Schmalfilm snuffs it

[aj]

Apparently there aren't german readers left on this forum?

The final issue of Schmalfilm is announced.
Declining numbers of subscribers and the seemingly eternal flow of funeral annoucements of ciné products did it finally.
http://www.schmalfilm-online.de/news/sc ... n+Mal/1408
Pretty cover as usual.


Good luck.

[Will2]

Very well designed magazine. I subscribed to the english version and eagerly awaited it in the mail. It will be missed.

[reflex]

I received the final issue in the mail yesterday. It was a sad moment and an acknowledgement that times have changed dramatically.

Perhaps the most telling thing: Schmalfilm, Andec and Kodak offered a Super 8 starter kit a couple of years ago for 19,90 €, including a 100D cart, processing, scanning and three issues of schmalfilm. They sold about 550 kits, but only 150 carts were actually sent in for processing. In Juergen's words, Dieses Missverhältnis spricht Bände. This disparity speaks volumes.

[aj]

I received the final issue in the mail yesterday. It was a sad moment and an acknowledgement that times have changed dramatically.

Perhaps the most telling thing: Schmalfilm, Andec and Kodak offered a Super 8 starter kit a couple of years ago for 19,90 €, including a 100D cart, processing, scanning and three issues of schmalfilm. They sold about 550 kits, but only 150 carts were actually sent in for processing. In Juergen's words, Dieses Missverhältnis spricht Bände. This disparity speaks volumes.

Couldn't be made easier. Still, getting to actually shoot the film can be a number of obstacles. Like camera, time, ideas etc.
Euro 20 for 3 issues of the magazine was a nice deal in itself. That could explain part of the number of films not sent to the lab.

If there are so many of these films out there it would be an idea to write a letter to all purchasers and ask how they are doing and if they are not going to expose the film if they would considere surrendering their film to projects of others or active forummembers With 400 films missing that would make 20 films per active member Process and scan paid...

[Charlie Blackfield]

I wouldn't be so sure that those films haven't been used. After all, there's always a possibility that people may want to process the films themselves - or have them processed somewhere else, for some reason. Okay, this probably only accounts for some of those 400 that weren't sent in. Then again, I suppose there was a time-limit on this offer, and some of the films may have been processed after that.

Coming back to the original topic, my main reason for not having subscribed to smallformat or schmalfilm was their peculiar payment method. If I remember correctly, they wanted me to send a Euro banknote in the post for a trial subscription. Had they accepted card payments, I probably would have given it a go, despite finding it a bit pricey.

Charlie

[doug]

A great shame. But I suppose any magazine publication these days has quite a struggle. I never subscribed to it solely because of my zero German, but I took the English version previously and thought this was great. I appreciated the way Juergen was totally unbiased and even critical at times with his advertisers. It was a true independent publication with much needed information that was bang up to date. And technical stuff you could refer back to many months later. Great also to read those stories from film-makers. Online is all very well, but there's a certain something that only an actual magazine can provide. It was always exhilarating to open that envelope... and it smelt good