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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Another attempt at a news article from Fox News
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 01-08-2012 11:55 AM
R.I.P. Film Projectors
My comments below...
quote:
By Michelle "Durp" Macaluso
Published January 07, 2012
The odds are good that the next movie you watch will be displayed by a digital projector. After a reign of more than 100 years, 35mm film projectors are quickly becoming a thing of the past.
More than half of projectors in use today are digital. And the world's theater industry will be completely digital in the next four years, according to Texas Instruments, which makes the chips that power many all-digital projectors.
Digital projectors make crisper pictures and enable 3D films. But will skipping the celluloid change your experience of watching the new Mission: Impossible or Sherlock Holmes flick? Absolutely, says Michael Harrison, a projectionist at the Tower Theatre in Fresno, Calif.
"The feeling [from a digital projector] is very plain and sort of programmed to me," Harrison told FoxNews.com. "Film itself has an aesthetic and an appeal and vibrancy of color, with some sort of life that's not in digital."
John Moses, an instructor in Film Studies at Fresno City College, agreed that digital projection tech might take the magic out of the movies.
"There's something maybe magical about the little scratches that cross the celluloid," he told FoxNews.com. "And the colors are going to be a little less vibrant."
Many Hollywood directors still prefer to shoot with film cameras as industry bible Variety recently noted: Among other things, they value the discipline of knowing they must wrap -- the end of the reel is near.
How a film is shot is different from how it's projected, of course -- but both affect the quality to your eyes.
Texas Instruments points out that a digital presentation will be cleaner -- there's no dust, jitters or splices, after all. And you'll no longer see the changeover cues, those black dots that appear in the corner of a film to let a projectionist know when the reels needs to be switched.
Digital cuts costs for studios too, since distributors no longer need to ship huge reels of film to theaters around the country. And films arrive at the local megaplex much faster via the matrix than via planes, trains and automobiles.
In the digital system, studios supply theaters with a downlink from their network that can be captured on the theater's management system. The theater operator then sets up playlists with the day's program, the movies and trailers that entertain theatergoers.
Yet smaller theaters may find it difficult to survive if they don't make the switch -- and the very high cost of installing digital projection systems may be more than they can afford.
"Studios and other companies are helping commercial theaters help the big chains make that conversion," Moses told FoxNews.com. "They're going to be less concerned with a small independent theater."
Christie makes projectors for sale to movie theaters around the world. Almost two years ago, the company went digital -- after making film projectors for over 80 years.
"Because of the economic advantages of distribution via digital content, I became quite concerned about the future of Christie," Jack Kline, president and COO of Christie Digital Systems, told FoxNews.com. "If we didn't have a solution we could actually become extinct."
The company Kinoton, which calls itself "one of the biggest manufacturers of professional film projection technology," declined FoxNews.com requests for an interview. But experts say most film projector makers are racing to build and sell new digital models.
Is Kodak, the company that single-handedly pioneered much of the film industry getting involved in the rush? Not so much, the company said.
Kodak recently told Variety that its film business was still profitable and quite viable.
"We're still making billions of feet of film and will continue to do so," Ingrid Goodyear, vice president of marketing said. "For the foreseeable future we still see film to be an important part of Kodak's business."
America's cinema industry is big business; it's the largest film industry in the world. Last year, box office numbers reached an all time high at $31.8 billion, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Yet despite the big bucks, attendance is steadily falling, and expected to hit a 16-year low in 2011 -- something expensive 3D moves can only do so much to offset.
Digital projectors have helped those 3D movies take form and improve quality for the audience. For example the box office hit Avatar would have been impossible to achieve with film.
"It's given us better animation and dynamics not as practical on 35mm film -- and a clearer and more steady picture," Kline said.
Most of us aren't cinephiles -- we're not rushing to see the latest foreign film and are more concerned with comfortable, stadium seating than how the images hits the screen. But no one wants to lose the classics; Raging Bull, or Citizen Kane or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Many small theaters are concerned that the transition might make movies that were printed on film obsolete.
"We need to make the best of the transition so that [film] won't disappear entirely and people can go to museums and see movies projected on 35mm," Moses said.
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Fox News isn't exactly known for their accuracy.
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Digital projectors make crisper pictures and enable 3D films.
3D has been presented on actual film for over half a century.
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"There's something maybe magical about the little scratches that cross the celluloid," he told FoxNews.com.
Scratches? That's film done wrong! Michael Harrison you suck.
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"And the colors are going to be a little less vibrant."
Not true if the digital projector was setup properly.
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Texas Instruments points out that a digital presentation will be cleaner -- there's no dust, jitters or splices, after all.
Again, film done wrong. I have ran prints over 1500 passes without the slightest hint of dust. Sure that was with FilmGuard, but the medium of film isn't the problem here. With prints made at a Technicolor lab and on a quality projector that has been well maintained, jitter is not an issue it is so slight.
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And films arrive at the local megaplex much faster via the matrix than via planes, trains and automobiles.
Hey idiot, the sentence is: And movies arrive at the local megaplex much faster via the matrix than via planes, trains and automobiles.
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Christie makes projectors for sale to movie theaters around the world. Almost two years ago, the company went digital -- after making film projectors for over 80 years.
Prove it. SHOW ME a Christie film projector from 80 years ago!
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The company Kinoton, which calls itself "one of the biggest manufacturers of professional film projection technology," declined FoxNews.com requests for an interview.
Misleading statement. NOW they are "one of the biggest" since essentially every other film projection manufacturer has shut down! ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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For example the box office hit Avatar would have been impossible to achieve with film.
A blatant lie.
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Most of us aren't cinephiles -- we're not rushing to see the latest foreign film and are more concerned with comfortable, stadium seating than how the images hits the screen. But no one wants to lose the classics; Raging Bull, or Citizen Kane or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Mr. Writer, are you really that stupid? Digital projection has nothing to do with "losing the classics".
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Bruce Hansen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 847
From: Stone Mountain, GA, USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-08-2012 06:39 PM
Even though I think Fox News = Fox communist propganda, I will agree with one thing, digital projection looks cheep to me. Digital projection does not have the same "feel" as 35MM film. I do think that theaters have cheepened their product by using digital, and will need to lower their ticket prices. If I wait a few months, I can rent the same thing for $1, and watch it at home ON TV (just like at the theater), but I don't have the distractions like some idiot on their cell phone, or over priced popcorn; and if I need to use the rest room, I can just hit pause, and I don't miss anything. Therefore, going to the theater to watch TV is worth $1 to me. There is no way that I will pay $10 to watch TV for 2 hours.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-08-2012 08:50 PM
Unless people are given a DOUBLE BLIND test, all the anecdotal "evidence" like this is of no significant value other than for the marketing departments -- if you can convince the populous to buy your product because you've created the PERCEPTION that it is better, it doen't really matter if it is or not -- you are going to sell more product.
All those raves about digital can simple mean 1) an exhibitor's film presentation was so suck-ass awful that now that he has a new, out-of-the-box and well-aligned system, yes it looks better, and/or 2) people are TOLD they are watching a digital picture and, well, digital HAS to be better -- it's the latest marketing buzz-word. You have test subjects that are predisposed to preceive whatever they are watching as better. If you didn't TELL them what format they were seeing...if you didn't TELL them it was a digital presentation, would they still come up with positive assessments?
And let's face it, if most exhibitors ripped out whatever 20 year old film projector that was being using and put in a spanking new, out-of-the-box Kinoton that had been as meticulously installed, aligned and tweeked as is done with a spanking new out-of-the-box digital projector, they would see an improvement as well (assuming whoever was making his film presentation look like crap before, isn't allowed to TOUCH the print)? Of COURSE newly installed equipment will look better than decades old stuff that's been neglected and of COURSE a technolgy that eliminates dirt and scratches by eliminating humans who create them is going to have an advantage, but this is an inherantly unfair playing field. DOUBLE BLIND and THEN see what they say; in fact, do what they do in some double blind tests is to actually give the opposite information and see how that affects perception.
Furether, unless something is happened drastically differently in other parts of the country, at least here in NYC, I see film about as often as I see digital, and in the last two years I have see equal problems that've made me go and complain to the manager -- once was a film problem (incorrectly framed) and the other was a digital problem (dramatically underlet AND with a glarring hot spot). Film and digital presentation are running about neck and neck, at least here.
And lastly, there is that other unspoken elephant sitting in front of the screen. Unless you are talking about Dolby or Panvision (which I have never seen) which are a minority of systems, get used to those big, ugly, hot spots with digital because the primary reason many exhibitors went digital was because they thought they just had to have 3D, and as we all know, the majority of the 3D installs are of the polarizing sysemts and they come with a big, ugly PERMANANT hot spot on ALL digital projection in those theatres, be they 3D OR 2D. All digital in those theatres will be marred. And unlike film, which can be kept clean and free from scratches by insisting on good standard practices, silver screen hotspots CAN'T be eliminated by good standard practices -- they will be there every time that regular Joe Movie Goer --you know, the one you think actually knows what is digital and what is film, and that digital is better -- he will see a hot spot every time he sits down to watch a digital presentation. Or do you think he is so critically astute that he can't abide the occasional scratch or fleck of dirt but is so obtuse that he won't notice an unevenly lit screen with a humungous hot spot sitting in the middle of it? Film scratches can be eliminated. Silver screens will never be as long as there is 3D.
Out-of-frame racking can be fixed (it was within a few minutes at my show); on the other hand, that dark underlit, hotspotting digital presentation couldn't be fixed at all (a free pass -- presumably to another dim, hotspotting presentation -- was the only fix I got).
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-08-2012 10:00 PM
I think it's pretty hilarious that this site, Film-Tech, has been dedicated for over 10 years to eradicating jump, weave, scratches, dirt, damaged film and visible splices. And now we find out that people actually miss all those things. "There's something magical about the little scratches??" Give me a freaking break.
I suppose it's only a matter of time before somebody uses some software to add "film"-like things (scratches, dirt, splices) to a digital print from beginning to end, in order to make it seem more film-like. Many of the film people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
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