And that is bad... how?
Is all this 3-D stuff a phase?
- Thread starter darkshadow0001
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And that is bad... how?
^^^^
Now your just being obtuse.
He answered your question.
Now your just being obtuse.
He answered your question.
To an extend. Wishing their movies to be presented in the best quality possible isn't bad, is it?
Digital projection isn't the "best quality possible." Celluloid still covers those bases nicely. Digital just provides studios (and exhibitors) with a few benefits that don't mean a thing to moviegoers (i.e. being able to instantly transmit the film to the theater rather than ship a print, being able to generate a digital file rather than strike thousands of expensive 35mm prints, being able to re-edit a film extensively if it's not going well without having to strike new prints).
Not degrading, and not breaking and needing to be spliced, are more than marginal benefits to moviegoers. It used to be that you had to see a film very soon after initial release to be guaranteed of viewing a pristine print. Splices and degradation could ruin scenes with missing frames and dropped dialog.
Winner, winner chicken dinner. Imagine I would never have had to get a raincheck that summer of 83' when I went to the early evening showing of "Octopussy" at UA Scottsdale 5 which broke, not once... not twice... not even three times. It broke a whopping six times before management canceled the showing and all remaining showings that night.
What's even more astounding was rather than overnight rush a new print they instead cobbled together the print they had... breaks and all. I went back Saturday afternoon... the showing with the new jump cuts and missing minutes of film was dreadful... Got my money back.
Yancy
Isn't one potential benefit that it makes it easier for worldwide releases of films. Rather than having to print tens of thosuands of prints they just need to transmit a digitial file.
So one potential benefit to movie goers is not having to wait weeks or months after the release of the film in its first market. Which is usually the US and occasioanlly the UK for the big Hollywood blockbusters
Partly, but the shift in Hollywood's international distribution strategy is also related to industry attempts to avert online piracy. They release a film all at once so people go to the theater rather than download a pirated version recorded in another territory where the film has already been released. The MPAA has been pushing 3-D for similar reasons: it's very difficult to pirate a 3-D projection.
I just started reading it, but it seems like this article is a good primer on the subject, if anyone is interested: http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/film-tv/35-mm-film-digital-Hollywood/
The Toy Story anecdotes were interesting. I think the article is driving home the idea that the distributors' objectives are incompatible with archivists' objectives. In this case, it seems that being a rights holder implies being able to dictate conditions which lead to the destruction of the property. It seems that that's a consequence of commodifying private property to maximize revenue. Right now, I can only think of legislative solutions to the problem, e.g. to shorten the time horizon of copyright protection.
And that's where I have a problem with the article. A large reason for the move to digital is for archival purposes. It is simply easier, more efficient and less expensive to manage digital archive copies of films rather than celluloid. I found the Toy Story particularly amusing when the writer didn't even both to mention the 2008 Universal Studios lot fire which ravaged a section of their film vault destroying hundreds of 35mm film prints and camera negatives. Fortunately most of these sources have backup copies at a location in Pennsylvania, but the fire could have destroyed hundreds of hours of film history.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/04/business/fi-universal4
The reality is this industry is changing and evolving and the distribution end of the chain has to "adapt of die" like other industries... Brick and mortar books stores, electronics stores and retailers all have to change their business models or they will soon find themselves in the same state as Borders and other stores that are out of business.
Look I love celluloid and have worked extensively in both mediums, but that genie is out of the bottle... I doubt I will ever work with film again... and most directors in the industry are moving that way. Guys like Nolan, Spielberg and Scorcese are a dying breed. Celluloid had its day.
As for cutting costs... why shouldn't the industry want to cut their expenses? You have runaway production budgets which are eaten up by high priced directors, big named actors and labor costs which dwarf those of yesteryear. Meanwhile the industry is seeing decreased movie attendance and drops in home video sales. The money has to be recouped somewhere.
Yancy
The issue isn't whether digital technology has the potential to do Wonderful Things, but rather whether adequate investment will be made to pursue projects such as reliable long-term archiving, for which there is no short or medium term return on investment. The Toy Story anecdotes indicate a total failure on the part of ostensibly knowledgeable professionals to take even all rudimentary safeguards and create fault-tolerant systems for long-term storage. The modes of failure that occurred were hardly surprises.
Unlike failure that occurs in analog media, failure in digital media often erases large chunks of data completely and totally at once. There's a whole set of techniques for preserving digital data indefinitely, but it requires care and feeding and not just sticking disks in a vault.
Which is why I'm convinced this over-reliance on digital files is going to be our undoing. I already have personal experience with losing - forever - files that were saved on formats that can't be read any more, or in codecs that can't be played with current operating systems. Or through a hard drive crash. And yes, most of those files were backed up. I have a drawer of writings and unique audio files saved to Zip discs that I may as well chuck because I cannot locate any way of retrieving them. And I was sold on Zip because it was the "way of the future" back before terabyte externals and flash drives became the norm. And odds are things archived on flash drives will be rendered useless in the near future anyway. All you need is for the computer standard to move out of USB or eliminate off-line archiving in favor of the cloud and no longer offer the option, and anyone who didn't back up their flashes are screwed.
True, backups are easier with digital. It is possible to keep copies of digital files on servers around the world rather than in one location where a fire or earthquake could destroy the only copy. But that still doesn't protect against format obsolescence; most of the files I mention above were backed up and not just on Zips, but I can't play them anymore because the new systems or versions of Quicktime, etc won't play them. I haven't trusted digital since I heard back in 2002 about the British Library declaring some historic documents lost forever because they were digitized in a format no computer on earth could read (apparently they were done back in the early days of scanning) and in the interim the originals were lost. (Yes, I'm sure they "found a way" but it probably cost the British taxpayer a few coins).
On the other hand, I am also reminded of how screwed a number of TV producers are now because they used videotape-based production and editing back in the 1980s and 1990s which renders image quality, etc. great for SDTV but awful on HDTV without expensive remastering as is being done with Star Trek TNG. Who is to say a digital "master" of a movie today will be useable in 10 years, never mind 50. I definitely think we're going to see people saying "this is cheesy and bad" about today's 3-D the same way we're hearing people condemning what was considered state-of-the-art special effects back in 1987.
Alex
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