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Author
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Topic: Digital Trailers - Pro's/Con's - Anyone Use Them?
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Ray McKnight
Film Handler
Posts: 3
From: Kingston, WA USA
Registered: Jun 2009
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posted 08-04-2009 06:07 PM
Hello all, this is my first post and wanted to take an informal "survey". Who is showing trailers digitally?
My take on digital vs 35mm trailers is this:
1) Digital are never out of frame
2) They are never out of focus (we hope...)
3) They don't get scratched
4) They can "easily" be changed, swap order, updated, skipped
5) Most importantly, you can find digitals of art house or "off broadway" features that otherwise you might not be able to find a 35mm trailer for.
6) If your ad material shows up without the trailer you want, you can fairly quickly work it up digitally on the fly.
7) Digital eliminates a big hassle in building prints.
8) This may open the door for your theater to offer in-house editing for promotional/advertising, why pay someone else $100/hr to do it for you??
CONS:
1) Studios have not yet embraced direct online access/download of trailers, so it's a crap shoot as to what aspect ratio and resolution you find.
2) Some of the best sources of trailers add watermarks, annoying at the least.
3) Other sources may not facilitate direct download, so you may need to be as good as Houdini to grab .FLV and other files thru the back door (think Apple's web site). The technical unsavvy won't be happy in this realm.
4) You absolutely MUST have a decent digital projector. That crappy 1000 lumen junk the ad agency provides will prove an embarasement.
5) Yes, it does take extra training and skill to seamlessly switch between the DLP and the 35mm.
6) Digital content downloaded from various web sites may not be all quite the same, some trailers have varying color saturation, brightness, contrast, and most commonly widely varying audio levels. This *can* be corrected successfully using software (i.e. Adobe Premiere, FinalCut Pro etc) but few theaters have the in house editing ability nor staff trained in using it. And yes, if you are a perfectionist and feel the need to "normalize" all your trailers, it does take time.
7) You may need a bit of skill to seemlessly mix files of varying resolution, aspect ratio and format to produce a good presentation.
Having said all that, with a decent DLP and a bit of training, your digital trailers can actually look BETTER than 35mm! Yes, it's possible, especially if you have a 2K or 4K DLP. If you don't need to edit anything, and manage to get them all in the same aspect ratio, say all of them at 720p HD and in scope, GREAT, you can actually produce a 4-trailer DVD in 5 minutes or less (not including the "burn time"). If you're a bit more sophisticated, you skip the DVD altogether and stream the content from a server directly to your scaler or projector.
So far, I've talked directly with the folks at Paramount that handle the digital prints. These are the folks that send you hard drives for those theaters capable of showing digital prints. They had not heard of anyone converting to all-digital trailers, and were thrilled and supportive. They think it's a great idea and probably the wave of the future. Although so far, have only been providing trailers on DVD. Single trailers on seoarate DVD's doesn't work well in the booth even if you have multiple players to queue up. So that adds a few extra steps, such as "ripping" the DVD to get the trailer on your HDD so you can then burn them all onto a single DVD with some sort of meaningful menu structure.
One of the best features I think is the ability to simply skip trailers on the fly. And for those shows where you don't have anyone in the theater yet, go ahead and play the digital trailers, if after 10 minutes and still no one has shown up, you're not committed to running the entire 35mm print. It gives you a lot more flexability.
But if your theater doesn't already have a decent DLP, I'd say the investment isn't justified. The combination of 5K-lumen or better with a long throw lens is a lot of money. If you have a decent DLP, then MOST of the trailers you show now in 35mm are probably available in at least 720p HD, which rivals 35mm, and in some cases, due to a little manipulation like they do in TV commercials, may actually be far more compelling to the audience with brighter, more vivid colors. This may disturb the purist, but I've actually had people stand up and cheer when they saw a really impressive 1080p HD trailer or promo shown at 8,000 lumens and 2K resolution.
Any thoughts?
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John Hawkinson
Film God
Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 08-05-2009 04:17 AM
We show trailers digitally in the extremely rare case where we can't get a 35mm trailer, typically for a repertory show. We had such case recently for Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948). (*)
We don't like to do it but it's better than nothing.
Generally speaking, availability of digital trailers in high resolution is a problem. I guess you can get 720p and 1080p versions of major new films, but beyond that, not so much.
Ray, if you think 1080P (or 720P) looks as good as 35mm film, then something is wrong with your 35mm equipment. Yes, 1080P won't get scratched and has that category of digital advantages. But film still has higher resolution and better color depth. In the hands of a good operator, film will look better, even over weeks of running.
As for building your own DCI server, I don't think the encryption system used is likely to permit unauthorized players; it would be far too easy for you to pirate the DCP/DCDM.
--jhawk
(*) -- and then ironically the 35mm print of Rope showed up
with a copy of the trailer attached to it!
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