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Popular Culture Review
each theater to install, versus $30,000 on a standard 35mm “platter” projector
(Fleeman 50), theater owners will probably split the cost of the installation with a
consortium of the major distributors, inasmuch as all sides will benefit, at least
economically, from the changeover. Indeed, Robert Lehmer of Cinecomm confirms
this scenario, noting that “our plan has us paying for the installation and retrofitting
of cinemas [with the new digital projection equipment]. In fact, our business model
is similar to that of Western Electric’s business model - when theaters made the
shift to sound in the 1930s, Western Electric paid for it, and I think that’s the only
way it will happen” (Willis 15).
While not wishing to appear apocalyptic, I feel that the changeover, once
it begins, will be both swift and brutal, exactly like the switch from silent movies
to sound films, as noted by Lehmer above. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, two
competing methods battled for dominance in the marketplace: sound on film, and
sound on disc. Sound on film, using optical sound tracks, eventually became the
industry standard, but even the cost of switching from one medium to another, or
of re-wiring the theaters for sound was insufficient to halt the switch in the face of
overwhelming public demand.
Here, we have a slightly different situation, in that demand for the switch
to digital seems to be dictated more by economic concerns than any other factor,
and by a handful of technologically-entranced mainstream filmmakers, who
nevertheless control a significant portion of the domestic and international boxoffice. But aesthetic concerns - matters of film grain, contrast, the entire magic
lantern process of throwing light though colored plastic onto a screen - will fade
and dwindle in the public consciousness, almost as if they had never existed. Already,
films are routinely subjected to fully-electronic post-production, and then re-scanned
back onto 35mm film for conventional theatrical projection; digital projection is
only the next logical step in the chain. The new model of digital distribution, as
described by Robert Lehmer, proceeds in the following manner:
At the distributor, a movie is encrypted and compressed, and
that data file is given to us. We take it to our hub where we then
up-link the signal and then transmit it to a satellite — we think
the most economic method is satellite, but there are other
options. The distributor tells us what theaters are authorized to
receive that signal, and the signal is addressed to each authorized
theater. The signal is then received at the theater via a small
satellite dish, and it is stored on-site in our theater management
system. At that point the theater takes over, and when it’s time
for a screening, the signal goes to a projector where it is
decompressed and de-encrypted. (Willis 15)