Converting theaters big and small to digital projection involves a complex mix of standards, art, money, technology, and logistics.

BY MICHAEL GOLDMAN

As has been well-documented, the rollout of digital projection systems into theaters was, for years, notoriously slow getting off the ground, largely due to financial roadblocks. Nevertheless, once the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI — a consortium of seven major Hollywood studios) unveiled its DCI specification standard in 2005, designed to assure interoperability of digital files for major Hollywood movies at all cinemas, this rollout began picking up steam. Indeed 2007 might well go down as the year the trend really accelerated. During the last year, several major exhibitors launched digital screens, started installation projects to revamp their infrastructures for digital cinema, or announced plans to do so in the near future.

On the multiplex level, for instance, an example of this new momentum would be Muvico Entertainment‘s Rosemount 18 in Chicago — a facility that Muvico opened in 2007 with 18 digital auditoriums, all featuring Sony‘s newest 4k projectors. One of the world‘s largest exhibitors of independent film fare, the Landmark Cinema chain also has an ongoing initiative to plug Sony 4k projectors into theaters across the nation, and several others are following suit. And many hundreds of screens across the country are already outfitted with 2k projectors from a variety of manufacturers.

Various studies indicate there are currently close to 4,000 D-cinema screens (largely 2k, but that momentum at the major chains will likely move to 4k shortly) installed in the United States, and that number is expected to go significantly higher in the next couple of years. Indeed, some studies suggest that more than half of all theatrical screens in the world will be digital within the next five years.

“The whole idea behind a single specification is to have a common delivery format for playback everywhere, similar to the way things functioned with 35mm for so many years,” explains Curt Behlmer, Senior V.P. of Digital Cinema Operations at Technicolor Digital Cinema, one of the nation‘s largest installation vendors for cinemas converting to digital technology. “Before the [DCI spec], there were cinemas with digital projection, but there were lots of proprietary systems in the field. Studios therefore had to create a large number of delivery masters to feed those proprietary systems. Now we have something operable and structured and consistent in presentation and quality — a global standard. It just makes sense to distribute motion picture content worldwide in one format and keep the cost of making multiple versions down and [avoid] interchangeability problems in different places. We aren‘t fully there yet — not all the installations are fully DCI compliant, but they are as close as the equipment allows today, and it will only get better.”

In other words, on the exhibition front anyway, the writing is clearly on the wall and, sooner or later, it will be in digital script for virtually every theater owner interested in exhibiting Hollywood movies to the masses. Even those who also exhibit other types of content, Behlmer suggests, will benefit from DCI compliancy because properly installed systems will also accommodate content that is below DCI standards. Those systems that are not DCI compliant, on the other hand, simply won‘t be able to play Hollywood content once digital cinema becomes ubiquitous.

Fitting indies into the paradigm

All of which begs the question, what about those who do not exhibit Hollywood fare, or do so only infrequently? What about smaller independent exhibitors, devoid of corporate parents? Art houses? The experimental and multimedia folks from the so-called micro-cinema movement?

The simple answer is their worlds are already going digital to one degree or another just like the high-end exhibition universe. Ironically, one could even argue they have led the digital assault by democratizing the process with lower-end technology and cost-effectively allowing more players into the game by helping artists completely avoid the expensive film prints. Many people who run small exhibition spaces are finding it far easier to replace aging 16mm projection systems with prosumer or home-theater style digital-projection systems of one type or another than to service, upgrade or replace those 16mm systems.

“Many [independent] filmmakers I talk to are finding it harder to deal with 16mm projection,” says filmmaker James Flowers, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas, Dallas, who is currently in the process of crafting his doctoral dissertation on experimental film and how it is changing in the digital era. “In other words, virtually all projectors in microcinemas and other small facilities are not new. To a lot of those people, digital projection looks better than hauling out an old, 30- to 40-year-old film projector. There are some filmmakers holding out, and many facilities keep their film projectors as long as they can, even while they add digital projection, but for experimental filmmaking I think the rise of digital projection is inevitable.”

The difference between “digital cinema” in this universe, however, and the world of high-end, multiplex exhibition is a matter of degree. The debate over whether there should be minimum standards for exhibiting non-Hollywood fare and how to make it affordable to do so is less clearly defined than what‘s going on with major multiplexes.

Even the question of what, exactly, constitutes an “independent” movie exhibition business to begin with is subject to interpretation. Within that larger umbrella, certainly those who can — and many can‘t, or simply don‘t need to — are moving toward business models whereby they can exhibit digitally within the next few years by embracing the DCI spec.

“There is really no firm definition of what is an indie, but for our purposes, anyone that is not a publicly-traded company and has less than 1,000 screens worldwide is considered an independent,” explains Wayne Anderson, Managing Director of the Maryland-based Cinema Buying Group (CBG), which defines itself as a nonprofit purchasing co-op aligned with the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). CBG is designed to help independent cinemas and small chains purchase equipment from manufacturers at a significant cost savings, and lately the company‘s focus has been on helping members find a way to get on board the digital cinema train. Last year CBG announced an RFP (Request for Proposal) initiative aimed at finding qualified digital cinema installation vendors willing to negotiate a manageable price for installing DCI-compliant projection systems into member cinemas in the coming years.

Anderson says 8,305 screens (7,585 in the United States and 720 in Canada) signed up to be part of CBG‘s digital program before the organization had to cut off registration in the program in order to lock in a set number of screens to permit negotiations with vendors. CBG has whittled 12 RFP proposals down to four finalists, all from major installation players in the digital cinema game — Access Integrated Technologies, Digiserve, Kodak and Technicolor Digital Cinema. He says CBG hopes to decide in early 2008 the vendor and begin the process of converting those 8,000-plus independent screens.

“These are independents, but they all play Hollywood products at one point or another, so it would serve no purpose to make any kind of deal that did not include DCI compliancy,” says Anderson. “The VPF (virtual print fee) model is how we can work with the vendor to make it affordable. We will pay over a period of time, as many as eight to 12 years, for the equipment, with a small buyback from the exhibitors themselves. For independents, it can get quite complicated because they have fewer screens in their facilities — some only have one or two — and they still have to install the same server technology that a multiplex with 20 screens would need. So the cost per screen goes up in that sense. That is why it was so important to have strength in numbers, which we‘ve been able to achieve with so many cinemas joining our initiative.”

Still many “independents” focus on alternative product and rarely show Hollywood fare at all. Behlmer argues that even at this level, if commercial cinema of any type is the goal, owners of such facilities should look for opportunities to convert to DCI-compliant technology sooner or later.

“At the end of the day, the cost differential if you examine all the components together might not be as big a gap as some people might think,” he says. “Think of the upstream work for this type of entertainment — mastering and distribution. The more everyone works the same way, the more the costs will come down. You don‘t have that larger volume with the more niche or specialty formats in terms of mastering and delivery. So it‘s a double-edged sword. But look at film festivals if you want to foreshadow what might happen if parts of the industry don‘t at least try to pursue a single standard. I‘ve worked plenty of festivals — you go in the back and find projection booths with multiple tape decks and servers and tons of gear and different things going on. That scares me. With the proliferation of multiple equipment requirements, you will have to service all that equipment and buy all kinds of content to make it work. So the goal of a common deliverable is something everyone would probably prefer.”

Although that goal might be admirable, others would argue that while a transition to digital projection is badly needed for independent venues, it remains unreasonable to expect them to tolerate the financial and logistical upheavals of bringing expensive DCI-compliant systems into their world any time soon.

Ira Deutchman, a producer of indie films and former president of Fine Line Features, is CEO/President of New York‘s Emerging Pictures, a company dedicated to using new technologies to digitally distribute and exhibit independent films. Deutchman argues that “digital theater chains” equipped with digital projection systems should emerge to specialize in independent or alternative product.

“What we thought of doing was putting [digital] projection equipment into alternative spaces — museums, performing art centers and existing art houses,” he says. “It was a real struggle at the beginning. Indie distributors have a traditional way of doing business, so it was difficult to convince them this was a worthwhile idea. It was difficult to convince content creators as well, but the barriers have broken down inch by inch in the last four years to the point where we handle films in our theaters from every indie distributor and even a few companies aligned with major studios. On the exhibition side, we now have 30 screens in places like art institutions, and we are helping them build film programs. The problem, of course, has been that if we were to adhere to the letter of the DCI standard, the projection equipment plus server — because, after all, you are talking about a system, not just a projector — it would [require] an investment of more than $100,000. So it would be difficult for these facilities to have the bandwidth that would require.”

Officials at Emerging Pictures, therefore, felt that the DCI standard was beside the point for their members. However, Deutchman argues, that does not mean that quality is any less important to them, or to independent filmmakers, in general. Therefore Emerging offers a digital infrastructure program that adheres to its own “i-Cinema standard.” The idea was to find a quality alternative approach somewhere between the DCI specification and the concept of “just throwing a DVD up on an old LCD projector,” according to Deutchman.

“This approach is affordable and puts a theatrical-quality image up on the screen,” he says. “The i-Cinema spec [consists of] parameters and guidelines — minimum technology quality suggestions for digital-cinema exhibition — that we offer and suggest. No one has agreed to it as a standard, but it is close to that for many people who are trying similar things around the world, like Rain Networks [of Brazil], for instance.”

The i-Cinema concept suggests all exhibited imagery should be shown on screens at least 26-feet wide, projected by 3-chip DLP projectors in a resolution at least on the HD (720p, 1280 x 720 pixels) level, using the VC-1 or AVC-H.264 codecs for interoperability. Emerging Pictures proposes to encode, encrypt and deliver those files to participating cinemas via the Web, played out and controlled by proprietary software at Emerging‘s main facility in New York.

“This would let independents talk to each other, and at least their systems would be inter-operable,” Deutchman adds. “Plus, smaller films could be shipped to cinemas around the world over the Internet, creating an enormous amount of flexibility in terms of the way smaller movies are distributed. Of course, it is a wholly green approach, which is also important to us. And it changes the notion of theatrical distribution being based on this single asset — a 35mm film print — that only makes you money when it is in use. Many of our cinemas show films only a few times a week, so the use of a digital file also makes sense from that point of view for these people. We feel this is an example of how high-end consumer [technology] and lower-end professional technology are clearly meeting somewhere in the middle. Our philosophy is that if it is a good image on the screen, and affordable, we are interested in it. Why should independents wait five or six years until [DCI-capable] technology is affordable?”

Microcinema

Even this model would not necessarily fit in the microcinema universe. These exhibitors routinely screen short films, art projects and multimedia works in rooms that were never intended for theatrical exhibition and lack so much as a projection booth. Plus the nature of the works themselves and the institutions involved in the microcinema movement all seem to work against even the notion of standardization to begin with. These exhibitors certainly don‘t have to worry about exhibiting Hollywood fare any time soon.

Houston‘s Aurora Picture Show typifies this kind of institution. Aurora‘s mission is to support artists who produce media, and as part of that mission, to help them exhibit that media. That results in the exhibition of short films and videos and live presentations of various types of significant audiovisual components. Aurora holds two or three screenings a month in a converted church building in a space that is approximately 30 feet by 40 feet, with no projection room. From a simple AV cart positioned in the middle of the audience, staff members run screenings using either an old 16mm projector or, more frequently, a $2,000 Mitsubishi consumer digital projector, and occasionally, a more sophisticated Panasonic projector borrowed from a patron of the organization.

Andrea Grover, Aurora‘s founder and Executive Director, explains that the size and nature of the space, and the works exhibited there, preclude the use of, or even the need for, an expensive, professional-level, DCI-compliant projector.

“That would be too bright for the room anyway,” she says. “Our space more or less demands a [consumer-style projector], but a new HD projector would be lovely for us to have. Generally we only screen short films, mostly experimental in nature, avant-garde, artist-made, often involving various types of new media.”

Such microcinemas hardly have budgets large enough for DCI-style technology, even if they had the space. Many people would even suggest such material is a different application than commercial cinema anyway and therefore has no need for Hollywood‘s standards. Still Grover insists that should not be construed to mean that exhibition quality does not matter to experimental filmmakers.

“People should stay up on the technology, even if they are using a consumer projector,” she suggests. “At the prices of that technology, and the way it is always improving, you might be buying a new [projector] every three years since the quality can be better every year or two. At the same time, it would be just crazy for a small venue to invest $20,000 in a projector even if they had the money when, in three years, something better and smaller will come along. In our case, a lot of what we do is built on personal relationships with artists anyway. It‘s on a case-by-case basis, but sometimes we have to use a backup projector or get a borrowed one. There are filmmakers I know who bring their own projectors depending on their material and what they are trying to accomplish. The point is you can do a lot with a little if you really optimize what you have to work with. Digital technology definitely has democratized the whole thing and made it less cost prohibitive for people to get involved, which is what we are all about. There is a greater supply of films and videos available, waiting to be exhibited, so digital is a good thing in that regard.”

This scenario can obviously lead to a wide disparity in how film or video pieces are exhibited and viewed in different locations, and on different days, for that matter, which is one reason why Hollywood studios pushed so hard for the DCI spec to begin with. But Flowers suggests that is no different from the film-world experience.

“Standards are important, but then again, I‘ve experienced [a lack of consistency] with film projection too,” he says. “You might exhibit in one place where the lenses haven‘t been changed out, or the screen isn‘t a great screen, or the print isn‘t very good, or they don‘t have a very good projectionist. So what is going on with digital projection at this level isn‘t that different. The advantages [with digital projection] are so great, I think it‘s pretty much inevitable that digital projection will take over this market.”

Ironically Grover suggests the arrival of digital projection at all levels of cinematic exhibition and the way it has improved the ability of niche and experimental filmmakers to get their work seen is part of the same creative burst of energy that includes the arrival of user-generated online videos. In that context, she suggests, cinema-style exhibition, digital or otherwise, may not be the future at all for independent and experimental filmmakers.

“I am still trying to wrap my brain around the online content thing and what that means for what we do [in the microcinema movement],” she says. “Now that all this media is available to people online, what does that mean for exhibition venues anyway? The real component we have going for us is the notion of getting together to watch the content and to be intimate. You need something besides just seeing the film to get people to leave their computers. In our case, we offer organic banana bread, and you can meet the filmmaker and bring your dog. Microcinema is sort of like the 1960s when a lot of artists made their domestic space also their exhibition space, and there was this blurring of art and life. But even the multiplexes are trying to be more intimate in their own way with digital projection — [gourmet food, stadium seating] and things like that. So who knows what the future will bring?”