Showing documentary in cinema
 

Hi,

I'm organising a doco that will be filmed middle of this year in Africa. I'm hoping to show it in a couple of independent cinemas in Australia once it is all completed. As far as planning goes etc, I'm new to this type of film as I have only dealt with event videography before. I was planning on shooting on the Sony EX1.

Will this allow for the necessary quality that would be needed to be shown in a cinema? Besides the topic of content as I realise that is the most important, Im just interested in settings/quality/formats at the moment.

Thanks.

Ok, so after a bit more research on the forums and following some links members have posted, I think filming in HD 24p would be the best bet to allow the documentary to be shown in cinemas, which will mean it needs to be converted to film.

I imagine this could be an expensive procedure? Would it be best to show the doco on a HD digital projector?

Matt

Converting video to film is an expensive process, hundreds of dollars a minute. DVfilm has a good reputation for a low budget operation, they charge $450 a minute for HD to film transfers, so a 90 feature would cost you about $40,000, a ten minute short $4,000.

It depends, your best bet might be to send the film to festivals, which usually these days can handle digital formats. HDCAM is usually.

If you have some cinemas in mond check out if they have digital projection and what formats they can handle (many might be able to deal with DVD or DVCAM) in whch case 25p might be a better bet.

Tl be honest Matt, since you're kinda new to this, I would recommend you think about hiring a post production consultant (like Mike Curtis of HDforindies fame) or at least talking to a post production house who could (probably for a fee) plan out and budget the whole process for you.

It would be cheaper to buy a digital projector and hand it to the theater than to pay for transferring to film. If you are going to finance this yourself I would simply avoid film-only theaters.