AS Media Studies

Study Notes
Unit G322 Section B
Audiences and Institutions

The Film Industry

Part 9
Film in the Digital Age

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New Technologies and Cinema a 120 year old love affair

The film industry has always used new technologies relating to the making and showing of
films (although crucially, this has not always occurred as soon as the technologies have
become available). A brief list of crucial technological moments in the history of cinema
would include:
1. the projection of moving images to create the original silent movies in makeshift
cinemas in the late 1890s;
2. the financially successful introduction of sound (the 'talkies') in the late 1920s/early
1930s which led to massive changes in the industry;
3. the widespread adoption of colour
and widescreen in the 1950s in an
effort to combat the competition from
television caused by the mass
production of TV sets, changing
leisure patterns, and the movement of
much of the population out to newly
built suburbs following the Second
World War;
4. the gimmicky, ultimately unsuccessful
first efforts to offer the public threedimensional film in the same period,
again in an effort to offer the public
something different from television;
5. the increasing use of television from
the 1960s as a medium for showing
films with the accompanying
realization that in this way old films
could effectively be recycled or
resold;
6. the advent of VHS rental and
recording from the 1970s opening up
the possibility of again reselling old
films but also effectively re-releasing
relatively new films to a new 'window' after a period at the cinema;
7. the introduction of satellite and cable channels from the 1980s which again offered a
further 'window' for both old and relatively recent films (main package channels,
premium subscription channels and pay-to-view channels of course effectively
further subdivided this 'window');
8. the increased marketing of the 'home cinema concept' from the 1990s so that with
technology allowing larger screens and surround sound something approaching an
analogous cinema experience becomes possible;
9. the move to DVD technology from the late 1990s which with the use of 'extras' and
an enhanced experience encourages consumers to replace their old video film library
with the latest disc format;
10. the increasing use of the Internet from the late 1990s, for marketing initially but also
increasingly for downloading films;
11. the advent from around 2000 of digital filmmaking and digital projection facilities
in cinemas;
12. the recent 'format war' between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc to become the successor
generation format to DVD.
13. the revitalisation of blockbuster films through the use of improved HD 3-d.
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Each of these moments of technological change for the industry are essentially concerned
with the viewing experience, but it is also true that there has been a parallel series of
technological changes in the making of films. For example, when sound is successfully
integrated into film then the cameras have to become silent in order that their mechanical
noises are not picked up and obviously sound technology has to develop quickly in order to
enable voices to be picked up clearly; in fact a whole new field of production and creativity
opens up. Perhaps we have currently reached a similar turning point because the big question
now is what impact new digital possibilities for filmmaking and exhibition are going to have
on the industry.

New technologies and the Audience

New technologies might be said to offer consumers:
1. an improved overall qualitative experience as a result of better sound and/or image
reproduction;
2. enhanced spectacle perhaps through the sheer overpowering size of the screen or the
impact on the senses of a surrounding wall of sound;
3. improved ease of access, or ease of use, for instance, through enabling people to own
their own film collections in various formats;
4. new, easier and intensified ways of using film for pleasure, for example, IMAX
would seem to offer an intense 'fairground ride' for the senses;
5. an enhanced intellectual experience through the provision of increased knowledge or
understanding, for instance through the use of commentaries by directors on DVDs
the chance to use new, ever cheaper and more compact devices to make films for
themselves

New technologies and the Film Industry

New technologies offer the industry:
1. the possibility of an improved opportunity to create profits (the costs or required
expenditure involved in bringing in the new technology will be carefully balanced
against the projected additional income before any new technology is introduced);
2. the chance to repackage and resell old products, especially cult and 'classic' movies,
thereby establishing a new audience base, or even fan base, for an old product (note
that this is even true of an older technological change like the move to sound);
3. an opportunity to place products for sale in new 'windows', thereby lengthening the
commercial life of each film (a film may now be sold to consumers via the cinema,
satellite and cable TV, DVD and terrestrial TV);
4. the chance to encourage multiple purchases of essentially the same product (so any
one consumer might pay to see a film in the cinema, then later pay to watch the same
film on pay-to-view, before later still buying his or her own copy on DVD);
5. overall, enhanced production, distribution and exhibition possibilities

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New technologies and the cinema experience

It could be argued that new technologies have always added to, rather than detracted from,
the cinema experience. The size and/or quality of the spectacle have been enhanced by each
new development adding to the unique nature of the cinematic 'event' (even the advent of
television in a sense only highlights the difference and in particular the spectacle of the
cinema experience).
The experience of the cinema itself cannot be easily replicated or replaced but the alternative
experiences of pay-TV, or home cinema, have their own attractions particularly in terms of
flexibility of viewing. The advent of TV and changed leisure patterns ended the social
dominance of the cinema as a source of entertainment and information (remember this was
once the only place you could see visual images of news events). The cinema experience has
made something of a comeback, although attendance is never going to match the heights
attained in 1946 in both the USA and Britain.

As with studying the content of the films themselves, what we find is that the industry and its
technological base always have to be seen within social, economic, political and historical
contexts. Towards the end of the Second World War and immediately after, cinema
attendance peaked, as without the presence of television sets in the home people sought news
images and perhaps some sort of collective, community-enhancing escape. The nature of
cinema attendance at this moment was determined by the nature of the historical moment,
and this is always the case. Our job is to try to understand how changes and developments
within the film industry might be connected to the contexts of the period in which they take
place.
With the increase in global communication and distribution afforded by the World wide Web,
supporters of the Internet suggest that this form of communication marks a new era of
democratization and freedom of choice empowering ordinary people to produce and receive
information and entertainment from all over the world.

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Others such as some Marxist critics might suggest that this development, by isolating
consumers from face-to-face human interaction, enables them to be more tightly controlled
and manipulated.
Other critics note the increased access to pornography and extreme right-wing propaganda
available on the Internet, or point to an increasing gap between information-rich and
information-poor populations (less than one in a thousand black South Africans, for example,
own a phone).
'The future of film is coming into focus. Digital technology not only redefines movies, but also
the very idea of the image. We were born in an analogue era, we shall die in a digital one. Film
is an analogue, that is, a physical copy of something else, it is "analogous" to what it
photographs. A digital image is not a copy, it is an electronic and mathematical translation.'
(Schrader 1996)
'I love film, but it's a nineteenth century invention. The century of film has passed.' (George
Lucas 2000)

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Six important changes to the Film Industry in the last decade

With the development of digital and computer mediated communication technologies, the
production, distribution, exhibition and reception of film have been and continue to be
radically transformed. If one were to take a selective 'snap-shot' of the film-making process
today one would find the following new media interventions at work.

1. The Introduction of Digital Storyboards

First is the increasing use of electronic, 'moving image' storyboards in both the
pre-production and production stages of film-making (first pioneered by Francis Ford
Coppolla during the making of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)). So, instead of hand-drawn,
inanimate storyboards being used to 'pitch' a film, or organise and dynamise a day's shooting
schedule, the director and cinematographers on a film utilise an electronic simulation of the
story/scene that is to be made a simulation which more accurately visualises what is to be
shot.

2. The Increasing use of HD Digital Video

Second is the increasing use of Digital Video (DV) cameras to shoot both
documentary and full length feature films. DV has a number of advantages over celluloid
film. Cameras are more mobile, and generally lighter to use; they are easier to operate; and
reduce the costs of shooting and editing, particularly because they do not use the
comparatively more expensive film stock, neither do they need their video formats
processing in the same way.
Shooting 'complex' scenes
is easier to organise,
especially in relation to the
relative ease with which
light source can be
monitored (unlike the
arduous lighting systems
needed for shooting on
celluloid).
Mike Figgis utilised the
flexibility of the digital
format for the groundbreaking TimeCode (2000).
The film was shot in 'realtime', with four (eventually)
interconnecting stories being played out on a split screen at the same time. The length of the
film is the length of the tape that Figgis had to shoot with. Events, actions, dramas, therefore,
unfold on the screen as they (arguably) did during the shoot.
Digital technology has reduced the costs of film making so much that DV can be seen as
widening access to the 'means of production' for new creative talent. And the convergence of
media through digital technology creates new opportunities for distributing and exhibiting.
The digital rejuvenation of film is not limited to the grand-scale strategies of a large industry.
The digital has created new cultural economies. There is clearly a place for short film via the

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internet. Through different websites, the digital version of film breaks down the limitations of
exhibition that have controlled what it is possible for audiences to see. Digital cameras have
made it possible to have filmic qualities in the smallest of productions. Although this expansive
development of film is still quite circumscribed, it demonstrates how 'film' has been more
accessible and is connected to the wider new media and cultural phenomenon of the will-toproduce.
(Marshall 2004)

3. The Increasing Use of CGI

Third is the increasing use of digital special effects or Computer Generated
Imagery (CGI) in the film-making processes. Increasingly almost all fiction films will
have one or two different types of digital special effect: invisible special effects, which
Buckland (1999) suggests `constitute up to 90 per cent of the work of the special effects
industry' and 'are not meant to be noticed (as special effects) by film spectators'; and visible
special effects, or those special effects which produce some wondrous, fantastic, out-of-thisworld creation that produces the Wow! That can't be real reaction from spectators and
audiences.
The digitally created dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) or the stop-motion action-spectacle
sequences in The Matrix (1999) are two examples of this. However, Titanic (1997) is an
excellent example of a film that is most remembered for its visible digital special effects,
namely in the form of the good ship itself, but which is actually saturated in moments of
invisible special effects, whether it be the seamless simulation of Southampton Docks, the
waves the audience see crashing against the vessel, or computerised passengers walking on
the decks as the ship sails away into the distance.

Such is the growth in CGI that it constitutes a major division of the film-making industry,
headed by George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic company. It is also now of course,
thanks to Pixar, a developing animated film form. The ground-breaking Toy Story (1995)
was the first ever complete CGI movie and one that established the trend (continued more
recently with Ice Age (2002)) for films to be generated solely from digital hardware and
software. However, CGI is also a technology which has `trickled down' into domestic use:
digital effect software packages are sold in electrical retailers and used to enhance everything
from home videos to GCSE and A Level Media practical coursework in schools and colleges.
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Digital Cinema Is for Reel - Since his first Star Wars film 23 years ago, George Lucas has been
a leader in applying technology to the cinema. His most recent movie, Episode I: The Phantom
Menace, contains almost 2,000 digital-effects shots. Yet Lucas took the digitization of The
Phantom Menace a step further. During its premiere in the summer of 1999, a few showings
were digitally projected. Audiences were amazed at the outstanding audio and the clarity and
brightness of the pictures. The d-projectors performed well, but the technology must come
down in price before its improved audio and visual presentation reaches a mainstream
audience. (Scientific American November 2000)

4. Digital distribution
Fourth is the developing use of digital distribution using the Internet to transmit
and exhibit new film releases. The cost of making prints, coordinating exhibition schedules
and distributing them to individual theatres (across the globe) is extremely expensive.
Copyright is also a problem with piracy a common feature of print distribution as it is, so the
major studios are looking at ways to utilise telecommunications to reduce costs, negate
piracy, but also, arguably, to increase the audio-visual experience for audiences film prints
can get heavily scratched in transit and during projection while the digital image remains
picture perfect. As Miller (2001) reasons:
Digital distribution would shave over US $10 million dollars in domestic postproduction print manufacturing costs for a Hollywood budget for a film like
Godzilla (2000). If the 39,000 screens in North America were to switch to digital
projection today, film studios would save US$800 million they spend annually on
making, insuring and shipping film prints.
However, it is the Internet where the most radical transformations are beginning to take
place. Independent, Internet-based film companies (such as iBeam and CinemaNow) can use
the Internet to by-pass the major studios' monopoly of distribution and exhibition, to stream
film/video straight into the home. With broadband technology, as noted earlier, and with
plasma screen/wide-screen PCs and TVs entering the market, increasingly reception 'at
home' becomes as good as watching a movie at the cinema.
As far as the major studios and distributors are concerned, digital technology offers great
potential to increase profits and dangers in equal measure. Digital distribution will certainly
transform the film industry more than any previous technological change since sound. Once
it becomes the norm to download film via broadband, the potential for a new form of
'blanket distribution' is obviousnot only do you no longer need multiple prints, you can
also bypass the cinemas (although the big screen offers a separate experience that is likely to
remain attractive).
Digital film has the advantage of offering identical versions of the film to each viewer, and
this will without doubt save billions of pounds at the distribution phase. Despite the 'hype'
over piracy and the digital enabling of this illegal activity, industry commentators believe
that one advantage of digital distribution will be control and security, as most piracy is the
result of a cinema-goer with a hidden camera distributing a poor quality version of a film to
parts of the world where it has not yet been released (because the prints are currently
somewhere else). Simultaneous global distribution via the internet will put an end to this
'time gap' and thus its exploitation by pirates.
One issue for debate is about the quality of digital movies. Whereas some film makers and
critics argue that the 'binary reduction' of images in the digital compression process reduces
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the complexity of image and light, it appears that just as music in MP3 comes without the
parts that the human ear cannot hear, so digital films remove the degrees of texture that most
viewers wouldn't notice anyway.
The movie we see at our local multiplex may have been shown many times over and the wear
and tear on it will be considerable: scratches, dust and fadingas a result of having been
exposed regularly to bright lightall reduce the quality of the presentation. Even before wear
and tear kicks in, what we are watching may well be a third generation copya process similar
to making a photocopy of a photocopy, where some of the original definition is inevitably lost.
Some experts believe that Digital cinema will overtake the quality of the best conventional
cinema within the next year or two, and at the same time address age-old industry problems.
Prints are bulky and their manufacture, distribution and exhibition are labour intensive and
therefore expensive. What's more, in a world increasingly concerned with the impact industry
has on the environment, it is hard to justify the use of a technology (film manufacturing), which
involves a highly toxic process, when a cleaner alternative is available.
(Randle & Culkin 2004)

Another interesting prediction that

Randle and Culkin make is to speculate
that film extras (another costly necessity
for the film industry) may soon be
replaced by digitally generated
'synthetic actors' more on that later
The digitalisation of film offers a range
of new institutional practices. There are
greater possibilities for the manipulation
of the image itself, the editing process
becoming more creative and composite
images can be produced to incorporate
digital animation. The current 'one way
process of film making and consuming is threatened by the interactive 'zeitgeist so that the
generation of audience, you, who are immersed in online media and videogames are likely to
require new forms of interactivity in the film medium.

5. The Impact of Film Piracy

Any attempt to ignore the fast approaching world of legal film downloading is seen as
'swimming against the tide'. Piracy is a major concern of all film distributors, with
Hollywood investigators claiming a 10% increase each year in revenue lost to illegal
distribution. In the UK the Film Council's report Film Theft in the UK (2004) claimed that
only Austria and Germany have a higher degree of DVD piracy.
Based on the information collected in November 2007, it was estimated that the impact of
Piracy on the film industry is:

Cinema: 88m (102m in 2006)

Retail (Film/TV): 258m (300m in 2006)
Rental (Film/TV): 58m (28m in 2006)
Download (Film): 53m (15m in 2006)

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Levels of piracy are relatively stable, although over the longer term there is clear evidence of
a continued, gradual decline in physical piracy digital
piracy levels appear to increase year-on-year and overall
piracy levels are now at 32% of the population (vs. 29%
in 2006).
A report published in March 2009 found that some
straightforward steps to tackle film piracy would increase
UK economic output by 614 million and protect the jobs
of many thousands of people employed in the film
industry, as well as creating some 7,900 jobs in the wider economy.
The audio-visual sector currently loses about 531m in the UK each year (up from 459m in
2006) from the direct impact of copyright theft, equating to a total economic loss to the
economy of 1.222 billion. This is felt right through the industry, from cinema, video,
television including cable and satellite and legal Internet services. At a time when the
Government is working towards universal access to broadband services and is looking to the
audio-visual sector to invest in the production of new and original content, Britain's creative
community are seeking reassurance that their copyright will be properly protected, so that
they can play their part in promoting demand for broadband through compelling content.

6. The Audio-Visual Experience at the Cinema

Another aspect of technological change that the UK Film Council is concerned with is
digital filming and projection. The Digital Screen Network project is the UK Film Council's
attempt to provide cinemas with digital projection facilities, and it is hoped (but by no means
guaranteed) that more small-scale independent films will get seen this way. Digital
technology has the potential to make life a lot better for low budget film makers and
distributors. In the case of short films, it is now possible for these to reach a potentially wide
audience via a range of hosts, from the UK Film Council to The UK Media Desk, BBC Film
Network and Big Film Shorts, Film London's Pulse and a host of short film festivals, all of
whom have online submission.
Digital technology is transforming the audio-visual experience at cinemas. On the most basic
of levels, with digital Surround Sound, improved projection and screening facilities, or with
the digital image itself being relayed from a mainframe computer terminal elsewhere, film
watching becomes ever more virtual'. However, it is with the development of very large
screen systems, of which IMAX is the market leader, that film viewing becomes an ever
more sensory dependent experience. Cinema becomes spectacle and display.

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What are the implications for Cinema in the 21st Century

Cinema as an institution has survived several threats to its life. Most notably, it was
predicted that television would make it extinct, but cinema survived by securing cinema
releases prior to TV broadcast and because of its social, 'night out' context. Later, the VCR
seemed to have put a bigger nail in the coffin, but this time cinemas redefined themselves as
multiplexes, offering a broader 'leisure experience' on an American model, together with the
emergence of the 'blockbuster' and its associated expensive marketing.
Despite multi-channel television offering viewers the opportunity to download films to
watch at their convenience, hard drive recording, specialist film channels that are now
relatively cheap to subscribe to or free to air and online rentals making the visit to the local
Blockbuster unnecessary, cinema still survives (though Blockbuster wont).
So the question iswill cinema always survive technological change, or is the latest
technology a bigger threat because it is at the exhibition end of the chain? Whereas the
changes in accessibility given above are to do with distribution, the pleasure of the filmic
experience is determined greatly by the size and quality of the screen.
Hollywood films in particular are still largely driven by spectacle and noise, as well as
character and narrative (perhaps with an eye to the preservation of the cinema box office),
and people still want to see these films on the biggest screen with the loudest sound.

IMAX
IMAX combines a horizontally run
70mm film with screen size as
large as 100ft x 75ft. The screen
itself is slightly curved and with
seating arranged in closer
proximity, the screen image
washes over the audience. This
sensory experience is extended
through the development of
hemispherical screens
(OmnIMAX), 3D IMAX, where
the `3D' glasses that are worn
render the image (film) threedimensional, and Showscan, which
combines the large-screen format
with synchronised, moving and tilting seats in the auditorium. Spectators no longer just
watch a film, they live it, more able than ever before to 'enter' its imaginings.
In short, film in the digital age and the age of computer mediated communication
technologies has metamorphosed into something touched by spectacle, by ease of use and
ease of access. Digital film revolutionises the production, distribution and exhibition
processes. Satellite and the Internet revolutionise not only the `public' distribution and
exhibition of film but the 'private' sphere, as film/video increasingly starts or ends up on the
Web and downloaded from or into the home.

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The question then arises: what are the consequences or implications for film and cinema now
and in the future from such radical transformations? Three potential scenarios emerge, each
outlined below.

1. The End of Narrative Cinema?

It can be argued that the increasing use of digital special effects, across all generic types of
film, establishes the dominance of spectacle and the spectacular as the 'new' structuring or
linguistic device in the way 'film' tells its stories. In particular, visible special effects can be
seen to come to displace narrative or three-dimensional characterisation, dramatic (human)
encounter and plot development. In this conception, contemporary cinema is reduced to a
purely albeit spectacular visual experience. In fact, it can be argued that visual effects
cinema revisits early cinema's 'cinema of attractions', where what is shown (the 'wow'
moment) is the 'main story', and the technology behind this vision the 'back story'.
Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) is arguably
an example of this: it is the digital
reconstruction of Rome, the Colosseum,
the roaring crowds, the spectacular fight
sequences, and ultimately the digital
'reincarnation' of Oliver Reed (who died
while making the film) that makes the film
a visual rather than a narrative experience.
(Ridley Scott is often criticised for being
just a 'visual' film-maker, as a director
who relies on the image to tell a story.) If
one links this to the developments in
screen projection UMAX, OmnIMAX,
and Showscan) then vision or the visualspectacular seems to be the tour de force
of modem cinema. However, it is with the science fiction/fantasy genre where the argument
seems to have most weight. Not only is it with science fiction/fantasy that state-of-the-art
special effects are often first developed and used, but the genre provides the textual context
for their use. Science fiction/fantasy films demand that everything from alien beings to future
societies be visually, believably created. Given that science fiction/fantasy films have now
dominated box office takings for over 20 years (unlike, for example, in the 1950s, where
science fiction movies were low budget 'B' movies), it is clear that for audiences special
effects cinema reigns supreme. Thomas Schatz makes this critical connection:
From The Godfather to Jaws to Star Wars, we see films that are increasingly plotdriven, increasingly visceral, kinetic, and fast-paced, increasingly reliant on
special effects, increasingly 'fantastic' (and thus apolitical), and increasingly
targeted at younger audiences. (1993)
There is one further inflection to the argument: digital effects-based cinema connects film to
the theme park environment. It is argued that the digitally created special effect often
simulates the theme park ride (as it does, for example during the pod race in Star Wars
Episode I The Phantom Menace (1999)). In this conception, narrative is totally effaced as the
cinema experience mutates into the theme park ride. The connection, of course, is maintained
because many theme parks Universal and Disney in particular movie-theme their rides.

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In summary, digital effects-based cinema supposedly sounds the death knell for narrative
cinema, producing an aesthetic that relies on the visual, the spectacular and the theme park
ride. Its visual aesthetic, then, ultimately ties it to the philosophical idea that the modern
world is lived and experienced in a culture of sight.

2. The End of American Studio Domination?

It can be reasoned that digital and computer mediated communication technologies have the
capability to democratise the processes of film-making and to challenge/change the way
films are produced, distributed and exhibited, undermining American studio domination of
the film-making processes. The argument runs as follows:
First, digital film-making technology enables a new generation of first-time film-makers to
explore the potentialities of film without the need for (very) expensive equipment, or for
highly specialised skills that take years of training to master. For example, the British
director Shane Meadows' first two films (Where's the Money, Ronnie? and Smalltime, both
1996) came out of his exploration of the video/digital version of the medium, independent of
film school training.
The spectrum of budgets for digital movies is very wide. The Star Wars prequels are being shot
with high-definition cameras and cost more than $100 million. Lars von Trier's latest digital
feature, Dancer in the Dark, cost about $13 million. Other established directors have made
digital features in the $2- to $8-million range, including Mike Figgis (Time Code), Spike Lee
(Bamboozled). Many novice filmmakers have directed first features for less than $10,000. Some
have even been made for under $1,000. Shot with a consumer digital video camera on a $900
budget, the thriller The Last Broadcast is in home video and television distribution in the U.S.
and abroad.
Scientific American (November 2000)

Second, computer mediated communication technologies such as the Internet have provided
these new independent digital film-makers with a distribution/transmission space that
requires little investment to use, and which circumvent the normal (public' distribution and
exhibition sites for film (which are dominated by the American studios). A film made on a
DV camera can then be edited at home, on a sophisticated domestic software package, and
then sold, rented or given free to Internet distribution companies to stream on-line.
Third, digital technology opens up the way film texts are viewed and interacted with, since
the digital image can be played around with again once it has left the 'author'. With digital
technology, film endings can be re-written, agreed on 'communally', have multiple storylines,
or simply appropriated by viewers who can reconfigure their structure and look. For
example, the $6m interactive feature The Darkening (1997) was released on CD-ROM,
enabling audiences to navigate their own way through a multi-layered and open-ended
narrative. As Paul Schrader (1996) observes:
...digital images are manipulatable, not only by the artists but also by the viewer.
Digital image and sounds can be altered. sounds and images can be added to a
recording, digital images can be broken up, colorised, morphised.
In short, digital and telecommunications technology have the potential to pluralise and
decentralise the way films transmitted, and are produced and financed, distributed/transn
read' by interactive audiences.

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3. The Death of Cinema?

The most apocalyptic answer to the question of the effect of digitalisation and computer
mediated communication technologies on film has been to suggest that reel (celluloid) film is
in a state of terminal decline and will in effect very quickly become an antiquated way to
make films. The argument runs that because digital is cheaper, the image that it produces is
more robust and yet more manipulative/flexible, and it is easier to use, film-makers will
abandon celluloid altogether in the digital age. The sense of a potential loss here is great. It is
argued that celluloid produces a particular type of moving image that represents action,
drama, landscapes, etc. in particularly charged ways. With the death of celluloid comes the
de-skilling of the industry as a range of professional roles are taken up by those who barely
know (or need to know) how to hold a camera or measure light or frame a scene 'properly'.
The very nature of the democracy implied by digital film-making is that anybody, no matter
how inexperienced, can make a film.
Further, with the potential digitalisation of cinemas, and the increasing use of the Internet to
stream videos, the theatres where reel film can be shown are likely to diminish in numbers
until they become mere museum pieces. just as today preservation groups place into heritage
old 'Picture Palaces', tomorrow they will put preservation orders on projection rooms where
celluloid was once put on flatbed 'platters'. This is potentially then a double death: the death
of film stock and the death of the cameras and the projection equipment used to showcase it.
Film-makers such as Paul Schrader celebrate this terminal decline, and wish for its death to
come quickly:
Technologically, film - at least as theatrically exhibited - is very antiquated. We still show
moving pictures the way the Lumieres did, pumping electric light through semi-transparent
cells, projecting shadows on a white screen. These techniques belong in a museum. A change
is overdue. (1996)
Others would rather a future where old and new technologies existed side-by-side,
plurahsing the form of the moving image in ways that a mono-technology could not achieve.

However, there is one further turn to make in the argument about digital effects. If digital
becomes the preferred film-making technology, if CGI becomes the dominant mode of
representation (so much so that, for example, computer generated characters replace human
actors, such as in Final Fantasy (2001)), and if exhibition sites become more virtual as
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physical celluloid is replaced by the digital image, then the total cinematic experience
becomes one based on simulation and artifice.
New Creative Options on the Digital Set - On a film set, the camera is rolling only a small
percentage of the time because of the expense of stock and processing and the amount of time
required to light and set up each shot. On a digital set, the camera is recording a much greater
percentage of the time. Directors often use two cameras, something that is unaffordable on most
conventional film sets. And because digital video production often necessitates a streamlined
approach to crew and equipment, the resulting aesthetic choices frequently make lighting
simpler and less time consuming. This lets filmmakers work with actors in ways that would be
impossible on film. Directors can shoot rehearsals, capturing inspired moments that would
otherwise have been lost.
Scientific American (November 2000)

Laggardly cinema at last starts to embrace digital

The silver screen is slowly changing from celluloid to digital prints
From The Times - June 23, 2006
IN THE headlong rush to digital, cinema has lagged behind, at least until now. But a big
push from film studios, distributors and the Film Council finally heralds the death of
celluloid on the big screen and its replacement by digital technology. It took the US film
studios three years to agree on a standard digital cinema model so as not to find
themselves in a VHS versus Betamax or HD DVD versus Blu-ray scenario. But a decision
was finally reached in July last year and a 200-page document compiled that set out the plan.
Cinemas have lagged behind other media, mainly because of the price of installing digital
equipment. However, these costs have come down sharply, making a digital future more
feasible than ever.
Howard Kiedaish, chief executive of Arts Alliance Media, a provider of film distribution
services, says: Not only is digital cinema visually better, but it is cheaper to produce and can
be used time and time again without getting damaged, unlike the celluloid model.
Mr Kiedaish has calculated that
installing digital facilities at every
UK screen, of which there are
3,486, would cost the industry
about 60,000 per cinema, or
209.2 million in total. However,
he says, it would take just five
years for British cinemas to pay
this off through the significant cost
savings that would be achieved.
The average cost of a celluloid
print is about 750, while a digital
copy costs more like 125. Taking
into account that there are 71,960
prints in Britain each year, Mr
Kiedaish estimates the annual cost
savings in this country alone to be
almost 45 million.
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However, more exciting to film-makers such as of George Lucas and Peter Jackson are the
visual possibilities. No more will celluloid prints have to be passed from cinema to cinema,
and get damaged on the way, ultimately affecting the clear, crisp picture necessary to give
full visual impact.
The quality of digital 3D cinema is far better than analogue. You dont get sore eyes and it
will be taken more seriously by film producers, says Mr Kiedaish, adding that there is
speculation that plans are being hatched to create 3D digital versions of Lord of The Rings
and Star Wars in the next few years.
Digital could also change the day-to-day use of the cinema. Already the few digital cinemas
that exist in the UK are showing live World Cup football because it is possible to plug a settop box into a digital projector. But there are quirkier ideas on how the cinema could be used.
A PlayStation 2, for example, could be plugged in to the digital projector, perhaps enabling
mass competitions for children on a Saturday morning, says Mr Kiedaish. Belgian cinema
chain Kinepolis has also used digital cinema to demonstrate an eye operation to trainee
doctors.
But it was one of these opportunities that provoked the Film Council to invest 11.5 million
to convert 240 British cinemas to digital. The Film Council has different hopes of what it
intends to achieve from its digital initiative.
It has signed a contract with a number of mainstream cinemas and will fund their conversion
to digital in exchange for access to specialist films. With the lower cost of digital prints,
cinemas can more readily afford to take risks and buy more arthouse films.
Meanwhile, the large cinema chains, such as Odeon and Vue, are in talks with the American
studios to invest themselves. The question is how fast the cinemas can get the necessary
funding. As televisions get bigger and cheaper and DVD and video-on-demand release dates
get closer to cinema release dates, cinemas need to start promoting themselves as striking
multimedia experiences if they are to remain as popular as they were in the past.

Avatar: changing the face of film for ever

Avatar is the 'game-changer' that insiders have been waiting for.
Forget the dialogue. Don't get too
worked up about the plot. Caught in
3D at London's bfi IMAX the largest
cinema screen in the UK James
Cameron's Avatar is a gob-smacking
sensory wow, setting an immediate
new benchmark for the blockbuster.
Cameron's aim with this long-ingestation sci-fi epic is to show off what
digital 3D can do. And anyone with
half an interest in what the future of
film might look like is going to want to
see it.

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This certainly explains why the IMAX at Waterloo perhaps the only known answer to the
question "When is a cinema also a roundabout? is swamped with as much human traffic
right now as Harrods on Christmas Eve. Advance bookings have broken global records for a
single screen: at the IMAX alone, Avatar already had 47,487 ticket sales (a gross of more
than 600,000) a day before it opened.
Demand for the film is such that this cinematic Mecca hardly shuts up shop. Even the
screenings at 3.40am are proving to be a sell-out. "It's mind-blowing," says Dennis Laws, the
cinema's affable general manager, who has worked in the field of 3D projection for over 30
years. "I dress like a punter and listen to the comments as people come out. We've got five
flights of stairs on the way down so I hear lots, and do it with several showings of each film.
"To date, I've not heard anyone who hasn't said, 'I want to see it again'. There's so much to
look at, they want to rewind and enjoy that moment three or four more times. That's the
secret that's why Star Wars was so phenomenally successful." It's no surprise that Cameron
has the geek vote sewn up. His dedication to whizz-bang technical showmanship puts even
Peter Jackson and George Lucas in the shade. Hardcore fans know what extra amplification
IMAX can offer Avatar: there's no better place to gawp than on a screen the height of five
double-decker buses.
The question is: how is it going to play everywhere else? Since it first entered production,
the $300 million Avatar has been subject to the most intense industry scrutiny of any
blockbuster in memory, or at least since The Phantom Menace and The Fellowship of the
Ring. What had Cameron been keeping up his sleeve since Titanic? Was this really the
"game-changer" we kept being told it was, and what might that even mean?
Advances in digital 3D had been a step-by-step business since Robert Zemeckis's The Polar
Express in 2004, which still does healthy business at IMAXs each festive season. But
Cameron was promising a huge leap forward: crystal-clear images without that halfway-to-acartoon look, and a new level of depth, detail and perspective. It's not just a movie the entire
industry is eagerly anticipating, but one it has had to adapt to accommodate.
"The most important thing that Avatar has done," explains Laws, "is to force the exhibition
industry to get off the fence and make a decision as to whether to install digital projection,
and more importantly digital 3D. Over the past four or five months, all the companies that
install these projectors have been going absolutely crazy." At the end of 2008, only 69
screens in Britain could handle digital 3D. Now there are 375. This is in part thanks to help
from the UK Film Council, which is continuing its drive to help both multiplexes and smaller
cinemas switch to digital.
In turn, distributors have more than doubled the number of 3D releases on their calendar 13
this year compared with six the year before. Next year, it will double again. One of these
films, the forthcoming StreetDance 3D, will be the first made in the UK by a British
production company. Cameron's original hope for Avatar was that it could be a 3D-only
proposition, but however quickly cinemas scurried to update their capabilities, it wasn't quite
quickly enough. The film is being shown in several formats, including conventional 2D.
Whether audiences favour the 3D (and IMAX 3D) versions is a significant factor in how far
Avatar will spearhead the 3D-ification of effects blockbusters to come.
Avatar feels like an experience designed to convert the sceptics, because Cameron isn't just
parading his third dimension as window-dressing but exploring it to the full, pushing the
recesses of the screen back further than anyone has attempted before. The 3D application
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isn't just a gimmick here the gimcrack, poke-you-in-the-face provocation beloved of 1950s
creature-features but a gateway to immersion in a strange new world. Disney and Pixar
have also pledged that all their animated features from now on will be in 3D. Still, Pixar's
Up attempted it with a softly-softly approach: there was nothing coming out at us frontally,
leading doubters to question whether it needed to be in 3D at all.
"It's about educating the audience," thinks Laws. "You know you can do it, but the question
needs to be asked: should you do it? Will the enjoyment be enhanced by 3D, or is it simply
there to add a couple more pounds to the ticket price?"
What does seem clear at this stage, and Avatar makes even clearer, is that 3D is no longer a
passing whim. "Digital has made the change," says Laws. "Way back in the 1970s, I ran
polarised 3D on 35mm. It was never any good. You had to go in person to every cinema that
showed it. The projectionists weren't trained on how to set the lenses up, and it was crucial
that it was set up correctly, otherwise it just didn't work. With digital, as long as no one
fiddles with anything, it works."
What's particularly impressive about the Avatar experience at London's IMAX is how
perfectly Cameron's showmanship marries with the venue. While I talk to Laws over the
phone, there's a muffled roar, and he breaks off in mid-sentence. There's been a front-ofhouse announcement; a screening is about to start, and thunderous applause can be heard as
he pushes his door ajar. Laws and his staff love to cultivate this air of expectation it's what
really makes the fans feel they're getting a different experience from what they watch at
home, however elaborate their living-room set-up.
This takes us right back to the 1950s, when 3D came in, along with CinemaScope and such
instantly obsolete fads as Smell-O-Vision, to tempt viewers away from their tellies and back
to the silver screen. Its souped-up re-emergence, in an age of Blu-ray and 100-inch plasma
screens, is serving a similar purpose. As the roar subsides, Law sounds like a satisfied
ringmaster. "Those people now have adrenalin running through them like you can't believe.
Half of the people in there will have never been in a cinema where everybody has clapped
and cheered."
As it starts, they wind up the sound on that 20th Century Fox drumroll "to really make it
smack them in the stomach". Revolution may be too early to call, but the ticket barriers can
consider themselves stormed.

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