Movie theatres and digital: FINALLY?
 

http://news.com.com/Top+theaters+on+...l?tag=fd_carsl

heath

I'm all for it. Celluloid prints acquire more dirt and scratches each time they are played. With an all-digital system, the picture and sound will be just as pristine on the last day the film is played as it was the first day.

If I watched KONG right now, it wouldn't be as pristine. I'm an old projectionist from my film school days over a decade ago, and I know that a $6-an-hour kid won't be cleaning everything on the projector regularly, so scratches, etc., are quickly inevitible.

heath

Imagine that, the studio will be able to eliminate almost all of it's P & A costs with a direct delivery system. Of course there's advertising still but the costs of a master and thousands of prints will be eliminated. If I remember correctly, the final Star Wars movie was released in China with this exact method. They essentially "beamed" onto 2,000 screens with nary a problem with the flick of a switch. Another announcement was made today that the 3rd largest chain in the States will be fully digital by 2007 with the Christie Digital projectors. Not only is this great news for Hollywood but in my mind it's even better news for independent producers such as myself. In a perfect world "indie's" would be able to approach the theatre chains directly, bypassing the middle men and thus saving a 2nd distibution fee.

I wonder if there will be a savings to the consumer???

(Just joking, of course not. Was there a drop in the price of albums when they went to digital cds and the cost of producing them dropped???)

Of course not on all counts, though I hear a major theatre near me dropped prices because an independent theatre about 6 miles away can afford to have low ticket costs. Night tix dropped from $8.50 to $6.00. Too bad "near me" is more like 25-30 miles north of me! Here's to hoping other major and indie theatres do the same.

heath

Actually what I think that's driving up the costs to the consumer is Hollywoods reluctance to give up a bigger slice of the pie even though they're making more money on every dollar they spend now. Five years ago the networks were striving for that "magical" number of episodes so that they could make it into syndication, essentially what they saw as the last line of serious revenue. Today that's all bunk, now after one season the shows are put out on DVD within months even weeks after the season's final episode is aired. Use "LOST" as an example, on for only one season yet today it was announced that their season one DVD became the 2nd best selling Tv show on DVD for 2005. All that from 24 episodes, an extra $80,000,000 in revenue in it's first season without syndication rights sold as of yet. With movies and music it's the "back-end" deals that are sending costs sky high. An established musician/band will earn approximately $3 per disc sold, an actor such as a Tom Cruise will earn at the very least $20,000,000 up front in a pay or play deal against say 25% of first dollar gross. Once these type of deals are a thing of the past, than and only than will we the consumer see ticket prices/dvd/cd's drop. Which of course in a capitalistic world won't happen any time soon.

Slightly OT, but do you think the fact that the networks don't have to worry about getting syndication we're seeing a lot more "good" shows on the air breifly and then canceled? Like "Arrested Development" or "Wonderfalls" They just have to play enough episodes to get the core audience hooked then they can make back the cost of purchasing the show by selling the rest of the season on DVD (or perhaps iTunes).

That being said I used to have a lot of reasons I thought the digital switch was bad but maybe this will be better for everyone. I mean in theory you could go to an indie theater, run a print of something you shot on your HDV cam and sell tickets then split the profits with theater. Suddenly more and more people could be able to get their stuff out there, now if we could just guarantee it was going to be good...

I know I went a little off topic with my posts but I would love to debate the "new" and percieved independent distribution network that's arising because of the digital workflow. I'm just not sure this is the thread to do it.

Try doing it in this forum, but start a new thread. Indie distribution is interesting.

heath

Nick:

I believe you are correct about the DVD sales affecting series production--Arrested Development made it to a (partial) 3rd season based on the decent DVD sales the show had generated, against ever-dropping ratings. Unfortunately it was such a top-heavy (i.e. expensive) show to produce that at a certain point the inevitable occurred. Such a shame--I love that show!

The next big thing for theatrical presentation would be UHDV, but there will be a sacrifice, IMAX sales will go down after UHDV releases. Can you imagine The Polar Express 3-D in UHDV?!? You will get motionsickness for sure!

The studios stand to save a fortune. One $1,500 print for each of the 37,000 cinems in the US is $55,500,000 that's just one print per cinema. The ROI is probably less than 12 months. The more goes digital the more expensive any real film will cost. Less demand for stock, less demand for processing, less demand for cameras. Shooting Film is going to get even more expensive and fast IMNHO.

There is a Galaxy Theatre in the next town over from me that has 1 theatre room equipped with digital projection already. The way it's described, they use a fiber optic system to acquire the picture from the studio. So there is no transfer of prints or anything of that sort as described in earlier posts. It's just a file transfer, with digital picture, and audio. I believe it's been installed in the theatre for a year or so now. Just thought I'd share.

Cool. There are some theatres in Orlando (200 miles north of me) that have DLP systems. No idea if it's satellite (some use that) or fiber optic.

heath