Kodachrome The Movie 2

The film was a homage to the changes happening via technology to the
photographic world. Digital imaging or capturing an image versus exposing one
has taken over the world of photography. It showed up early as technology
advanced in 1988 with the marketing of the first commercial digital cameras. What
was game changing was the digital sensor. It reads and stores data. And the data
you have captured is fundamental to digital photography. It is digitally coded
information that the camera and certain computer programs are able to read.
This was a significant sea change from film, which was a physical object
presented on a piece of plastic. With chemicals used to develop the image that
you could hold it in your hand. It became very personal for me, a sense of
warmth and communication with the image. It was spiritual.

The operative understanding of the difference is that film is exposed and
processed while digital images are captured. It is then, in an instant, that
one can view the results via camera playback button. This was a cosmic shift in
how one would perceive and view their work. I said the film was physical and
you could feel it and even smell it. And I, as one that developed it in his own
dark room it was personal and spiritual. My dark room became my sanctuary.

How does a believer in such a powerful dogma move from it. With great
difficulty. For the longest time, I went around with a 4 x 5 film camera and a
dark cloth over my head, exposing my film. My mantra, when asked, “I was
working hard to be a dinosaur “.  Whereas digital photography, as you can see,
was immensely more convenient. Your images are viewed  instantly via the
playback button. Soon they were gaining so much in popularity that the economics shifted. The companies that produce a digital camera, promoted the convenience.
They marketed well and before long, the wave of change grew big enough to
overtake the competition. Industries grew along with it and took on a life of
their own. Software, for instance, for reviewing and producing your work
without the dark room became the standard. I was surprised that the huge film
company Kodak began to shrink and disappear.

What happened is the market for film had become an alternative process, used
by the few film devotees.

This demise and disappearance of Kodachrome film processing is the premise
of the movie “Kodachrome”. Released via Netflix in
2018, the cast is impressive. Ed Harris, Academy awards nominee, plays
the dying photographer Benjamin Asher Ryder, needing his last  roles
of Kodak’s Kodachrome to be processed. The twist is that he could arrive late after
the lab had run out the dyes needed for the processing or die before.

Jason Sudeikis plays his estranged son, who since the death of his mother
was raised by his aunt and uncle. Elizabeth Olsen, who played Ben’s nurse and
future love interest of Matt. Together, they have to get Ben to the lab to
process his last roles of Kodachrome before he dies.

After watching the movie, I went back to read the article that stimulated
the idea for this movie. I also went and looked at the people involved with the
overall production. A screenplay developed from this article was a
collaboration between the Director, Mark Raso, and the writer, Jonathan
Tropper. Shot, totally on 35 mm film the movie evolved into a work of passion.
The Director and the cinematographer, Alan Poon, expressed
how the use a film enhanced their movie and their perception and experience and
how to make one. More tomorrow