When the term "digital cinema" is bandied around, the first thing that may come to mind is a movie theatre filled with the latest, cutting-edge electronic cinematic gizmos. One may expect pristinely sharp pictures to be projected onto the big screen and sound systems that transport viewers into the thick of action with such aural clarity.
While that notion is not far from the truth, digital cinema is much more than just perfect images and sounds. Digital cinemas are not simply digital capture or post-production, digital delivery or digital projection, but the combination of all these phases into a system, a value chain, that offers a myriad of possibilities on how the movie-watching experience is set to change.
In brief, digital cinema impacts how the movie is actually made (production), how it gets from the production company to movie theatres (distribution) and how the theatres present the movie (projection).
So how did digital cinema come about? George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars series, has been widely attributed as a strong proponent and pioneer behind the push to promote digital cinemas. Lucas in fact led the way with his many techniques for digital filmmaking and developed the THX audio system now used in many theatres worldwide.
Lucas was dissatisfied with celluloid and traditional film-based special effects. He could not create the effects he required for Star Wars and thus became an early advocate of video-based digital effects. Working with vendors, he developed the hardware to create the special effects he wanted. However, when projected onto the big screen, the film to which he transferred his digital images could not quite match the quality he could create on his computers.
A proven technology innovator, Lucas then went on to work with the likes of Texas Instruments, Technicolor, Kodak and others to produce a video-based digital cinema system capable of doing justice to his creations. Impressed by the results, other directors and their studios followed suit - and thus began the development of digital cinema.
Cost
Production: In a nutshell, digital video is much cheaper than film. There is virtually no processing involved before the editing stage. As such, filmmakers on a real shoe-string budget can even reuse the tape multiple times. By Hollywood standards, digital video costs nearly nothing.
Distribution: From the business perspective, the most compelling argument for digital cinema is distribution. In today's system, distributors spend approximately US$2,500 - US$3,000* per print duplication. Then, working with logistic companies such as Fedex and UPS, they spend an additional US$300 - US$500 per copy shipping the reels of film to theatres all over the world. In total, the US movie industry spends an estimated US$1.2 billion on print duplication and shipping costs alone. That figure can be cut by at least 50% with the simultaneous transmission via satellite of a first release movie.
Distribution
With traditional film, distributors need to strategise where they send their movie prints to. Given the high costs, they risk making a loss if the cost of duplicating film prints far outweighs cinema earnings. Digital cinema's low distribution costs on the other hand, allow movies to be sent via broadband cables or transmitted via satellite.
The illustration below outlines the process of preparing a film for distribution. The telecine machine digitises the film which is then passed through a compression machine to reduce the file size. At the same time the file is being compressed, the data is also encrypted to protect the file from being pirated. The file is then sent to the uplink site where it is beamed to a satellite for transmission to the theatres.
Digital Cinema Central Transmission Hub
The digital distribution system also allows individual theatres to run the movie on additional screens on the spur of the moment. Theatres could also show live sporting events and other digital programming.
Flexibility
Digital technology makes editing movies much simpler and faster. It also opens a plethora of special effects possibilities, as Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones clearly demonstrates. The movie is considered a forerunner in digital special effects.
Traditionally, filmmakers convert film footage to digital format for post-production and then back to film again for its theatrical release. This conversion process is expensive and time-consuming. Digital video however, does not have to go through this conversion process. As soon as they shoot digital footage, filmmakers can immediately play it back and start editing it.
Projection
While many critics argue that a projected digital movie is inferior to a pristine film print, they also recognise that a digital movie looks the same every time you show it - whether for the first or 501st time the movie is screened. This is unlike traditional film. Every time a movie is played, the film quality drops a little. A movie that has been playing for a few weeks will probably show hundreds of scratches and bits of dirt.
Costs
While there is a lot of savings to be made distributing movies digitally, it is costly to convert a conventional theatre into a digital one. Today, it costs about US$150,000 to do so. Unless movie theatres make full use of the opportunity to screen alternative content, previously not possible with traditional theatres, the digital cinema bandwagon will be a relatively empty one.
Restructuring
Again, while digital cinema makes a lot of economic sense on the distribution front, it would involve huge changes in the industry; namely workforce restructuring. Even if the net result of the move to digital cinema is a cheaper distribution system, the possibility of restructuring poses a hurdle.
Piracy
Piracy is another hurdle to the movie industry. For conventional films, a movie 'pirate' either has to hold up the delivery van containing the movie reels or sneaks a video recorder into a theatre. In the first instance, the bootleggers will have to use expensive machinery to make video copies. In the second case, pirated tapes usually have poor image quality.
However, if a movie was already in the form of bytes of data, anybody could make an exact copy by hooking into the data stream. To make broadband and satellite transmission feasible, a secure encryption system has to be in place.
Image Quality
The jury is still out on whether digital movies are up to scratch, so to speak. While digital cinema's proponents cite market research showing audience preference for the image quality of digital movies, many movie buffs still vouch for celluloid. Some purists even go so far as to denounce the pristine image quality of digital movies. Digital movies offer resolutions of 1,300 - 4,000 lines compared to the 1,000 lines of a 35mm film.
Convergence of Multi-Media Technologies
Another hurdle in the horizon is the convergence of home entertainment and professional theatre technology. While there is currently a huge gap in image quality between high-end digital projectors and home models, this may not be the case for long. As home theatre projectors improve and drop in price, digital cinemas may find it harder to pull in the crowds.
Digital cinema is poised to take the world by storm. It will radically change the way movies are made, distributed and enjoyed. Its technology stands to save billions of dollars in the movie-making and distribution industries. At the onset, the quest to round up support for and converts to digital cinema may be as epic as the Star Wars series. But with technical recommendations** in the pipelines early next year to standardise how digital movies are made and distributed, the digital cinema looks set for lift-off. Meanwhile, the saga continues...
* Figures from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA, Digital Cinema 2001 Conference.
** The standards are based on the recommendations of the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI), a consortium of the 7 major studios in Hollywood (Disney, Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros, MGM. Sony & 20th Century Fox). DCI has a two-year mandate, and their goal is to develop a mutually agreeable set of minimum performance requirements and general technical recommendations for digital cinema which includes projection resolution and file compression format.
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