From: Tony Conrad (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Jun 13 2009 - 03:05:41 PDT
Let's see.
F**Kers. A**holes. S**Tbags. S**Msuckers.
Oh, well. None of these cognomens is quite fury-loaded enough to express my
feelings about (ugh) DuArt. (It pains me to even so much as write the name.)
My experience was almost identical, with a 78 minute film I worked on for three
years. DuArt kept it in the "vault" (read: "trash can") while about a decade
passed. When I went there to re-print, I was told by Howard Funsch that there
would be outrageous storage fees -- fees that were not only exorbitant, but more
importantly that I was simply unable to pay in any case.
Then I was informed that the original COULD NOT BE LOCATED ANYWHERE, either in
the "vault" in Manhattan or in storage in NJ. End of story. I will never do any
business with those pirates; every time I see the scurrilous bastards' logo on
screen, I cringe.
Thanks for this opportunity to release the truth about this scandalous practice,
and to defame DuArt even a little.
Business people with this kind of ethos should roast in hell, if only there were one.
-----------t0ny
On Fri 06/12/09 10:32 AM , Jerry Tartaglia email suppressed sent:
> You can probably get them to reduce the charges and settle for a portion of
> the amount due. They DO understand the situation, but it will take tactful
> communication. Do you have a contact person?
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Scott Stark" BEAM.NET>To: email suppressed>Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 10:19 AM
> Subject: DuArt Lab storage fees
>
>
> > Hi all, I thought I'd report a troubling
> situation with DuArt Lab in New > York in case any other filmmakers are in the
> same situation.>
> > In 1998 I used DuArt to transfer my film Noema
> from Hi-8 video to 16mm > negative film, and had them print several
> release prints. DuArt kept all > of the film elements and returned the tape to
> me; I haven't thought about > it much since, except once a couple of years
> later when I had another > release print made.
> >
> > Last month I asked them to return the film
> elements to me. I was notified > that I first had to pay a "storage
> surcharge" of $40 per month for the > last ten and a half years (125 months),
> amounting to $5000 plus tax.>
> > This was obviously a quite a shock to me, first
> of all since other labs > I've used (such as Monaco) never charged me a
> dime for storage. Alpha Cine > charges a modest $1.25 per month. But more
> importantly, never once in the > last 10+ years did DuArt send me any kind of
> invoice for these charges. If > they had, I'd have paid it off immediately and
> withdrawn the elements. Yes > I see now it's in their literature and I should
> have read more carefully > at the time (though I never actually saw their
> literature, since the > transaction was handled via phone and U.S. mail
> at the time). But I wish > they had billed me 10 years ago instead of
> letting the charges accrue to > thousands of dollars.
> >
> > In the meantime, filmmakers beware: if your
> elements are being stored by a > lab, look carefully at the storage
> agreement.>
> > Scott Stark
> > www.scottstark.com> www.hi-beam.net
> >
> >
> >
> __________________________________________________________________> For info on
FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> om>.
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at om>.
>
>
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.