Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Print Cost?

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Posted by Brett G. Sherris (Member # 3543) on 01-11-2006, 03:33 PM:

Gentlemen:

I'm new 'round these parts, so please excuse an ignorant question, but...

How much does it cost - in terms of lab fees & materials - to produce the average 2 hour release print?

Thanks,
B.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-11-2006, 04:53 PM:

Approximately (give or take) $1000 for an average print run. I believe it gets less with more quantities and most certainly gets more expensive with lower quantities.

Your mileage may vary depending on raw stock, time restrictions, a particular lab's pricing, etc.

Posted by James Pope (Member # 1189) on 01-23-2006, 03:34 PM:

Film stock varies from .08 to .14 a foot depending on brand, which lab there printing at (where in the world.. the Tialand lab is the cheapest for bothe Deluxe and Technicolor) and quality plus they do give breaks for duping more prints. A 35mm print has 16 frames per foot so thats 1.5 feet per sec (24 frames a sec) x60 = 90 feet per min x 120 min movie = 10,800 feet plus lead in/out just under 11,000 feet of film Say at the average .12 a foot $1,320 for a complete duped print

But if your talking about

quote: Brett G. Sherris
to produce the average 2 hour release print?

Then your talking about making a Oringinal a inner positive and a answer print which is where the major price of making a film print comes from but once you get to the answer print you can dup 500 or so prints saftly from it.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 01-24-2006, 08:03 AM:

quote: James Pope
Film stock varies from .08 to .14 a foot depending on brand.

The list price of 35mm Kodak VISION Premier Color Print Film 2393 is less than $0.10 USD (10 cents) a foot. Kodak VISION Color Print Film 2383 list price is less than 9 cents per foot.

Labs are able to somewhat offset the cost of processing by the silver they recover from the film.

quote: James Pope
Then your talking about making a Oringinal a inner positive and a answer print which is where the major price of making a film print comes from but once you get to the answer print you can dup 500 or so prints saftly from it.

The "answer print" is made from the original cut negative. Pricing is relatively high, as it includes the scene-to-scene timing by a skilled color timer.

Once the scene-to-scene timing of the answer print is approved by the director and cinematographer, the lab makes a master positive (interpositive) on Kodak VISION Color Intermediate Film. Multiple duplicate negatives are made from the master positive, which can then be sent to labs around the world for release printing:

Here is an interactive tutorial about the "image chain" and film printing:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/imageChainDetect.shtml

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-29-2006, 06:43 AM:

The biggest variable is the size of the print run. The more prints you're striking, the more the cost of timing, negative cutting, striking intermediate elements etc. is amortised over each final release print. Each print of a 90-minute blockbuster feature which has 10,000 copies struck might cost as little as $500-600. On the other hand, when a single new print of Seven Samurai was struck for a film festival last year (one-off print, individually timed from an archival interneg, black-and-white, 10 reels long and with lasered subtitles), I gather that the lab bill came to UK£7,500.

Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 02-03-2006, 10:26 AM:

John,

I was surprised to see that Vision Premiere (393) stock is about 1 cent more expensive than the reg. 383 per foot.
I guess quite a lot of films could have looked nicer on 393...

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-03-2006, 11:26 AM:

The KODAK VISION Premier Color Print Film 2393 does have more silver and other emulsion components in it, hence the slightly higher cost. Its maximum density is well over 5.0, capable of a 100,000:1 contrast ratio between white and black.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-03-2006, 12:08 PM:

quote: Jerry Axelsson
1 cent more expensive than the reg. 383 per foot.
I guess quite a lot of films could have looked nicer on 393...

1 cent / foot is at least the yearly salary of an entry level employee in their corporate office for a wide release. It's really not surprising that you don't see more films on 2393.