Your question is whether projection is worth while to an Indie.
Mine is, if an independent film maker chooses to attempt projected distribution, what hurdles will they have to jump through to get their material compliant with whatever systems the major distributors will eventually support in the theaters.(maybe propietary?) -- and 10 yrs down the line, will their media still be projectable?
The sad fact is that any 35mm print will play on any 35mm projector. (In my city you can rent a projection room for under $100/hr) And a print is relatively hardy. (yeah, the down side are the scratches, but what happens when your disk gets scratched?)
Not to mention unfriendly to Murphy's Law & Occam's Razor.
Look, I work in this business (everything from dvcam, High Def, 2k, and 35mm). I love them all (though dvcam is my favorite child), however as film scanning technology improves I am amazed at the information you can pull out of a frame of 35mm.
Which brings me to my point. Technology changes way too rapidly for digital projection to make great economic sense. A mechanical film projector has a working life of decades, (and can be easily serviced)-- does anyone really expect that same kind of longevity of a digital system?
I work in digital post production, and the hardware and software I use changes fast. I can't retrieve elements from some jobs I did 10 years ago without very serious help. And let's not talk about standards -- (how many HD & DV standards??)
After finnishing digitally, rather than archive a film to magnetic or glass media I recomend 35mm. (the progressive digital formats make this very easy)
Film is emulsion on a hardy base that only requires light to decode it. This is why we can still enjoy Harold Lloyd, Carole Lombard and Boris Karlov.
As an independent filmaker, with 35mm you absorb the cost of your prints and you can walk your work to any venue. In a digital world, an indy will always be in a possition of having to match his or her media to the playback system... and as time goes by I'm sure there'll be plenty of em.
And after 20 years, how can an indy do a retrospective?
i think we may expect our school systems to be sensitive to the inner demons of thousands of individuals, while we're inclined to cut families a lot of slack when they are suprised by a child's behavior.
i think this desire to place blame and produce "policy" is a crock and denies that each child--no matter how bright or where their gifts lie-- is an individual package.
i think i qualify as a person that "the public school system failed". i was considered quite bright, but when i stopped attending, or my grades fell off, i was cut tremdendous slack. (i remember trying to turn myself in for truancey and having the attendance office staff stare at me in dis-belief.) at the same time i recall living in fear about the possible consequences of my actions. i eventually dropped out. i survived.
in retrospect, i'd be inclined to say i was over-indulged by a school system that didn't want to hurt a bright white student, and neglected by a parent who had too much on her plate. but i survived.
school systems,(esp. post columbine) are increasingly being pushed to see "other people's kids" as dangerous threats to "our kids". concurrently they are being bashed for not providing a nurturing enough environiment.
if you were under this kind of bombardment at work, you'd probably scream about the death of common sense and eventually give notice.
after reading all the threads about whether the punishment fit the crime -- should the parents be blamed, should the school be blamed -- *common sense* tells me that the school admin. *and* the parents thought they were dealing with a balanced, bright, high acheiver that just needed his cage rattled a little to get him back on track.
they were wrong. but why do we think we're entitled to easy answers?
the questions regarding the ease of use of the palm beach ballot, its approval by a county official who is a member of the democratic party, and the unusually large number of buchanan votes (and unqualified spoiled ballots), are interesting, but at most they are secondary to the main problem that individual voters in Palm Beach asked for fresh ballots after making mistakes - before their ballots were cast. unfortunately these people are claiming that these requests were denied, (in contradiction to the instructions on the sample ballot), and their spoiled ballots were placed in the ballot box by the officials in the polling place.
these individuals who requested new ballots, and were denied, -not the democratic party or the naacp - may have one hell of a demonstratable case to press a suit of denial of the right to exercise the franchise.....and if there are enough of them, it could get very very ugly.
whether you or i agree that the butterfly ballot is confusing or not, isn't all that important -- neither is the fact that the ballots were approved by a county offical who happened to belong to the democratic party.
the important challenge to the palm beach ballots will be from enough individual voters, (not the democratic party), who can claim that, having told polling officials that they'd spoiled their ballots, they were denied a fresh ballot.... and had those ballots taken from them and placed in the ballot box, (arguably against their will).
denial of the opportunity to excerise the franchise is a very serious thing, and if a large enough group of people can make that claim, the election results could be in the courts for quite some time.
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Your question is whether projection is worth while to an Indie.
Mine is, if an independent film maker chooses to attempt projected distribution, what hurdles will they have to jump through to get their material compliant with whatever systems the major distributors will eventually support in the theaters.(maybe propietary?) -- and 10 yrs down the line, will their media still be projectable?
The sad fact is that any 35mm print will play on any 35mm projector. (In my city you can rent a projection room for under $100/hr) And a print is relatively hardy. (yeah, the down side are the scratches, but what happens when your disk gets scratched?)
Not to mention unfriendly to Murphy's Law & Occam's Razor.
Look, I work in this business (everything from dvcam, High Def, 2k, and 35mm). I love them all (though dvcam is my favorite child), however as film scanning technology improves I am amazed at the information you can pull out of a frame of 35mm.
Which brings me to my point. Technology changes way too rapidly for digital projection to make great economic sense. A mechanical film projector has a working life of decades, (and can be easily serviced)-- does anyone really expect that same kind of longevity of a digital system?
I work in digital post production, and the hardware and software I use changes fast. I can't retrieve elements from some jobs I did 10 years ago without very serious help. And let's not talk about standards -- (how many HD & DV standards??)
After finnishing digitally, rather than archive a film to magnetic or glass media I recomend 35mm. (the progressive digital formats make this very easy)
Film is emulsion on a hardy base that only requires light to decode it. This is why we can still enjoy Harold Lloyd, Carole Lombard and Boris Karlov.
As an independent filmaker, with 35mm you absorb the cost of your prints and you can walk your work to any venue. In a digital world, an indy will always be in a possition of having to match his or her media to the playback system... and as time goes by I'm sure there'll be plenty of em.
And after 20 years, how can an indy do a retrospective?
i think we may expect our school systems to be sensitive to the inner demons of thousands of individuals, while we're inclined to cut families a lot of slack when they are suprised by a child's behavior. i think this desire to place blame and produce "policy" is a crock and denies that each child--no matter how bright or where their gifts lie-- is an individual package. i think i qualify as a person that "the public school system failed". i was considered quite bright, but when i stopped attending, or my grades fell off, i was cut tremdendous slack. (i remember trying to turn myself in for truancey and having the attendance office staff stare at me in dis-belief.) at the same time i recall living in fear about the possible consequences of my actions. i eventually dropped out. i survived. in retrospect, i'd be inclined to say i was over-indulged by a school system that didn't want to hurt a bright white student, and neglected by a parent who had too much on her plate. but i survived. school systems,(esp. post columbine) are increasingly being pushed to see "other people's kids" as dangerous threats to "our kids". concurrently they are being bashed for not providing a nurturing enough environiment. if you were under this kind of bombardment at work, you'd probably scream about the death of common sense and eventually give notice. after reading all the threads about whether the punishment fit the crime -- should the parents be blamed, should the school be blamed -- *common sense* tells me that the school admin. *and* the parents thought they were dealing with a balanced, bright, high acheiver that just needed his cage rattled a little to get him back on track. they were wrong. but why do we think we're entitled to easy answers?
these individuals who requested new ballots, and were denied, -not the democratic party or the naacp - may have one hell of a demonstratable case to press a suit of denial of the right to exercise the franchise.....and if there are enough of them, it could get very very ugly.
whether you or i agree that the butterfly ballot is confusing or not, isn't all that important -- neither is the fact that the ballots were approved by a county offical who happened to belong to the democratic party. the important challenge to the palm beach ballots will be from enough individual voters, (not the democratic party), who can claim that, having told polling officials that they'd spoiled their ballots, they were denied a fresh ballot.... and had those ballots taken from them and placed in the ballot box, (arguably against their will). denial of the opportunity to excerise the franchise is a very serious thing, and if a large enough group of people can make that claim, the election results could be in the courts for quite some time.