Sending Film Internationally By Mail

MattKing said:

FWIW, with motion picture film, a few years ago Eastman Kodak had one full shipment of film sent to a full length motion picture production that suffered X-ray damage in shipping, and as a result had to incorporate a more complex and expensive procedure into all its subsequent shipping cost calculations.

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I certainly recall that after a location shoot for the TV show "Lost", an inexperienced employee or intern had the exposed film flown back to such a way that it was subjected to CT scans. IIRC it was taken in hold luggage in a commercial airliner that the crew travelled home on. The entire shoot had to be remounted.

It's probably happened in other instances too.

The bottom line is that for us mere mortals, nobody seems to have a credible example of our camera film suffering damage in the international post/courier systems. Many of us have many examples of successful international shipping of film. A small but non-zero number of us have had stuff go missing in the mail. Which would actually seem the bigger risk.

Agulliver said:

subjected to CT scans. IIRC it was taken in hold luggage in a commercial airliner that the crew travelled home on.

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Not that this matters much for what you're trying to say, but when Lost was being produced, there were no CT scanners being used for this application AFAIK. It's well-known and has been for a long time that hold luggage is generally subjected to far more powerful and thus damaging regular xray imaging than cabin baggage. It's an unfortunate turn of events, but it still makes a good anecdote (let's hope the production assistant can laugh about it now)!

What we do can glean from the CT-or-not issue is that at present, we're seeing big changes in inspection processes and equipment. I'd be hesitant to draw conclusions towards present and future shipments on the basis of past experiences.