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Topic: I'm curious to know why many on Film-Tech seem to be so negative on digital cinema
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Frank Bruno
Film Handler
Posts: 50
From: houston, tx
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 11-24-2008 08:55 AM
I don't know if anybody's seen this yet, but:
This Benjamin Button screening issue raises one of my digital anxieties; my favorite part: quote:
"Film is not without the possibility of technical failure, but the digital cinema side has more opportunity for absolute failure," added Loren Nielsen, principal at Entertainment Technology Consultants.
Most lowly operators working for major exhibitors (counting myself in this number)are poorly trained for day-to-day booth operations, let alone quickly and properly addressing calamities. I'm not betting on AMC, Regal, or their ilk putting extensive training in place to deal woth the new digital equipment.
I haven't worked with any yet myself, but visited a sister location to check out their Christie digital projector setup. The guy working, who seemed film competent enough, explained that some click & drag was all that was expected of him. The projector actually had a "do not attempt to repair anything yourself" nastygram Scotch-taped to it in a few places.
I don't have a problem with Christie's techs, at least as far as their maintainence and repair of a DTDS advertising setup has gone. But with a full auditorium, there's no time to call a tech; there will need to be some kind of "heat of battle" training to make this work. I'd love it if that happened, I'm jsut skeptical that it does, at least until the wider digital rollout means more digital problems.
I would love it if there was, say exhibitor or manufacturer sponsored seminars anticipating the rollout, but I doubt that will be. Will maintainence contracts be bug enough that say, Christie doesn't want those of us in the trenches to have maintainence or repair training?
Side note: I still haven't seen an entire digital presentation. At the time of my visit, Hannah Montana was playing. I sat in a few mins and thought it looked OK in 2 and 3D, but not life-changingly good; only a little better than the "Spy Kids" type 3D (anaglyph, right? spelling?) I've never seen old 2-print 3D for that comparison.
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Ron Funderburg
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 814
From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA
Registered: Nov 2007
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posted 12-16-2008 10:45 PM
I don't know if I have posted on this topic before or not! I have been thinking on this a lot of late, why are so many in the industry not that crazy about digital. There are a lot of reasons for this I'm sure. I think about me and I have very mixed emotion on the seemingly unstoppable advance of D-Cinema.
I think that my objections are an accumulation of all the different changes I have seen in Cinema over my life time. I have seen film in theaters in the old 1.37:1 screen size then there is 1.66:1, 1.75:1 and lastly 1.85:1 screen dimensions. Then along comes CinemaScope (pre-1957 at 2.55:1, then 2.35:1 now they say 2.40:1), VistaVision, Cinerama, SuperScope, ToddAO (also known as Dimension 150), Cinemiracle, Kinopanorama, UltraPanavision, and SuperPanavision. Not to mention the various 70 by incarnations of which the most used is now IMAX.
We had good ole lousy mono optical sound a basic 2 channel optical stereo sound then there was magnetic sound 4 channel stereo for 35 MM film, 6 channel mag stereo for 70MM and then optical Dolby stereo, Dolby Digital, DTS, and SDDS. The best of the offerings for picture (the various and sundry 70MM film formats) in the end were too expensive for both the exhibition end and the studio end and went bye bye.
Now we have labs that run the film through at twice the speed they should to make the prints and much of the product looks like total dog turds fresh out of the lab. You add in poorly trained projection people and you end up with inferior product.
Having seen all the changes in my 50 plus years of life I worry that either the digital will go south in a fast way or the production values will fall to inferior. It seems if looks good and sounds great we see how much we can screw it up in this industry, at the lab and in the theater. Digital sound is one of the few improvements that have actually hung around and been good for the presentation (now we have the audio cap or crap).
I threaded my first piece of film in November 1972 and have been pretty much in love with film but I have watched as manufactures and exhibitors look for ways to eliminate the projectionist. I know that some see this push to digital as just another push for just that one less pay check. Perhaps it is but it is a very expensive way to get rid of a job.
I think others just think it isn't a movie without film. I don't know if digital will sweep the planet and destroy any and all film presentation ... time will tell. The industry has change a great deal since the old days when men cranked the projector in silent film days. For sure there will be more changes in the future. It will be interesting to watch as for digital I think we are moving there for better or worse and maybe at breakneck speed.
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