Variety recently announced that Fuji will stop making motion picture film stock in the upcoming year. It was just a year ago, that Fuji announced their entry into the cosmetics business, so I felt this was only a matter of time.

After this was announced I went and watched a true IMAX screening of The Dark Knight Rises. It (65mm) looked amazing and I did tear up to think that I could possibly be watching one of the last films I'll see projected.

Even the highly praised and paraded 65mm poster-child film Samsara, (the follow up to Baraka), was not shown in it's original 70mm format.  I attended opening night in Los Angeles, which was followed by a QnA with the director/cinematographer, producer and composer, only to find the screening of the 70mm film was actually a 4k projection. Now if you know anything about film... 4k is a fair projection of 35mm film... not 70mm! The last time I had seen Baraka, was another instance where there was a QnA with the director/cinematographer and producer... however that time was an inter-positive print in 70mm. I could tell and it was the most beautiful presentation of an image I have ever seen.

This long winded side-tracked story is basically for the point of saying film is beautiful and 4k can't replace 65mm. It just can't.

Fuck you Fuji.

Juan Ruiz-Anchia: Kodak Original to Fuji Print

From American Cinematographer, More Trouble In Little China by Eric Rudolph (March 1999)

In an effort to keep costs down, New Line Cinema primarily makes its release prints on Fuji stocks. Anchia was therefore compelled to experiment a bit in the lab in order to successfully blend his Eastman Kodak camera original with the Fuji print stock for the general release prints. The cameraman says that he and Beverly Wood of DeLuxe Laboratories in Hollywood eventually devised a complex yet cost effective printing strategy that effectively emulates the crisp look of the Vision-printed show reels.

Anchia notes, "We made our interpositive on regular Kodak stock, which we slightly underexposed, and our internegative on slightly overdeveloped Fuji stock. We then printed to Fuji release stock, which was exposed and processed normally. These manipulations, coupled with the inherently higher contrast of the Fuji release stock, gave me the rich, contrasty look I was after for the general release prints."

- Juan Ruiz-Anchia ASC, AEC