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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Storaro's interview in Filmmaker

David Mullen ASC said:
Many cameras, including film cameras, can shoot at multiple frame rates. The problem isn't at the acquisition end. It's at the distribution and display technology end.
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RED already announced 4K projector and 4K display as I remember. There could be a lot of space for the revolution "at the distribution and display technology end."
 
I tend to agree with David, that digital projection will be one of the slower elements of this HD revolution.

People at home will be rocking 1080p screens and enjoying the beauty of it long before the theater guys get their act together and start projecting 2K or 4K.

In fact, I believe people like us will be sporting 4K screens for our RED editing long before 4K projectors become the norm at the local multiplex.
 
it's just economics -- 35mm projectors (for now) are cheaper and won't be obsolete in five years, plus most theaters have long ago paid off their 35mm projectors. So getting digital projectors is a considerable investment, and the majority of savings come to the distributors not making prints, not the exhibitors buying digital projectors. And there are thousands of 35mm theaters in this country alone.

So basically, for digital projection to really take off, (1) the cost of 2K and 4K projectors has to come down, below the 100K mark that I've heard; (2) the savings that distributors get have to partially be passed on to the exhibitors; (3) exhibitors have to find some other cost-savings benefits, probably in reducing their projection staff even further, plus being able to quickly change which movie is playing on which screen (one digital file of the next "Spider-Man" movie can play on as many screens as needed in one multiplex and then be reduced as attendance drops, rather than having to book multiple prints.) (4) Exhibitors need to find some sort of big capital investment for the switchover.

But it really starts with #1. If the cost of the projectors is low enough, it makes everything else easier and even obsolescence is less of a concern.
 
As ticket sale's start to decline due to the home theater experience and better tv programming I think the salvation of the theater may be D-3D.

Who Knows consumers are a finicky breed.
 
I have a 37" HD LCD screen and I'd still rather see a movie in a theater. I doubt the average family is going to invest in something much more elaborate than what I have.

When I'm working out of Los Angeles, though, and experience some of the horrible theater projection in some other U.S. cities, I can understand why some people would rather create a decent home set-up. But here in L.A., I can see a new print of a movie on opening week in a big theater and there's nothing quite like it.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I have a 37" HD LCD screen and I'd still rather see a movie in a theater. I doubt the average family is going to invest in something much more elaborate than what I have.

When I'm working out of Los Angeles, though, and experience some of the horrible theater projection in some other U.S. cities, I can understand why some people would rather create a decent home set-up. But here in L.A., I can see a new print of a movie on opening week in a big theater and there's nothing quite like it.
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I've been to a few movies in LA and I have to agree that you do have some good theaters. You also have alot better selection than we do in Redding. When spiderman and pirates were playing, that's all we had at one eight-plex. We only have two theaters in town, and one of them is guaranteed get your car broken into and your stuff stolen.

A lot of people I know have 55-65 inch tv's and better sound systems than the theater. This may be a localized trend as my house is designed for a 15' wide screen theater room.

I love to see movies at the theater but its more from the opportunity to get out. That and I hate waiting for release. I am dying to see "I am Legend", "transformers", "Ratatooee". "Die hard" was awesome.

I realize that it is going to take some time, but the theaters are going to have to adapt or die. I am more interested in story than I am in projection format.

Digital or film I just love good movies.
 
I saw "Meet the Robinson's" in LA in D-3d. It was the bomb.

I'll see "Transformers" this weekend. I just have to find a sitter for four kids. My wife will kill me if I go without her. I was going to go tonight to the special early show but by the time I found a sitter it was sold out.
 
I went to the early show tonight, the 8 p.m. one up here in Portland (I'm home for a week visiting) and we didn't even know of it until 7:25, haha, I bought tickets then online and we left at 7:35, got there at 7:50, and got horrible 2nd row seats, but oh well it was still tight. The dialogue is pretty cheesy at points, the story is really just an excuse for mass mayhem, but who cares? It's Transformers not Shakespeare. When people talk about story being everything, well, I get what they mean but not always. I was very entertained and that's all most people want out of a movie like this. The voice of Optimus Prime was tight, I thought, I heard some people had complained about that before the movie opened or something, they're full of it, he was awesome. Plus Megan Fox has to be one of the hottest chicks around, good god!

David, a lot of what you talked about has already been underway for a few years now with the Digital Cinema Initiative that all of the major studios finally signed on a bit ago. I don't think it will be a slow rollout, at least not from all of the research I did (for my last book, I had read a lot of stuff from Variety, Hollywood Reporter, etc. on the plans and the negotiations, etc.). From what they were indicating, it would be much more swift, where this plan once in place would quickly replace the projectors across the nation in a matter of a year and a half to two years, not five to ten years or some super long time frame. However, IMO, that remains to be seen because we've been talking about digital cinema since The Phantom Menace became the first major film ever screened digitally, in 1999, and that was a long time ago now.

I saw Revenge of the Sith digitally screened and it made every experience seeing it on a film print pretty horrible by comparison. I just couldn't tolerate that crap. I mean, the first week it looked mostly good, but when I kept seeing it in theaters after 5, 6, 7 weeks, the prints were horrible, missing sometimes a half-second here or there, just really bad quality, it gets to you after a while until the point when you just say, "Eh enough, I'll wait for DVD, I can't do this anymore."

Just the lousy grain and the cigarette burns and the scratches... ugg, it's very frustrating. I can't wait until the day when film projection is just seen as something funny they used to do before real technology. It's already such a joke, so embarrassing, that we have such amazing technology out there and we're using something that they could do in 1895 to show a movie. It's time to move on. If people want to film movies with film, great, but in fact film looks best transferred to digital and projected with a 4K projector, NOT projected with film, because that's just lousy. We're done with that. It's 2007 not 1895, not 1935, not 1970.
 
I just don't think it will be a fast roll-out. Looking around on the internet, I believe that there are some 35,000 screens in the U.S., and some 3,500 of them are digital.

Well, just doing some math and figuring what it would cost to convert 30,000 screens to digital, at $100,000 per projector, I believe I get 3 billion dollars. That's a lot of overpriced popcorn to have to sell.

If you want to keep up on what's going on, visit:

http://www.DCinemaToday.Com

And film technology IS real technology. Don't make the mistake of thinking the only valid technologies are the newest ones. You still use a pen, ride a bike, use a toilet, etc.

What we have today with film projection is pretty good when it's done properly.

And what we will have tomorrow with digital projection will suck when it's done badly.

What you are doing is making the mistake of comparing the worst of what we have today with the best of what we will have tomorrow. You have no idea once there are 30,000 digital projectors going in the United States what sort of problems you'll be seeing at some typical mall cinema in some typical small town.

Yes, there will be some real improvements with digital cinema, but I also think we are going to learn just how badly some underpaid popcorn makers in the lobby can screw up a digital screening.
 
Well, that's the thing, there is no such thing as the best film projection because it always leaves something to be desired. Ok, sometimes, every once in a while, if you see a movie on opening day, it looks good. Sometimes. Much of the time, it's still not very good. When reels break in the middle of screenings, which I've had happen several times in the last few years, I don't think digital could screw up much worse than that. The hard drive could crash, etc., but that's a risk with any technology. I can't see anything good about film that wouldn't be better with digital, or anything bad with digital that isn't worse with film, as far as presentation alone. Now as far as what you shoot with, well, that has to do with the look you want, sure, but not the projection.

Also, 3,500 screens are digital in this country? If that's true, I'm very, very impressed -- I didn't think it was anywhere near that high. In 2005 when ROTS came out, the count was less than 100. It was actually higher outside of North America. Pretty pathetic.

PS: I don't ride a bike and I avoid using pens whenever possible. I can't handwrite anything, haha, I need to type it. I just sign my name to checks or credit card stuff, basically, lol.
 
JonathanLB said:
Well, that's the thing, there is no such thing as the best film projection because it always leaves something to be desired.
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OF COURSE the best film projection will leave something to be desired. But that doesn't stop it from being the best film projection. The best digital projection will leave things to be desired as well. The best implementation of almost any non-trivial technology leaves something to be desired.

And quite frankly, it's much easier to splice a film reel and get going again than to figure out how the data on a DCI package has somehow become corrupted, or why there is a hardware malfunction on a server, etc.

Also, all this talk of "film breaks, burns all the time, etc." makes me wonder where the hell (or in hell, maybe?) you guys are watching films. In the thousand upon thousands of film screenings I've been to, I've witnessed the film catch and burn/melt in the projector ONCE, during the trailers at an old art house theatre. I've seen a film strip break about five or six times, and always at screenings of old archival prints that are beat up to begin with. And always within a minute or two, the break has been spliced, the screening is up and running again.

Now, if we were still running nitrate prints, perhaps you'd have a valid point. Those things were nasty. They didn't just burn, they exploded.

Edit: On the upside, nitrate prints are freaking gorgeous.
 
JasonMurphy said:
OF COURSE the best film projection will leave something to be desired.
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If nothing was left to be desired than no-one would strive to improve, and we would never know our true potential. Life would be boring if every thing was perfect from the get go. Flaming film and breaks are annoying, but only if you let them be. :matrix:
 
JonathanLB said:
there is no such thing as the best film projection because it always leaves something to be desired....I can't see anything good about film that wouldn't be better with digital, or anything bad with digital that isn't worse with film
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Jonathan, Jonathan.

We get it. In your mind, anything film is bad. Anything digital is good. Yes, we get it.

The problem is that your opinions are clearly born of lack of experience, closed mindedness, and a desire to embrace things you consider "cool." What David and a number of others here have attempted to do - repeatedly - is educate you and open up your mind a bit to the world around you. They're tried to make you aware of values that are held by experienced professionals with open minds, those with a great deal of experience in the visual arts and both the creation and exhibition of such arts, who don't judge things based on hype, buzz, and "coolness" factors. They judge things based on their merits, merits which you refuse to see because you've already made up your mind. Which would be fine, except that you have made up your mind without enough experience to make a clear judgement. And by experience, I don't necessarily mean technical experience. I mean general education - life experience, knowledge of art and the priciples behind classic art, knowledge of the human response to visual stimuli and why certain things are generally pleasing to the human eye and mind, knowledge of music, of sound, of the range of human emotion - all of these things make up what experienced professionals use to form the judgements they form. They are the true tools of the artist. David isn't just a practitioner of the mechanics of image creation. He's a life long student of the arts, and of all the things I've just mentioned. When he talks, you should listen - except that you don't. You come back with your quickly formed opinion and rarely consider who you're talking to or what you can learn from him, which is a pity.

Open your eyes. And your ears, and your mind. You might learn something.
 
Michael: laying down the law as usual. :D Don't change it.

Jonathan: When forum members like Michael talk, try to listen to them and see where they're coming from. Michael speaks from his experiences. In practice, a lot of theory (and marketing hype and dogma) don't work out the way it should. He tells it like it is, as abrasive as it may come off as on the Internet. It's a good thing that he's sharing his insights from his many years of experience working in the industry.
 
Well, the last time a reel broke during a screening was in 2002 when I tried to see "28 Days Later". Before that, I'd have to go back at least a decade. That's a pretty low failure rate -- once every five years -- for film projection considering I see about 100 movies a year in the theaters.

90% of the time, the problem is focus, which is fixable 90% of the time. That's the most common annoyance. Occasionally it is due to more than simple bad projectionist work, but some mechanical problem. And some theaters just don't have very good lenses on their projectors, so refocusing doesn't help. You just learn to stop going to some theaters.

Beyond focus, the next common problem is dirt, dust, and scratches.

Below that, poor registration, jitter.

Below that, annoying light leaks coming into the theater.

Below that, it's film breakage or jamming. Like I said, it's pretty rare in most theaters.

I mainly experienced it on a regular basis when I was in college going to the local art house cinema in town, the local mall cinemas, and the screenings that the fraternities ran on campus (I was at UVA in Charlottesville, VA at the time -- and learned everything that could go wrong with film projection.) But that was back in 1980-82.

Badly designed theaters with light leaks won't really be solved by a switch to digital projection. And digital projectors still need to be focused, though there is less reason for it to drift during the day.
 
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