Post by spiderwort on Dec 10, 2019 3:48:50 GMT
The headline and article give no details and I am now very
curious. The labs (there were many, but CFI was the preeminent one) processed the film negatives and printed positive prints to be edited. They also had negative cutters who cut the negatives for films, based upon the final edited workprints supplied by the production companies. And they had people who helped with color "correction" -- i.e. made sure the color saturations met the needs/desires of the filmmakers. When all that was done, they then printed the film "masters" from which they then printed all the distribution/"release" prints that were shipped around the world in 2000 feet reels (roughly 20 minutes each).
But today almost everything is done digitally, so there's little need left for labs to do much work with film and hence little money to be made. That's why CFI was shut down in 2008.
Ironically, with few exceptions, most lab work now lies in taking finished digital "films" and transferring them to celluloid film for archival purposes; in other words, the studios make film "masters," because they know how fragile the digital format is and how easily they could lose their product if it's not on real film. For someone who doesn't like digital and would always rather shoot on film, this is a sad irony, indeed. But with very few exceptions (Spielberg being one, and even he doesn't know how much longer he can hold out), that's really how the "film" world works these days. Like Spielberg, I know how much is lost in that translation.