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Digital vs. Celluloid: The war has begun |
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Tuesday, 10 January 2006 |
By Dee-Dum
Edited by shrrshrr
 There’s a war a-brewin’, and I’m not talking about the Middle East, the Balkans or the cast of Desperate Housewives. The war actually started several years ago, but has been confined to minor skirmishes until recently. Most of the information I’m going to talk about won’t be news to many people, but the context has been slowly eroding and it appears that soon it will be time to fish or cut bait.
I’m talking about Lucas vs. Spielberg, Soderbergh vs. Shyamalan, digital vs. celluloid. Technological and economic forces are conspiring to bring about an end to movies being projected onto theater screens at 24 frames per second. Some people are embracing the change; others have vowed to fight it in the trenches.
The technological assault on celluloid comes from film technicians like George Lucas, who has been pushing digital technology especially since returning to writing/directing with Star Wars: Episode I. Digital technology allows him to put more toys on the screen with less blurring or distortion; digital filmmaking also reduces costs, since virtual sets alleviate the cost of building real sets (Lucas claims casting Liam Neeson in Episode I cost an extra $150,000 because at 6’4” Neeson’s height required the actual sets to be built higher than if he’d been only 6 feet tall). Since films are now recorded digitally, it makes sense to people like Lucas to project them digitally as well. Also, digital films can be distributed more cheaply by beaming the film to theaters via satellite or over cable, as opposed to producing thousands of copies of a film on reels of celluloid.
Opposing Lucas on the technical front is none other than Lucas’ some-time collaborator, film wunderkind Steven Spielberg. Spielberg is concerned that digital projection methods will result in the loss of some ineffable quality that makes film entrancing. Spielberg is joined by Roger Ebert, who at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999 warned that studies had shown that watching movies flickering at 24 frames per second created brain waves that indicated an interactive, aware state of mind, while watching digital projections (essentially television) produced a more passive, hypnotic state.
The distinction makes sense when you realize that watching a “motion picture” requires your brain to create the illusion of motion. The phenomenon of “persistence of vision” causes your brain to perceive a series of still photographs running through the projector at 24 frames per second, as motion; you are actively, if unconsciously, involved in the process. Watching a digital image scanned at 15,750 lines a second (on a TV screen) is more akin to watching literal movement. Your brain is not as involved, and thus the effect demands less attention (okay, I’ll confess—there is ZERO evidence supporting any of the above; but it makes sense to me).
The other prong of the attack on film is market-driven economics. According to a recent New York Times article, studios have higher cost margins when distributing movies to theaters and this encourages them to seek a greater share of their profits from DVD sales. Producing large spools of film is costly, and theater owners take up 50% of the revenues (theater owners still don’t make much off showing films; almost all of their profits come from concession sales).
Distributing DVDs is much more economical. A single DVD costs about $2 to manufacture, meaning a studio’s profit is approximately $16 a unit (as opposed to maybe $5 out of every $10 theater ticket purchased). If a DVD sells unexpectedly well, production can be increased immediately; if too many discs are produced, the cost of sending the excess to the dump is minimal. The growth of home theater systems has made watching DVDs at home closer to the theater experience (minus, of course, the persistence of vision effect I mentioned). An increasingly higher percentage of a film’s gross is coming from DVD sales these days, and the window between a film closing in theaters and being released on DVD has already fallen from six months to four months, and may eventually go to nothing.
Director M. Night Shyamalan warned theater owners about this phenomenon in late October at the theater owners’ national convention. While admitting that he had personally benefited from DVD sales (he conceded that DVD sales of The Sixth Sense bought his house), he stressed that he made films to be shown in theaters, and simultaneous DVD/theatrical release would destroy the theater industry.
Steven Soderbergh disagrees. Soderbergh, who makes experimental indie films like Schizopolis and Full Frontal, as well as more conventional fare like Out of Sight and Erin Brockovich, plans on releasing a film called, Bubble, in theaters and on DVD at the same time in January of 2006. His logic appears to be that new digital technologies can reduce the cost of film making, and that low budget films can be distributed more economically on DVD, bypassing studios entirely. He plans on selling copies of Bubble in the lobby of theaters showing the film theatrically.
Most people opposing the conversion to digital technology have argued for the ‘communal experience’ of film going. That’s hard to argue for in an age of cell phones, rude patrons, $7 popcorn and $10 ticket prices; frankly, I love attending a Saturday matinee that’s just me and the screen. But, as I said above, I do believe in watching images flickering at 24 frames per second. I won’t go watch a big TV screen in a dark room, even if it is communal. I know from experience that I can watch a movie in a theater and be entranced, but when I watch the same movie on DVD or on broadcast TV, my attention flags.
How the war will play out is unclear. Obviously powerful forces are supporting the switch to digital projection; equally obvious, digital has made fewer inroads than had been predicted 6 years ago. The cost of replacing old style projectors with digital ones has no doubt delayed the conversion process. Maybe it will play out like Astroturf in the 1970’s—an initial rush to embrace “new technology,” but then everyone realizing that good old natural grass is better after all.
My opinion is that if there is anyone who understands the psychology of cinema, it’s Steven Spielberg. If he says that digital projection may not influence an audience the same way as celluloid projection, I’m going to listen to him. So I won’t be attending the premier of Star Wars: Episode VII - Yoda’s Revenge at a digital theater near me. I just hope that the option to see it on celluloid exists when the time comes.
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