| Exploring The Magical World Of Digital Movies |
| By : Richa | Previous | Next |
| Posted on : 17 Oct, 2005 | Total Views : 293 |
Digital technology, the hottest thing to happen in the movie world, creates flawless copies of films and therefore the quality of digital ‘films’ is very good. Scratches, dirt, smudges, and fading of the con-ventional celluloid copies are no longer a problem in the digital film
In this information age when everything becomes bits and all bits are connected together on the Internet, the adjective ‘digital’ can naturally be attached to all things. Movies are no exception and digital movies are now the hottest issue in the movie world. But with digital movies still so new, their definition is as yet unclear. The customary definition of a digital movie as the one shot on a digital camera, edited on a computer, and screened on a data projector or on the Internet, does not seem that important. More important is the cultural significance that digital movies carry. In conventional movies what did not change over the years is the film itself. A series of innovations made films more lifelike—with technicolour and sound effects, etc. But films still remain a long, thin strip of celluloid pulled in front of a lamp by holes punched on its sides. Digital films, on the other hand, are multimedia compressed into zeros and ones and beamed onto screens via digital projectors.
How the digital movies work
Digital projectors receive inputs of streams of data, which they convert into moving images. In a typical projector of Texas Instruments, the projected white light is split by a set of prisms into basic colours, i.e. red, green, and blue. Then each coloured beam is directed to a designated digital micro-mirror device (DVD). The DVD receives a digital stream that instructs each tiny mirror to reflect or deflect the light. In the last phase, the red, blue, and green light streams are recombined and projected onto the screen as a single source of light.
Projectors of other makes, however, could be working somewhat differently. Theatres receive digital movies via satellite or dedicated landlines.
Benefits offered
Digital technology creates flawless copies of films and therefore the quality of digital ‘films’ is very good. Scratches, dirt, smudges, and fading of the conventional celluloid copies are no longer a problem in the digital film that always gives the same quality no matter how many times the film is run.
When a conventionally made movie is released, one has to have as many celluloid copies as the number of releases at different theatres, which is a costly proposition. But digital movies can be released simultaneously on hundreds of screens at a small fraction of the cost of making so many copies of the conventional film. So there is huge cost saving in distribution, which is estimated to be up to $2 billion in the US.
Digital films offer a very economical alternative. You can buy a digital camera for Rs 200,000 and an editing station for Rs 600,000 to Rs 700,000. Traditional cameras cost upwards of Rs 2 million with editing stations costing at least Rs 5 million.
Another direct benefit of digital movies is that ‘live’ shows, concerts, plays, and sporting events can be screened in theatres with the digital technology.
Theatre owners will draw multiple benefits as they can show different films or the same film in different languages at different times of the day, which is currently difficult with celluloid copies. Further, they can rent out space for teleconferencing in the mornings and afternoons, when theatres are generally vacant.
The obstacles
Primarily, developing a proper security standard to make the security of screenings 100 per cent foolproof is essential. In the US, video piracy costs up to $4 billions. Whenever the video pirates find a way to steal even one copy of the movie off the satellite or landline, the losses are quite heavy.
The second issue is that of infrastructure. A high-speed fibre-network backbone is required. Also, the costs of digital projectors are very high, ranging from $65,000 to $100,000, against $20,000 for conventional celluloid projectors.
When all the theatres have to have digital projectors, if you multiply the cost of a projector by the total number of theatres, the amount of conversion will run into millions of dollars. Who is going to pay for the additional costs? Under the existing business model, theatre owners would have no interest in converting to the new technology, since it is the film distributors who would benefit directly by savings in eliminating the need for making multiple copies of the celluloid film.
