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Posted by Jeffry L. Johnson (Member # 453) on 02-17-2003, 11:21 AM:
 
MOVIES
The cutting room
After movies go out of release, thousands of miles of film head for the shredder, on the way to new life via recycling. (Is that a blockbuster you're wearing?)

By Michael Mallory , Special to The Times

If you're wearing this year's polyester, you may be wearing part of one of last year's big movies.

Ideas are not the only thing Hollywood recycles: The thousands of prints left over after all those blockbusters have run out of steam at the nation's multiplexes have sparked a thriving industry that helps transform old film into other products, including polyester fabric.

With movies opening at theaters virtually everywhere at the same time, the number of film prints needed for a single title is monumental. Last year's "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," for example, required 8,400 prints for the U.S. and Canada alone. For that three-hour movie, the total for those prints amounts to about 29,000 miles of film.

After movies go out of release, an enormous amount of film, minus the few hundred prints that will be retained for archival purposes and future industry screenings, has to be disposed of. "We have to do a huge junking three or four times a year," says Nancy Sams, vice president of film print control for Warner Bros. "If not, we would have to pay storage on film and it would cost us millions of dollars."

Where do all the film prints go? Once upon a time they went straight to the landfill, but these days the polyester-based film stock gets the green treatment. Some of the recycled plastic becomes the base for other photographic products, such as X-ray film, but it has other, more surprising uses as well.

"There continues to be a huge demand for recyclable polyester," says Kathleen Beckhardt, chief executive of Film Processing Corp., a division of Eastman Kodak. "The material can be washed by other suppliers and vendors and typically can go back into the fiber market, so any polyester that's in the clothes you're wearing right now could have at one time been a movie print."

"We guarantee that all our processed film is not being burnt or put into the ground in a landfill in any shape, manner or form. It will be recycled," says Sam Borodinsky, chief executive of Filmtreat West and Filmtreat East, a bicoastal corporation whose services include certified destruction of obsolete film prints.

The Sun Valley warehouse of Filmtreat West brings to mind the final scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark," with crates of film reels stacked floor to ceiling, all of which will be put through a custom-designed chopper and reduced to glittering black confetti.

In addition to recycling the polyester plastic, which the company uses as a base for products it manufactures, including film reels and cores, emulsion from the film can also be recycled to make such products as ceramic.

"We're making products that go back to the industry at a lower price because of the recyclable product that we're getting," says Filmtreat West President Larry Zide. "Ninety-nine percent of everything we get we reuse."

About 1.5 million pounds of film is processed each year by Filmtreat's East and West coasts' facilities, according to Zide. The company also won an Emmy in 1998 for its proprietary rejuvenation process, which cleans and removes scratches from existing prints.

While Filmtreat processes all brands of film stock, Film Salvage, a division of Film Processing Corp., handles only Kodak stock. Virtually all of the material recycled at the company's facilities in Mountain City, Tenn., and in Italy gets returned to Kodak.

Rejuvenation has become an increasingly common form of film recycling as well. The process varies, but the goal is to take the best available prints and revitalize the image for less than it costs to strike a new one. "If a picture is not in the main theaters for a very long time, they may rejuvenate those release prints and repurpose them for international distribution," says Tim Maurer, president of Technicolor Cinema Distribution, whose facility based in Wilmington, Ohio, does rejuvenation work.

Not all prints are destroyed. A few to a few hundred are invariably archived for future use. "I still have about 1,200 of the original 5,500 prints of the first 'Lord of the Rings' because they may reissue it," says Gisela Corcoran, vice president of print control for New Line Cinema. "You don't get rid of everything right away. We have a special library where I keep beautiful, pristine prints plus just nice prints for USC or UCLA, who may want to borrow them for their film classes."

The number of prints for the current "Rings" feature, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," was increased to 6,085 for the U.S. alone. By contrast, Corcoran ordered only about 800 prints for the much chancier "About Schmidt," which was released on what is known as a platform basis, starting with a few theaters in New York and Los Angeles and gradually adding markets (it is currently in about 1,200 theaters).

The journey that prints make from film laboratories to the 33 distribution depots in the United States, then to theaters and back to the depots once they have been pulled from screens, and ultimately on to the destruction facilities, is accompanied by a flurry of tracking paperwork to ensure that no print falls into unauthorized hands. The way film reels are shipped for junking also makes it nearly impossible for anyone to reconstruct a complete print.

"The prints are intentionally mixed in the box, so that if I were to open up one box, I would not find all six reels for a specific title," says Beckhardt. "If I wanted to search the whole trailer, I probably could put a whole movie together, but it would take a lot of time to unroll part of each reel, determine what the movie was, figure out the reel number, and then search through 40,000 pounds of material to try and find all six reels to that movie."

Documentation that accompanies new prints on their arrival from labs follows them to their destruction. "As we get the prints we are in contact with the studio," says Borodinsky. "Communication is very, very tight. We issue a certificate of destruction based on the print numbers supplied with the film and the number of reels. We've very, very security conscious."

Even with these stringent controls, the occasional print does manage to slip into the hands of collectors and buffs, usually at the distributor or film booker level. One former independent distributor, speaking on condition of anonymity, describes how he once returned reels of what was essentially scraps to the depot but kept the actual film print. Despite the tight security, he confirms, "You can get a print of whatever was out last summer."
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-17-2003, 11:41 AM:
 
The Kodak and FPC websites have information about Kodak recycling services for scrap film:

Kodak Scrap Film Program

Film Waste Classification.jhtml

Kodak FPC Film Salvage

Recycling Motion Picture Film
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 02-17-2003, 05:44 PM:
 
Once a film has been released around the world and is out on video everywhere I would see little downside to the studios selling a small number of prints to the collectors directly, instead of this gray market that exists of prints that were supposed to be junked but "fell off the truck." Make the buyer sign whatever agreements the lawyers deem appropriate...perhaps structure it as a life-of-print lease. I'm sure on a hit movie a good number of collectors would be willing to pay in the mid to high hundreds or even a thousand. It would also stimulate the hobby which would lead to more buyers. They could probably clear half a million profit on selling an asset that otherwise just brings cents a pound. For an industry that tries to exploit every revenue stream I think they are missing the boat here. They can certainly try it with a few select titles and see what happens.
 

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 02-17-2003, 05:58 PM:
 
Wouldn't they have to make it extremely clear to buyers that the prints are sold "as-is", no returns or exchanges? What if a "collector" pays $750 sight-unseen for a used print that turns out to be scratched to hell, missing excessive frames, or the digital soundtrack(s) are damaged? Maybe no DTS discs? If it costs the dists. a couple hundred $$ extra to thoroughly "grade" & package a complete print in xlnt condition, will that jack up the retail price to the point where there would be few buyers? I doubt there's much money in this for them, given the hassles of dealing with individual buyers. Maybe they could sell off some quantity of prints to some 3rd party, let them do the grading etc. and be the retailer. Certain "select" titles might be popular enough to sell in relatively large quantities used.
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 02-17-2003, 08:40 PM:
 
Ah but David, why should the collectors do any better than commerical subrun theatres?
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-19-2003, 11:35 AM:
 
The real problem with that is that once you've got a 35mm print, you have the means to produce very high quality video copies (OK, you need a Rank or a Spirit too but I'm sure that a lot of organised video pirate operations have them).

The studios probably don't worry too much about 'off the back of a lorry' prints now because the collectors know that the materials are in their hands illegally, ergo if they do anything stupid with them they'll be nailed, pure and simple. With hundreds or possibly thousands of prints legally held by private individuals, the risk of piracy must surely increase. And some of the buyers approaching the studios will surely be fronts for organised pirate gangs.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-19-2003, 01:27 PM:
 
Why would anyone bother to telecine a 35mm print when a good-quality video master can already be easily and legally obtained (in DVD form)?

For older titles which are readily available on videotape/DVD, I wish that the studios would just legitimize private ownership of 35mm prints for noncommercial home use. Obviously, some prints will still need to be recycled (are there really 8000 collectors who want prints of Harry Potter?), but that number could be significantly reduced for popular titles. It would be a nice source of income for the studios and would allow them to keep track of who owns what prints in case there are any copyright issues (public shows, video copies, etc.).

The film collectors I know aren't video pirates and don't show non-PD films to the public without permission. They do it because they prefer the quality of film and are willing to go to significant trouble and expense to achieve the best possible presentation quality in their homes. Many of them are happy to loan materials to studios and archives for preservation or licensed exhibition purposes where studio materials are inadequate or nonexistant.
 

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Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 02-19-2003, 06:19 PM:
 
I too find it rather disgusting that the film community, for the most part, sees film collectors as "video pirates" and a threat to their penny-piching hands. It just isnt worth the time and effort to transfer a film once released on video. All I want is a 10 foot picture that matches the quality of the digital sound. Also the way studios are loosing one of a kind stuff left and right, collectors later serve as a kindof last resort for film preservation efforts.

Josh
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 02-19-2003, 07:37 PM:
 
There is zero video or internet piracy potential from a film print once the film is out on video in all territories. The only possible risk would be an illegal theatrical run which I think would be unlikely domestically but a possibility in the third world. But given that this would all be well after the worldwide theatrical run it's just as likely that that might be done with video and a DVD. I see no real harm in testing the concept with a few titles.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-20-2003, 01:57 AM:
 

quote:

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Why would anyone bother to telecine a 35mm print when a good-quality video master can already be easily and legally obtained (in DVD form)?

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quote:

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I too find it rather disgusting that the film community, for the most part, sees film collectors as "video pirates" and a threat to their penny-piching hands.

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