Seeing as I'm less busy at the Lab, the most proactive approach I've come up with is to hire myself out as a camera operator for various events for other filmmakers. If I could get the hirer to purchase film, processing and telecine from me as a package deal this would be cheaper for them overall, postage costs would be minimal as well because I could bring and take all film stock to the event/lab personally. I would only have to post the processed films and dvd disk to the hirer when everything had been developed and digitized. After It's been shot, developed and digitized the hirer can edit the raw film as they see fit. This approach would  give me time to develop, dramatically improve overall turnaround time and give me some extra cash for services rendered. I have all the equipment necessary to do this kind of work and I'm extremely handy with it. I have 3 high end Super 8 cameras, shoulder support, monopod, tripod, nice wide angle lenses etc... I could do your standard coverage or do something more specialist like time lapse shots.. Remember I don't only shoot and process my own film regularly but also have the privilege of watching other peoples endeavors on a weekly basis (a schooling in itself).

After chatting with Roger this morning he has confirmed the telecine unit is complete and will be posted out by friday. We had first planned on having it up and running in January, then February but now it seems likely it wont be until March. It'll take me a good month to set it up and become proficient at using it. It's great that it's finished at last though.   

I just want to get some input from you guys and girls. I have placed my first order with Wittner (nice guys) for 100D and V50D S8 carts & with the UPS shipping each cart is costing me around £21. Very expensive and this will be the roundabout baseline for colour reversal film in future. Because the film stock is so expensive to buy in, I'll probably only sell it with process paid or process+telecine to try and keep the overall costs down. However with paypal and ebay fees we're talking about a pretty steep rise from my current prices. It's going to be around £32-33 pounds for a process paid cart and £40ish for a film+process+telecine. Pricy to say the least but realistically this is as good as it's going to get for colour reversal now. I just want to know what peoples thought are on this? Will you pay that much to keep using super 8 colour reversal? It's worrying because I suspect many people wont and this will decrease my turnaround time and generally have a negative effect over a prolonged period of time.       

Happy new year to all! It's going to be a month of alteration. You may have noticed we're light on S8 cameras atm. This is because we didn't have time to look for any last month. We'll still stock cameras in future but we wont have as many due to time restrictions and the fact that 50% of the cameras we get in are broke (It's somewhat of a financial black hole). We'll only buy up sure things in future. As already mentioned we're selling off the last 100D and looking into new stocks this month. Still no news on our telecine unit. I'll be contacting Moviestuff on the 7th if it doesn't appear soon. The aim is to have everything up and running for Feb so I hope it turns up. I'm also developing a batch of colour this week and B&W next week so for anyone who didn't get their films back over the holiday, your wait is almost over.