Rallying,

post

disaster

Vancouver: Tylenol, Perrier. What do we think of when we hear these company names? Most likely their well-publicized corporate nightmares. Interestingly though, they’re both still in business. What sets these companies apart from the others that aren’t is how they dealt with their nightmares. Accidents are bound to happen; it’s how we react to them that counts.

On July 4 at 1:00 in the morning, disaster struck Vancouver’s Gastown Film Labs. Dave Hardon, president of Gastown, one of Canada’s most respected labs, experienced his worst nightmare – only he was awake and at work.

At some time during the night something mysteriously had caused a corrosive substance to eat away at the film negative during processing. The result – four major productions had their film from the previous day’s shooting destroyed. Everything would have to be reshot.

While Hardon says he couldn’t begin to guess what the financial impact of this event will be, other industry sources estimate the production insurance claims could run up to $1 million.

Hardon says quality control checks were done meticulously as usual prior to beginning the run and everything was fine, ‘but the problems didn’t start at the beginning, it was very late in the run and it was only when we started printing that we first found any physical evidence that something was wrong.’

And then, he says he felt ‘absolute horror.’ He knew what it meant.

Gastown stopped processing film immediately until it could isolate the cause. The affected productions were notified of the damage. Gastown arranged to have competitor Alpha Cine Labs process all its clients’ film in the interim. And Gastown staff began to check every parameter in the processing. Hardon says they were fortunate to have 7,500 feet of non-sensitive test film that they could run until they could be sure they had identified the problem. But that proved to be difficult; the full 7,500 feet came up clean.

An expert from Kodak, Rami Mina, director of engineering for western u.s. motion picture and television imaging, was called up from Los Angeles to analyze the Gastown problem. He says it appears as if a particle transfer roller (a relatively new Kodak product), designed to remove any loose or lightly embedded foreign material from the film following processing – used as an additional precautionary housekeeping measure prior to printing – had inexplicably broken down and exuded a corrosive substance on to the film. He promptly removed the rollers and sent them down to Kodak’s head office in Rochester, n.y. to ascertain the cause.

Alpha Cine, Vancouver’s only other lab, was also using the same rollers until this happened. Hardon says, ‘I think their rollers were off their processors three-and-a-half seconds after we informed them.’

As to who is responsible for the problem, Hardon suggests there are two possibilities: ‘that the roller broke down on its own or that we did something to the roller that made it break down. If we did something to the roller that made it break down we want to know what it was. We have now done everything to these (same kind of) rollers to try to duplicate the effect but so far have been unable to.’

An accident of this magnitude is very unusual in a lab, says Hardon. ‘I’ve worked in this business for 36 years and it’s certainly the worst event I’ve ever been involved in. There are a great many ways of damaging film during the process cycle. The most likely and prevalent cause is human error or a mechanical breakdown. Those are definitive things that can be identified and addressed in one way or another but this is an event that comes totally out of left field. How does something that isn’t supposed to, break down like this and how does it exude some substance that can turn perfectly good motion picture film into shit?’

Marty Katz, producer on Man 2 Man starring Chevy Chase and Farrah Fawcett, one of the productions most affected in the accident, says two days will have to be reshot. Katz laments: ‘Unfortunately one involved a first unit cafeteria scene with 200 extras and the second unit shoot was a precision driving stunt that had gone so well none of the 11 rental cars had sustained a single scratch.

‘The cost of reshooting those scenes,’ says Katz, ‘will be about $150,000, $50,000 of which will be a deductible and naturally our premiums will rise.’

Other productions affected include Little Women, the Columbia TriStar feature directed by Gillian Armstrong starring Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Gabriel Byrne and Eric Stoltz. Production manager Warren Carr says, ‘thankfully we were not terribly affected. We only had to reshoot four scenes and we had it done the next day.’

Tom Rowe, producer of the Green/Epstein mow Foster’s Field Trip, which lost two full days of shooting, says, ‘Obviously it’s not fun and you never really get back the magic when you have to reshoot, but at the same time, it’s just one of those things that happens and we’re not upset with the lab. It’s just an insurance claim.’

Another Green/Epstein mow, How the West Was Fun, being filmed in Calgary, will have to reshoot one day as well.

Accidents of this nature are covered by the production company’s insurance policies but the deductible portions are not covered. The lab is not legally responsible for paying the deductible, only for replacing and processing the film; but in order to retain goodwill and regain the trust of its customers, Hardon admits, some compensation will have to be made. ‘I will be dealing with each customer on an individual basis.’

Restoring customer confidence was Hardon’s greatest concern. However, Katz says after he spoke with the Kodak expert who told him that Gastown was one of the ‘cleanest and best run labs he’d ever seen,’ he felt a lot more confident about sending his processing there again. Adds Carr: ‘I’ve been working with Dave since the early ’70s and this is such a bizarre event, there’s no question I still have confidence in the lab. Look how they brought in a Kodak technical expert immediately. It wasn’t a lab problem but a piece of equipment.’

At week’s end all the affected productions had resumed processing at the lab again with the exception of How the West Was Fun, which was shooting its final week in Alberta and was posting in l.a.

‘The lab business is unique,’ says Curtis Staples, vice-president and general manager of Gastown’s sister company Gastown Post and Transfer, ‘you can’t hide your mistakes. Everything rides on your reputation in this industry and confidence is essential. Our lab has enjoyed a well-earned reputation over the years for its excellence, so when events like this happen that could potentially be very damaging, it’s been reassuring this week that so many of our customers have called both from Vancouver and in l.a. with words of support.’

This event serves to remind producers of the importance of insurance coverage and one of the reasons for dramatically rising premiums. When there are accidents in the film industry they are usually very costly. JM