A roll of film today can be $20, but that’s nothing compared to the expenses a large movie production incurs. For IMAX, 4 minutes on 65mm film costs $830¹, and this doesn’t include cutting, transfer², and distribution, which could add up to millions of dollars just in materials.
There are lots of us still photographers, and our choices certainly matter. But for Kodak, being able to sell huge orders like that must be very important for the business (which is growing: analog.cafe/comments/463a).
"…And that economics allow Kodak to make a lot of stock and it keeps the whole infrastructure intact.” — Andrew Oran on the significance of his lab’s work to film photography as a whole.
Adam Savage has recently visited a lab that processes the largest quantities of motion picture film in the world to support directors like Christopher Nolan and their projects. He spoke to Andrew Oran at Fotokem about their work as they observed huge lengths of film travelling through the drying rack and multiple chemical baths.
Dmitri