Paramount stops releasing major movies on film

[Richard--W a straight arrow Find all posts View Profile Close Richard--W]

my heart is breaking for the movies.

a total conversion to digital capture, digital distribution and digital preservation is not smart.

By Richard Verrier

January 18, 2014, 5:30 a.m.

Roll credits.

For more than a century, Hollywood has relied on 35-millimeter film to capture its fleeting images and deliver them to the silver screen. Now, in a historic move, Paramount Pictures has become the first big studio to stop releasing its major movies on film in the United States.

The studio's Oscar-nominated film "The Wolf of Wall Street" is the studio's first movie in wide release to be distributed entirely in digital format, according to theater industry executives briefed on the plans who were not authorized to speak publicly.

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Paramount recently notified theater owners that its Will Ferrell comedy "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues," which opened in December, was the last movie released on 35-mm film, these people said. Previously, only small movies such as documentaries were released solely in digital format.

The decision is likely to encourage other studios to follow suit, accelerating a complete phase-out of film that could come by the end of the year.

"It's of huge significance because Paramount is the first studio to make this policy known," said Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. "For 120 years, film and 35 mm has been the format of choice for theatrical presentations. Now we're seeing the end of that. I'm not shocked that it's happened, but how quickly it has happened."

Paramount has kept its decision under wraps, at least in Hollywood, and a spokeswoman for the studio did not return calls for comment.

Its reticence reflects the fact that no studio wants to be seen as the first to abandon film, which retains a cachet among purists. Some studios may also be reluctant to give up box-office revenue by bypassing theaters that can show only film.

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About 8% of U.S. theater screens have not gone digital and can show movies only in the old-fashioned film format. Internationally, Paramount is still expected to ship film prints to Latin America and other foreign markets where most theaters still show movies on film.

Studios prefer digital distribution because it is much cheaper. Film prints cost as much as $2,000; a digital copy on disc usually costs less than $100. Eventually, these movies could be beamed into cinemas by satellite, saving even more on production and shipping costs.

Digital technology also enables theaters to screen higher-priced 3-D films and makes it easier for them to book and program entertainment.

Other studios were expected to jump on the digital bandwagon first. 20th Century Fox sent a letter to exhibitors in 2011 saying it would stop distributing film "within the next year or two." Disney issued a similar warning to theater operators. And last year, many industry watchers expected Lions Gate to make history with an all-digital November release of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire."

Paramount's move comes nearly a decade after studios began working with exhibitors to help finance the replacement of film projectors with digital systems.

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As a result, large chains have moved quickly to embrace digital technology: Ninety-two percent of the 40,045 screens in the U.S. have already converted to digital, according to the National Assn. of Theatre Owners.

The slackening demand for film has been felt across the industry. Last month, Technicolor, the French-owned film processing and post-production company, closed a film lab in Glendale. That lab had replaced a much larger facility at Universal Studios that employed 360 workers until it closed in 2011. Last year, Technicolor closed its Pinewood film lab in Britain.

"The Wolf of Wall Street" would seem an unlikely choice for the industry's first all-digital wide release. The movie was partially shot on film, and its director, Martin Scorsese, is a passionate advocate for film preservation. His last feature film, the 2011 3-D extravaganza "Hugo," was a loving homage to film's early days.

A spokesman for Scorsese said the director was traveling and not available for comment.

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The march to digital puts further pressure on some small-town community theaters that have been struggling to finance the purchase of $70,000 digital projectors.

Those theaters are at risk of going out of business if they can no longer obtain film prints of movies. More than 1,000 theaters, about half of them independently owned, have not converted to digital. Some are turning to their communities to raise funds for digital equipment.

Others have opted to close because of the high costs.

Jeff Logan, who operates a small chain of theaters in South Dakota, has invested more than $700,000 to equip his three theaters with new digital equipment.

But Logan said that last year, he had to close a nearby drive-in theater that dated back to 1949 because he couldn't afford to install a digital projector there.

"We looked at some of the financing," Logan said. "But there was no way we would have been able to service the debt."


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...930,full.story

[Paul L Scholar of Sleaze Find all posts View Profile Close Paul L]

my heart is breaking for the movies.

a total conversion to digital capture, digital distribution and digital preservation is not smart.

Totally agreed. I guess this has been an inevitablity for a while now, but that doesn't make it any less sad. Digital tech has its place, but in my view it needs to stand alongside film; given smart business models, I'm sure the two can co-exist. An absolute replacement of film with digital capture and distribution is (again, in my view) incredibly short-sighted.

[Zane C. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Zane C.]

This is depressing as hell. Goodbye, lots of small theatres, as well as THE format to see movies on.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Does it matter? Why does it matter? I get the nostalgia for film. I was at a cinema that was closing down on Friday. The huge 35mm projectors were to be junked despite being in perfet working order. Theyre worthless now as every cinema in the country has half a dozen of these mouldering in a back room. The owner was pretty cut up about it and it did genuinely seem sad that these huge machines were being put out to pasture. The owner let me take away some 35mm trailers which are completely useless to me but also very cool. So I totally get the nostalgia but ultimately film is just an object that carries the movie. Now the movies are carried on hard drives. There may be a differnce in quality but thats just technology and is changing all the time anyway. 70s film doesnt look much like modern film but so what? Its a significant moment but Im missing why people are geting upset about it.

[Zane C. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Zane C.]

Does it matter? Why does it matter? I get the nostalgia for film. I was at a cinema that was closing down on Friday. The huge 35mm projectors were to be junked despite being in perfet working order. Theyre worthless now as every cinema in the country has half a dozen of these mouldering in a back room. The owner was pretty cut up about it and it did genuinely seem sad that these huge machines were being put out to pasture. The owner let me take away some 35mm trailers which are completely useless to me but also very cool. So I totally get the nostalgia but ultimately film is just an object that carries the movie. Now the movies are carried on hard drives. There may be a differnce in quality but thats just technology and is changing all the time anyway. 70s film doesnt look much like modern film but so what? Its a significant moment but Im missing why people are geting upset about it.

If you lived in a small town like me, with one theatre and one screen in that theatre, this would make more sense. Smaller centres like ours get hit the hardest, because they do not have the funds to transfer over to digital all at once. If they don't transfer over, they don't stay in business, period, as they will not have the equipment.

I'm less concerned about the nostalgia, although it does have some nostalgia for me, than the fact that it affects the bottom line of perhaps not having a theatre to go to at all because of the economics of this decision.

Hollywood has always been about turning a profit - it's a business, but the hybrid model of film and digital makes more sense for theatres like mine that are small businesses and perhaps cannot make the switch instantly, like I said.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

That would be annoying. I don't think there's any cinemas in my state that don't have digital facilities so wasn't even considering that.

[Paul L Scholar of Sleaze Find all posts View Profile Close Paul L]

Does it matter? Why does it matter? I get the nostalgia for film. I was at a cinema that was closing down on Friday. The huge 35mm projectors were to be junked despite being in perfet working order. Theyre worthless now as every cinema in the country has half a dozen of these mouldering in a back room. The owner was pretty cut up about it and it did genuinely seem sad that these huge machines were being put out to pasture. The owner let me take away some 35mm trailers which are completely useless to me but also very cool. So I totally get the nostalgia but ultimately film is just an object that carries the movie.

There is that, but there's an aesthetic difference between film and video. For me, it's not a matter of nostalgia but rather aesthetics. Film and digital are different media: even the best digital cameras can't quite match the dynamic range of film, and like you said there's a variance in different film stocks, with each having its own 'look' owing to the emulsions used and the processes of development. Because of this, I don't know that film is just an 'object that carries the movie' - the unique texture of film is part of the movie. For example, I recently revisited Tsukamoto's BULLET BALLET. That's an interesting film, shot mostly in low-light on fast 16mm monochrome film stock. The resultant image is a high-contrast, super grainy black and white image that recalls the work of Japanese photographers like Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanashi. That kind of aesthetic is impossible to emulate with digital technology: it's possible to emulate it in postproduction, but not possible to get the same kind of look as these photographers associated with the Provoke movement.

As a cultural thang, digital tech is about standardisation. Where there's variance in different film stocks, and even variance between different 35mm prints of the same film, digital production and distribution is about standardisation - every digital print looks the same. Seeing a 35mm print, with all its unique wear and tear, whirring through a projector is different to watching a digital projection of a film. (I think Walter Benjamin would agree with me on that point )

I'm not a Luddite: I agree that digital technology has its place. However, I'm sure that with smart business models, digital and analogue cinemas can co-exist. My ultimate point is that digital capture and exhibition is a different aesthetic to traditional film, rather than a replacement for it. The two aren't the same, and that's the beauty of it: replacing one with another is kind of a step back culturally, to Fordist principles. And like Zane says, the movement to digital technology largely benefits the big players and the push towards digital technology could easily squeeze out small independent cinemas. (There's one near me that likely won't survive the 'death of film'.)

[Richard--W a straight arrow Find all posts View Profile Close Richard--W]

My thanks to Paul for making the point about the difference in aesthetics. It's not about nostalgia. A painter has the choice of working in acrylics or oils or waterbase. A sculpter has the choice of working in wood, clay or metal. Each medium has a quality and a nature that the other medium's don't, and an artist chooses his medium based on what he is trying to express. A filmmaker used to have the choice of working in film or in video. No longer. Now it's digital or nothing. Film achieves things that digital can't, doesn't and never will. Which is not to say digital is bad, it's just different.

Digital is too new to know how long it lasts. It may all deteriorate into pixels in 30 years, and all the films preserved in the medium may not be preserved at all. The truth is nobody knows.

Movie theaters all over the USA and Canada are being wiped out because they can't front $20,000 for a digital projector, or if they're a multiplex, two or three or four digital projectors. I see fundraiser and kickstarter pleas all over the place, and most of the theaters simply aren't raising enough money. The industry does nothing to help them, does nothing to meet them halfway. Likewise, theaters and theater chains have raised ticket prices so high to pay for the conversion to digital projectors that the number of ticket buyers have diminished. Less people are going to the movies with each passing year. People complain about high ticket prices, but the industry isn't listening. They're too giddy playing with their digital toys. If people turn entirely to downloads, it will be largely because the theatrical experience has been sabotaged.

Digital was rolled out too soon. I've been sitting in the dark temple of a movie theater for fifty years, and I could never imagine the reduction in image quality that I'm seeing now. Filmmakers used to expect more from themselves. In the 1960s and 1970s audiences would have not have stood for the poorly defined and low-resolution capture, the murky images, the artificiality of digital, and the dim, desaturated, murky projection. Perhaps the digital moguls should have waited until they achieved 8K or 10K resolution to start with for capture and projection. Without a luminous monitor to bring out the best in digital capture, it looks like sh it. Even big expensive studio tent-pole films look like sh it. A younger generation is coming along that knows nothing else; they accept it because they don't know any better.

When do we get to see your film on blu-ray, Dom?

[Dick Ringeisen Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Dick Ringeisen]

Digital doesn't bother me too much. In terms of preservation, as long as studios and whomever else don't put, "All their eggs in one basket", and keep multiple back-ups, in multiple places, things will be fine.

It all makes sense to me. Easier to transport, make copies of, etc. Start, stop with ease, less to mess with.

It's like still film cameras, not many people use them anymore! Get a nice still digital camera, and you can have more than enough options to play with - ISO, f stop, shutter speed, etc. No need to change out a roll of film, so you can go from 100 to 400.

Film will always be around, it will just become niche. There will still be places to get it processed, etc, just fewer and fewer.

I don't mind digital. What I do mind, is how it has made the color of the movies LAZY! Orange and Blue, is now the modern black and white. I hear good things about Wolf of Wall Street, but when I see the trailer, all I see are shades of Orange and Blue. That is what keeps me from many of the films from the past 10 years (I don't recall this much in the early 00's). I think the newest movie I saw in theatres in 2013 was, "You're Next". Part of the reason, was because it didn't look like it was all in Blue and Orange. yeah, the movie had a stupid twist, but color wise, it was OK. Most of what I saw in the theatre in 2013, were older films, projected in Digital - Die Hard 25th anniversary, Escape from New York, etc.

I don't like most/a lot of CGI, I don't like watching movies that seem to only feature orange and Blue, I don't like certain new techniques for slowing down the action into slow mo (Ramping?), Shaky cam doesn't bother me much if kept to a minimum or when necessary - such as a hand-held camera someone is holding (Heck, shaky cam was used in National Lampoon's X-mas vacation, when cops bust into the house, back in 1988), CGI blood splatter is stupid.

I don't mind digital, I just don't like the laziness that has followed it.

My test usually is, if in the trailer I notice the movie is mostly Orange and Blue, I won't watch it, because it's too distracting to me.

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[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

A lot of interesting thoughts there. I'll argue a few of them but I've taken the general gist on board because I miss the look of film too.

As a cultural thang, digital tech is about standardisation. Where there's variance in different film stocks, and even variance between different 35mm prints of the same film, digital production and distribution is about standardisation - every digital print looks the same.

I'd disagree with this. The DCPs for distribution sure but at a production level, no. Cameras have huge variation in the look that they deliver and directors and DOPs will consider that now just as they used to judge film stocks. More and more I'm hearing cameras being discussed in terms of the "grain structures" they deliver. Canon put out a cine camera about a year ago that was widely panned but I loved it for the grainy 16mm look. A RED camera looks different to an Alexa which looks very different to a DSLR.

As far as dynamic range and that sort of thing goes, I'm out of my depth. If digital is currently behind film well so be it. It's digital and it's improvement has been and will be done at a phenomenal pace. I am kind of interested as to whether film does have a wider dynamic range than video shot RAW though (as all good digital cameras do now). I haven't shot RAW video but I'm stunned shooting RAW stills at the range of information that the camera is capturing. The human behind the camera can be almost totally incompetent these days cause its capturing everything.

Movie theaters all over the USA and Canada are being wiped out because they can't front $20,000 for a digital projector, or if they're a multiplex, two or three or four digital projectors. I see fundraiser and kickstarter pleas all over the place, and most of the theaters simply aren't raising enough money. The industry does nothing to help them, does nothing to meet them halfway.

This is not really something I've seen much of in my neck of the woods. Cinemas around here are mostly run by 3 large corporations who also own the "Independent" cinemas. Warner brothers has a huge stake in cinema distribution here in an example of vertical integration that would be totally illegal in the US. The upside of this I guess is our cinemas always seem well funded and don't appear to be bothered by these kind of shifts. I forget that it's different elsewhere.

Perhaps the digital moguls should have waited until they achieved 8K or 10K resolution to start with for capture and projection.

2k was too soon for cinemas. 4k matches 35mm for resolution and will be the standard soon enough. You're point above about the struggling cinemas really becomes more pointed here though. A 35mm projector is good for life. Now we're playing the resolution game the life span of the digital machines is probably about the same as a blu ray player.

Digital is too new to know how long it lasts. It may all deteriorate into pixels in 30 years, and all the films preserved in the medium may not be preserved at all. The truth is nobody knows.

Seems to be a lot of worry about this. I'm sure it wont be a problem. These films are massive assets held by massive corporations. They're not going anywhere.

I liked a comment I read on a Doctor Who forum recently. Someone was posting about The Web Of Fear iTunes release and commented that only amonth earlier there had been only 1 copy and then in the space of minutes after the upload there were thousands. That footage will never be lost again. It's hard to imagine anything released properly online ever will be. That's kind of awesome.

When do we get to see your film on blu-ray, Dom?

We're just debating it. I hate discs. I'm kind of idealogically oppossed to them. A lot of people want them though. Cast and crew don't seem to think its real till they have a disc. Will probably crack under the pressure and design a blu ray cover shortly. Matering the blu ray by the way was a total PITA. Blu Ray doesn't do 25P. I wish someone had told me that before I started.

[Scott Intellectual Carrot Find all posts View Profile Close Scott]

Time marches on.

I prefer the aesthetics of film too. It's richer, more natural and organic. Digital often feels very thin, for lack of a better word. But digital is convenient. And convenience wins over quality to the corporate bean counters. Too bad.

[Dick Ringeisen Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Dick Ringeisen]

Time marches on.

I prefer the aesthetics of film too. It's richer, more natural and organic. Digital often feels very thin, for lack of a better word. But digital is convenient. And convenience wins over quality to the corporate bean counters. Too bad.

Scott, great video, I hadn't seen any MR. Show in ages.

Watching that video, and the, "Snaps, and pops, and shit" line reminded me of one thing I will miss about film, and it nearly only applies with watching older movies, is, "How beat up is the print"?

I remember in 2000, or 1999, I went to see a few Kubrick films playing someplace for a weekend.. I recall A Clockwork Orange's print was pretty beat up, especially the opening credits. During the opening credits I remember hearing someone in the theatre blurt out something about how beat-up the print was.

That's the funny thing, how some movies want to add in stuff digitally, like "Snaps, and pops, and shit", and lensflare, etc.

Myself, I won't really miss all the, "Snaps, and Pops, and shit". If they're there, I won't mind them, but if I never see A Clockwork Orange on a well-worn print, oh well.


Snaps, and Pops, and shit!


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