The year for digital movies?
STDMs (Small Time Digital Movies – that’s to say amateur and professional digital productions of varying lengths and qualities) have been available online forever.
But now, offline BTDC (Big Time Digital Cinema) seems about to rear its head.
"2004 could truly be a watershed year for digital cinema," says Bernhard Warner in a Reuters story here. "A recent surge in investment by theater chains and technology companies means the number of digital projectors in cinemas will more than double to over 400 in the next 12 months, Screen Digest reports."
Not that it hasn’t happened already, of course. This April, Landmark Theatres and Microsoft said they were equipping 177 screens in all 53 Landmark Theatres across the US with digital cinema playback systems based on Microsoft Windows Media 9 technology.
This followed the 2002 ‘launch’ of the BMW The Hire short film series, "created by Hollywood?s finest talent" and available now for "downloading and streaming" via the – you guessed it -Microsoft’s Windows Media 9 Series format.
"For the first time, a critical mass of the independent film industry’s infrastructure will be wired for digital distribution," said MS in a puff release. Please note the use of the phrase independent film industry.
It went on, "This helps address the escalating costs of releasing theatrical films, which weighs heaviest on the independent sector, as it must pay the same costs to release a film as the major studios. The creation of a complete digital alternative represents a major breakthrough in these economies that will help guarantee greater diversity and access to the marketplace for independent filmmakers and distributors alike."
Which isn’t to say the biggies are out of it. George Lucas has been keen on digital cinema from the off. His ‘ Star Wars Attack of the Clones was screened digitally at around100 theaters across the globe. Whether or not the effort and expense were worth it is, of course, an entirely different question. Then there’s Finding Nemo (definitely worth it) from Walt Disney and Pixar and more recently, Warner’s The Last Samurai, currently doing well on p2p networks everywhere. There are other digital movies, but not that many, relatively speaking – not in North America, anyway.
"There’s no guarantee the technology will make the next Jennifer Lopez-Ben Affleck film more watchable, but at least the final product will look better," Warner points out
"As always, whenever art and technology collide, snags emerge. Installation costs for cinemas are high and the major studios are slow to churn out fully digitized blockbusters until technology standards and anti-piracy measures are resolved."
Anti-piracy measures, you say?
We’re talking digital movies, here, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see what could happen – and from within as well as without, witness the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) ’screener’ debacle when MPAA boss Jack Valenti banned DVD pre-releases on the grounds they were re-appearing on p2p networks. He was forced to rescind the ban, but …..
And digital movies aren’t stored in film cannisters – they’re on hard-drives and/or other electronic media, with all that imnplies. Nor do you have projectors: rather, you have servers.
And digital movies aren’t stored in film cannisters – they’re on hard-drives and/or other electronic media, with all that imnplies. Nor do you have projectors: rather, you have servers.
In the meanwhile, although last April the seven major movie studios formed a consortium dubbed NewCo (to start thinking about standards and ways and means and, presumably, to make sure they don’t follow in the footsteps of the music industry which instead of embracing the new technolgies, is trying to kill them), the Rest of the World seems to be showing far more active interest.
"Major Cineplex Co will spend 100 million baht [about $2.5 million] to install digital movie projectors, making it the second operator in Asia to use the new entertainment technology," says Thai Retail Headline News here.
"The country’s leading movie operator has already placed an order for the equipment with International Barco Digital Cinema Co of Belgium. Major Cineplex executives would not say how many projectors had been ordered but said each was worth about 12 million baht. Only 31 operators worldwide are now using digital projectors, with Japan having the only digital installations in Asia.
" ‘Digital movies will play a bigger role in the future and replace traditional film screening. This big investment is designed to meet the new trend and to keep our leadership in the market and our brand image,’ said marketing director Anavach Ongvasith."
An Indo-British film festival was staged in New Delhi, last July, featuring ‘cutting edge’ digital films from India and the UK, including Gayatri Rao’s Raju and I, Ram Madhvani’s Let’s Talk, Dom Rotheroe’s My Brother Tom and Channel 4’s acclaimed documentary series The Greatest Show on Earth: The Mahakumbh Mela.
Switzerland’s Pure Digital Cinema brags, "instead of using 35mm film (like in your camera), running at 24 frames per second, the image on the PURE DIGITAL CINEMATM big screen is beamed via satellite and stored in a file. Powerful processors then decode and project a pure DIGITAL picture."
February 6th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
please send the movie to me..