Hollywood Fire Destroys Films Worth Millions

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.

Oh, sorry. I misunderstood your question.  I would assume that most of that money was lost because the films they were working on and/or storing in 1929 were made out of silver nitrate stock, not celluloid, and hence were quick to burn. Under those circumstances, the costs would have quickly risen.  I'm sure that's what happened.  And when you add in production costs as well -- money spent on the films that were lost -- the total losses would have been overwhelming.

And I just wanted to add one more thing about what CFI (and other labs) did before digital completely took over - in the transition in other words:  when films were still shot on film but edited digitally, the lab, through what is known as telecine, would transfer the film negatives to the digital format for editing.  Then, when the editing was done, they'd transfer the digital final cuts back to the film format.  Those were the last good days, in my view.

Of course, it would have made sense for the labs to keep them when they were going to be making distribution prints.  And your side note does indeed it strike terror in me and others, I'm sure. That said, when I was making my own short films as a teenager, I sent off my cut negatives to have positive prints made.  I think about that now and shudder.  But that was my only option then, and for whatever reason I guess it was often the preferred option in the early days of the industry.  That, combined with their use of silver nitrate stock, could have been (doubtless was) a disaster waiting to happen.  

Nice to chat with you about this again.  I love our shared experiences.  I love that you know film!  I miss seeing it on the screen, but I even miss holding it in my hands, touching it, and turning it in a moviola one frame at a time.  Oh, boy.  Those were the days.