And the cost of the film recorder. And its support and maintenance. And the cost of your building, the power to run it, your employees, shipping costs, Internet costs, infrastructure, etc, etc, etc. The cost of the materials is only the starting point. Your true cost of manufacture must take into account a lot of things you haven't mentioned. The only way what you're saying seems to make sense to me is if one is running essentially a one man operation that is located in the residence of the owner. Perhaps that is the case, perhaps not. I just think that the cost of the equipment needed by your client has little to nothing to do with with your own costs of running your business. The fact that they can get their equipment cheap doesn't mean you can too, and it doesn't mean that you have to severely discount what you have to offer. The only way that becomes sensible is if you can buy a reliable film recorder for as little as they pay for their Mac computer and Final Cut. And we both know that's not the case. As long as a film recorder costs what it does (and an ArriLaser is in the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, with required maintenance support running close to $50K a year), the cost of services associated with it has absolutely nothing to do with what your clients may or may not be doing. It has to do with your real costs and what you can and must charge to make a fair profit on them.
BTW, the primary differences between camera negative and intermediate stocks are durability (as you've mentioned), and grain (intermediate stocks are practically grainless, and as a result are very, very slow, requiring more light for proper exposure). There are those (myself among them) who feel that camera stocks are in some ways more desirable for material that originated on a digital camera because they add a bit of film texture, while the intermediate stocks tend to give a "cleaner" result. Of course, that really depends on what the client prefers.
