Studios Will Stop Distributing Conventional Film Prints Here By End Of 2013: Report
Time is running out for theaters that haven’t made the switch to digital projection. Studios’ use of conventional 35 mm prints “is projected to cease in the United States and other major markets by the end of next year, with global cutoff likely to happen by the end of 2015,” according to the latest IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service report. There’s still a ways to go: The firm says that 51.5% of worldwide screens had digital projectors at the end of 2011, an increase of 82% from 2010. But IHS notes that soon it won’t be sufficient to have a digital projector. Director Peter Jackson is lobbying for theater owners pay for the software upgrade needed to show his upcoming The Hobbit films at 48 frames a second. That’s the speed at which he’s shooting the movies, up from the conventional 24 frames. At the end of 2011 about 50,000 of the world’s 63,825 digital screens, including 19,000 in the U.S., would be capable of being upgraded. Theaters with Series 2 DLP and Sony projectors will be able to accommodate Jackson. Pressure to upgrade won’t abate after The Hobbit. James Cameron plans to shoot his follow-ups to Avatar at 60 frames a second. (Incidently, IHS’ figure on the worldwide total of digital venues is slightly higher than the 2011 tally from the MPAA, which counted 62,684, of which 44% were in the U.S. and Canada.)
For the most part the IHS report covers the ground we explored at April’s CinemaCon. But it has some interesting factoids regarding the transition from celluloid to digital prints. The firm says that at one point distributors used 13B feet of film a year, equal to five trips to the moon and back. By 2010, though, film usage was down to about 5B feet. One big reason for the shift: The price of silver, heavily used in film processing, soared from $5 an ounce to about $25 this year. The heat is on for all theaters to switch to digital projection.
Didn’t Tarantino say he’d stop making movies if they stopped projecting film? Does this mean no Kill Bill 3?
We’re forgetting that who we all have to thank for the death of film and filmmaking, as it truly should be (with FILM), is the one-idea wonder, George Lucas. His push to get rid of celluloid and switch to digital (aka video) caused so many theatres in the US to close in the last couple of years because they couldn’t afford to convert to digital, and make it very difficult for filmmakers who aren’t huge to even be able to shoot on film. Roger Ebert said that when compared the functions of the brain watching film vs. digital; with digital, it’s like your brain goes into a trance, a sleep if you will, while the flicker of actual frames of film one after another is stimulating to the brain, like watching a dream. As Tradition said, there really is no reason to go to the cinema anymore now… you can project a DVD at home. It really is pretty much the same thing. If only MaxiVision 48 had taken off.
Shut the hell up!
Gosh. I’m sad to see the art of film projection become an endangered species, but you can’t blame it all on one person. I’m sick to death of Lucas-bashing. People just want someone to blame, and it’s pathetic. The world is embracing digital projection, and filmmakers are taking it one-by-one, and enthusiastically at that.
I shoot and process my own Super 8mm, and you don’t hear me bitching to Lucas, Fincher, Scorsese, Soderbergh, etc.
And don’t say things like going to the cinema is no better than DVD at home. The social experience of sharing a movie for the first time in a room full of strangers will never diminish.
So…out of curiousity, how recent is this report? Is it more recent than David Hancock’s report in November that said (essentially) the exact same things or is that report where these facts and figures are coming from? If there is a more recent write-up on this digital/analogue issue, I would really like to read it or look into it.
Read the article again. Jackson is 48FPS. Cameron is 60FPS. Points made with incorrect facts make you look stupid, stupid.
GREAT! Now movies will look like TV. Just what we’ve been waiting for!
Other than a great conversational piece at a party or dinner table with friends or relatives, I don’t see the big deal. So what? It’s being replaced by something better, just like typewriters were replaced with computers.
staff writer at iGlobalMuslim, LLC.
The theatre conversion will be finished just in time for the studios to announce that they will stream 4k directly into the the home day-and-date with the theatres.
Why does this matter. These people who try to dress up this all like it matters. A movie is a movie regardless of what it is done on or where it is shown.
I really fail to see how many of the comments in this thing can be given any more degree of care then “….who cares.”
I’ve never had this magical cinema experience as some people claim to have, It’s still the same movie that i could later buy on dvd or back in older times Vhs. It’s no different whether on a tv or on a big screen.
Maybe i just don’t care about the technical side of things, but it really does make me feel like “…….who outside of this place even cares”
And why are we still acting like Peter Jackson matters? He’s disgraced his name far beyond repair at this point regardless what kind of films he wants to make.
I have retired from the drive-in business. I can’t afford the digital conversion at my age. My drive-in only ran for about 4 months a season. Not worth the investment.
I own an 8 plex that that runs second run movies. We charge $3 for a ticket. A family of 5 can see a movie for $15. Young families as you can imagine are our main source of customers. The theater has been serving the community for 25+ years. When they change to all digital we will be forced to close. At $3 a pop there is no money to upgrade the equipment. Many other theaters are in the same situation. 100′s will be forced to close, some say as many as 2000 theaters will close. Progress has come I guess, for 1000′s it will be the end of them being able to see a movie in a theater at all. Recently in politic’s Hollywood has been preaching how they love the people and dislike the greedy rich folk. But in the end their greed is the same as everyone’s.