I know that they are not generally sold to the public but what is the cost of producing the 6-7 reels of a 35MM print that makes up the average feature film? Is there a market somewhere for selling the old prints once their useful life in theaters is over?
It all depends on volume. If I wanted to strike a single print off of, say, an internegative–pristine, full QC, the whole shebang–we’re talking about $30K. If I want to run off 100 or 1000, than the price/unit drops dramatically (though needless to say, it’s still pricey).
I think any “market” is an underground one, since film prints are still typically owned by their copyright holder and are not openly available for resale. Most prints, after they’ve lived their life-cycle of 2nd and 3rd-run houses, are destroyed (and by that time, they’re usually in such bad shape that most collectors would probably balk at them anyway) since that is the most cost-effective way of dealing with them (except for saving a print or two for archival purposes, as well as your typical LoC deposit).
eBay will not allow the sale of movies as 35mm prints because it knows that 99% of those sales are unauthorized by the copyright owners.
Once upon a time, before film piracy became as widespread as it is today, the regional film exchanges were allowed to “return” a worn-out 35mm print to the studio by sending only the title credits, thereby saving the shipping expenses of sending the whole movie. This rendered the movie unplayable for commercial purposes.
Is there enough silver left in the film to make recovery efforts worthwhile?
A typical 35mm print contains about 250 parts per million silver content, by weight. Thus, 1 gram of silver per every 4000 grams gross weight. (Source: Film Journal, October 1998.)
Anybody know how a reel of 35mm film weighs without the reel itself?
5-6 lbs (cored)
OK, so a 5.5 pound reel weights 2.5 kg. (Are we talking 1,000-foot reels or 2,000-foot double reels?)
2.5 kg ÷ 4000 = 0.62 g of silver per reel of 35mm print film.
So that comes to about 4 grams of silver per standard feature.
Films are shipped in standard 2000ft reels (6-7/feature) so I weighed a 2000ft cored reel.
Assuming the silver is of 0.925 purity, the current maket price for 4 g is a measly US $1.55 (1.20 euros). Boost it to .999 purity, and it’s still only $1.67.