The Death Of Film

By Jyoti Thottam

Steven Soderbergh wants you to see movies the way he sees movies. When he and his cinematographer finish a film, they lift it out of its chemical bath and take it to a projection booth for its first and most perfect screening. The color and contrast are true and bright from edge to edge, free of dust and precisely in focus. "Nobody, including us, ever sees it that good again," says Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director of Traffic and Erin Brockovich. "Even after that first screening, it's got dirt on it and scratches." It's one of the sad facts of life for anyone who loves movies: film wears out and runs at the mercy of projectors with weak lamps and worn gears.

It doesn't have to be this way. The latest digital-projection systems, which run from digital-data files rather than reels of film, can deliver images as sharp and rich as the best film print, without ever degrading. After viewing a demonstration of a projector using Texas Instruments' DLP Cinema technology, Soderbergh says, "I thought, 'Why don't we have this everywhere?' It's like seeing a pristine camera negative print every time." The quality of digital projection--which works for movies shot on film and later converted, as well as for digital or computer-generated movies--is no secret. Soderbergh released Ocean's Eleven digitally wherever projectors were available. George Lucas is promoting digital projection as the best way to view his latest Star Wars movie, Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Even the Academy Awards ceremony used digital projectors this year for its film clips.

But today fewer than 30 of the 35,000 movie screens in the U.S.--and 25 of the 75,000 screens abroad--run digital projectors. And so far, all those projectors house TI's DLP chip, which consists of an array of tiny mirrors that flip on and off, refracting light through a prism and onto the screen. Kodak is developing a competing product set to launch next year. Its chip, manufactured by JVC, uses a liquid-crystal display instead of mirrors and, in a recent demonstration, appeared to match DLP's in quality. "The holdup right now is not the technology--it's the economics," says Elizabeth Daley, dean of the film school at the University of Southern California. The major movie studios and theater owners are tangled in a web of competing interests that is delaying adoption of digital technology--and preventing the industry from achieving hundreds of millions of dollars in annual savings.

Installing a new digital-projection system, which includes a server for storing the files and a PC for running the screening software, costs about $120,000 a screen, although the price could fall significantly as volume picks up. Even so, that sort of expense makes little sense to the operator of the local sixplex, which usually owns the projection equipment. Nick Mulone, who owns four theaters in the Pittsburgh, Pa., area, praises digital-picture quality but doesn't expect it to draw crowds or justify higher ticket prices. "The average moviegoer is more interested in the movie than in the technology," he says.

The studios, however, have plenty to gain by going digital. Hollywood spends an estimated $800 million a year domestically (and $800 million more abroad) printing and shipping reels of expensive, perishable film. Digital projection could cut that to, conservatively, $100 million a year in the U.S. Instead of printing film, studios would create a digital master of a movie and send copies to theaters, either on lightweight and inexpensive dvd-rom discs or via broadband connection or satellite link. If studios bore the up-front cost, and if the price of the systems gradually fell 50% to $60,000 a screen, they could make back their investment within three years.

Theater owners fear, though, that if studios pay for the projectors, they will also have more control over what is played on them. That fear, even if it proves unfounded, is delaying the transition. Studios could, for example, dictate how much advertising theaters show before a feature or negotiate favorable terms for popular movies. "It's not just about costs," says John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners in North Hollywood, Calif. "It's about control." As long as movies are shown on film, theater operators are the only ones who know exactly what is played on which screen and how often. But all that information would be recorded by the digital-projection software. Studios could negotiate to get that data--both for market research and to make theaters pay for the extra, unreported screenings of popular films that some theaters now run.

Studios could also use digital projection as a weapon against counterfeiting. Whereas transmitting digital files, even in encrypted form, leaves studios vulnerable to digital piracy, the technology could make it easier for them to prosecute other kinds of theft. Studios could embed a digital "watermark" in their files that is specific to a particular screen. They could then use the watermark to trace bootleg copies (usually made via camcorder) and seek better policing by the theater owners.

There are alternatives to studio-financed conversions to digital. Kodak, Technicolor Digital Cinema and Boeing Digital Cinema offer third-party solutions in which theaters and studios split the cost but neither owns the equipment. Mulone has signed an agreement with Technicolor, which will charge a fee for every digital feature he shows. By leasing or renting the equipment, theaters will also make sure that as the technology improves, they can upgrade to the latest digital systems.

The studios are starting to come together to prepare for the transition. The seven largest jointly announced early this month that they have formed a group to devise a common set of technical standards. While who will pay for the transition may also be discussed, insiders say the focus is engineering. Too much cooperation on pricing schemes could leave them open to antitrust concerns. So far, Disney has emerged as the biggest proponent of digital cinema. With 11 digital releases under its belt, it is also the most ready for the switch.

Removing the burden of creating film prints could also make it easier for small films to find an audience. The cost of just one 35-mm print to show a distributor "can kill your budget," says Brad Anderson, director of Session 9, a psychological thriller set in an abandoned insane asylum and shot on high-definition digital video. Anderson found a distributor to release Session 9 on film, but he would have preferred an all-digital release. To save money, he says, the distributor cut corners on the film stock, and the image quality suffered.

Digital projection has gathered enough support that the industry argues over when, not if, the transition will happen. "When better technology shows up, it doesn't stay secret for long," Soderbergh says. "It makes too much sense"--for both art and commerce.