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Star Wars Prequels Media Movies

All-Digital Star Wars Episode 1 Screening 125

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wipe-that-spittle-off-your-chin dept.
DJ_Jose writes sent us a link to an excellent article that talks about Lucasfilm's plans to screen an All Digital Version of the Prequel in june. The future of film is doesn't have any film in it. Isn't that excellent?
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All-Digital Star Wars Episode 1 Screening More

All-Digital Star Wars Episode 1 Screening

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  • >Film will always be better.

    You're joking, right? Always? In 20 years when you can store a terabyte on the head of a pin you think that film will be better? It's just a matter of time before digital storage outpaces the alternatives. Audio first, then video, then high-performance video.

    Something I wonder about from time to time is that in X years it will be trivially inexpensive to build one of those voice-recorder gadgets that has a recording capacity greater than a human lifetime. Imagine storing everything you've ever heard in your entire life? Imagine if everyone did?

    -Pez
  • The dynamic range of Kodak Vision 200T is about 40 times greater than video of any variety.

    Going by the digital cameras we use now at school, even the analog ones are better. BetacamSP kicks the shit out of DigiBeta and DVCAM. The colours are flat, and there's very little depth to the image. Lots of this could be corrected by giving it a REAL lens, but none-the-less, the tech has a LONG way to go.

    -shai
  • If new films are produced only in digital, it'll essentially kill the second-run theaters, leaving your choices an increasingly expensive show in a first-run theater or renting the video (also getting more expensive and of poorer quality).

    Ever heard of DVD? :P

    Actually, that could solve your problem...dunno how much good LCD projectors are (about $10k US?) but that + DVD would make sense (possibly even some form of Divx *shudder*)

  • Great...so 10,000 years from now, "Ishtar" and "Speed 2" survive, but TPM doesn't. Glad I won't be around then...

    Anyone remember the Arthur C. Clarke story about aliens rescuing one thing from Earth being destroyed - a film reel of "Steamboat Willie".
  • Posted by EasySleeze:

    I doubt that the upgrades would cost that much really. Assuming the SAT equipment and RAID's cost each theatre $20,000 , the cost they pay for each movie would be lower, and in the long run, profits would boost
  • Nope.

    It will always be possible to transfer a digital copy to film at a higher resolution then a digital copy could be projected onto a screen. You only need to have one badass super mega expensive film recorder to transfer a digital copy to film. Due to economics, the digital projection systems in theaters will be lower quality. Film will always be better.
  • You're joking, right? Always? In 20 years when you can store a terabyte on the head of a pin you think that film will be better? It's just a matter of time before digital storage outpaces the alternatives. Audio first, then video, then high-performance video.

    Storage/bandwidth won't be the bottleneck, display technology will be. Sure DLP and other digital projection will improve, but analog projection isn't standing still, look at imax. As technology improves, the resolution achievable with film will always be better than tiny mechanical mirrors. Maybe in the year 2020 DLP chips will be built at an insane resolution by nanites, but nanites could also be used to expose analog film.

    Note that I am not saying that digital won't take over, (for various distribution related economic reasons), but it won't take over because it is of higher quality.

  • Yuck. (Score:1)

    by Scott ( 1049 )
    As someone who despises 98% of modern films, this only makes the problem worse. Movies in the 40's and 50's had character to them, all the imperfections only helped to make them much more fun to watch. Now everything is shrinkwrapped and sanitized for my protection; going to digital to make things even more perfect just disgusts me. Doesn't anyone have good taste anymore?

  • Moron (Score:1)

    by mholve ( 1101 )
    No, FILM IS GOOD. Jeez.

    "Whhheeeeee. Something digital. I want it. It rules."

    Whack!

  • Now that is rediculous. Film is much cheaper than the equivalent setup to do digital. Granted, it may be harder to copy, but not that much - and besides - so what?
  • ...beam the film via satellite into subscribing theaters...

    This is just retarded. So only hi-tech AND subscribing theaters can get it, at least initially. Who's going to pay for the theater upgrades? What advantage would this offer either the theater OR the movie goer? There are less things to go wrong with a normal projector than a digital solution. The quality is better with film. Sorry, but I'm not convinced. AT ALL. Prove me wrong...

  • That is one great point - theaters can run multiple copies of the same movie, perhaps subject to additional fees.
  • HDTV has a "higher resolution?" What on Earth are you talking about? Film has "practically" unlimited resolution. As for 24fps, that's plenty good enough - why would you want more? As for bulb intensity, I've never had that problem - and what's to stop them from doing the same on a digital projector?

    Film can be stored offline. Where are you gonna stash all the backups? How much is it gonna cost, comparitively?

  • LPs do have something that CDs miss. Many audiophiles call it "warmth." Perhaps - and I agree, 16 bits at 44.1KHz just isn't enough for the full range - but then, human hearing isn't all that much better. Maybe the dog will notice, but I won't. I love both my CDs and my LPs and I'm not giving up the latter, though I've thought of making CDs from them. The scratch, pop and hiss I certainly won't miss...
  • There are quite a few errors in your reasoning.

    About as many as in the original post of this same message.

    Takes up more space? Than what?! A huge video serving computer with racks and racks of drives? A dedicated UPS and air conditioner? Rows of consoles? A satellite dish? Hmph.

    HDTV better than film? Umm... That's crazy. Film has practically unlimited resolution.

    Ain't nothing wrong with 24fps.

    Which is cheaper? Already viewed film reels or backup tapes/drive cartridges? How much do multi-terabyte Jaz cartridges go for these days? ;> Now tell me which is cheaper to store. One that's already paid for, or one you have to pay for in addition?

    Breaking in the projector and splicing... Okay, so instead, we train monkeys to operate complex video-on-demand computer equipment. Hmm, yeah, I see your point. Not.

    Bulb intensity?! Put down the crack pipe... I don't know what trailer movie theaters you attend, but the ones out here in the real world are just fine...

    35mm... Ummm. Where to begin. The only limit on film is the factor of enlargement/grain. Not so with digital - you have a FIXED resolution. It'll look just as shitty blown up three times as the 35mm, if not worse. Grain is normal - people are used to it. Pixelation is really obvious. Ever look at an IMAX theater? That's 70mm film. Looks DAMN good to me, dude.

    Film hasn't changed... Er, yes it has. I take it you're not into photography or cinematography? It's gotten a LOT better. But otherwise, you're right, it hasn't changed - why should it? It's damned near perfect, visually.

  • Agreed. I'm a photographer in my spare time. I know film as you do - good film makes VERY nice enlargements. Shoot something on 120/2.25" with a medium format camera and it'll look better than anything digital.
  • About whether or not digital video is "there" yet. it's not. When it is, maybe it will replace film. Not anytime soon though. Yeah, DVD is nice, but until it's recordable and is as ubiquitous as the VCR... Sorry.

    And for the record, I STILL have my vinyl, and I ain't ever giving it up!

  • I don't think anyone here is against trying to go to digital, but more along the lines of realizing that digital isn't quite there yet for many reasons - technical, political and economical. Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing all digital movies any less than the next person. The comparison itself isn't about it being possible - just that film is a LOT different than digital, and as they say, "digital ain't all that."
  • Seeing how lucasfilm has a lot of money invested in digital theater technology it makes sense for them to screen in digital. We need to make theater technology as idiot proof as possible and digital certainly is easier than film for the idiots who run theaters nowadays.
  • 1280 by whatever ain't high enough. It needs to quadruple each axis. That's all.
  • I used to work on a very cool, very useful, and very expensive digital post production product from a company whose main business is regular film. They started the project with the hopes of becoming market leaders in the new post-film era, and were very nearly there. But short sighted bean counters decided that digital isn't profitable *today*, and film is, so they axed the digital stuff. In 5 or so years, when movies are recorded on digital cameras, all editing is done digitally, and the final product is beamed to digital projectors in theatres, those bean counters are probably going to be safely retired or on to ruining another company.

    For those who say that digital is too pixelatted and doesn't map colours right, I say "feh!". Our product stored images at 4096x3072, with ten bits of LOGARITHMIC colour per plane. We make scanners and recorders to move film to digits and digits to film with that sort of quality. I defy you to tell the difference between film and that sort of digital. Chances are, you've already seen a lot of film that went through that process somewhere along the way.

  • It's Kodak's own damn fault that they are abandoning digital just when it's on the verge of taking off.
  • You make all these general assumptions about what digital is and isn't capable of. Have you actually worked with Kodak's DXR (?) digital format, where colour is logorithmic, so it responds very much like film does? Did you see Kodak's Lightning scanners and recorders? Remember that Kodak is a film company, and has a lot of film scientists who working on these digital products to make sure that they were right. Too bad Kodak threw it all in the trash.
  • According to the ABC News article [go.com], the colour sucks on this system:

    "During a demonstration at ShoWest, with film and digital scenes projected side-by-side on a big screen, the only problem with digital appeared to
    be color, with whites taking on a yellow hue, blues becoming purplish, and skin tones giving actresses a manequin-like complexion."

  • What do you think takes the film and turns it into digits in a Lightning recorder, magic pixies? There is definitely CCDs involved. *You* pay attention.
  • "The future of film is doesn't have any film in it. Isn't that excellent?"

    no no no no no no.

    Film is:

    1 durable
    2 device independant
    3 cross platform
    4 has minimum machine spec requirements (light, lense)

    100 years from now, people will find reels of film in archives and be able to play them. Even if there were no projectors left, it would be trivial to design one that could play old films.

    100 years from now when they find an unknown storage device with some label on, they will chuck it.

    It's the same as those people taking videos and not photographs (or worse, taking digital photos). In 50 years when there are no VHS players in common use, people will just chuck out their grandparents recorded lives, because they can't see what's on that dusty old tape in the attic. With photographs, you can tell in an instant what it is, and it requires no playback device.

    More or less the same with celluloid film.

    A digital future leaves no past for our grandchildren.



  • I agree that the durability of celluloid may be poor, but:

    1. Sure, we will have the technology to use VHS tapes for a long time, but that technology won't be available to most people. If you find a shoebox in the attic marked 'photos', you can open it up and see if the photos are worth keeping.

    If you find an old tape marked 'holiday video', and the tape won't run on any equipment you or your friends have, you probably aren't going to bother keeping it.


    2. It's not the software, it's the hardware. Sure, just because in 15 years everything is in MPEG-8 format, I'm sure we'll be able to see MPEG-1 movies. However, just 10 short years ago I was saving text (digitally) onto audio cassettes from my Commodore 64. Recovering data from those audio sets so that I can print it from my PC is going ot be REMARKABLY hard.

    Sure, Disney will make sure its digital works stay stored the the very latest mediums. But what happens when some little company makes a great little film (yes, outside of the US small companies can make films), and in 20 years time they go bust. Their archives will sit there on some outdated format, until they become unusable.
  • This has already become a problem. There are literally thousands of old data tapes lying around encoded in formats for which there is no data available. The data on these tapes is now considered to be lost for all time.

  • So true (Score:1)

    by deanc ( 2214 )
    This is the Nicholas Negroponte syndrome. :)

    The simple fact is that we experience life in Analog, not moderated through a digital sample that gets decoded back again.

    The LP fanatics may sound kooky, but they are really onto something when they say that CDs can't really imitate the sound quality of an analog recording, and we won't be until DVD audio discs become available (which have 24 bit sampling, instead of the 16 bit sampling on CDs).

    Now, actually, I've heard that the high-end digital film displays are said to be better than than even a film fresh out of the canister, but somehow I think we'll only get the low end stuff in theatres for the immediate future. Digital transmission and display only becomes a good imitation of film when the sample rate of the digital is so high that you can no longer notice it.

    -Dean
  • >But enough of all that....what I can't understand >is why people are so AGAINST anyone even trying >to update to digital. Wouldn't you even want to >look at it? Is your mind so closed?

    Premature adoption of a technology will result in being stuck with an inferior standard.

    Digitalization is inherently _lossy_. It takes a digital "sample" of what appears and then reconstructs the image using the data available from the sample. Now, this is great for mass duplication, copying, and transmission over long distances for analog data whose quality isn't that important. However, when one is trying to duplicate real music and real scenes of the real world, you need a sampling rate high enough that the human eye and ear can't detect the "loss" involved by digitalization. And this is an extremely high sample rate.

    And, let's face it, given the choice between the _right_ technology, and the trendy, buzzowrd-laden, but slightly inferior technology, which is going to be chosen, right? :) All we're saying is that digital film _right now_ isn't going to be as good as the real thing. Digital just for the sake of it is not great.

    However, I did hear that a group of people compared an HDTV movie projected onto a screen with a film projection movie that was fresh out of the cannister (ie, no stretching, scratching, or fading from the projector bulb), and the HDTV projection image won out hands down. So I have no doubt that digital movies will eventually be "all that". On the other hand, I suspect that digital movies _now_ will simply be a way for distributors and movie theatres to cut down on cost while giving us a product that simply isn't as great.

    But, what the heck? I know that I'll probably head to the closest city to see the all-digital projected version of Episode One. :)

    -Dean
  • And what about today's 70mm film? Hmmmm?
  • photo's don't last forever either. The pigment in your color film will be long gone after 100 years.

    Only black and white (silver-gelatin) and Poloroids will survive that long.
  • Did you see the quality of the episode IV-VI film from the archives? They had to go to digital to save the film. It was really faded. And that's only 20 years old. Film fades and degrades over time. What happens if you expose your box of precious photgraphs to the extended times of bright light? They fade out. What happens if you leave a CD-ROM in the same light? Pretty much nothing. (heat would destroy both)

    Are you trying to say that a 100 years from now, no one will be able to decode the data stream from a digital photo? You've got to be kidding me. Yes, VHS and other physical formats may have problems due to lack of hardware, but digital formats do not. Look at the fact that MP3 works on hard disk, removable disk, CD-ROM, streamed over a network . . . It doesn't matter because it's all just data. In the hundred years that pass from now till then, do you think that no one will make sure that their is software translation for the current DVD or other digital formats? We still build graphics software that opens the old 1 bit paint images, why would we abandon and be unable to decode other old forms of data. It just doesn't make sense.
  • I still prefer 35mm film to the digital cameras.
    The original Starwars was great because of the way they had to render those ships.. (i.e. made from models and glued together ).

    An all digital rendering of those special effects would be "So realistic" it would suck.

    I wonder what Kubrick would have said......



  • Thank you for one of the few signals amongst the noise. I'm surprised a "news for nerds" site would harbor so much anti-digital resentment.

    I work in a software house which makes software to be used in digital film production. I can't say more because I'm under NDA until the NAB show in Las vegas (plus, marketing is not my area of expertise :).

    IMHO film is *dead* in the same way NTSC is dead - the old technology has been pushed as far as it can go and digital is almost ready for prime-time. This will be argued for years, but we've already seen digital take over audio (the CD, although they CD doesn't have quite the freq range of an LP...) and digital video cameras with [Apple] Firewire ports are becoming mainstream.

    This is NOT 1280x1024! 4k resolution is the minimum, and 64-bit color is sweet. This can scale up for larger screens, and does NOT have to be projected -- 120 degree concave screens anyone? (years away of course..). Quality is fantastic I hear and unlike film will improve quickly.

    Lastly, the BIGGEST reason for a studio to push digital... DISTRIBUTION. This opens the doors for a coordinated worldwide release, instead of US only releases and when sales curve off, shipping the reels overseas. This also lessens the effect of piracy -- there's less demand for bootleg showings of something everyone has already seen. The release delay or innaccessability of a hit film overseas is more than enough encouragement for some to pirate...

    I'll miss film dropouts and dead moths like I will miss record pops and static electricity...
  • Actually, yes I have developed film. Of course that was summer camp 15 years ago... :-D

    I agree developing qualifies for Nerdness (tm). I regret implying otherwise (hey, I was talking about the percieved "anti-digital").

    Now one thing everyone seems to have overlooked is this is jst a PREVIEW. I heard they will consider ALL-DIGITAL for the second movie, but for the first we're just seeing a trial run.

    Based on that information I don't see why the flat-earthers are getting all worked up like hysterical women in a B horror movie.

    They're going to show THIS movie in the same stick-floor cinemas we are used to.



  • I agree with most of the early posters here with one exception. While I also maintain it will be years (if not decades) before a digital transmission media can match film in the consumer/theatrical realm, I also think digital transmission of features will (unfortunately) begin earlier than that. The market for most theatrical product is targetted at the least common denominator. Eg., your Joe Sixpack VHS owner who has recently moved to DVD and doesn't see anything wrong with encoding errors or pixilation. For these people (and they are the majority) it likely won't make any difference. A friend of mine managed a theatre at the same time I did. I went to see "The Untouchables" on Sunday of the opening weekend. As soon as the film started, I noticed that the wrong lens was in (the film was supposed to be scope but they had their normal spherical lens in.) I went out and told my friend who immediately fixed it and told me after the film that it had been that way all weekend. If the average audience doesn't notice that Kevin Costner is suddenly much thinner than normal, how do we expect them to fight of the less than stellar performance of digital transmission?
  • >Storage/bandwidth won't be the bottleneck, display
    >technology will be. Sure DLP and other digital
    >projection will improve, but analog projection
    >isn't standing still, look at imax.

    I have looked at IMAX. Nice and pretty.

    In fact, I looked at IMAX ten years ago.

    See the problem?


    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • Well, I'm part of an MIT student group [mit.edu] that projects 35mm films every weekend. We get films in between "real theaters" and when they come out on video. For a second-run theater like us, $20,000 can be a lot. If new films are produced only in digital, it'll essentially kill the second-run theaters, leaving your choices an increasingly expensive show in a first-run theater or renting the video (also getting more expensive and of poorer quality).
  • Anyone have any idea when Star Wars 4, 5, and 6, will be available on DVD?
  • Hi jh,

    Do you think they'll use 4:4:4 color?

    -jab
  • "Cinecomm hopes to digitally transmit an encrypted movie via satellite, beaming it directly to theaters."

    Maybe in a while we won't have to wait for the reels to arrive in scandinavia before we can get to see it here.

    Did I hear "Terabytes"? this has got to be huge amounts of data?

    Did I beat those stupid "First Post"ers?

    Frank

  • The entire episode 1 is stored digitally, then transferred to film!
    So the very high quality trailer you see in the theater is made from a digital copy already!

    Besides, tons of films already out also have entirely digital sequences. Any CGI shot is a digital copy. They look just fine, don't they?

    The only difference this would make is that they would be projected directly from the digital copy, thus skipping the transfer to film step, which can only degrade quality.
  • I'm surprised a "news for nerds" site would harbor so much anti-digital resentment.

    Have you ever tried to develop film? Waaay more nerdy than pushing buttons on a computer.
    --
  • Have you checked out the difference between the experience of the trailers in the theatre and watching some pixellated version on the screen? I don't care how good you can compress the bugger, the industry is many many years away from reaching the equivalent resolution of film.
  • How can B/W still be a popular format even though color is now the standard. The reason? The sharper image and the mood created by the format. Even if digital becomes the standard for your run of the mill boring crap movie, the serious movies will stick to film for the same reason we still use B/W film.

    Go take a photo class and you'll understand why digital sucks.

    I'm not just a computer geek, I'm an art major as well.
  • (from the link given by Rob) The technology will also help take the ?film? out of ?Lucasfilm,?

    Am I the only one who gets extremely pissed off by cheap html-generators' question marks?

    --
    Paranoid
  • they're not gonna release a lame 320x200 pixelated POS for the big screen.

    We're looking at an improvement here. Think of all the digitally remastered home movies and the touched up re-releases of episodes III,IV, and V.
  • no IMAX is 110 mm each frame is the size of a 4*5 card. at least 16000 X 9000 pixels at 32 bits that is 18 GB per frame
  • Step 3: Digital Distribution/Projection.
    I haven't got time (or the facts and figures) to go through the math, but even without compression, I think that a
    movie recorded onto DVDs would take up a lot less space and be cheaper to mass produce than the equivalent
    in film reels ready for projection. This brings about my second question. How many DVD disks would it take to
    record a movie at "film level" resolution?

    4,000*2,000 * 4 * 24 * 60 * 120 =5,529,600,000,000
    pixels color fps spm length total in bytes

    5,529,600,000,000/3,000,000,000 = 1843 3 gig dvd

  • ...where Kodak [kodak.com] is already seeeing some very hard times, but still enjoys being Hollywood's favorite platform. It would be yet another blow to the local economy if this went away.

    bnf

  • I agree with you. They announced the intent to sell off a software division last week. That baffles me. I wish they could take a lead in this industry but they are too nervous and are moving too slow. They're current digital attempts seem like they're bound to go the way of the disk camera.

    bnf

  • On the other hand, if nobody tries to commercialize digital projection, digital projection systems will never come down in price.
  • Not an ouce. I'm unfamiliar with culture or tragedy or real drama. I've grown up on Star Trek, Star Wars, Inspector Gadget, the Gummi Bears, Knight Rider, ER, and RoboTech. I'm a product of mass/pop culture. I've never eaten any meal that cost more than 18$, I haven't seen a film except because it looked cool, and I wear clothes that I look good in.

    Of course I'm young, and I will eventually hit a French restaurant, and try a fabulous wine, buy a jacket for 200$ and lasts for 25 years, and listen to music because the composer was insane and suicidal, but for now I am easily placated and entertained.

    AS
  • Why does anybody put a DVD in their PC? I've got a 26" TV for watching movies - with matching comfy chair.
  • Did I beat those stupid "First Post"ers?

    No. You just became one.

    (don't take it personally -- I'm just in a shitty mood right now.)
    --
    - Sean
  • THX is morphing into "TotalHoaX".
  • Lets say you go to a movie and (gasp!) there's a scratch running down the left side of the movie for the entire length of the film. Do you know what the theater can do about it? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. And it drives me up the wall.

    I worked at a first-run theater for 3 years as a projectionist, and I can tell you those poor films get the s%!t beat out of them every single day. Scratches, soundtrack blurring, one time a projectionist cut out an entire scene for his "personal" viewing (remember Showgirls?). And the prints never get replaced, because the theater would have to enter into another contract lease on another print (in other words, they'd lose money, anywhere from $2 - $10,000 a week).

    What I'm saying is digital films would have the benefit of being durable, if nothing else. And, as someone made the point earlier, when was the last time anyone on this board listened to an album because they wanted to hear the imperfections of the 12" record?
  • Darth Maul sounds like a type of ceasure.

  • As a filmmaker, I feel the loss of celluloid
    will be a terrible loss to the creative process
    of bringing moving images to the screen in
    an artistic way. I've worked in both video
    and film, and film is the only way I prefer.
    There's just something about holding the strip
    of film, finding that exact frame on which you
    want the match cut, and then splicing it
    together. To me, 16mm will always be the best
    way for me to make moving images.

    I guess in a few years when digital projection
    comes, I'll be in that crowd that cries for the
    "old school" ways. Like some of us that still
    listen to vinyl and love it.

    Digital video still has a LONG way to go to match
    not only the resolution of organic film, but
    also the color range and intensity range.
    The process of converting photons to an image
    via a CCD chip is so completely different from
    the exposing process of film that it'll be a
    while before it looks good, in my humble
    opinion. So, don't go arguing about 16 million
    colors, and matching colors, because it's not
    a data issue. It's the conversion at the CCD
    chip that's just not right yet.

    Just because it's digital doesn't mean it's
    good. Just think back to VideoCD. ;)

    -Mike
  • I agree. I'm already sick of all the grainy digital effects out there. Last summer I saw The Truman Show [imdb.com] from the front of the theater, and there were trailers for Armageddon [imdb.com], Snake Eyes [imdb.com], and the like. What bothered me about these trailers were that to me, I could see the grain in many of the digital sequences. And this was at a resolution above 1280x1040. The quality of The Truman Show really impressed me, however.. The shots that were done through a fisheye lens for example looked real, not as if they were shot through a regular lens and processed digitally.
  • I read an interesting article in Hi-Fi World a while ago, where the author's point was that CD was basically limited to an (inadequate) 16-bit, 44.1Khz sample, whereas LP playback equipment has continued to improve in quality over the past 10 years.

    And if 16-bit, 44.1Khz is adequate, why do today's good CD players have huge (e.g. 128x) oversampling?

    By the way, HD CD players (DVD audio) offer 24-bit, 96Khz.. I want one..

  • Ever take a 35mm neg and blow it up to 20x24? Lots o grain isn't there?

    No, but I have projected 35mm slides shot on good film (e.g. Kodak Professional Ektachrome [kodak.com]) to well above that size.. And the grain wasn't all that noticeable. At any rate it was much better than the 1280x1000 or whatever they're showing Star Wars at.

  • You can hardly get a Real(Video/Audio) file out of their format now. Imagine playing it in 30 years after they've gone bankrupt, and everyone's using MPEG1 or 2 (with all patents expired, unless the government does something _else_ stupid like extend 'em) for home-made digital video. :)
    Seriously since MP3 (and MPEG 1/2) are formats for which there is source code out there to do encoding and decoding, it's less likely to die than formats which don't...
  • You guys are missing the point completely. When Robert Rodriguez made "El Mariachi," he shot on 16mm film, edited on 3/4 video and copied his video master to VHS. Digital cameras are more and more getting on par with film in terms of quality. When filmmakers go digital, it will make a number of things easier:

    editing. Assuming they use firewire, this means anyone with a digital camera will be able to edit at home on their PC/Mac/SGI.

    effects. one of the expensive parts about effects is getting the film transferred into a computer so you can put in all that nice CGI. Then you have to spit the composited shots back out onto another piece of film. Digital cuts both transfers out.

    distribution. Digital will allow you to send movies all over for cheap. Much cheaper than printing a copy of your reel. This is not just limited to theaters, either. If you hook up a regular vcr, you can print dozens of copies off your digital master.

    I long for the day when wannabe Robert Rodriguez's like me can make movies that easily.

    So there.

    Zagmar
  • From my data communication book last year:
    "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of digital tapes cruising down the highway."

    Zagmar

  • 35mm... Ummm. Where to begin. The only limit on film is the factor of enlargement/grain. Not so with digital - you have a FIXED resolution. It'll look just as shitty blown up three times as the 35mm, if not worse. Grain is normal - people are used to it. Pixelation is really obvious. Ever look at an IMAX theater? That's 70mm film. Looks DAMN good to me, dude.

    Of course, none of that matters. You only get the effects of 35mm when you show it on a big screen. Gone to a theater recently? They are all small screens, which is why "Clerks" looks as good as "Hamlet" (which was shot in 70mm.)

    And I swear this is my last comment on this topic.
    Ever watch "Boogie Nights?" This is the scene where it's December 31 1979, and Jack Horner is saying he'll never shoot on video because it looks and sounds like shite. All you filmophiles are Jack. The fact is, there will always be a small group of people who will pay more for better quality. But just like porn and music, regualar movies are gonna go digital. Think of it this way. You and a classmate both get out of your film majors at the same time. You both go to the same money people with the same quality script and demo reels. Now. Do the money people finance you, who insists on using film, preferably 35mm? Or do they finance your classmate, who'll shoot on a borrowed Canon digital camera? That's right. Because film is too damn expensive, for too little a jump in quality, to be justified.

    Zagmar
  • Film is also expensive and more complicated to replicate than digital data.
  • Ever hear of Plesantville, guys? Almost the whole movie was transferred to digital to do the editing. It was shot on film, then scanned in at quite high resolution (something like 4000x7000 or something) and then desaturated pixel by pixel. It was then transfered back onto film.

    The only drawback is the amount of bandwidth needed. I suppose instead of beaming the movie to the theatre, they could ship DVDs to the theatres. In fact, they would probably copy the DVD data (which will probably be encrypted) to hard disk. I worked fixing computers at an amusement park, and the had a 3D simulator ride that ran off of computer projectors and had 20-odd disk array of drives to store all the data.

    Film is bulky and heavy, but has (theoretically) infinite bandwidth. Digital is small and light, but bandwidth intensive. That is from basic Fourier analysis.
  • I don't think that it is that simple to design a system to play back ancient analog media. Think of the 8track. I have never even seen one in my life time, much less heard one.

    In 100 years, I think it would be easier to write an MPEG decoder than to make an 8track player.
  • Assuming, ofcourse, you happened to be covered by that satellite in question... Scandinavia is generally out of reach of any of the major satellites, which would likely be placed over USA only, central Europe at most. As a result it would in the end probably mean slower and poorer deliveries to Scandinavia. Not to mention "Just a minute... we're having atmospheric interference... Screening wwill continue in about 2 hours."

    -Donwulff
  • Hey! Guess what! Your experiment above proves that CCD is less lossy than film. You are not the only to notice this. There is a company in Hollywood that has made a box that takes "cold" digital shots and "warms" them up by applying the effective transfer function of film to the digital data.

    The problem does not lie in CCDs or "digital". This kind of thinking is akin to the freaks who think that listening to vinyl recordings through tube amps is a truer reproduction than CD recordings through a transistor amp. Despite the fact the signal from the record goes through the nastiest-ass filter you've ever seen (RIAA equalization). The sound is not purer, it is more distorted, via the analog method. It might sound better, but you are fooling yourself if you think it is a truer representation.

    Same goes for film.

    -todd-
  • I like how confident you are about the future. In my version of the future, I simply say, "Computer! 8 track player, Earth, circa 1972". Problem solved...
  • Perhaps you should actually go and *see* the technology in action before you put it down.

    At the last *two* Consumer Electronics Shows in Vegas, TI was there showing DLP on a screen I estimate was half the size of a normal theater screen. I think the DLP unit was 1024 x something. First, they showed cuts of various films. Looked awesome, no pixels. Then they showed some HDTV pictures. I was blown away! Looked like I was looking out of a window, very lifelike, almost 3D. Unlike film (especially 35mm film). Later, I went close to the screen to see if I could see pixels. I could see them at about three feet from the screen. Otherwise, they blended so damn well I just couldn't tell.

    Given a bit more time to get the resolution up to 1500x, on a fullsize screen, I am confident that DLP will look just great showing film!

    -todd-
  • The "warmth" you are talking about is distorition. It might sound better, but it is distortion, nonetheless.
  • I can't wait to hear the wanking from people who remember the good ol' days of flat-2D 30-degree passive film viewing...
  • Apart from all the tech aspects, does anyone know what effect this may have on the smaller non franchised cinemas? Not all those that I know of are purely art house, so they need the big releases.

    Can anyone else see the distributers phasing out film as quickly as possible at the behest of the large cinema chains?
  • As with most things, this has an upside and a downside. Like MP3, digital film *might* make it easier for more indie films to make it into theaters. This is a big maybe. It could also solidify the hold the major movie factories have on American cinema right now.
    Either way, the only way digital will be good is if it can maintain either the same level of quality as film, or improve it. I was once forced to watch a movie on one of those hideous digital screens (looked to be about HDTV in terms of quality) and it just isn't the same. You simply don't need digital to make or show a good film.
    Kubrick never used digital. Hell, he never even used stereo! Yet the experience of seeing a film like that in the theater is amazing.
    Right now the whole digital film(oxymoron) thing is mostly aimed at easing distribution for major movie studios. I think this is a bad thing because the major movie studios pump mostly crap into cinemas. In this case it dosen't matter how good it looks. Crap is still crap.
  • It depends on the projector. Lousy digital projector = lousy picture, regardless of what's being displayed. How many theaters are going to want to put up the cash to get these hugely expensive projectors when they get no economic benefit in return?
  • In 100 years I'll be gone too and I won't care how my pictures look, but in the meantime I'll use film. I've taken pictures with a wide variety of digital cameras and real cameras. Digital just can't come close to film in terms of quality. This is not to say that years from now digital won't be just as good. I'm sure digital will catch up eventually, but we're talking about right now.
  • You want to know who to blame for all of this? Blame MTV. Ever since The Real World started, all visual forms of entertainment have gotten screwed up.

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