Kodak bankrupt (on topic discussion)

[Andreas Wideroe]

Please feel free to continue the discussion since this thread really got polictical.

Stay on topic from now on. All off topic posts will be deleted.

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[Will2]

Kodak's marketing budget has shrunk accordingly.

Kodak's motion picture division has been asking for testimonials about why people still shoot film. I find it interesting that of course all these interviews are shot on video unlike the film-shot testimonials they had from about 5 years ago.

I know it's for practical reasons at Sundance but I just thought it was interesting.

Here's a sample...
http://youtu.be/oR3H4K6ZSjI

Compared with...
http://motion.kodak.com/motion/Hub/layout/interview.htm
(click on "on loving film")

[jpolzfuss]

why people still shoot film.

... and that's the whole problem: Why does one need an apology/excuse to "still" shoot film? I've never seen any "why I've switched to video"-vindication! (Besides: The "still" implies that film is completely outdated and that there aren't any new users. - And yes, Kodak therefore avoids the "still"...)

[BAC]

An interesting quote from this article about a town hall-style meeting led by CEO Antonio Perez hours after Kodak filed for Chapter 11: http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story/ ... autoplay=1

On Selling Film Business:

Kodak investigated selling the film business every year.

“The film business was going down very rapidly and you think the person who was going to buy it didn’t know that right?” The audience laughed. Perez said it was better to manage the film business.

“This is a buyers’ market you don’t get much when you sell businesses. We tried. We tried to sell businesses that were not fundamental. We could sell some for a good price. But the other things that we tried, it was not worth it. It was leaving money on the table.”

[aj]

some insight

Film is non fundamental for Kodak.

[grainy]

I'd take that quote with a grain of salt and consider it's Perez's job to ingratiate himself with his audience and seem "with it" during a very hard time.

"Film business" doesn't necessarily mean "the motion picture film business", which is seperate.

Everyone knows that consumer still film is not even a shadow of its former self.

[woods01]

Well where would you effectively advertise such a niche product in this day and age? Probably the best they can do is to approach art and film schools and offer special rates and make it easy to do direct orders for students.

Arguably, apart from putting ads in trades magazines about new stocks, the best advertising for their motion picture products is the continual use of film as a capture format for many of the features shot. And Imax seems to have its own market.

[carllooper]

Well where would you effectively advertise such a niche product in this day and age? Probably the best they can do is to approach art and film schools and offer special rates and make it easy to do direct orders for students.

Arguably, apart from putting ads in trades magazines about new stocks, the best advertising for their motion picture products is the continual use of film as a capture format for many of the features shot. And Imax seems to have its own market.

Sooner of later Imax will transition to digital (8K+ cameras and projectors). Digital is on a roller coaster. Quantum computers are on the horizon.

The dive in film, will eventually level out (if not already), like the toe of a DR curve, being produced and consumed according to small business models (rather than large business growth models). There is no reason it can't remain stable for another hundred years. Indeed the threat to silver supplies can be regarded as basically solved by the digital age. Those using film will become those doing so for any reason they like (but typically slow cook artistic, educational and historical reasons), while the fast cook, fast burn, commercial reasons will be (in a happy sense) elsewhere occupied.

[wahiba]

Do not reckon on silver prices falling. There was little bit on the radio this morning suggesting that silver may be suitable for cancer treatments without the side effects of current platinum based chemo treatments. However, they have to find out why silver has anti - bacteriological properties before progressing further. It does but no one knows why.
My first thought when hearing this was that as one silver using industry declines something else appears needing silver.

[carllooper]

Do not reckon on silver prices falling. There was little bit on the radio this morning suggesting that silver may be suitable for cancer treatments without the side effects of current platinum based chemo treatments. However, they have to find out why silver has anti - bacteriological properties before progressing further. It does but no one knows why.
My first thought when hearing this was that as one silver using industry declines something else appears needing silver.

That's quite interesting. I often wonder if there might be some suitable alternative to silver in film. Some sort of cheap light sensitive nano-technology, applied as a film emulsion. Synthesised silver.

[S8 Booster]

silver replaces by a micron sized microchip by a billion "grain" electronically coded data wireless directly to a computer in RAW format? oh, no then one needs only 1 chip frame - silly me....

old style window panes reportedly could capture and burn images when a person stood near by it when lightning struck. Maybe lead & glass could.....?
dunno..
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... aintenance

shout film....o.....

[carllooper]

silver replaced by a micron sized microchip by a billion "grain" electronically coded data wireless directly to a computer in RAW format? oh, no then one needs only 1 chip frame - silly me...

24 chips a second I say.