Shoot cost Comparison

[Ross Isaacs]

Does anyone have a table which compares the production costs of shooting on film and shooting on digital formats like Red One and or Epic?

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Many factors...

Many factors...

Does anyone have a table which compares the production costs of shooting on film and shooting on digital formats like Red One and or Epic?

There are too many factors to give a single answer to such questions.

What is your shooting ratio?

How many shooting days do you need?

Is there a lab you can drive to to process movie film or do you need to ship it, if ship then by ground or air mail, post or next day, will you make a workprint or get the film scanned, if scanned then to SD or high quality 4K frame scans?

How will you archive your Digital Data, or for that matter your film rolls?

How many years will you archive, will copies need to be made?

How many backups are you going to make of every frame or are you going to trash some of the footage that is not used?

What kind of lenses are you going to rent, can you work a deal for a free film camera body?

Its endless...

On film you can shoot a movie for less than $20000 maybe, without the cost of what goes in front of the camera, on Digital maybe you can shoot for much less, it all depends on exactly where you are, and what result you expect to get.

Film will probably not be produced many years into the future, film labs will close, projectors will convert to digital, so any investment in film equipment is not going to be worth much in the future, at most maybe 20 years of film being used for shooting movies, maybe 30 years for print stocks maybe less maybe more, although I don't see the more from where I sit. If Kodak has any rabbits in their hat they shold start pulling them out and give people a reason to continue shooting film for a few years longer... the more they reduce the silver content and make the film image "brittle" and video like, the less reason there might be to use it as Digital Cinema cameras improve and surpass what you can get at any budget off film...

Thats why shooting Digital at 5K or more helps "future proof" your footage, 35mm will be like 16mm/SD is today, so you need to add that value into the equation for return on investment. You did not say what film format you want to shoot also, if its IMAX then your lab options are even smaller, and in the future you would have a harder time getting it re-scanned.

 

[Etienne Caron]

It may help a little bit:

ARRI DIGITAL: BUDGET
http://www.arridigital.com/budget

 

[Ross Isaacs]

Hey thanks guys I know most of what Dan has said...I was actually looking for a comparative chart which I had seen once before which compares the general costing of a production shot on film to one shot on say a Red One. As I am trying to convince an EP of the benefits of going RED to shoot his series on the Epics as opposed to shooting on super 16 on Arri SR.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

$0.10 for 35mm ECN processing?

$0.10 for 35mm ECN processing?

It may help a little bit:

ARRI DIGITAL: BUDGET
http://www.arridigital.com/budget

Did you notice that they budget $0.10 per foot for 35mm ECN, and show less for waste I guess, it shows,

11,000 ft 35mm ECN processed for $1080, are there any labs worth sending you film to that have that rate on their rate sheet?

Seems like it should be more than that, anyone know their rates?

What about VAT or sales tax added also?

 

[Julio Quintana]

Ted S. did a comparative outline a while back, or at least a rebuttal to some magazine that was claiming digital was more expensive than film. You can probably find it if you search the Recon section.