Digital Production in the 21''* Century
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Guy, Thomas Edison, Lee de Forest, Vitaphone, and other allied processes that
have brought us into the Dolby stereo age of digital sound and image processing.
From black and white paper negatives, the cinema has moved swiftly through
silver nitrate film, safety film, 3-strip Technicolor, Eastman monopack color film,
moveable mattes, split-screen “doubling,” until it now stands on the threshold of
the final video transformation, where the film camera ceases to exist, and is replaced
by an entirely digital imaging system that will soon replace conventional 35mm
production and exhibition process. As critic James Stemgold recently noted,
“Within two years, movie theaters are expected to begin
installing the first generation of digital projectors. And reels of
35-millimeter film - which are several feet in diameter and
very heavy - would, at long last, disappear, to be replaced with
electronic projectors that use magnetic tape or discs.” (C l)
Using the new “light valve” projection system, Texas Instruments and JVC have
both created new machines that use high-definition digital video projection to throw
the image onto the theater screen, and exhibitors, as a group, are enthusiastically
awaiting the change. Said the president of one large chain of multiplex theaters,
“we can’t wait for the day we’re unshackled from the 35-millimeter prints”
(Stemgold C2).
The advantages for studios and distribution companies are also obvious.
No more shipping of prints, no more theft of prints. With the use of satellite
technology, the “movie” to be screened can be directly downloaded from a satellite,
then stored in computer memory at the theater, ready to be screened as needed,
without the rips, tears or scratches that one would find in a conventional 35mm
print. Electronic encryption of satellite signals will make piracy all but impossible.
One method, as described by Robert Lehmer, “uses a 128 bit algorithm which
changes every 1/3 of a second. It would take a super computer six months and
between S4 to $6 million to break the code” (Willis 15). So for reasons of cost,
security, and ostensibly of image quality, it seems that digital projection as a way
of life in theaters is now only months away.
While films will still originate on 35mm film for a short time in the future,
it seems inevitable that we are headed for a fully-digitized future in the area of
moving image production, reception and distribution. And the quality of new “light
valve” projection image is being enthusiastically embraced by filmmakers, as well.
Notes Martin Cohen, the director of post-production at Dreamworks SKG, “1 went
into one demonstration where the only way I could tell the difterence between the
film and the electronic version was that the film one had that jittery movement and
the electronic one didn’t” (Stemgold C2). This new technology, which has been