posted 12-05-2003 02:01 AM                       

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Its main function is supposed to be promoting the economic growth of the British film and television production industries, but its remit also extends into distribution and exhibition, education and other cultural activity, hence its role as the funding body for the BFI. According to one of FCUK's recent reports, it gives £16 million to the BFI overall per annum ('Three Years On: A Consultation on our Funding and Policy Priorities', October 2003, p. 6).

What scares me about the FCUK is how little they understand the non-commercial issues. A frightening example is their 'Digital Screen Network' initiative, and I give this example because I think it typifies how they approach archiving, too. This is their grand plan to reinvigorate the arthouse/specialised exhibition market by spending several million (the report doesn't give the exact figure, but their total for distribution and exhibition is £6.75 million) equipping 250 screens with DLP projectors. The rationale behind this is to 'break the binds that 35mm has caught specialised film in' (p. 26) by offering a 'true, film-like experience' using these projectors to circumvent the cost of striking and transporting film prints. But they just don't seem to realise that you can't compare the economics of 35mm vs. digital by taking the cost of prints in isolation, or that the film industry has done these sums and is emphatically rejecting digital. Only yesterday I was chatting to a friend who runs one of this country's leading projection installation and maintenance companies, working with both mainstream and arthouse clients (including some screening facilities for major archives). 'Exhibitors don't want it and the studios won't support it,' was his verdict, pointing out that Boeing have recently cut their losses and pulled out of the d-cinema market (this person makes his living out of cinema exhibition technology, so he should know the score). The economics simply don't make sense - DLP cinema projectors cost six figures and will be obsolete in a couple of years, while a 35mm projector costs £20k and will last for decades.

Yes, the prints are expensive, but print emulsions are improving all the time (something which the d-cinema brigade like to forget when characterising film as a Victorian technology) and the overall cost of delivering the picture to the screen, taking everything into account, is far lower with film than DLP. The big multiplex chains realise this and are therefore refusing to install d-projectors unless someone else pays for them, and the studios are not interested in releasing their product in digital formats. This is best illustrated by the fact that my local arthouse cinema has one of these £160k Christie DLP machines - paid for by our taxes - and so far, the only thing it has been used to project are the adverts at the start of each show! How's that for reinvigorating British film culture?! If FCUK persist with this the result will either be obsolete and useless hardware gathering dust in cinemas up and down the land, or a process of ghettoisation in which arthouse film makers are forced to use second rate technology to produce their product, which is then shown on a network of second-rate screens, while the commercial film industry sticks with the gold standard of 35mm.

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The rationale behind this is to 'break the binds that 35mm has caught specialised film in' (p. 26) by offering a 'true, film-like experience'

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posted 12-10-2003 01:47 AM                       

Actually, I was more curious about the massive resentment expressed towards film by people with no technical knowledge, as opposed to looking again at theatrical video inroads.

But as long as it's veering, I'll point out again that it's not being driven by image quality. Regal's going to be the winner in the US here, because they're aware that installing their video projectors for ads is in fact installation of a network. They'll now be in a position to negotiate non-print distribution deals with the studios.

Steve is close to being right, the fact is that 35mm has in fact dictated *some* baselines for theatrical projection. It's not just *possible* that there'll be reductions in resolution: there are already features shot in low-quality digital formats which were printed to film that should *never* have hit a theatrical screen; they'll be easier & faster to put up. Also, as the theatrical model simply moves to automated closed-circuit broadcast, the "stations" & chains will take advantage of the technology's features for maximizing additional ad revenue, branding, & minimizing cost. Just like broadcast now, we can expect the programming quality to quickly move to the minimum (like local TV & cable) using more consumer gear, disregard for signal degredation if componentry can be cheaper & additional features implemented, & negotiated adaptation of the programming itself to suit the "station". We'll see Regal bugs, compression not only of signal data, but of images as the technology's abilities to modify the output for crawls, etc. is used.

It's interesting that earlier reference for video/digital theatrical projection was sort of mockingly referred to as , but in fact that's plainly what its business/technical model is reorganizing itself into.

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This does give DLP an opening in that right now we are at least looking at equivalent presentation quality for the masses as it now stands.

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