Ken Pierce Featured Editorial
Vive La Revolution!
This past Saturday night, my wife, my brother-in-law, a friend and myself
all went to see a midnight showing of a true pop film classic, Raiders of
the Lost Ark. Sadly, the experience was mired by problems with the
incredibly old print the cinema was using. The picture was faded, and had a
distinct sepia tone to it, the picture was jumpy, there was an inordinate
amount of scratches, and the film even managed to jump off its sprockets at
one point, causing an interruption in the film. Still, I would do it again,
because I never had the opportunity to originally see the film on the big
screen.
For the past two weekends in Los Angeles and New York (and I guess New
Jersey as well), theatres have been showing a digitally projected version of
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. All the reports coming in
indicate that the experience is at least as good as, and in some respects
better than, the film as projected through a conventional projector. Thus
begins the digital revolution.
The advent of digital projection in theatres means a number of things for
moviegoers. First, and foremost, it means when a film is shown some fifteen
or twenty years after its original release date, the film won’t show any of
the marks of time (aside from young actors and dated costumes and scenery,
of course). The picture will be as bright and clear as it was when the film
was originally released. Also, the odds of something going fatally wrong
will decrease dramatically. Film is an analog format, and as such is
subject to the wonders of physics. A true digital film would suffer from no
such limitations, and the only possibilities for error would be human error,
power failure or equipment failure. Of course fire alarms in the middle of
the third act will always be a problem.
Digital film also means a number of other things for moviegoers and
filmmakers alike.
For filmmakers, the cost of making a film will reduce dramatically, on all
levels. A low budget filmmaker will be able to shoot a ratio of ten or
twenty to one (i.e. ten “bad” takes for every “good” one) rather than the
current two or three to one. The limitation would not be the cost of the
film, but instead the cost of the time. And the independents are realizing
this, as they are the first to embrace the digital technology.
Also, distribution is cheaper. The cost of a film print of a typical
theatrical release is $1,500. The cost of a digital print is significantly
less (right now, the cost of a RAID array of hard drives with the movie on
it in MPEG-2 format – and the array can be re-used, in future, the cost of a
satellite uplink). The estimated total cost to the studios for theatrical
prints in North America (Region 1) alone is $600 million per year. With
satellite uplinks and digital theatres, that cost could probably be reduced
to under $50 million per year. Unfortunately, this will probably only mean
increased profits for the studios, not reduced admission prices for the
moviegoer.
Lastly, the cost of telecine transfers for later video and DVD release is
eliminated. Since the film is already stored digitally, it can simply be
transferred to the appropriate medium and duplicated. The transfer is
better (because there are no lossy stages in between), and it doesn’t cost
the studios anything. Once again, expect increased profits for the studios,
not reduced prices for the consumer.
The advantages to the consumer are multi-fold.
The biggest advantage, of course, is a more consistent experience at the
multi-plex. Rather than being at the whim of a piece of celluloid (which
will scratch, and burn, and tear), the picture will always be crisp, and
always be clean. For a great example of how bad film can get after a while,
take a look at some of the Dolby Digital or DTS trailers. These trailers
are recycled often, and eventually the print is absolute garbage. With
digital cinema, Dolby would never have to strike another print. By
streaming the film off a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices) array
of hard drives, a hard drive can even explode and the film will keep on
playing as though nothing happened.
Other advantages are still plentiful. When we all sit down to watch the
High Definition HBO broadcast of Star Wars: Episode II – Jar Jar Gets
Melted, we’ll be able to watch the film at full resolution, exactly as it
appeared in the movie theatre. This is because digital cinema is actually
MPEG-2 video played back at 1080I resolution (1,080 lines, interlaced).
Never before has the home theatre experience been as close to that of the
multiplex. The screen may not be as big, and the sound system may not be as
expensive, but the picture and sound will be identical, just on a smaller
scale.
Also, DVD transfers will be better. Since digital film is, by definition,
MPEG-2 video and anamorphic, we can expect that all digital films will be
presented in the best possible format for DVD. Unless, of course, Disney
and Fox still insist on downconverting to 4:3 letterboxed (which wouldn’t
surprise me). Even HDVD will be no problem, since the early specifications
call for it to be MPEG-2 1080I – that’s right, the same resolution,
compression method, and aspect ratio as digital theatres.
There are a few minor drawbacks to digital cinema. One is that the classic
grain of film will slowly disappear with time. Many times film grain can be
an annoyance, but there are instances where it is used to great effect to
create a mood. I suppose nothing stops a filmmaker from actually using film
then transferring it to digital, but I suspect over time it will become
cost-prohibitive to do so (like shooting on black and white stock now – most
black and white films are actually shot in color, then the color is removed
because the film stock is cheaper). Digital filters and the like can help,
but they really can only approximate film grain, it’s never quite as good as
the real thing.
The other thing I suspect we may see over time is the occasional
malfunction of an MPEG-2 decoder. Just like when you’re watching the
umpteenth rerun of the Simpsons on television and those bizarre pixelly
elements crawl down the screen. This, to me, is a minor issue. As times
goes on, MPEG-2 decoders will get better, and these types of problems will
slowly but surely disappear.
All in all, digital cinema is nothing but good for the industry and
consumers as a whole. The only thing holding it back is the cost of
converting theatres. I suspect the studios (or maybe the MPAA, on behalf of
the studios, so they all contribute a fair amount) may step in and assist
with the necessary upgrades. I certainly hope so, because the sooner
digital gets here, the better.
Last week’s quote of the week was from Ivan Reitman’s classic comedy,
Ghostbusters, new this week on DVD. Several people got the quote right, but
unfortunately my system screwed up and I lost everyone’s email…including the
guy who’s gotten the last three quotes of the week right, but always seem to
miss being first by about three minutes. Given that I’m using Microsoft
Outlook for email, I’m not surprised that it won’t import its own backups.
I guess it’s a good time to upgrade to Outlook 2000 (hey, who says beating a
dead horse isn’t fun!).
I’ve had a cursory look at the Ghostbusters DVD, and I must say, I’m
impressed. One area of concern, though, the Mystery Science Theatre-style
commentary track does not work when watching the film in anamorphic mode. I
realize that the silhouettes would be stretched, but since the picture is
16x9 enhanced, you’d think the commentary “angle” would be as well. Oh
well, can’t have it all. Look for a full review either later this week or
early next week.
Keep in mind that we’re giving away the Ghostbusters DVDs here at
dvdfuture.com, so enter the contest if you haven’t done so already (and
enter lots of times, Jay needs something to do!).
This week’s quote is probably harder than anything else I’ve done, and
admittedly it’s skewed toward Canadian readers since the film played on
Space last week. To give you a few subtle hints, Sylvester Stallone played
a supporting role (the quote is spoken by him), and the film is set in the
year 2000. The film is available on DVD, but may be difficult to find. I
suspect the film transfer sucks, but in the case of this film that would be
appropriate. It was released in the 70’s and probably cost around six
dollars to make.
"You know Myra, some people might think you're cute. But me, I think you're
one very large baked potato."
One last note. I’m still looking for title suggestions for this weekly
column. Send quote guesses and column title suggestions to dvdken@home.com.
Until next time!
Ken Pierce
Dvdken@home.com
Contributing Editor, www.dvdfuture.com
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