MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, April 14th, 2008 - 10 Comments »
Be Sociable, Share!

Digital Cinema Spin

There is a story in Variety today that reports the facts, but misses the real subtext. The journalism of it isn’t my issue.
The story, as it did at ShoWest, ties Digital Projection to 3D… which is a bit of a scam. 3D is cool, yes. Avatar and animation are the cash cows that are being used to force the issue, just as the Star Wars trilogy was offered as a motive a decade ago.
The truth is simpler. The cost of digital projectors got low enough and the belief in sustainability got high enough that the studios – which stand to save billions every year – have decided that it’s in their interest to pay their share for a technology that will benefit them a whole lot more than it will benefit the theater owners.
The story today is really about the studios playing games after having laid the public groundwork back at ShoWest. They got the media to sell the “3D is the future” con so that if it falls apart, it looks like the theaters owners are taking something away from the public, who they are scared of losing, even though the reality is that they are still showing up in huge numbers that ticket sales are dropping minimally in the face of so many alternate options for the delivery of same films. And now, behind the scenes, the studios are trying to force theater owners to pay for more than the offer that was on the table just months ago.
And in this story, NATO is pushing back and saying, “if you don’t pay for it, it will not happen… here’s a timetable… now YOU deal with Cameron and Katzenberg!” AND Lasseter, who just announced that all Pixar and Disney CG films will be available in 3D.
But in the end, this has very little to do with ten 3D releases a year… and has a lot to do with cold, hard cash. The studios want to squeeze a billion or so from the exhibitors over the next five years. The exhibitors have been saying for a long time that they are happy to have these projectors, but they will not make more money because of them, so the studios need to pay. And of course, the studios will be in profit on digital projection alone in less than 4 years.
In other words… it’s the same old negotiation right before “escrow” closes..

Be Sociable, Share!

10 Comments »

10 Responses to “Digital Cinema Spin”

  1. mutinyco says:
    April 14, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    I don’t think Spielberg is anti-digital. After all, he’s doing Tintin. I think just for Indy, he’s trying to keep the experience as old fashioned as he can.

  2. movielocke says:
    April 14, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    all of spielberg’s films are cut on film, I guess with tintin he will finally have to convert to an avid or FCP or Edios or whatever works with the digital files captured by the bleeding edge cameras they are bound to use. Or the phrase, “cut and print” will take on new meaning as Spielberg selected takes will be printed to film so they can cut on the flatbed or movieola (I can’t remember which one he and Kahn use, i think it’s a movieola).

  3. jeffmcm says:
    April 14, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    I believe Spielberg and Kahn finally made the transition to Avid a few movies ago.

  4. Wrecktum says:
    April 14, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    Not much of a story. Fithian is doing what he’s supposed to do: support theater owners. He’s wrong, and NATO’s wrong in their argument, but it’s his job to tow the company line.

  5. David Poland says:
    April 14, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Wrong how, Wreck?

  6. movielocke says:
    April 15, 2008 at 2:21 am

    nope, every Spielberg film has been cut on film, he’s never cut on an Avid, Kahn cuts all his other films on Avid, but when he’s working with Spielberg he cuts on film. Spielberg did consent to using CGI pre-vis on War of the Worlds, but it wasn’t cut on an avid.

  7. movielocke says:
    April 15, 2008 at 2:41 am

    it’s worth pointing out that Natural Born Killers was the first major studio film to be cut on an avid (and virtually every print review pointed this out as another reason to dislike the film, since it meant no thought whatsoever went into the cutting), so Avid being used for films is only about a 13 year old innovation. and the period when AVID exploded in popularity (and when Murch won for English Patient, the first digitally edited film to win) and during the big switchover from 1994 to 1997 Spielberg was on hiatus from directing
    Spielberg has also never used a DI.

  8. jeffmcm says:
    April 15, 2008 at 2:47 am

    Thanks for the info, I guess I was thinking of Scorsese, the other holdout who made the transition a couple of years ago (I think?).

  9. LexG says:
    April 15, 2008 at 2:52 am

    NATURAL BORN KILLERS OWNS YOUR ASS.
    I’VE SEEN IT 413 TIMES.

  10. Cadavra says:
    April 15, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    I don’t know what’s creepiest: that someone would watch a movie 413 times, that he would brag about it, or that he actually kept count!

The Hot Blog

Comments Most Recent Archives

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon