8mm Forum: 35mm -should I or should'nt I ?

This is topic 35mm -should I or should'nt I ? in forum 8mm Forum at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Colin Auty (Member # 231) on September 28, 2004, 01:18 PM:

After recently seeing a restored Gaumont British (circa 1940's)35mm projector working at the Film Fun Day at Farnworth , which
is for sale - I am trying to justify spending £600 on this beautiful machine.
converted for 250 watt lamp
2000ft reels (eqivalent to 400ft - aprox 20mins )
Availability of films seems scarce - though on the e-bay site
brand new cinema release trailers are available at a reasonable
price and I have seen some 35mm films at conventions.
I would appreciate any thoughts , words of wisdom on this
subject - I don't want to buy for it to gather dust!

Regards Colin
price -

Posted by Tony Milman (Member # 7) on September 28, 2004, 01:23 PM:

Colin,

If it is good enough for John Clancy then go for it, sounds a fair price to me but then I know nothing!

Posted by Craig Hamilton (Member # 258) on September 28, 2004, 02:10 PM:

What happens to all the 35mm features. Thousands are produced every year, but you never see any for sale?

Craig [Confused]

Posted by Mike Peckham (Member # 16) on September 28, 2004, 03:00 PM:

Craig

I fear it is a sad sad story that would have cine collectors waking from a fitful sleep in a muck sweat [Frown]

.

Mike

Posted by Chris Quinn (Member # 129) on September 28, 2004, 04:00 PM:

Colin,
Flip a coin that's what i do. [Wink]

Chris.

Posted by Mark Todd (Member # 96) on September 28, 2004, 04:37 PM:

I think I would give it a go for trailers, but are you married colin, do you want things to stay that way, maybe thats the question you should be asking yourself.
But on a practical note think about postage, its a serious bussiness if you go beyond trailers.
Superb quality mind but if it were me I`d stick to 8 or 16mm.
Some 16mm can be amazing and some 8 can be like 16 too.
best Mark.

Posted by Craig Hamilton (Member # 258) on September 28, 2004, 06:05 PM:

Mike, spill the beans. [Frown]

Posted by John Clancy (Member # 49) on September 29, 2004, 06:51 AM:

Colin, films do come up for sale over here occasionally. I generally spend about £80 plus postage of around £23. Recent titles do come up on the occasions I hear about titles.

If you're coming to the BFCC make yourself known and if you do go down the 35mm route then I can get in touch if I hear of anything for sale.

But don't think 35mm is a replacement for Super 8. It's great when you're projecting it but you will need muscles like Popeye and a lot of storage space for just a single feature. I only have 5 or 6 and that's too many. Keith Wilton has hundreds, but then he's Keith Wilton.

Posted by Mark Todd (Member # 96) on September 29, 2004, 10:24 AM:

How many!!!!! He`s obviously got a big house and an unusually Ok wife then.
best Mark.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on September 29, 2004, 05:17 PM:

I can't even imagine collecting 35mm, I am rapidly running out of space for my Super 8 collection, not to mention DVD's and VHS tapes. Keith's house must have an underground cavern where he stores all this stuff. This is one reason I have never got into 16mm - too bulky, too heavy. But obviously if you have the space 9and the muscles!) 35mm is a great way to go.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on September 29, 2004, 07:52 PM:

I hung out with a guy in High School who had a great part time job: Assistant Projectionist at the local theater. Unfortunately he learned early on that his greatest responsibility was to haul the films up to the booth and then back down, and they weighed about 70 Lbs per reel.

-No small effort for a scrawny 16 year old!

Posted by John Clancy (Member # 49) on September 30, 2004, 02:06 AM:

Hundreds may have been a bit of an exageration but you get the picture. He's collected so many mainly in consideration for shows at the conventions. Between us we've got enough material to keep the shows fresh and (hopefully) interesting for years.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on September 30, 2004, 03:44 AM:

I collect 8mm, 35mm and 70mm. (I don't do 16mm because of the mono soundtrack.) 35mm can take up a lot of space, but if you store on 6000 foot reels (roughly 1 hour of 35mm film on reels that are 24 inches diameter), you can fit about 100 movies in a small room of 8 x 10 feet.

35mm prints of pretty much any current title are readily available. The catch with 35mm is if you don't get it as the prints are being junked, your only source for an older title is another film collector, and that's when it gets expensive. Recent releases commonly run $300-400, but once it gets into someone's collection, the price starts to skyrocket commonly over $1000.

Equipment wise there are tons of machines out there, but bear in mind you have to build some sort of booth because all of them will be too noisy to sit in the room with the projector. If you want to get fancy, you will either need to have the technical knowledge on how to set it all up, or pay for a cinema tech to come in and do it for you. I am a tech and have a screening room set up not only for my personal print-watching, but also as a demo room for clients. I have a detailed step-by-step picture tour of the room from foundation to completion over on my main website www.film-tech.com Just click "pictures" and select "Film-Tech screening room".

Posted by Tony Milman (Member # 7) on September 30, 2004, 04:14 PM:

Brad, how do you acquire 35mm films that are being junked?

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