This is topic Digital Theatre - She's coming... (long) in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 08-13-2004, 06:10 AM:
 
I'm not a professional projectionist, hell, I'm barely an amateur projectionist, but I do have a lot of background in IT, and in making businesses work better through the use of IT. I've been following the digital theatre thing a bit, and haven't seen any comment on the issues that I believe will force Digital Theatre down peoples necks.

I offer the following thoughts... If all this is old news then apologies up front, I've just not found it yet And I may have misunderstood and/or misinterpreted things I've read about on here, and if so I apologise for that too. And I'm sorry its a bit long.

Meanwhile, on with the show.

The Coming of Digital Theatre

This is a crystal ball attempt at how movies will be shown in chain multiplexes within ten years. I’m talking here about large national chains in the USA that have many hundreds or thousands of multiplex theatres. Smaller chains and independents won’t be able to leverage the commercial advantages outlined here, so what will happen to the huge numbers of these theatres is a bit of a mystery. The public will determine their fate. As to other countries – they also generally don’t have all the pieces to achieve the economies that USA theatres will, but something similar will arrive in most advanced countries in the world, though maybe over a long timespan.

In the Drive-in Workshop web site, it states “Consider the operation of a drive-in theatre as a restaurant. Contrary to popular belief, theatres see little of the money that is taken in at the boxoffice; film companies get the lion's share. Concession sales are literally the theatre's bread and butter. If the entire theatre operation is kept foremost in mind as primarily a restaurant business, for which movies are shown as added entertainment, then the financial success of the operation as a whole can better be served.”

The chain owned multiplex theatre of the future will be more a restaurant than ever before, or possibly less of a movie theatre – the manager won’t even have the keys to the projection booth. The manager and the staff will be free to concentrate on the profitable front-of-house activities, leaving the actual business of screening the movies to head office and their computers.

Most discussions concerning digital cinema have focussed (sorry – poor pun) on the actual affair of projection, and the advantages and (more usually) the disadvantages that digital projection has compared to the traditional 35mm presentation. This, however, isn’t a good point to start from when looking at the future of a multiplex chain. Indeed, it seems almost the least important element. The entire value chain needs to be examined, as much of the benefit of digital cinema (as seen to the commercial arm of the multiplex chain) is outside the booth.

Before detailing how this will all work, we should consider the most important person in the whole process – the audience member.

It is very sad, though maybe not so surprising, that many folks who visit the movies either don’t care the presentation is naff, or don’t even realise they are seeing a naff presentation. A small percentage of the worlds projectionists are represented on film-tech, and it is assumed most of these projectionists either don’t suck at all, or suck less than the typical projectionist. Whatever is the case, every day lots of people are going down their local multiplex and seeing a mediocre presentation, and walking away blissfully happy.

This typical bunch of people who are blissfully happy with their mediocre multiplex presentation are going to be really happy getting digital cinema, as they don’t know or care enough to know if its better or worse, and as long as whatever technology is rolled out doesn’t truly blow goats, its likely to be at the least more consistent than they are used to, and in all likelihood probably a slicker “better” presentation. And its digital, it must be better – right?

There are endless debates about how good (or otherwise) digital projectors are, and indeed how good they need to be, and what they will require to do to compete with 35mm on a level playing field. But I worry this may all be a bit academic. In the sadly now defunct Electronics Australia magazine, November 1966, The Serviceman (who we never found out who he was) reporting on a TV set in need of repair mused “I will never cease to wonder at what people will listen to in terms of distortion while ever there is a picture on the screen.” I wonder if the converse is true: as long as the Dolby Stereo is pumping, how much does Average Joe agonize over picture quality?

There are two (other?) groups of losers in this incessant march of technology.

The first is the person who can appreciate “film done right”. There will be many less venues capable of showing 35mm at all. As stated above, those few independent non-monolithic chain establishments will be fighting for their existence.

The second group of losers will be the projectionists. This is a job title that will be almost non-existent after the digital revolution. Today, many people “operating” projection equipment are “sort of” projectionists, often with job titles including the word “usher”. This is already degrading to “proper” projectionists, but all are a species under threat.

On then to how this all will work.

Let’s start with Printing and Distribution

Today there is a massive industry built around the making of prints. A movie heading for a big first run requires thousands of prints. It’s not much easier to make a thousand prints than ten prints; each print requires a copying process, and a development process. There are few economies of scale.

Then when you’ve got this mountain of prints, you need to get them distributed.

You need to get the right print to the right theatre at the right time, and these days that includes trying to stop prints from being “borrowed” en route, and thus copied. This is a large logistical nightmare.

Just when you think you’ve got it cracked, you’ve got lost prints and damaged prints which need replacing quickly, in time for the scheduled screenings. So you had to make spare prints, and you hope you have enough.

And then a couple of weeks later you need to move them all around to different theatres, and then finally you need to dispose of the print mountain, because the next big movie has arrived.

This entire operation will be replaced with digital distribution.

Given the number of target theatres, the obvious digital distribution mechanism is via satellite. Satellite is a very expensive method of distributing data, but it is very cost effective when you have to distribute identical data to many places. So every theatre will be equipped with a dish to receive the (dual) encrypted movie. The data will be transmitted using techniques like Forward Error Correction (FEC) so that noise bursts or rains pots will not cause data integrity failure.

Inside the (locked, remember) booth will be a receiver and a disk storage system. This will store the encrypted data stream. There will also be a decryption mechanism that will take off the outer wrapper of encryption. This decryptor will operate very like the decryptors used to ensure the integrity and privacy of money transactions. These devices are highly tamper resistant, and will self destruct if they think they are being interfered with. Bring on Mission Impossible.

The outer encryption will offer powerful over-the-air security, far in advance of what is used in most of today’s satellite broadcasting. It also will allow control of when the movie can be decrypted. Only first-run theatres can extract the movie stream for the first period of time, and then second run etc. It is conceivable that home users could also retrieve the data from satellite, but not extract it until the DVD release date.

This all sounds expensive, but it is all available today, and the costs can easily be amortized over a long period. And it will cost a fraction of what all those prints cost, over the long term.

Many people who work in the print production and distribution industry thus have an uncertain future.

So the studios can deliver a movie securely to a theatre. What next.

Digital Projection.

Its coming, and its getting better and cheaper by the year, and it will be more reliable, and with remote management. The least reliable element of the projection system (or put it another way, the element that is likely to interrupt a presentation) is the light source, the xenon arc. Digital projectors will adopt the same approach that lighthouses have used for years, namely a standby light source. If the prime source fails, the standby source will take over. This is likely to happen automatically, so an exploding xenon lamp is not the end of the show.

Given that the local staff doesn’t have access to the booth, the ability of the system to self-heal and for the “vital statistics” of the projection system to be stored, analysed and reported on, all at the head office, will be important innovations. The same techniques and tools used today to manage computer networks and computers thereon will manage the theatres of tomorrow.

As an example, when that light failed, the projectors own intelligence allowed it to carry on operating with the spare. The projector raised an (SNMP) “alert” which was recorded on the alert management systems at head office, which automatically raised a “trouble ticket”. Tomorrow, an engineer will be around to replace the failed bulb.

What happened to The Manager

The other thing that will change dramatically is the manager’s role; particularly in relation to how little control he will have over his/her facility. This is because it won’t actually be the manager’s facility any more, the key decisions a manager makes today will be taken at head office, and in many cases by computer. The manager’s role will be to keep the concessions selling, and to keep the concession sellers in order.

The key to this entire approach will be centrally driven automation of the entire multiplex operation.

Today many theatres have automation to do the mundane things on a per presentation level, like dimming the house lights, and the clever things, like changing from flat to Scope. Tomorrow’s automation will run the entire show. But it won’t be programmed by the projectionist, not that there is a projectionist there any more. Head office will build the program for the features presentation, and this will be downloaded to each theatre. Presentation consistency across a chain of multiplexes will be the name of the game.

In the book “McDonalds, Behind the Arches”, Richard Kearns who built the (now well gone) Red Barn hamburger chain stated “We all had star stores that could keep up with the best of McDonalds, but on a companywide basis, nobody compared”. McDonalds (love ‘em or hate ‘em) have a consistent product identically delivered at all outlets. That is the multiplex of tomorrow. And centrally programmed automation is the key to that consistent experience.

But that’s only scratching the surface.

The same central, head office computer system that delivers the show to the theatre will also book the advertising in the local papers, provide the recorded announcements of what is on where, and allow you to book your ticket over the phone or the web. It will also instruct the computer systems in every multiplex as to what is on when.

The multiplex’s slave computer will then make sure the LED signs (or video walls) outside the theatre have the right shows and showtimes on them. And that little LED sign behind the ticket seller, and the ticket sellers computer will all have the right things on them too. And the ticket selling machines in the foyer, just swipe your card, madam, no need to wait in a queue.

But here’s the really cool bit. A screen won’t be allocated to a movie until the computer is ready to instruct the staff to let the audience in. So the computers can “oversell” movies, as if a particular screen fills, it can “swap” the movie to a different screen. Any screen can show any movie. There is a branch of computer science entitled “constraint programming”, often used to generate school timetables or nursing rosters, which would be ideal to solve the “how best can I fill this theatre overall and make most money” type problems.

And of course, all this attendance data is summarized, analysed, localised, regionalised, drilled down and a million other things that data warehousing techniques offer head office, so they can “better know their customer”. And decide just when to change the schedules in the hope of attracting a bigger audience. Or, to be really honest, the audience that does best at the concessions.

That means that if a movie sucks, or some B feature becomes popular, the theatre can instantly adapt. Some turkeys are going to find themselves dumped off an entire chain within hours of opening.

So just to wrap up - the staff’s job is to get the people to the screen when the computer says so, and to press the green button when most folks are in. That’s it. Oh yes, and sell food.

Endspiece

That then is the future of the large chain multiplex. As individualised as McDonalds, slick mechanical presentations. No projectionists, no managers to speak of, just a money generating machine that cranks the handle on a daily basis. Movies untouched by human hand.

The only people who will decide if this is what happens, or it doesn’t, are the paying public. Projectionists, managers, industry figures, media will all be ignored and frankly trampled under foot as the boards of directors of big chain multiplexes are caught in the glare of the headlights as the economics of the big picture of digital cinema roll in. Only if the public don’t buy it will it fail.
 

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Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 08-13-2004, 10:18 AM:
 
But the one big question still remains. Who is going to pay for all of this shit. According to the In Focus Magazine that the US is the lowest on the totem pole in digital projection installs and most of them were donated by 3rd party sources like Texas Instruments.

If everyone were to use the high end TI projectors most likely a lot of projection consoles will have to be upgraded to be able to provide the light output that is required to run these things.
 

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Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 08-13-2004, 02:52 PM:
 
The cost of re-equipping 'plexes will be paid for out of the decimation of the printing and distribution industries, and in a lessor part by salary savings at every theatre.

This wont work if just a few theatres go digital - it takes the big multi chains to do the math, and look at the costs and benefits over a few years.

Oh yes, and on better margins in advertising. Advert reels suffer the same cost structure as features, again in printing and distribution.
 

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Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 08-13-2004, 03:22 PM:
 
The cost savings you refer to in film printing and distribution will go almost entirely to the film companies. If they want to foot the bill for digitial projection that's great in theory. The problem is despite their already tremendous cost savings they are going to want something in return-more control of programming (trailers), showtimes, etc. I am definately against theatres surrendering control of operations to the distributors.
 

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Posted by Ethan Harper (Member # 472) on 08-13-2004, 03:41 PM:
 
Boo Digital...Digital Bad. Why if I were a wrestler, I would bodyslam digital and then throw it against the ropes and then clothesline it.
 

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Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 08-13-2004, 03:52 PM:
 
Ponder this then.

How much does your multiplex chain value you?

Or to put it another way, what differentiates one multiplex chain from another? They all show the same films?? Does anyone say "we do film right, better than chain X down the road"?

From the perpective of the multiplex chain, projection is just a necessary evil to make the business work.

What if TES say to AMC - "Look, all that projection stuff, its just an overhead on your business, and to be honest, doesnt add any competitive advantage to your chain. Projection is just a commodity. Why dont you outsource your projection to us, and we will re-equip all your theatres with state of the art digital projection, and just take a percentage of your gate? And as a sweetner, we'll update your IT systems and give you great information"

Result - AMC don't need to spend a cent and get to reduce their running costs and stresses, and TES gets to save its business.

I dont disagree the numbers involved here are huge, but its a twenty year gamble, and there are going to be huge winners and huge losers.

And "state of the art" to AMC will not hold a candle to what is being done today in some theatres, but as they say, "thats progress". Who would ever have thought that folks would listen to MP3s. MP3 bad - but people like it...
 

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Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 08-13-2004, 06:05 PM:
 
So TES gets to take over maintenance of said digital projectors and AMC gives up revenue?

Lets see, TES will need cost of spare parts + cost of standard maintenance + overhead cost of their own business structure + profit. AMC, if they did their own projection needs cost of spare parts + cost of standard maintenance. Business overhead is a cost AMC would have either way. So how does AMC save any money here, except on the digital projector install (which do not really benefit them in any way anway)?
 

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Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 08-13-2004, 07:10 PM:
 
No, TES takes over the ownership and operation of the booth. And that was just a "what if".

Twenty years ago, before the word "outsourcing" made it to the dictionary, you could have asked the same questions of any large business. Everything was done in house, there were janitors, IT people, photocopying staff, people who answered phones, all sorts of things. In many businesses today, these tasks and many others are outsourced to specialists in their field.

Example: IT is the core of almost any large business today, and yet large businesses, and governments are quite happy to outsource their entire IT operation. In many cases, that represents billions of dollars.

The big advantage to the host company is that they dont need to manage these aspects of their business, or the staff associated with this part of their business, and they often (though not always) achieve a cost saving into the bargain. And being ugly about it, outsourcing is a good way for a company to dump staff.

Its not just about buying a digital projector. Its about changing the whole way the movie exhibition business works, and for those companies in at the right place at the right time, its a win-win situation - they make more money.

Of course, I may be completely wrong in all this...
 

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Posted by Dan Lyons (Member # 1454) on 08-13-2004, 07:47 PM:
 
WTF? David, do you work for a digi projector company?
That long post of yours sounds like a sales brochure.
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-13-2004, 08:05 PM:
 
Cost wise and upkeep cost still would require a replacement of far more prints than are currently struck to be viable

Also remember that in many secondary markets the used prints are what they get so the cost of providing to those markets will be higher if there are no used prints
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-13-2004, 08:58 PM:
 

quote: Darryl Spicer

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But the one big question still remains. Who is going to pay for all of this shit.

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quote: Dan Lyons

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WTF? David, do you work for a digi projector company?

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quote: Gordon McLeod

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Also remember that in many secondary markets the used prints are what they get so the cost of providing to those markets will be higher if there are no used prints

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quote: Gordon McLeod

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... isn't even recovering the cost of the lamps used in "digi advertising"

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quote: David Buckley

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The trick will be to survive until the backlash and nostalgic revival of 35mm, like vinyl on yur record player.

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We'll see how this one plays out
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-13-2014, 06:40 PM:
 
Well vinyl LPs are cool once again but they're still not selling much -- it's less than 1% of the total music market. Most people who love vinyl are resurrecting old records at garage sales and such. I suppose there'll always be a niche for movies shown on film -- until all the prints are trashed, anyway.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-13-2014, 08:22 PM:
 

quote: Mike Blakesley

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until all the prints are trashed, anyway.

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quote: David Buckley

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Today there is a massive industry built around the making of prints. A movie heading for a big first run requires thousands of prints. It’s not much easier to make a thousand prints than ten prints; each print requires a copying process, and a development process. There are few economies of scale.

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Right at the time that Technicolor and Deluxe Labs were closing their Doors a 35mm 2hr Film(6reels) was on average around $1200 per print. So you need 3000 Prints figure about 3MILLION 600Thousand Bucks. 70mm was even more astronomical sometimes costing as much as 10,000+ Dollars if it was Contact Printed.

Like I mentioned in another thread I was looking at a Color Optical Printer(one of several that Deluxe had up for auction)The Transfer rate was 1200Feet per minute. So do the Math on a 2 Hour Print.6 Reels at 1800ft =10,800fT divided by 1200FPM = 9 Minutes. That is phenominal considering the Days of Contact Printing where 300 FPM was considered Fast. Probably why the 70MM Contact Prints were so high priced. Time is Money. Even though it wasn't feasible/cost effective to Contact Print 35mm Features when Studios needed Thousands of Prints verses 100's back in the Day.A contact Print out does an Optical Print in every way no matter how precise those Optics were...
 

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Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 08-15-2014, 07:00 AM:
 
All release prints were contact-printed. There are two different types of contact printing, continuous and step-printing.

The first type, called continuous contact printer, has negative and positive film in contact while they are moved across an illuminated slit. If contact between both strips of film is not maintained perfectly, unsteadiness (weave) and loss of sharpness is the result.

A step contact printer will print frame by frame, so both films are in contact but they move intermittently like in a camera or projector.

There used to be a rule of thumb that in step-printing resolution will suffer the faster it is done while continuous printing will get better results at higher speed. Of course, this was in the days before ultra-highspeed printing for thousand of release prints.

Optical printing was not used for release printing at all, with two small exceptions:

1 - Direct blow up 35mm release prints from 16mm or Super 16mm camera negatives. The idea was to produce a small number of 35mm prints from 16mm low budget productions without expensive intermediate stock. All format changes require optical printing, the frame by frame step-printing type.

2 - 70mm blowup prints from 35mm anamorphic or 8-perf Technirama/Vistavision type original camera negative. The OCN was enlarged while step-printing frame by frame to 70mm positive stock which was mag striped afterwards.
70mm prints were more expensive because of the low number of prints and because they had to be mag-striped and recorded separately. Some processes, like Technirama-70 or blowup from 35mm OCN, were done in liquid-gate optical printing only with more variables to watch and difficulties in operating (speed, avoiding bubbles, health hazard from the fluid etc.)

Optical printing had its own problems (contrast buildup, enhancement of defects like dust, scratches etc) and was much more expensive than contact printing, so it was used for visual effects, title sequences and format changes only.

The only continuous optical printers I am aware of are

- The COSHARP printer which was introduced (and soon abandoned) in the late 1980s with the idea of making 65mm production easier and more affordable, allowing fast 35mm dailies from 65mm OCN. There is a SMPTE Journal article on it.

- A special continuous printer for creating multirank super 8mm preprint, unfortunately I don't recall the manufacturer. IIRC, the 35mm or 16mm image was split up by a prism device to reduce it to four small S8mm images.

Some lab people may deny this, but in many colour and b/w prints from the 1950s there is a degree of sharpness and perfect steadiness which is not easily replicated in new continuous prints even from the same negatives.
However, we should remember that print runs were small back then and that step-printers will create wear on negatives, especially if printing is done from the cut OCN which has hundreds of splices.
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 08-15-2014, 07:16 AM:
 
Another thing to remember is that one can only continuos contact print 1-step. That is, you can use an IN to continuous contact print release prints but you had to step-print the IN. The industry only really had two perforation pitches. .1866" for negatives and 1870 for positives/release prints. For continuous contact printing to work the "inner" negative (the one directly touching the sprocket while the two are in contact with each other) has to be a shorter pitch to allow for the added radius due to the thickness of the film itself. Otherwise, you will get slipping between the two layers and cause vertical unsteadiness in the image.

In later years, one of the problem with the release prints was not that they were printed in such a high-speed but that in the name of speed, they continuous contact printed generations that should have been step printed. Step printing takes much more time than the contact print.
 

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-15-2014, 09:53 AM:
 
Well the optical printers that Deluxe was selling(same as Technicolor0 work like a photo enlarger. the image is projected on the film stock. The Negative is not making contact with the release stock so it's Optical Printing not Contact printing.

One of the resaons Optical Printers were developed because of their Speed. 300FPM verses 1200FPM is not what Labs wanted when they had orders for 1000's of release prints. The SMPTE lAB TECHNICIAN that sent me the info regarding 3 Strip Technicolor confirmed this...
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-15-2014, 09:58 AM:
 
Magnetic soundtracks added to the cost of traditional 70mm prints. Hazardous chemicals were involved. The magnetic coatings took a certain amount of time to dry. Prints had to be sounded in real time, which could be a real chore if the movie release had dozens of 70mm mag prints.

I had hoped DTS 70mm would allow dramatic cost savings with 70mm prints. The prints could be made at high speed, just like 35mm prints. But with so few 5/70mm DTS prints actually having been produced with Hollywood releases the prints probably still had to cost a ridiculous amount of money.
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-15-2014, 01:30 PM:
 
Well a there would be needed a high speed 70mm printer which don't exist and the DTS timecode is printed seperatly as it is a anamorphicly stretched one
 

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-15-2014, 02:58 PM:
 
BELL & HOWELL did make a highspeed Model C 65/70MM Printer;but I'm not sure how many were ever sold(IF ANY) to Lab's because it was developed for NASA. There is one on EBAY for quite awhile. Yours for just under 30 Grand. Since it was Taxpayer Money designing and building the NASA Model I'm sure it was at least 10 times that new

http://www.ebay.ph/itm/UNIQUE-Bell-Howell-65-70mm-Motion-Picture-Printer-Used-Space-Shuttle-/2515 69528275?pt=US_Vintage_Cameras&hash=item3a92b65dd3
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 08-15-2014, 04:53 PM:
 
The printer in your ad is a 65/70mm Model C or D, an older printer actually made by B&H. Bell & Howell became BHP after the employees bought that part of Bell & Howell. A friend still works for them and I believe they are now owned by RTI who has been buying up film equipment companies at fire sales left and right. BHP made LOTS and LOTS of 65/70mm panel printers and they were all custom built to the individual lab's requirements. Far as I know they are still able to manufacture new ones although RTI has bought a lot of used BHP at labs that are closing of lately. http://www.rtico.com/bhp/

Mark
 

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-15-2014, 05:24 PM:
 
At DELUXE's Auction they had 7 older B&H Model C Dry Gate and 3 Model C's with Schmitzer Wet Gate head. If they were doing Release Prints with these models- The Dryhead was 180FPM and with the Wet Gate System 300FPM. Maybe for some Custom Order where only a few hundred prints were needed. The Speed(or lack of Printing speed)wouldn't be cost effective for them to print
Studio Orders for thousands of Prints.

Both Deluxe & Technicolor
had a lot of Older Equipment; Probably why they also had a Cinncinati Metal Lathe and Vertical Mill(Deluxe) up for Sale also.Break an Obsolete Part;just make a new replacement one inhouse.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 08-15-2014, 05:53 PM:
 
Ha? You need to learn how a big lab works Steve! First off release prints haven't been produced in the States for well over 5 years, and it's closer to ten years for many studios. They have all been made in Toronto for a very long time and that is a highly automated process that operates at ~1800 fpm and faster. The small printers are for small jobs like dailies and one up print orders, restoration work and so on. The only stuff regularly printed here was 70mm release printing mainly for Imax and done at Technicolor. The majority of the biz the last 5 to 10 years here was negative processing and dailies if required. Not many shows bother with dailies any more though... When they were doing lots of dailies a certain printer would actually be assigned to a show to maintain best consistency.

Mark
 

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-15-2014, 07:32 PM:
 
It must be wonderful Mark to know about everything in the World!
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-15-2014, 08:57 PM:
 

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen

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Ha? You need to learn how a big lab works Steve! First off release prints haven't been produced in the States for well over 5 years, and it's closer to ten years for many studios. They have all been made in Toronto for a very long time and that is a highly automated process that operates at ~1800 fpm and faster. The small printers are for small jobs like dailies and one up print orders, restoration work and so on.

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