
It has already collapsed, at least as far as exhibition is concerned. From the manufacture of raw film stock to the labs still capable of developing it, film is all but gone. Processing 35mm occasionally in small amounts is just not commercially viable. The infrastructure needed to manufacture the film stock, the chemicals needed to develop, the knowledge set needed to mix the chemicals, maintain and run the machines, is not something that will survive much longer.
>While it may still be possible to have 35mm prints made for the next 5+ years, it's going to become an increasingly niche market.
Film, as an exhibition format, does not have 5 years.
>The second is the cost of producing a 35mm print. I don't know what the current cost is for a print, but that cost is only going to increase.
It has already almost doubled from just a few years ago.
The only way film will remain viable as a commercial format is if there are print runs in the thousands on a regular basis, and that does not seem likely to ever happen again.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-22-2013 12:52 PM
I don't see this working for first-run exhibition. Let's say that a feature-length 35mm print costs $2k to manufacture. Let's further say that the commercial viability of the average first-run feature is six weeks (which may be somewhat generous). That means that the print will cost about $333 per week of exhibition, plus shipping, plus the usual distributor boxoffice take (does anyone really believe that, even if they agreed to a plan like this, distributors would reduce their "film rental" rates just because no film is actually being rented?).
$333/week is over $17k/year. Let's assume that an average D-cinema installation goes for $60k/screen. That would pay for itself in three and a half years. By most measures, that would be a good investment, and there is a reasonable chance that an exhibitor could finance the cost over a longer period (say, five years), making the actual out-of-pocket expenses lower for D-cinema.
This sort of deal could maybe work for repertory engagements (get a few dozen theatres to commit to booking a specific title and divide the cost among them), but not for first-run, given the relatively short shelf-life of the product.
I love film as much as anyone, but I don't see how the economics work. Maybe it would have a chance if we had a bunch of rich theatre owners who loved the film medium, but there are precious few people in that category.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 12-26-2013 09:37 AM
As others have pointed out, there is still just about the lab capacity out there to handle 200-300 print runs of a small number of blockbuster features. But how long any capacity at all exists (even among the specialist archival labs, that will charge closer to $10k for a two-hour color release print) will depend on how long Kodak continues to make and sell the stock and kit chemistry needed to process it. I'm guessing that there will be a "long tail" of production and archiving users of film, and how long that has enough spending power to make it viable for EK to keep the production lines open will determine that.
However, there is another reason why I suspect the studios would resist a cooperative arrangement whereby a third party actually owns the physical prints of newly released films: IP. The essential reason why the industry changed from a prints sold outright to a prints rented to theatres business model in the 19-teens was that studios wanted to keep control over their productions. TV, home video and the online distribution made that reason even more important.
If you have a 35mm print of the latest blockbuster in your possession, a few grand buys you all the hardware and software you need to pirate it into any desired digital format. OK, everyone knows that the current distribution arrangements don't prevent this from happening anyway, but the studios believe, rightly or wrongly, that if they remain the legal owners of the physical prints, they at least have the ability to plug leaks. I cannot see them agreeing to a setup whereby a third party owns the prints.
However, that's just in the case of new releases. For older titles circulating in rep, they already license screenings of prints owned by other people (usually archives, but sometimes private distributors and occasionally even film collectors). I may be wrong, but I suspect they'd have less problem with a collective of rep and second-run exhibitors establishing a central store of prints of titles that are, say, at least 20 years old, because they already allow this to happen with nonprofit archives and a few niche distributors. The essential difference between such an organization and an archive would be that it wouldn't impose the strict handling and presentation requirements that archives typically do. It would simply gather prints that studios and distributors would otherwise junk, and loan them to theatres as and when booked.
The obstacles would be (1) that exhibitors (or their bookers) would have to do what theatres booking archive prints have to do already: two lots of bureaucracy per booking, getting the print from one source and clearing the rights with another; and (2) that there would be substantial start-up and running costs for such an organization. You'd need a large building (preferably in a relatively cool and dry part of the country, and well connected to mainline shipping routes), a few staff and a bit of IT infrastructure, essentially. There is a cost to keeping a print securely on a vault shelf doing nothing, and this would have to be factored in to loan pricing.
If such a venture were to be run as a nonprofit, it might be possible to secure grant funding at least to get something going. But the opposition from studios would, I'd speculate, be such that they'd never agree to it to handle new releases.
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