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Digital Movies and The Big Screen
Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times has an extensive article [free reg req] about the move from film, invented in the 19th century, to digital cameras and projection in the movie business. It sounds like the shift is building a lot of momentum, with a nice push from George Lucas' decision to shoot Episode II of Star Wars entirely using digital cameras. The article covers both the technological developments making it possible as well as the business alliances. One neat detail is that if a distribution system based on streaming (instead of data on DVDs, for example) is set up, theaters could show things like live concerts or other performances as they happen. Sounds great to me." Rather neat the impact that George Lucas is making in this area by filming episode II all digital. Could theaters gain back with exclusivity some of what they've lost to Blockbuster and NetFlix? And how soon till the equivalent of soundboard recordings are squished onto MP4 before the credits are through?
Now we have 35mm-only, with 5-channel compressed digital sound.
Soon, we'll be moving to HDTV. Yes, that's right, HDTV. That's what Lucas is using for SW Ep. II. He's using a Sony HDTV camera that captures images at 1920x1080, cropped to about 1920x800 to form a widescreen 2.39:1 "scope" image. (Compare that with the resolution of 35mm film, which is equivalent to about 4000x3000 for an anamorphically squeezed "scope" image.) Add to that the fact that the color and contrast ranges of HDTV are smaller than that of film, and you've got a nice step down (yes, down) in picture quality.
Also note that the DLP projectors built by TI are only 1280x1024, so you won't even get to see the full HDTV image if you go see this movie in a theater with digital projection.
All told, this is yet another reduction in quality for theatrical presentations. What's there to be excited about?
Free Hans!
A lot of this problem hinges on a single fact: Analog by nature is in a state of constant flux, think of a curve-like wave in comparision with constant packet-like bundles of binary data. Yes, I know that's a rehash of what many people already know, but consider the finer points of it: Analog can, in fact, be replicated using certain methods of transfer over a network or indeed, on a local host, over the local bus of that host. The trick is to triangulate hexadecimally produced void resultants, so that static resultants in the codec delimiter don't stay at one logical depth the whole time. In other words, we need to retrometricise symbolically compressed equation identifiers in such a way that the resultants of the code interacting with the codec is in a state of flux similar to that of analog motion. Using these methods, we can design octadecimal output tuned theoretical pipes in the software interfaces interacting with the codecs and create logically programmable integrated exchange dividers within the codec interface itself. This will basically eliminate the problem with digital resolution/colour.
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
What does digital mean? It means it's represented in ones and zeros. But that isn't what people are talking about when they compare film and digital media. They are complaining because digital media is quantized: It is split into little finite segments and chopped to hard values. No one cares how it's stored. Film is quantized as well.
Look at film mechnically, it consists of an array of fiber like strands of photo-reactive material. Some strands are more reactive to Red, some to Green, some to Blue. Chemically each reactive molecule is either exposed or it's not exposed, the exposure is timed so that the number of exposed molicules is purportional to the amount of light hitting it. So the dynamic range of a color is directly releated to the number of reactive molicules within a sufficently small space. The values are quantized, the quantization is non-linear varries by spacial location and the exact thresholds are randomized, but it is still quantized.
Film is also quantized in space. It has a resolution (directly related to grain sized).
So how does film compare to 'digital media'? It has a much lower dynamic resolution for luminance (thus color) compaired to state-of-the art digital stuff, and it's much more expensive to use higher resolution film (you simply use BIG film).
So why isn't digital unargueably better? Because it turns out that the quasi-random quantization of film is *MUCH* more perceptually acceptible then the rigid ordered quantization used by digital media.
Because of this, we use oversampling and dithering. State of the art digital film making using 12bpc (12 bits per color component per pixel) and a resolution several times greater then would otherwise be used for film. When we need to output to display devices with lower resolution and dynamic range we use dithering both in space and on values. With dithering we mix small amounts of 'colored' (frequency filtered) noise into low-order part of the selection of 'high quality' contentent brought into the low quality mix. This increases the percieved quality greatly.
Is digital media today better then film? When you mix in cost as a factor (it always is): YES! Because digital cost so much less then film, you can afford to use sufficent oversampling to make it look better then film of a simmlar price point.
(A) Remember, live actor footage for SW Ep. II has already been completed. It's long over. Lucas (and company) are spending the next year or two on post-production and effects. For analog film, how do you add in laser blasts, matte shots, lightsaber blades, and other fun stuff? The traditional way involves someone sitting down on the film with a very expensive crayola marker, while the more modern version involves transfering the footage to a computer, doing it digitally, and then spooling it back out. Either way is substantially more difficult than just taking it digital all the way through. It's the same issue as with analog vs. digital LCD monitors. The digital ones have fewer steps, so they are faster, cheaper, and have better pictures.
(B) It takes time to paint in all of those blasters/phasers/lasers. And it takes even more time to piece together all of the various scenes, especially when each scene exists in seven different pieces. Remember the brief shot in the original Star Wars, where Luke is practicing with his lightsaber against the robot ball while Chewie and the droids are playing chess in the background? That shot contained over five different "layers" that had to be put together and synched, and then all alligned with the rest of the footage. That takes a fraction as much time to do when it's all in Adobe Premier (or whatever program LucasFilm uses) than when it's all on celluloid rolls.
(C) Time is money, or so say the beancounters. The time you save by doing development and post production digitally will translate into less money you have to pay your post-production people (good for the studio, bad for the post-production people, which means the major studios will go with it every time), which means higher net profit. In addition, chemical film costs a lot of money. So does the development cost. And then you need the storage space to archive all of it until the movie is finished, and sometimes even then you keep all the bits and pieces. (Lucas did for the original trilogy, which is why they were able to do the Special Edition release.) Digital equipment is not cheap, but once you have your cameras and a few (dozen) DV tapes, you're set. All you need for storage then is a ton of hard disk space, which is now going for a song. You then have perfect reproduction copies of all your footage, and you can reuse the tapes for the next scene, or the next movie. Over the long run, that brings the cost of production down substantially, just as digital still cameras do compared to 35mm film cameras, even if the quality isn't quite as good yet.
We can argue until we're blue in the face about whether the quality of digital film (that's a fairly big misnomer, isn't it?) is noticibly poorer or better than traditional film. But to a studio, quality is irrelevant. (Just look at some of the stuff coming out in theaters.) Time, money, and simplicity are what they work on, and in all three of those categories digital video wins hands down. I expect that for art films and movies without many FX, traditional film or even the "enhansed" film we're starting to see will continue for a long time. But for anything requiring substantial FX or post-production, digital is going to take over, whether we like it or not.
--GrouchoMarx
My other account is CmdrTaco
--GrouchoMarx
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Digital movies/theaters are a pretty good idea whos time is coming. They are not however to be forced on people any time soon. I wish 100% digital editing had been mainstream when I was doing some production video editing. Now you can grab a DV camcorder and a PC and do 100% digital video transfers and edit them as you filmed them. I had to fight with taking VHS video (if I was lucky Hi-8) and making it look pretty. You can render and edit shit at radical qualities on your computer but when you have to transfer it to another medium you've got difficulty so keeping the same medium through the entire process of production, post-production, and distrobution makes for some pretty good quality video.
There are very serious problems with this, ones that many people completely disregard. In order to make a 100% digital movie, you need complete vertical integration. This means your cameras need to be digital your editing is all digital and then your distrobution and display is all digital. This is prohibitivly expensive! Digital cameras are getting cheaper indeed and maybe we'll see some 6 megapixel cameras that can deliver 25fps and 36-bit colour (12 bits per colour channel for oversampling). Digital editing is already in place and in some cases can be considered a comodity if you think that even low budget movies can have non-linear digital editing or CGI effects in them. The biggest and most serious barrier is distrobution and display. Do you ship some hude RAID box to theaters like Lucas did with the digital viewings of Episode I? Or do you try to download the literally terabytes worth of video? After you figure out how to get the movie to theaters there is the problem of showing it. The TI DLP projectors in use now are of pretty low resolution and won't scale past 24fps; not only are they pretty locked down in that regard but they are twice and a half more expensive than a single good film projector. DLP projectors can't use the lighting that film cameras use and those things are fucking expensive. Film is high resolution which makes it easier on the eye to watch on a large screen. You can of course really oversample digital video to emulate the analog-ness of film. That in turn adds another layer of complexity to the digital video because the projectors become that much more expensive and the video is that much larger due to the extraneous data. Theaters are already fucked because a good number of them are on the border of bankrupsy. How can these companies that can't afford shit afford to revamp all of their theaters with really expensive new projectors? Small theaters are going to be completely left out because they exist on even smaller margins than big chains and new projectors would be way too much for them. You've also got to take into consideration that studios probably won't be making digital copies of their old movies any time soon so the theater by your college isn't going to have a Kevin Smith festival or be able to have that money making Rocky Horror late-night screening if they replace all of their projectors with new fangled ones. No infrastructure == slow transition.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
>> What's there to be excited about?
>
> Oh, I dunno, crystal clear quality?
>
> You still listen to records, don't you?
But you're missing the point that you're actually getting much less quality. Yes, digital instead of film means that there won't be the occasional specks of dust on the print. But there'll be less picture resolution.
It's like this: Imagine you're given the choice between two images to work with. One of them is taken with a digital camera and gives you a 1024x768 16bpp picture with no dust or other analogue issues. The other was taken with a film camera, and gives you something like 4000x3000 with better-than-32bpp, but there may be small dust specks. I'd want to work with the film image, because there's more to work with and a few dust imperfections can be fixed--if they're even noticeable.
As for your remark about records versus CDs, that's not fair because CDs give sound quality almost equal to that of vinyl, but with the advantages of being digital and easier to take care of. But, resolution of digital video cameras isn't nearly the equal of 35mm film cameras. The right analogy would be comparing a record to a low-quality mp3 recorded at only 112kbps. Sure, it's digital. Sure, most people won't notice the sound difference. But a lot of people *will* notice the sound difference, and it's a huge step down.
Roger Ebert is one of the most consistent critics of digital film and digital projection. He says they're wonderful for independent projects and for films that big studios won't agree to produce. And he's right--they're great for that. But if it's a major film with an actual budget, it should be shot on film. I think he's right. Film has a much better, less harsh look than video, too. Video is often sharper, but not as true with its treatment of colors and contrast. But the killer is that video resolution can't touch film. What happens 50 years from now, when we're moving to HDTV-2? It will surely outstrip the limits of video resolution. Lucas's new pet all-video Star Wars saga will look pathetically scaled-up. Yet, anything shot on film will probably still need to be scaled *down* to fit the new standard.
Technology progresses, and one day probably soon there will be a digital video camera that can rival the quality of film's resolution and color. But that time is not now. Shooting on digital video is pathetically shortsighted, unless you think resolution will never, ever get better than current HDTV formats. Where a budget demands, fine, go for digital video. But, film is better. And yes, sitting at a theater, you *can* tell the difference between a real film and one that's being shown digitally.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
If the theatre distribution system were to change to digital streaming of some sort, this might pose a significant advantage for small time low-budget films to be available to audiences. Think about it; as it is today, a theatre company will only show a film on it's screens repeatably, and hope that enough people will show up. I've been in cinema rooms with as few as seven people in them during off peak hours or when the movie wasn't a fresh release.
After all, the theatre knows that seven tickets are better then one, and since it has the film at hand, it shows it again for the additional marginal revenue.
But what if an underutilized cinema screen could be showing any current movie in existance [at least, more recent ones that have the benefit of being digital]? This could add significantly to the competiveness of the theatres by alowing them to diversify their offerins significantly. A group of 7 to 25 people who want to see some particular low-budget or subversive art film could get together and bid as a group for a desire to reserve a screen at a certain time. Both the theatre wins by offering exactly what it's customers democratically bid on, and the customers win, by having an enormous expansion of the available material in the theatre.
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