Film technologies

Oppertunity or Threat?
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?

Digital Democracy

Citizen journalism - the democratisation of the media enabled by advancements of heldhelled digital equipment and their increasing availability combined with web 2.0 features like blogging lets members of the public contribute to mainstream media.

Emily Bell talks about the difference between the professional journalist and the citizen contributor - and the fact that the work of the paid journalist is not always qualitativley better than the amateur citizen.

Googlezon presents a vision of the future where the collaboration of Googles storage space and bandwidth with Amazons huge commercial infrastructure to create an environment where members of the public are paid to provide entertaining material for the news based on their popularity, and the offline printed press is aimed at the older, 'elite' generation.

The age of permanent net revolution

~Endism is the perspective that sees new technologies as replacing older ones.
e.g CD roms replacing books
TV Replacing Radio ect.

~Media Ecosystem: The interactions between new and old media are complex. In science, an ecosystem is a dynamic system in which living organisms interact with one another and with their environment. The 'organisms' in our media ecosystem include broadcast and narrowcast television, movies, radio, print and the internet.

~Narrowcast TV: specialist content is aimed at subscription-based audiences and distributed via digital channels.

~The difference between the Web and the Internet is that the Web is enourmous, but its jsut one kind of traffic that runs on the internets tracks and signalling

~Push Pull mediums: Pull mediums - nothing comes to you unless you choose it, youre in charge, e.g. The Web. Push mediums - a select band of producers decide on the content, create it and push it at a passive audience, e.g. Television.

~Blogging- keeping an online diary - suggests that the traffic in ideas and cultrual products isnt a one way street, as it gives everyone access to publication media.

Film technologies: production distrubution exhibition

Technology

~Blue Ray? Why was it not successful?

~3D Cinema? How many are there? How popular are they?

~Celluloid? How many people still use Celluloid? Why?

~Digital Projectors - decline in cinema popularity stops cinemas affording to go digital.



Insitutions

~How much cheaper is Digital than Celluoid?

~Financial losses through film piracy? who? howmuch?





Audience

~How have the public responded to 3D cinema?

~How feasable is it to legally distribute films via the internet to the public?

~How many people still go to the cinema? why not?

The Fourth Estate

What is 'the Fourth Estate'?
The fourth estate refers to the press. The other estates are the courts, religion and parliament. Edmund Burke (18th century) said that the fourth estate was the most important one because it checked on abuses of power by the other three.

Is new media technology responsible for the decline in newspapers?
Teletext has been a faster method for news since the 70's and 24 hour news channels on satelite TV and the internet completely usurped newspapers in the 90's. As new media technologies are providing the news in faster and cheaper ways (The guardian post so much content online that entire issues can often be read online, free of charge), the printed press becomes old news before it is even read.

What does it mean "maybe the internet is already the cyberspace of the fourth estate"?
This means that although the internet has caused the decline in newspapers by providing faster, cheaper access to their content, the origional purpose of the fourth estate can still be carried out by these new media technologies. We can still be told what those in power do not want us to know but it will be from the internet rather than a newspaper.

Feedback #1

Well done Toby - excellent summary and you have found some interesting statistics to back up your pointsn(although I am not sure about the feature film reel costing £700? I am sure it is much more than this...) My only concern is that you haven't sourced where you found those statistics - include a link or at least name of source. You would need to do that in the exam so for revision purposes it would be worth going back and amending this.

A/1

Digital Technology and the film industry

Production:
Advances in digital technology mean that films can be shot straight onto a Hard Drive rather than using a reel of film. This is much cheaper (An average length feature film print costs around £700), also HDs are smaller so they cost less to transport, and can hold much more footage than rolls of film. This allows more creativity in shooting a film as the low cost enables experimentation with the story. Digital tehnology has opened more opertunities in post production aswell, for example, frames from 35mm film can be scanned into a computor for digital editing - this enables effects such as colour grading, shifting focus with lighting or adding completely new elements. This use of technology allows far more creativity with editing as decision changes in the past would not have been possible because of the cost of a re-shoot. It also introduces the possibilty of CGI which enables imaginative scenes that would be impossible to shoot profilmically.

Distribution:
The delivery of film reels to cinemas is a costly process and the use of digital technology would irradicate this, enabling cinemas to download the encrypted film directly. Also, digital technology has introduced DVDs, a more appealing non-linear way of experiencing a film. However, due to the publics increasing access to advanced technology, piracy is becoming more common, lowering cinema ticket sales because people are seeing the films before they are shown. Hollywood claims piracy has cost it $6bn (£3.2bn), digitising films means that copies are easily made and distributed illegally which is a big threat to the industry. By the time the Phantom Menace reached Asia for example, box office receipts were far lower than expected. Piracy was blamed because so many people had already seen it. The second film was given a simultaneous world wide cinema release as a result, probably a good idea as 10 million people went online to download it.

Exhibition:
A projection of a 35mm film roll picks up any imperfection in the frames like dust or scratches, impairing the visual experiance whereas a projection of a film shot digitally gives a crystal clear picture, just as the director intended. Advances in technology have introduced home cinema systems to the general public. This could be a threat to cinemas as one of the last deterrences of viewing DVDs or pirated films was the idea of the "cinema experience" beating any alternative, as this high definition, big screen, high sound quality is being brought into peoples front rooms, they are less likely to pay for it elsewhere. However, digital projectors in cinemas will bring a wide range of new oppertunities as they will be able to project anything with a digital input- from a youtube video to multiplayer gaming, possibly turning the cinema into a universal entertainment centre.