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 <[email protected]> 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 > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks >
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