The Ins and Outs of Short Ends

by Scott Spears

So you’ve scraped together a few extra dollars to shoot film, but you’re still a bit tight on cash and somebody says, “Buy short ends!” Now, you’ve heard about them but aren’t sure you want to buy somebody else’s leftovers. Well, here’s the scoop on short ends: it’s film that was bought by a production that never got used and to make some money it is being sold. It comes in four types; short ends, long ends, re-cans and buy-backs.

Before we get into the details on these different categories you should first know where to buy short ends. My recommendation is to buy from a reputable dealer in short ends and new film. The advantage to going with an established company is they test the film they sell before it goes out the door. If you buy from somebody you don’t know or somebody off eBay, you don’t know if the film has been tested. For all your know it could have spent two long summer months baking in the trunk of some production assistant who now wants to make some beer money by selling some leftover film. Now, I’m not saying that all the film on eBay is bad film, but by going with a company that does this everyday who lives by their long term reputation, you’ll most likely get good film stock.

SHORT ENDS

Here’s where you save the big bucks, but there are always drawbacks to going the cheap route. Short ends are usually 250 feet and under. They are the cheapest of short ends because they plentiful, but there’s less to them. On 16mm that’s about seven minutes of film which isn’t that bad, but on 35mm that’s three minutes which after a color chart, head slate and regular slate isn’t a lot of film. If you go with a lot of short ends on 35mm, you better have a couple loaders ready load mags constantly. They can be had for under twenty cents a foot. I once picked up some for six cents a foot.