Braineack said:
i wonder why Kodak went belly up...
There were multiple reasons Kodak lost its shorts...trying to dictate, "How things are gonnna' be!" to huge markets, rather than listening to customer issues, complaints, and desires; trying to literally CREATE entire, brand-new market segments out of thin air, based on corporate hubris, and then having those efforts cost hundreds of millions of dollars and having the efforts fail in spectacular fashion; the massive lawsuit loss to Polaroid over instant film and instant cameramanufacturing; Kodak's utter refusal to address the importation and distribution of FujiFilm film products for a decade; Kodak's refusal to understand that DIGITAL imaging meant digital cameras, until it was too late; stockpiling and hoarding hundreds of patents, and doing NOTHING with the patents for years; and more!
I've read that Kodak was at one time the largest non-military industrial employer in the USA...they sure as heck have lost that title!
This new Super 8 movie camera initiative is, according to the guy in the promo video, aimed in large part at film students and filmmaking departments. Going after university film school students seems like a long-term strategy on Kodak's part, but I have to wonder if it will bear much fruit. It will take at least a decade before any film school grads are in position to decide to make big-budget blockbuster films that are shot on film, and even then, that would not be much film sold. Kodak's long-time business in 35mm film, that of making film stock for theater prints is almost dead now: theaters have already transitioned to digital projection, so the market for making individual theatrical feature film prints is pretty much almost totally dead now.
This new camera has a VERY distinctive design ethos! It looks VERY different from any older cine camera designs that I've ever seen...so that will probably separate it, mentally, from older, 1970's-era Super 8 cameras. One thing missing from the video: I read that this camera would have a digital viewfinder AND would create
a digital copy of the footage it shot. Of course, mentioning that, that it would be a hybrid digital/film capture device, would be a bit contrary to the
sis-boom-bah! we shot this on film! cheers...
I dunno...this sounds like as good an idea as the Kodak instant film camera system...