This lecture given by Lord Puttnam said the film industry needs to embrace digital technology otherwise it will share a similar fate to that of the music industry which has witnessed a massive drop in profits due to illegal internet trading.
Puttnam says that digital technology has the potential to substantially reduce distribution costs. Each physical film print costs $1000 or more, which quickly adds up, as in the case of Troy which was released simultaneously on 16,000 screens worldwide at a cost in the region of $16 million.
Digital distribution is taking a long time to catch on. There are only a handful of digital screens in the UK, and not many more in the United States. It’s countries such as China and Brazil which are leading the digital revolution; China, for example, already has 64 digital screens and plans to have at least 500 by the time of the Beijing Olympics.
“The problem is a relatively easy one to identify: Who pays? Solving it is a lot harder. Exhibitors, that’s to say the owners of cinema chains, have relatively little incentive to install or pay for new digital projectors. After all, digital doesn’t significantly add to the audience’s enjoyment of a film. The distributors, who will be the main beneficiaries in economic terms, effectively need to agree a model with the exhibitors whereby, although the projectors sit in the cinemas, it is they who are defraying a significant part of their costs – perhaps, for example, by paying exhibitors a fee to show their films thereby sharing in the costs of the projection equipment. This would be an almost complete reversal of the current model under which exhibitors effectively pay ‘rentals’ to the distributor out of the box-office gross in return for the right to screen a film.”
- Incentive for exhibitors to install digital projectors?
- Changes to audiences experience due to digital?
- Distributors benefits?
- Digital screens in UK?
- Digital cinema - media convergence?
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