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Lack of Digital Screens for Attack of the Clones
spt writes: "CNN Entertainment has an article describing Lucas Arts' disappointment at the lack of digital screens available for Attack of the Clones. When the Phantom Menace was released, they were hoping that, by May 2002, there would be 2000 digital screens. That estimate dropped to 'several hundred', but the reality is that now there are only 20 digital screen in the U.S.
Who has been lucky enough to see a digitally produced film in one of these 20? Is there enough of a benefit to think that more screens will be converted to digital projection?"
is there a list of these theaters? I know there won't be one near me anytime soon.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
i dont understand what this digital screen is, but when it comes down to it unless its a full lcd there will always been a dac somewhere, i mean let face it in the theater, the biggest problem is the loss of quality whehn the light hits the air, full of dust, and popcorn. perhaps im wrong, any ideas?
I know there are advantages for the film producer in doing all digital. Editing, and special effects are easier in an all digital medium.
Digital may also (theoretically) solve distribution problems, allowing them to download the films to the theaters, rather than shipping the physical films around.
But, what is the benefit to the theater or the viewer?
I believe that Lucas is doing Star Wars in 1080p24 (1080 lines, progressive scanned at 24 frames per second). A good 35mm film will offer much better resolution than that.
Wouldn't a better option for quality be 70mm, like Imax uses. Or, even cranking up the frame rate.. how about a 60fps film. The motion blur at 24fps is horrible.
Do I want Lucas to delay the release, or get it over with quickly so he can hurry up and put the series out of its' misery?
Well, digital stuff doesn't degrade - watch a movie opening night, and compare the quality with a movie in the dollar theater. You'll notice it degrades over time, just like an LP would. Digital stuff might not fit your bizarre audiophile definition of quality when it first comes out, but until you lose 50% of the signal strength, it will always be at that quality.
The advantage of digital for the studios is that it's cheaper. Films open far wider now than they ever used to, and play for shorter periods of time, and all those prints cost more money for the studio and eat into their profits. It doesn't matter that DLP projectors only have 1280x1024 resolution (at least the ones that theaters use), they save them money in the long run, so the studios love them.
Roger Ebert has written about this and has a great column about a new film technology that shoots at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, makes all motion look much more fluid, prevents annoying film artifacts you'll see, and is acually an improvement over current 35mm film, instead of a downgrade like digital is.
For people wondering, Lucas shot Episode II using special new Sony HD Cameras that shoot at 1080p, 24 fps, and use Panavision lenses. They are incredibly nice, the best DV cameras out there, but don't have the resolution that film does no matter how advanced they are. The DVD transfers should look totally incredible, though. However, does anyone care if the movie sucks as bad as Episode 1, and so far the trailers don't give me much hope.
LUCAS: Digital is cool. I'm cool. I'm old, but I can still set a trend.
STAR WARS FANS: Speak to us your words of wisdom, oh wise one!
Lucas: Um, okay, I guess I don't do anything else. Hmmm...
Lucas: <Intense thinking>
Lucas: I have it! I will produce AOTC digitally and it will be shown on digital screens around the country... I am a visionary; I will be worshipped like a god!
Star Wars Fans: <Proceed to worship Lucas like a god>
Lucas: Muhahah! My plan is complete!
BYSTANDER: But don't digital screens cost money? Who's going to pay for it?
Lucas: If I produce it, they will pay.
Star Wars Fans: If he produces it, we will pay.
Bystander: No, I meant who will pay for the digital projection equipment and the like...
Lucas: <Shock flashes across his face>
Lucas: They shall not have AOTC without installing a digital projection system! I command it.
Bystander: Say, how many more days until the next installment of LOTR?
They are not that hard to work with or install; and in many cases, plug right into the existing setups. It's a linux based computer running movies from fibre based harddrives. The movies are loaded from a highly encrypted (sic!) dvd disk. The image is then sent via the same projector lens (with a modification) out to the same silver screen we are all used to.
The only drawback is the cost of the setup which is one of the reasons there are not more screens.
Anyway, this situation will be a money-making bonanza for Lucas. They can re-release the film to theaters after a few years, this time in "full digital glory" and with 3 more minutes of previously cut scenes. All of the usual geeks will show up and shell their money out once again (OTOH, if it sucks as much as episode 1, maybe not).
...the reason why Phantom Menace sucked so much was because I didn't see it on a digital screen??
Silly me... I thought it was because of that Jar Jar thing! I should have known better.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
The Edward's Theatre at the Irvine Rectum^H^H^H^H^H^HSpectrum (rumored to be the largest grossing theatre in the US, even though Edward's is currently attempting to claw their way out of Chapter 11) has at least one digital projector. Saw Atlantis and Final Fantasy there....so I do know they exist.
The good: Clear picture.
The bad: I saw one animated movie and one all-cgi movie. Without seeing them on a traditional projector, how would I know the difference? There was still the dust problem (air or lens), although it did look to be a lot cleaner overall.
A few points worth noting: I saw part of the phantom menace on one of those wide-screen hdtv's. Picture was so clear that it made the film's effects look even less realistic. Anyone who's gone out to see Beauty & The Beast at any of the IMAX theatres may have noticed that thanks to it being increased to "Dear god, look at the size of that nutcracker!" size made it much more apparent that the people coloring the cells didn't get quite as close to the outlines as you might expect. Thus, technology increases typically work best when everything is aiming at the same target.
Additionally, I'm not a believer that FPS needs to be increased much more than it is. Yes, you could make conventional projectors churn out film faster, although you'd need to increase the size of the platters, adjust the timing of the reels, etc. You'd probably not have a lot of reason just to convert an existing projector, you'd want to get a new one...and if you're getting a new projector, you might as well get a digital one if you get the benefits of the [easier, more durable] distribution medium, clearer picture, etc. Besides, there comes a physiological limit to the amount of information the eye can process at once. 30fps is plenty for me, and I can't really distinguish a difference between 30 and 60. Same reason why I think 96khz cd's are ridiculous. I can't hear outside of a certain range, who cares if it can faithfully record it?
I think digital projection will catch on, not because of features the audience would notice, but because of things that will make distribution easier. People seem to go to the movies no matter how badly they're made, how uncomfortable the seats, how high the ticket prices...so getting stuff done for the sake of the audience doesn't really seem like a big motivating factor for the industry.
-transiit
George Lucas presents Attack of the Clones, direct to video?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
When I read two years ago that Lucas was going all digital for Clones, I thought he should put down the crack pipe. I'm now more convinced than ever.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase
1280x1024 on a movie sized screen! I've seen it on several occasions, and let me tell you, the pixels are huge. It's ugly. If you've seen digital projection, you're not "lucky".
The resolution of digital projection must be improved if it is to be taken seriously. 1280x1024 doesn't cut it. There are rumors that TI might finally inch their way up to full HDTV resolution (1920x1080) by the time Ep. II premeires, but even that isn't good enough.
Movie special effects are always done at at least 2K resolution, sometimes 4K. There was an article linked from here not too long ago which quoted some people who were working on FX for LOTR that some of their shots were done at 4K resolution. What good is that if movies are going to be projected at a puny resolution of 1280x1024?
Fortunately, there are more technologies on the horizon besides DLP. JVC's D-ILA is already at 2K resolution, and may reach 4K before too long. Sony is working on laser projection which should also be able to reach 4K.
The bottom line is -- don't be in a hurry! They should take the time to do things right, and make sure theaters are not stuck with equipment that is obsolete overnight. It's a good thing that there are currently only 20 digital screens in the US. The technology needs more time to mature first!
Free Hans!
The article doesn't try to explain the benefits, if any, of digital projection. Are they claiming to achieve higher resolution than 35mm film? 70mm film has already been tried, and mostly abandoned. It provides too much resolution. I had the pleasure of seeing one of the '2001' films in a small screening room equipped with 70mm. You could see the brushstrokes on the cabinetwork of all the "futuristic plastic" spaceship interiors. 35mm is a better match for standard sets, costumes and makeup.
When the CD came out, it offered much better audio quality than the average analog media. But since then, there's more focus on compression and squeezing maximum efficiency out of digital media (since consumers don't seem to notice quality.) Hence, DVDs which don't even look as good as 1/4" videotape from the 80's, small-dish satellite TV which has horrible motion artifacts and digital cell phones. I'm not sure how many people are still gullible enough to think that "digital" is automatically better than "analog". It's entirely a question of resource allocation. Given adequate bandwidth or storage, and therefore the luxury of high-bitrate, high-dynamic range linear encoding, digital can generally outperform analog. But more typically today digital media are used to fine tune the level of crap which consumers will accept. Of course the popularity of MP3's is sending a clear message to the music industry that CD's are much too high quality for our taste.
Anyway, the main driver I can see for digital movie theaters is the ability to fire the projectionists, get rid of some moving parts, and exert much tighter central control over playback. I don't think they have much interest in offering higher performance. Ultimately you would pay $12 to watch an enlarged version of the HDTV in your house playing material that's not yet cleared for home viewing.
I've got a digital screen.. it's a modified overhead projector using an LCD projection panel. Parts from Ebay. Good stuff. Does 1024x768 and it cost $300 total and no expensive bulbs to replace every 2000 hours. Of course it only works well in a darkened room, but hey.. that's what movie watching's all about. (..or getting sick playing Descent3) (-:
Being a film maker of no repute, I shall attempt to address this. I can't answer EVERYTHING, but I can address some of the biggies.
First off the cameras Lucas is using shoot with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels at 24 frames progressive. The format they use is Sony's own HDCAM. This is a compressed digital format. It is not however DV, which refers to a particular codec used most often for standard definition production at 25Mbps. Panasonic has a format called DVCPRO HD which uses the same codec at a 100Mbps profile. HDCAM is about 145Mbps.
Confusingly, many people for some reason think DV also means "Digital Video." This is probably because it does. Mostly video people say digital video and save DV for the codec. I tend to say DV25 or whatever when I am talking codecs, or say MiniDV when talking format...damnable words.
SO, back to HD...There is a huge lossy compression that happens before we can even examine the image. If the image is captured directly to a D-5HD recorder (not to be confused with D-5 which is an SD video format.) from the camera without going to tape, you get a much better product. Lucas has done this for at least some scenes.
What about the notion that 35mm offers more resolution ? It depends. Are you talking about acquisition or projection ? You'll be surprised that while 35mm has a resoltuion advantage, it is not the primary thing that you'll notice when looking at the projected images. Mostly I feel that color generated by these cameras as recorde on tape isn't smooth enough.
For projection HD video projectors using DLP at 1920x1080 are available, and they produce a STUNNING image. I saw one Jan 2001 at NIST's Digital Cinema conference. I couldn't bear watching 35mm projection with my friends later on after the conference. Why ?
Well, first off there is not gate weave or jitter. Images are very solid and clear when they are supposed to be. Better than even the best theatres with union projectionists. (not a lot of those left..Mann's in LA, Uptown in DC, I dunno any more.) What I am talking about is the way film moves. Being a mechanical system there are limits to its operational precision. You get inaccuracies in vertical and horizontal positioning, as well as movement towards or away from the lens, and the lamp. Then there are the subtle deformations of the film itself. This is all well controlled actually, especially when you consider that a 35mm picture is being made into a 70 foot or more picture on projection.
Well, none of that exists for the digital projector.
The color gamut available surpasses that of 35mm film. Most of what I saw was film acquired, which was stunning enough. The digitally generated stuff, Toy Story 2, well...it NEVER looked that good before. Colors literally leap off the screen. It is a cinematographers dream. ( I know cause I dream about having my images projected on that thing...drool drool)
Make no mistake, digital projection is THE future of theatrical exhibition. Even Vittorio Storaro has come out in favor of it. (Storaro is a very highly regarded cinematographer, perhaps the best ever. Check out an interview with him about digital cinema.)
Now, on acquisition 35mm is certainly superior. Not because of format limits...Uncompressed HD is very nice and can compete with 35mm, but rather because of the limitations of current camera design, mostly the CCD's. Still they provide a very good image.
Frankly I am amazed that the film look as good as it does after seeing the previews. A quick look at the previews shows that while the image has flaws, it is quite frankly very very good.
Now when evaluating the technology you have to consider HOW the image reaches the final consumer. For a movie like Star Wars, or FoTR the 35mm camera image is scanned into the systems at ILM or wherever using a laser film scanner, then digital effects, manipulation and elements are all added. Then it is ouput to film, pre composited, via a laser film "printer."
What this means is that the limiting image resolution is set at digitization. This hardly affects most films, but for a Star Wars film, where virtually every scene, if not every frame, contains digital composites, the entire film is produced digitally even if you shoot with film!
For more discussion, argument and general confusion check out the archives of discussions on alt.movies.cinematography, search for "HD film" and you should be overwhelmed.
I hope that has been entertaining if not useful.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
Filmakers' have traditionally lamented that the film that they finish cutting is NEVER the film that the audience gets to see. The reason? Multiple layers of copies that need to be struck before you get to the release prints.
The quality of one wet-gate interpositve to internegative is quite good, but you do that a couple of times at high speed, and there is significant quality loss (no lenses used when copying folks.) By the time you get to the release print, which is struck from the final internegative, you're lucky to get 2k of the original 4-8k worth of information. Think of it as photocopying a photocopy - several times.
Add that grainy, blurry, off-color print, to the crap that it will go through during the first couple of days of release (burn, splice, scratch, dust), and by the time that you and I go to watch it, it's nowhere near what the editor handed off to the director. Of course, if you go to a crappy theatre, with a crappy projector, with a dirty projector window and a crappy screen... jeez, you might as well wait for the DVD.
As a rule I prefer 70mm prints to 35mm, just cause there's less degradation, I prefer better theatres to crappy multiplexes, because they usually get the better prints.
Now, you ask, what's so hot about digital? I mean, even with a bad print you get better resolution than the current tech, right? Not quite. Even though the max resolution of the current projectors can't match the theoretical resolution of 35mm film, the digital stuff is either cine-scanned or telecined from an early inter-positive, and cleaned up (dust removal, etc.) As a result, even if the final resolution is less, you get pretty much what you'd see what the director sees, and that's what Lucas and a whole lot of other filmmakers are so hot about.
And yes, the projections they use are LCD or DLP, so the projections are digital.
However, I must warn you. It's weird going to a theatre looking at a bright picture that seems like it's playing straight off a HD DVD. No scratches or blotches. No jitter. Very little grain (for daylight shots). It's like sitting in your living room watching a super-big TV. Eerie.
I have seen quite a few digitally projected films with both major projection systems over the years at the local AMC including Toy Story 2, Tarzan, Star Wars I, Monsters Inc, and others.
The absence of scratches are immediately apparent from the second the films begins. They are so jarringly clean that it takes a couple seconds to get used to it. Tarzan in particular was amazing, like looking into an animated window.
In fact, the most distracting thing about the digital experience has been the annoying FILM GRAIN in Star Wars. Well, of course, there was the crappiness of the movie itself, which was worse, but anyway...
Yes, you can make out the regularly-shaped square pixels in digital projection, but only if you look for it, and only when there is a high-contrast between bright and dark areas, such as when titles are superimposed over a black background. These pixels at least are regularly spaced and steady, as opposed to the jittery "dance" of film grain, which is omnipresent in film. Once I went from a clean screening of Toy Story 2 to another viewing of it on film, the grain really bothered me.
Aside from that, I found the colors to be brighter and more vivid than film with deep blacks and bright whites and shades of orange and blue that I just hadn't seen projected before. And there is no distracting 24 fps flicker-- it's hard to explain, but it's something like the difference between watching a flickering CRT vs. the steady image of an LCD.
The only real advantage digital offers is that the print won't get worse over time, but how long are prints in the theater for now anyway? A month?
Well first off, in major cities that may be true. However, from what I understand, the 2nd run cities and smaller towns get the prints after they've run through the projector dozens of times.
Face it, film breaks, film is scratched. Film must be spliced together when it breaks. Film goes out of sync...
Resolution-wise it's difficult to measure film grain count vs. pixel count because video offers anti-aliasing and other tricks to improve the image.
The advantage of digital for the studios is that it's cheaper. Films open far wider now than they ever used to, and play for shorter periods of time, and all those prints cost more money for the studio and eat into their profits. It doesn't matter that DLP projectors only have 1280x1024 resolution (at least the ones that theaters use), they save them money in the long run, so the studios love them.
It's not just the prints-- movies shot on high-end (Lucas-level) video are (in theory) much cheaper than film. Every bad shot in film is wasted negative. Tape stock is relatively cheap in comparison.
You save money on raw film stock. You save money on processing. You save money on creating workprint and answer prints when color-balancing (timing) the film. Then, yeah, you save money on the final prints, you save money on postage having to to distribute heavy cases of film to all your exhibitors. You don't have to worry about film jamming in the gate of your camera or breaking in the lab...
Editing-wise, digital video is far simpler. No keycode to link to timecode (if you've ever had to deal with 3-2 pulldown or audio sync issues when editing film on video or a non-linear editor, you'll know what I'm talking about) No 24/30 fps conversions. Color correction and effects can be easily added in the original medium without losing quality. No need to worry about costly optical effects or negative duping if you wanna use a shot more than once.
And of course, the quality of the original image is the same quality of what you see on the screen, no matter how many times the image is composited, manipulated, copied, re-edited, etc. With film, you are guaranteed to be seeing at least a third generation copy of the negative. (it goes from the negative to an internegative to a print... and that's without any optical effects added, which may require more losses in generations)
For an independent filmmaker, the costs of shooting on film can be prohibitive. As video gets cheaper and better, there's no denying its appeal to lower budget projects.
Roger Ebert has written about this and has a great column about a new film technology that shoots at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, makes all motion look much more fluid, prevents annoying film artifacts you'll see, and is acually an improvement over current 35mm film, instead of a downgrade like digital is.
Ebert's been pushing that 48 fps film for years now. 48 fps means the film is running through the camera/projector twice as fast. If the image size is the same, that means you're burning film twice as fast, which means your film costs are twice as high.
I've heard that it's cool, but because of the expense (and the fact that it's still a physical, mechanical technology) I just don't see that ever being anything more than a novelty.
For people wondering, Lucas shot Episode II using special new Sony HD Cameras that shoot at 1080p, 24 fps, and use Panavision lenses. They are incredibly nice, the best DV cameras out there, but don't have the resolution that film does no matter how advanced they are.
Like I said, it's sort of comparing apples and oranges. From my totally subjective point of view, the digitally projected Toy Story 2 was VASTLY superior in terms of color, clarity, and overall image quality to the film version.
I think stuff like CGI films that went straight from the computer to digital projection have been the best of what I've seen so far. Because, yeah, I'll admit it-- film does have a certain quality that as yet digital projection hasn't really captured. Kind of a surreal, magical, hard-to-describe look. And you can do a lot of cool shit chemically with film.
But DV has its own qualities that are waiting to be explored. And I really think thatit's not gonna be too much long before they get the video to look and act like film. Most of the video we see looks crappy because it's shot like it's on video. But I think that cinematographers have a whole new world to explore because believe it or not, you can actually light a DV project WELL if you want to.
For those of you interested in checking out a "film" shot on 24P DV, USA Films released a movie not too long ago called Session 9 with David Caruso (yeah, yeah. I know). I haven't seen it on DVD yet (saw a 35mm transfer), but it's among the very first films out using super-high end video acquisition. If you can't wait until Star Wars and wanna see some 24p stuff, check it out. You may change your mind about what's around the corner.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
First off most NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) members will admit if pressed that they are not in the movie business at all, it is incidental.
They are in the concessions business. They sell sugared water with carbonation, and exploded corn kernels with butter flavored oil.
Nonetheless there are very strong economic reasons to use digital projection. For one it allows a theatre owner to be far more flexible in what they show and how many screens they show a film on. They can dynamically allocate theaters to meet demand in a digital world.
The DLP projectors are designed to be more reliable than film projectors, and to have fewer operator adjustments. They look better for longer without intervention. There are no prints to manage logistics for and to deal with shipping. etc etc.
OH, yeah, they LOOK BETTER to boot. Once you see one, that may be the end of your film projection days.
NATO members are very eager to get these advantages.
However as you can imagine the candy and soda business can't afford to bear wasted overhead. They can't invest in a DLP system on a fiber network to a, exabyte server room and have it be supplanted quickly.
What NATO members are waiting for is two things:
The technology to settle down
Standards to emerge and stabilize
Once these things are in place, there will be a RACE to get DLP projectors out to your local multiplex.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
As soon as digital theaters get big, home digital theaters using the same technology will get big, and pirated perfect digital movie-theater resolution copies of these flicks will be pressed and distributed like Thin Mints.
--Blair
The economic benefits of digital projection go almost totally to the studios -- no prints to distribute. But the theater chains are expected to bear the cost of new equipment. Given that they are hurting right now, due to a glut of screens, this is not likely.
Anyway, film is still better than digital -- in resolution, and more importantly, in color and contrast ranges. Its response to light is not just greater, it's totally different (logarithmic rather than linear; there is no clipping). Digital may catch up eventually, but not soon. Unfortunately, if the industry can shaft us with inferior imaging technology, they will.
Digital Film has a much higher resolution than Digital Video. Digital Film tends to be projected at 1280 x 1024 - digital video has a much lower resolution.
Actually, I saw my first digitally projected film on Wednesday night - Monsters Inc at the Liecester Square Odeon, and I was very impressed by the quality - it was much crisper than I've ever seen with film projection. Whether this is to do with being able to project more sharply or some inherent blurriness in the film copy I'm not sure.
At the beginning when they showed the BBFC classification notice I could just about see the pixels - but then it was white non-antialiased pixels on a black background. When the film proper started I was very impressed by the crispness and clarity and I didn't notice any pixellation artifacts.
It's part of the analog richness of film.
I will always love the random scattering of those silver molecules, dancing over the image flickering in the darkness.
It's like the warmth that comes from a vinyl record, as opposed to the cold clarity of a CD.
LucasFilm not LucasArts...
I don't like cities. In fact, I hate the hustle and bustle of San Francsico, but 4 times already I have gone out of my way to see a digital screening at the AMC 1000 on Van Ness.
After seeing a private digital screening of Episode I at Skywalker Ranch's Stag Theatre, I was sufficiently impressed enough to go to the City to see Pixar's "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc." twice each.
Let me just say this: WOW!
Having only seen one live action film in digital, I can only say that DLP is exceedingly good at reproducing a film and capturing the look and feel of actual film.
And, when it comes to the purely digital domain, it is even better. Pixar's films couldn't have looked better. Keep in mind that all prints go through extensive color timing to make sure the proper balance is achieved. With DLP, we are seeing (assuming calibration is performed properly) exactly what the original designers, animators, art directors, texturers, shaders, and renderers saw and intended when they first created the work.
It is so nice to be able to see a film weeks after release and not be distracted by a marred print that has been playing 5 times a day for however many weeks. Even better still, there aren't any jumps from places where the celluloid broke and had to be spliced back together!
Of course, there is a downside to this technology, too.
Remember when some politically-correct advocate groups complained about a scene in Disney's "Aladdin"? Disney couldn't do anything about it while it was still in the theatre because prints are extremely expensive, but with DLP, playback can be from WVHS tapes, satellite (via WVHS or other downloaded formats), or directly from a hard disk. So, the cost to redistribute an editted, censored version of a film is negligible in comparison.
Do I think they'll use it that way? Undoubtedly.
Is the format going to replace film? Absolutely. It looks amazing! It really IS more like film than film! I really just wish more films were being made available in the format. After "Monsters, Inc." closed in the digital screening, the AMC 1000 was not showing another film in DLP. How disappointing!
Jory
I saw Akira twice while it was in theatres (great movie BTW), the first time with digital projection, the second a week later (when I thought it would still be digital) on film. The DLP screen was much sharper with more consistent and saturated color. The opening motorcycle chase (with the incredibly detailed backgrounds) was simply amazing on the DLP but looked muddy and washed out in comparison on film. The colors were way more saturated and the DLP (I swear to God) had more dynamic range than any film I've seen in a theatre. Nothing I've seen on film has come close. I could say the same thing about Monster's Inc on DLP vs. film.
I'm sure that film can theoretically match the clarity and sharpness that I've seen but it never has. The print you watch in the movie theatre is at least a 3rd gen print and too often a 4th or 5th (or god forbid higher) generation print. And it's been run through the projector 4 times a day gathering dust and scratches. The film batches are different, the chemistry is slightly different and the printing process can't be repeated exactly everytime. And even if it could control all of that, you're making 3rd, 4th and 5th+ generation prints! Yes, a 70mm print can do better than 1080p24, but can a 5th generation print do the same? Can it match the original's color? Can it match the original's 1080 lines of resolution? From what I've seen, the answer is a big, huge NO!
I'd pay an extra 2-3 bucks per showing if I could get all digital, that's how much better I think it is.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Fascinated, I went to the giant flagship theater to watch, "Mission to Mars", which was being presented on the new digital system.
Anyway, I stood there with my friend in the expansive, pulsating lobby, and we were dirty and damp from the smog and rain outdoors, and we'd just eaten some bad fast food. The city was winning. I turned to him. . .
"You know, I just realized. I don't care enough about digital technology to go through with this. I really don't want to watch this movie. Everything I've seen regarding it looks absolutely awful."
"Yeah. I thought I could do it, but now I just don't feel so good. This place makes me feel like I'm in the middle of the "Terminator" future waste land. Why are there so many lasers and ultra violet lamps? Why is the floor black?"
"Well, this is the new, cool thing! You're supposed to feel naked without a BMFG-2000. --You know what they say; "The theater is the new social gathering place." --And how better to enrich the social fabric than to make people worry about being fragged?"
"BMFG?"
"Don't worry about it. Let's get the hell out of here."
And that was my experience with the new digital projection system! All in all, I'd have to say that it has some front-end and content problems to overcome before it becomes popular with cynical bastards who pine for the good old days when theaters had red carpets, soft lighting, and ornate wooden banister railings rich and dark from years of use.
-Fantastic Lad
You can't hear *pure tones* above 20kHz, but many people can hear other effects up to 24 kHz or higher. The same goes for the brickwall antialiasing and reconstruction filters that tries to go from 0 to -80db in less than 3kHz: it creates ringing that does not affect pure tones but distorts the transients of percussion instruments. Sure, 96kHz is an overkill, but it lets you built a reconstruction filter with barely two cycles of the sin(x)/x function - no ringing.
50-60kHz would probably be enough, but just doubling from the standard processing rate of 48kHz was the simplest option. With the non-lossy compression of the DVD-audio standard it barely takes more storage capacity than 48kHz.
96kHz audio is not ridiculous. Sony's SACD is totally ridiculous. There is no way to perform any kind of processing on the Direct Digital Stream without destroying its alleged superior properties. I wonder how many of those SACDs were actually mixed on a digital console at 48 or 96 kHz...
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Ebert's been pushing that 48 fps film for years now. 48 fps means the film is running through the camera/projector twice as fast. If the image size is the same, that means you're burning film twice as fast, which means your film costs are twice as high.
Not quite true. More film is used, but not twice as much.
Regular 35mm film wastes a lot of film anyway, simply because of having to crop the academy ratio to 2.35:1. MaxiVision48, which is the "new" medium we're talking about, theoriseses that nobody uses academy format anymore and "squeezes" the 2.35:1 frames as closely as possible. As a result, MaxiVision uses less space per frame and more frames per second, but vanilla 35mm uses more film per frame - which almost evens out.
MaxiVision24 definately uses less film and has many advantages depsite being only 24fps.
I've not explained that very well, I'm sure, so I'll point to this page for a better explanation.
If my monitor counts as a "digital screen", then I've always watched DivX:-) movies on one.
But I still don't have Attack of the Clones. Maybe if George Lucas provided the link for download, he wouldn't be bitching about the lack of digital screens.
Current DLP projectors have a set of 1280x1024 chips in them, which have a native aspect ratio of 1.25:1. The projector also comes with two anamorphic lenses, a 1.5X lens to stretch the image out for 1.85:1 movies, and a 1.9X lens to stretch the image out for 2.39:1 movies. The lenses must be changed whenever the theatre is getting ready to show a feature in a different aspect ratio than the previous one.
Free Hans!
There is one notable exception: scratches.
I've been to midnight-showing, opening night of some movies and see scratches on the film.
The one DLP film I saw (Emperor's New Groove @ AMC Buena Vista in LBV, FL) was flawless.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Having worked in the theatre business I can tell you that money is the main problem. Right now there are many companies having finacial problems and some are filing for bankrupcy.
Why are they going broke when they charge so much for tickets you ask?
Because almost ALL of the box money goes to the movie studio. You can thank George Lucas for that one. For Episode 1 he wanted 80% of the box for himself and on top of that he wanted some of the consession sales, which is unheard of.
Consession sales are where the theatres make their money for operations, payroll, and so on...
So with the snack bar being the only real source of income for the theatre, they're not exactly swimming in the money once you figure in the cost of keeping all of the current equipment working.
Projectors aren't cheap either. You'll be lucky to find a USED one in okay shape for $20,000.
So, George, it looks like you have shot yourself in the foot on this one. You are the only person to request 80% of the box revenue. Want to know where the digital projectors are? LOOK IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS MORON!
There, I feel better now.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I happen to work for a projection equipment manufacturer, up until 2000. We had the chance to see the first installation of a digital screen(playing the first Star Wars) in NY. And actually started on a networking project(for the theatre's to be able to swap movies, and data).
The biggest problem with them, and why they didn't take off wasn't mainly the quality of the movie, but the huge ammount of space needed for a single movie. Also the expense that was required by a major moviehouse to aquire one of these.
If I remember correctly, every movie was roughly 8-16gigs, thus requiring for some of these larger movie houses 128-256 gigs of information. But your not done yet. You need a way to back it up, a way to transfer it quickly, and a way to make sure the computer doesn't BSOD during the movie. (Yes, they were played on Windows NT machines).
The company I worked for Neumade Products actually had a bid in to try and get rights to create a projector for this medium, but eventually didn't see the large investment as being worth it.
The way the technology works, is by shooting light through a microchip that has thousands(if not millions) of mirrors, and reflectors. As the movies image changed, the mirrors, and reflectors rotated, or shifted to get the right ammount of light, and color onto the screen.
The technology wasn't then, and still isn't ready for the real world. It wasn't perfect, and could'nt be installed on different size screens(specifically the bigger ones). Thus making it unusable for a majority of the theatre chains out there.
Just what I remember, nothing more, nothing less,
Brian...
Color fringing was substantial (note that company engineers were there to calibrate the projection system, so it was set up properly) on horizontal motion and you could actually see the pixel rows when sitting in seats near the screen. Contrast was a problem.
I'm not sure why people are on this bandwagon. I have a degree in cinema production and can say without hesitation that digital projection is a long way off in quality when compared to film.
Also, before anyone starts with the "scratches, dust, blah, blah, blah" I have this to say: with the exception of the film element, digital projection suffers from 90% of the problems film does. Dust in the mechanics and lenses (don't forget there is also a giant Xenon bulb housing back there), stained, gouged, and otherwise abused screens, broken seats, etc. Digital projection is going to make little difference in the quality of the viewing experience because the venue owner must take resposibility for providing a well maintained facility. If this hasn't happened already, it's not going to happen with digital projection. I can already tell you that instead of the occasional flash of dust or scratch, you'll have the constant presence of dead array elements showing up on the screen like black Legos. Think the theatre owner will rush out to buy a new DLP array? Not likely. He already doesn't have employees clean the screen once a month.
In fact, modern projection equipment is so good that we should rarely see significant film wear. Anything we do see is generally caused by poorly trained projection staff and cheap owners. Any lontime projectionist becomes as familiar with the equipment as a mechanic with a favorite car. You can tell by the sound of the projector whether something is ailing or not. At the first sign of trouble, the projector should be immediately checked. Unfortunately, most theatre chains wait until the unit is in the obvious throws of breakdown before calling repair. These are the same people who will own the digital projectors. Does anyone think it will be any different? I don't.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
They're a company making one of the more awesome theatre systems in existence. Also, arguably, the most expensive. The reason why IMax theatres are doing well is because most of them are museums of one sort or another or they are ran by private interests running them, not chains. (Cinemark is one notable exception, setting up at least several IMax theatres.)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Heh. David Fincher's "Star Wars". The first rule of Jedi Club... is do not talk about Jedi Club. The second rule of Jedi Club... is do not talk about Jedi Club!
Spike Lee's "Star Wars". Mace Windu: Muthafucka!
Kevin Smith's "Star Wars". Silent Bob: [meaningful look] Jay: Snootch to the bootch! [to Amidala] Can I see your tits? [smokes a comedically large blunt] Noitch!"
Toshio Maeda's "Star Wars". Amidala: Aieee!! Tentacle Beast: [unspeakable weirdness] Amidala: Oooh... Tentacle Beast: [decapitates Amidala] Ahh...
Pierre Boule's "Star Wars". Obi-Wan: It's a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!! Anakin: Doctor, I'd like to kiss you goodbye. Monkey Amidala: All right, but you're so damned ugly.
Ahh, I'm all out of +1 Insightful.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Actually, in Akira's situation, the film version was based on an unrestored interpositive, the digital version was restored and color repaired.
Something that needs to be said is that some theater chains really have sucky equipment, don't check their tuning and so on, they might be running old equipment and so on.
I do want to see a digital theatrical projection sometime, but I'm sure it's not going to be as crisp as a made-for-IMAX presentation such as the restored Beauty and the Beast.
And that's the problem.
My brother was projectionist at a local theater. This isn't just any theater, but a 1920's era Vaudville house that's been totally restored and brought up to spec with the latest movie technology.
He invited me to sit in the booth with him one day shortly after the restored theater had gone "online." It was a good, old fashioned movie show. Double feature with a short and a cartoon. The cartoon was the Bugs Bunny about the penguin from Hoboken.
My jaw dropped when it came on. For 20 years I'd only seen Warner Bros. cartoons on TV. I'd forgotten what they really looked like in their native enviroment.
Was it scratched, gritty, with specs of dirt? You bet your ass it was, but. . .
The colors. My God, this was NOTHING like what you can see on TV! The richness, the subtle shadings, the pure ART of the thing floored me.
Only seeing them on TV for 20 years made me forget what they were supposed to look like.
I'll live with the scratches and dirt specs until digital can make Bugs look the way Bugs is supposed to look.
When I go to the theater I don't want to see a big TV. I want to see FILM, light shining directly through a tinted medium.
At the moment, nothing else even comes close.
KFG
Do you have to pay a fine if you return the film unrewound?
Mmmm.. Donuts
History has shown that disruptive technologies (GUI, small disk drives, flash cards, etc.) have followed this path:
Digital film is a classical example of a disruptive technology at stage 2. It won't take off until it is adopted in niche markets.
I suggest for the niche market something I thought of a few years ago for HDTV: small "art" film houses, the ones that now aren't above using projection of standard video at a pinch, who make most of their money from selling beer and espresso, and have small but dedicated clientele. Set up a distribution system where a small theatre can lease such a system and download films. Offer a variety of older films in digital form (possibly scanned from prints but ideally from interpositives). This would provide a nice, steady stream of revenue for older films that were not blockbusters but which will always have a steady market amongst the people who go for this sort of thing.
It is probably too small a market for the studios to notice, so some small entity is going to have to negotiate with studios to provide this service.
As this happens, companies will be able to work to improve the technology, eventually getting it to the point where most of the (currently legitimate) objections will not apply.
Bah humbug! (Bear with me while I pull numbers out of thin air and further pretend you are a theater operator)
More specifically, the new digital projector will cost upwards of 100 grand. Your theater seats 300 people, and you generally sell 1000 tickets per day. (five showings at 200 people per - you are doing good!) And you aren't going to be able to sell off the old projector - not everything is available digitally, and when it is all digital who the heck will buy your old film projector for anything near what it actually costs?
Now, pretend that you will actually get 5% more people coming for the "improved digital" experience. Well, that is an additional 50 people per day. But your box office basically goes to the distributor/studio (400.00 extra per day,but not to the theater). So you get 5 bucks per person on the concession stand - or an extra 250 bucks per day. Gee that would almost pay for the upgrade in a year -if you can count on that five bucks per extra person at the concession stand. On the other hand, the studio gets an extra 400 bucks per day from the box office (over a hundred grand per year), but it actually saves them a few thousand in the costs of actual films that they do not have to make and distrbute.
Oh, but wait - you don't have just one screen, you a new stadium seating multiplex with 2 dozen screens. And you are still paying off the debt you took on constructing that to get ahead of the competition, plus you are hurting because of the long term leases on the mall multiplexes you cannibalized when you put up the new stadium seating facility.
And having learned some hard lessons from the stadium seating construcion glut, you know that if you do upgrade to digital and start seeing slightly better numbers, well, then your competitors (who lost that extra 50 tickets per day per screen) are going to be forced into upgrading aswell - if they can afford to. If they can't afford to, they will take other steps to remain competitive - maybe cutting their ticket prices. You can pretty much be guaranteed that you won't see those extra customers long enough to recover your investment in a new projector.
But wait, we aren't even talking about a single multiplex! You are actually part of a national chain, and theses decisions are made at a regional level (the manager at McDonalds does not decide what gos on his menu either). So rather than a decision involving a dozen screens, and a couple of million bucks, we are talking hundreds of screens and real money. All so we won't disappoint George Lucas - the prima donna snob whose ideas of "fair play" kept us from running Episode 1 on most of our screens for the first few days to milk maximum revenue, and then cut back to handle just the die hard fans who put down "Jedi" as their religion on census forms.
No, theater operators actually have a strong financial DIS-incentive to "go digital". Their demands that the studios subbsidize it make a heck of a lot of sense - the studios will see all the major cost savings on the digital distribution over physical media, but there won't be any overall change in the actual numbers of tickets sold or buckets of popcorn purchased - hence no advantage for the theater.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Everyone here is right. The current resolution and color space of digital is insufficient - but it can be improved with new/better technology. Those digital projectors are expensive - but those prints are even more expensive.
What really matters is that distribution of digital films could be an IMMENSE improvement over the existing network. There would be no limits on where, or when, or how many screens a film could be shown. Everyone could show a hot film on opening night. Theaters could adjust the number of screens they're showing their films on at will. Staggered worldwide release of films due to limited prints would be a thing of the past (the sole reason for the evil DVD region coding). Older films could be re-shown at will, without worrying about coordination. Instead of renting a copy of a film at a set price, theaters could pay based on seats sold/available, eliminating discrimination between large and small venues - indeed, leading to a trend towards theaters with more, but smaller screens for increased flexibility, and greater intimacy when desired - including private, on-demand screenings. Who needs a home theater when you can have the real thing?
In short, going to the movies could be a lot more fun for the fans, and more efficient for the theaters and studios.
Hell yeah, we should go digital. And the studios should be paying for it. They stand to benefit in a big way.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Imagine that digital projection is everywhere, and it is great quality. Movies "zip" across the internet from the distributor to the movie theater near instantly on dedicated high-speed data lines. Here is where the problem lies...
Currently, a film is made, then multiple copies of it are created. There aren't enough copies made for every theater in the world, because the cost of making the copies is pretty large. So, a limited number are made, and the movies are sent out in a "staggered" fashion around the world - first in America (for American films, usually), then to Europe and Japan, etc. What happens is a movie will open in one country, but not in every country - a few months later Europe gets it, then Japan (or however the order is) - until eventually some backwater country may get it, after it has passed through a ton of mailings and numerous playings (pity the small man on the totem pole) - scratchy and ugly - but that is the way it is.
With digital, it doesn't have to be that way - "instant" transport via dedicated lines, no film to copy, etc - there isn't any need now to suspend sending it everywhere - right?
Well, look at DVDs - same thing, nearly - but it has this funky thing called "region coding" - it is an artificial scarcity placed upon the medium, to continue with the staggering of releases, so that the DVD isn't seen in Europe while it is waiting for the actual movie. If movies went digital, wouldn't this DVD region-coding staggering issue be seen as the real scam it is?
Or maybe they (MPAA? SOMEONE!) are making extra money by staggering the movies in some fashion (ie, the staggering has to be done - so let's make money off of the situation!) - but with digital distribution, away goes that revenue stream...?
As always - follow the money, and there will be your answer (it surely can't be the cost of the projectors - I am certain that the money saved by using digital projectors over normal projectors would easily cover any extra infrastructure cost - ie, network, servers, etc - at the theater - those non-digital projectors are EXPENSIVE)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon