New technology means curtain to fall on main movie symbol: the film reel

Thursday, March 11, 1999 | 2:46 a.m.

Such progress will also eliminate the most familiar of movie symbols - the film reel.

Leading the revolution is director George Lucas, whose eagerly anticipated "Star Wars" prequel, "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace," will be shown this May in four digitally equipped theaters. In two to five years, increasing numbers of movie houses could go digital as exhibitors work out technical and business problems.

"I'm very dedicated and very enthusiastic about the digital cinema," Lucas told thousands of theater operators at the ShoWest convention late Wednesday. He cited the "quality, the savings in cost and the ability to do things that just aren't possible today."

In digital cinema, the movies are shot on film and then converted to a digital format, though soon the work may also be shot on digital cameras. The completed movies are distributed from studio to theaters by satellite, over fiber-optic cable or on special discs.

The movies are shown on a digital projector, a significant upgrade from the standard film projector whose basic technology has barely changed since Edison's Kinetoscope in 1891. It used George Eastman's celluloid film on 35 mm stock - the same as today.

One digital projector, developed by Texas Instruments, creates a screen image by bouncing light off 1.3 million microscopic mirrors squeezed onto a 1-square-inch chip.

The technology means profound changes in the behind-the-scenes business of movie exhibition. Audiences will find big differences in convenience but minor differences in quality.

A demonstration at ShoWest on Wednesday, with film and digital scenes projected side-by-side on a big screen, revealed digital movie quality is now as good - and in some respects better - than film, with a cleaner, sharper image that won't show wear and tear with repeated showings. That means no scratches or declining color quality late in a movie's run.

The only problem with digital appeared to be color, with whites taking on a yellow tone, the blues becoming purplish, and skin tones giving actresses in the demonstration an artificial, almost manequin-like complexion.

Digital technology allows theaters more flexibility in show times and the number of screens showing a particular movie, since theaters aren't limited by a finite number of film prints.

One thing nobody is saying is that digital movies will reduce ticket prices, which last year averaged $4.70 in the United States.

Indeed, it's the economics - not the esthetics - of digital cinema that is causing the most concern. A digital projector runs about $100,000 (compared to about $30,000 for a standard projector), requiring a mammoth investment by theater owners.

"I was very impressed with the quality. It's almost to the point where it's ready," said Mike Goakey, director of construction for Signature Theaters, with 145 screens in California and Hawaii. "I think the big issue is going to be the money end of it."

But Goakey, like many at ShoWest, predicted theaters could be going digital within five years.

Actually, there are great savings from digital. But they go to the movie studios, which won't have to pay the enormous costs of making the movie prints and shipping the huge, heavy reels of film all over the country. For digital movie theaters to succeed, exhibitors says the studios must pitch in.

"The issues are: When will it come and who pays for it," said Peter Ivany, CEO of Hoyts Cinemas Limited, with theaters in the United States and Australia.

One company, CineComm Digital Cinema, thinks it has the money problem taken care of.

CineComm, which put on one of the demonstrations, proposes to give theater owners the projectors, built by another company, and all of CineComm's satellite gear and systems that go with them for no upfront costs. CineComm would then charge a fee based on the number of showings of movies.

That still doesn't solve all the problems, though.

There are concerns about how difficult it will be to learn the new systems, as theater managers are now faced with having to digest such terms as "delivery paradigms," "proprietary software" and "decryption and decompression," then choose between competing systems and equipment.

Studios, too, worry that beaming their precious multimillion-dollar pictures over satellite only invites widespread movie piracy, already rampant overseas.

The digital companies insist there are encryption programs that will scramble things enough to ward off even the most computer-skilled pirates.

Robert Mayson of Eastman Kodak countered that "one unbreakable code ... has already been broken." Mayson oversaw a side-by-side demonstration that pitted digital against Kodak film.

Of course, Kodak would be the big loser in digital theaters since it is Kodak film that is run through the world's movie projectors. While Mayson was careful not to speak out against digital technology, he did warn that "digital technology will be ready for the future of cinema only when those issues have been addressed."