Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Steve Le Huray writes (with big snips by me): I was told to embrace video because film would be dead in 5 years. But now 16mm, Super16mm Aaton and |Arriflex cameras have a 3 to 6 month waiting list for a camera package that |runs about $150,000. A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to tour a "state of the art" 14 screen theater in my capacity as an economic development planner. I paid the most attention to the tour of the projection corridor where fourteen films were running at one time. The major state of the art was in the digital sound tracks. They are still splicing together the film rolls that were from the film distributors. The film projection was very similar to what could be found in the 30's except that since the rolls were all spliced together, the projectionist did not have to change rolls during the projection of the film. What struck me was that there were two areas of major capital investment in equipment. The first was in the sound systems for the digital sound track. The second was in the projection equipment. The projections equipment was quite state of the art. Each of the projectors had bulbs, filters, and lenses matched to the screen size and projection throw. The costs of these items were commensurate with their limited market. While I can see future enhancements of the sound track, I am somewhat limited in my vision as to what benefit would be derived from digitization of the picture track. Without some great artistic or cost benefit, why should the theaters swich from film to digital tracks? If I am wrong, then the niché market I will look for is showing old art films and slides (perhaps I could make slides of all of the negatives in the US National Archives) with old projectors. Ought to keep me $$$ occupied until the end of my life. Regards, Bill