The all-digital cinema is basically here: what the end of film means for you .
The biggest fear for a projectionist at a movie theater used to be loading reels out of order, or tearing the print. Now, it's deleting the film.
Which is exactly what happened just before a late April press screening for The Avengers. The Twitter dam burst with the flood of 35mm purists snarking about how it's impossible to delete a 35mm print. This is very true; if a physical film print breaks, it snaps or bursts into flames. It's also impossible to create another pristine 35mm print on the spot, which is what the theater staff did for The Avengers — they downloaded another perfect copy in minutes.
Digital conversion and projection is already common in chain theaters across the country, with 27,000 screens in the U.S. (over two thirds) converted to digital. The switch started in earnest last year after major studios like 20th Century Fox privately notified theater owners in December 2011 of the coming new world order. And at CinemaCon this year, Fox's master plan was announced: all digital, no film by 2013.
A Toy Story 3 DCP — not very magical looking.
The studios are completely phasing out 35mm prints for Digital Cinema Packages, which are the standard in multiplexes now. Instead of bulky film reels, DCP are essentially encrypted hard drives with audio, video and data that are hooked up to a camera. If you've seen any film in the last three months at a multiplex — especially 3D — you've seen a film in DCP. Major chains, like Regal and AMC, have recently added “D” on certain listings to reveal you've been watching DCP all along.
Cue the downsizing of venerable film processing companies like Technicolor and Deluxe.
There are a few reasons for you, non-projectionist moviegoer, to care about this. The refusal by studios to send out prints will cripple independent theaters or groups that refuse to purchase DCP. Most smaller theaters can't afford the DCP, and soon they won't have prints to screen, either. It’s already happening: If you've been to a midnight screening of Serenity recently, you watched a disc. The fate of the prints is one of quiet assimilation, as they'll likely be digitized and converted into DCP-friendly formats over the next year. As terrifying as this sounds, it promotes a unified quality across the board. Which means what you see in a theater really won't seem that different when it's put onto a Blu-Ray or shown on basic cable.
There's an easy way to figure out if you're watching a restored print on film or DCP. If the transfer isn't handled properly, it'll show up in the final product. The DCP difference can be made clear when blacks are so solidly black that the ghosting effect that plagues HD programming can happen in the theater. Still, regular folks who happily pay $20 for a 3D IMAX ticket don't care about the quality, just the scale — most probably can't even tell the difference between a fake IMAX and a real IMAX theater.
