I'd guess at yes, but the timing must be just perfect.
Come in too soon, and they're competing against the remaining Kodak films.
Come in too late and even the die-hard users have switched to digital, however reluctantly.
Of course, no matter how late it is and no matter how many have switched to digital, there's always those who will switch back if 'the look' is good and the price is right.
I'd say the bigger danger is coming in too early, spending all the R&D money and producing too much film, and selling none of it because Vision3 is still around, that's the kind of situation that could kill the whole endeavour.
But that can be mitigated by a few test-rolls, getting some big& famous film-lovers like Tarantino to try it out, if it's good and they get on board for pre-orders that could justify a decent-sized run.
That's a lot more sales and marketing skills than technical though, we know Ferrania have the engineers but do they have the salesmen with the connections?
Your right, however Ferrania dont have any cine negative film products that we are aware of (unless their formulas in the archive contain future products that were scrapped by 3M)
So extensive R&D would be required, which could take years. Since ECN type films share alot of things in common with C41 films, this is not so bad for Ferrania, since they produced C41 film right up to 2010, so they do have the solaris formulas to work with to develop a new ECN2 product, but this still would require alot of work.
The good news is that Solaris was a very high quality C41 film with fine grain etc. I wouldnt expect that Ferrania will look at the cine negative film market until after they have C41 production well underway.
As you said kodak Vision is not going away any time soon, but anything is possible, the key for Ferrania would be to conduct market research to see if the majority of film makers would be happy to switch to a different film if Kodak pulled out. How many would have switched to digital after Fjui pulled out as an example?
And timing would have to be everything as you say, its no point waiting for Kodak to drop ECN before Ferrania starts R&D, but too early and its a waste of resources. If its too late, then labs will close down and processing will be near impossible, so the idea would be to release a replacement product around the time that you can feel that kodak is about to pull the plug.
We don't know if Ferrania has the equipment to perforate 65mm and 70mm film stock. Although the perforations look similar to the ones used for 35mm.
If i have researched correctly, the increased costs of 70mm prints were not exactly due to the increased amount of photo film area, but due to the fact that for 70mm there was no (cheaper) optical audio option, but only the magnetic audio. So the 70mm print stock needed additional manufacturing work so it would be coated with magnetic stripes, just as it is done when manufacturing audio tape. I've read on forums that this increased tenfold (10x) the cost of the print (source unknown -- please contribute), which limited 70mm prints manufacturing and distribution.
In the 1990s, DTS created digital audio (optical) sync tracks for the 70mm prints, so magnetic tracks were not needed anymore and thus print costs could decrease. There was a small resurgence of 70mm prints in the early 90s.
ARRI and Panavision both have modern (late 80s) 65mm cameras which they still rent, plus an array of lenses. The latest lenses released for the Arri digital 65mm camera use the same mount as the Arri 765 65mm film camera; that's good news.
"See new coming attractions presented in 70mm FERRRANIACOLOR..."
Black and white high-acutance 70mm prints should be something wonderful to watch...
Yes good point, i was thinking the same thing. I dont even know if Ferrania ever produced 70mm film or not, if so, there is a good chance they still have a 70mm perforator. They probably could get a scrapped one from kodak at such a time though.
Couldn't Dolby digital and SDDS be printed onto 70mm the same was as was done with 35mm?
One that I haven't seen mentioned that I would be really interested in is the Minox format. Would you be able to work with something that small, especially given the specialized Minox cassette?
