Kodak Film Lab London opens at Pinewood

Kodak Film Lab London is now fully-operational in the Ken Adam Building at Pinewood Studios. Kodak and Pinewood have signed a long-term collaboration agreement on the facility, which will offer comprehensive 16mm, 35mm and 65mm colour negative processing.

The move to support the use of physical film in motion picture and television has been made in response to the medium’s strong resurgence, following two banner years of movies shot on film. These include: The Mummy, Wonder Woman, I, Daniel Blake, the ITV series Doc Martin and the soon-to-be-released Justice League, On Chesil Beach and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. Dunkirk, The Nutcracker And The Four Realms and Murder On The Orient Express, were shot using large format 65mm film.

“It is wonderful seeing so many great directors coming back to film,” said Sir Kenneth Branagh, director of Murder On The Orient Express. “And the fact that we have another large format processor is such a huge win for motion pictures. The digital world is miraculous, but the look, depth, and emotive power of large format film is a gold standard.”

A dedicated team of film technicians with extensive experience on major feature films, commercials, promos and archive projects are on board at the new lab, which houses two Photomec Silver Sprinter Processing Machines that can handle over 90,000 feet every ten hours. Using Kodak’s pre-mixed chemistry, the lab will run day/night baths from Monday to Friday and on weekends by arrangement.

“There is nothing quite like the process of making motion picture art on real film, and nothing matches its aesthetic and emotive qualities,” said Steve Bellamy, president, Kodak Motion Picture and Entertainment. “With new labs in London, New York, Atlanta and more in queue, we are ensuring that every major production hub has a state of the art filmic infrastructure.”

Pinewood Digital, which operates within Pinewood’s established Creative Services division, will collaborate with Kodak to support a growing portfolio of dailies and post production services.

Darren Woolfson, Pinewood’s group director of technology commented, “I am delighted that Kodak have chosen to base their latest state-of-the-art film lab at Pinewood. Kodak’s modern film processing techniques, combined with Pinewood’s continued development and innovation in dailies workflow, will provide filmmakers shooting on film with the best possible experience.”

James Corless, group head of picture services at Pinewood, added: “We have made major investment in the last few years to support single scan 4K dailies workflows for productions capturing on film. To complement our film dailies workflows, bringing Kodak onto the lot means filmmakers who choose to capture on film within the UK, have the full support of Kodak and Pinewood.”

Kodak recently opened Kodak Film Lab New York and has already processed Steven Spielberg’s The Post, Ondi Timoner’s Mapplethorpe and Judd Apatow’s series The Crashing for HBO. Kodak Film Lab Atlanta, which was acquired in March, processed Toronto Film Festival favourite I, Tonya as well as AMC’s The Walking Dead. Kodak Film Lab operations in the UK and US are part of the company’s on-going efforts to support the infrastructure for motion picture film worldwide.