Fuji To Cease Motion Picture Film Manufacturing By End Of The Year?

[Marc Wielage]

Nancy Tartaglione reports in Deadline: Hollywood today that Fuji is considering shutting down its motion picture film manufacturing plants by the end of the year.

The story in part:

The division of the company that produces motion picture film is set to close by December 31. A Fuji spokesperson said they were unauthorized to answer any questions. However, industry sources say they are aware of the plans. “They clearly are going around telling people,” one says. Fuji film is used for about 20% of studio business with Kodak repping the other 80%... While there remain stalwarts, fewer movies are shot on film today and eventually, a source opines, no one will be manufacturing it. However, film is still considered the best medium for archival preservation given the unknowns surrrounding the future of digital archives.

Full story at this link:

http://www.deadline.com/2012/09/fuji-to-cease-motion-picture-film-manufacturing-by-end-of-the-year/

I know most people here are gung-ho about digital, but I still think it's sad whenever cinematographers lose another option for image capture. I wasn't always a Fuji fan, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s, but they won me over by the end of the 1990s, when I think their emulsions got a lot cleaner and faster. In the right hands, I think Fuji film could make amazing images.

 

[Ryan De Franco]

Fuji Eterna Vivid has the cleanest, deepest black of any imaging format created by humankind.

The first film I ever shot for my best friend was Fuji 16mm.

Sad day.

 

[Jason Comparetto]

A family friend actually worked for Kodak for about 30 years, and just retired a year ago. Lots of Sad stories about how Kodak (and Fuji as well) could have preserved their reputation for quality image capture technologies... but no. Mostly due to poor decision making, and its hard to make changes in these large corporate empires.

Despite being a promoter of digital technologies, I still feel a sense of sadness that we are indeed losing a way to capture images that has been with us our entire lives. I knew the day would come, but I could not have predicted that it would be so soon.

 

[mikeburton]

Yes, it is sad, even though i primarily use the Kodak stocks it is never good to give any one company a monopoly in any industry. Kodak now has that in their negative and print stocks. Hopefully we will see the restructuring at Kodak be for good, meaning more options for filmmakers of all budget ranges. With BMD aquiring Cintel scanners we are about to see the cost for indies to shoot, develop and scan their images at todays resolutions without breaking the bank. That means Kodak needs to step it up and lower the costs of their negative stocks which they just recently did creating the new Afordable print stocks. We'll see.