The Fall of 35mm

With the advent of spring 2012 (or fall for our northern hemisphere counterparts), a deadline looms for film exhibitors around the world. This is the deadline to cash in on the offer propounded by various major film studios that if exhibitors make the conversion from film projection to digital projection, then the studios will pay them a “virtual-print fee” for the next ten years for every new release shown digitally. However, with a price tag of $70,000 to $150,000 per screen, this conversion can be quite costly and near impossible for many specialty art house theatres, which are running on a budget of $500,000 a year.

More than being expensive, the conversion from film projection to digital projection is not necessarily a shift into new technology that is such a desirable one for purist film exhibitors who want to continue to show classic and obscure films in their original format of 35mm.  Quentin Tarantino owns the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, California and has vowed that the day this cinema completely stops showing films in a 35mm format is the day he burns it to the ground.

Christopher Nolan is another Hollywood director who is a big advocator of continuing to shoot films using 35mm. Before the completion of The Dark Knight Rises, which Nolan shot entirely in 35mm, he held a private screening of the first ten minutes of the film to many members of the Director’s Guild of America urging these men and women to continue to fight for the right of the artist to have the choice between shooting films in whichever format they may choose.

Even if directors continue shooting films on 35mm (which can be converted to digital copies easily enough) there is a much greater pressure on exhibitors to convert to digital methods of projection whether they prefer it or not. The advantages of converting to digital projection are mostly to do with short-term savings. For example, one copy of 35mm film costs approximately $1500 to print and ship where a film in digital form only costs $150. Thus, film studios can save up to $850 million a year on having release film prints made and a further $450 million on delivering them.

Recent studies have demonstrated however that in the long-term, a 4K digital master can be eleven times more expensive to preserve than 35mm film. This is because the technology of digital format film are constantly changing and evolving and becoming irrelevant. So digital film copies need to be continuously upgraded and converted otherwise file formats can become obsolete in a matter of months. Also, simple human error can result in data on digital copies of films being lost just by someone accidentally hitting ‘delete’. On the other hand, 35mm film simply requires a cold, dry vault in which to be stored. It is estimated that a black and white print on polyester film stock could potentially last 1,000 years if stored correctly.

Henceforth, producing, distributing and exhibiting films in a digital format can save film studios a lot of money, however it leaves film preservation for the future in a very delicate and precarious situation and threatens the loss of millions of obscure films which will simply not be deemed important enough or garner enough demand for digital conversion.

The worldwide conversion of film to digital projection will also result in the loss of jobs for many in the industry, from projectionists to couriers, photochemical lab workers to restoration artists. Many specialist art house cinema and theatre owners must resort to showing certain films in a blown up DVD format which looks markedly worse than films in DCP (Digital Cinema Package) format and consider it a crime to charge audiences for a format they can watch in their own homes. Some small town cinemas have had to close down due to a lack of funds to convert to digital projection, thus leaving audiences with no cinema to visit within a twenty-mile radius.

Digital cameras are easier and faster to step up for directors, and they are much more portable than film cameras, thus allowing directors to get those shots that require the cessation of traffic or to peer into tight nooks and crannies that would otherwise be extremely difficult using a film camera. Does this mean though that the art of film-making will lower in standard given that filmmakers needn’t have the patience or skill that directors required in order to master their craft and give us films such as Lawrence of Arabia or Citizen Kane during a time when film cameras needed reloading every ten minutes?

Whether we like it or not, it seems the digital age for film is upon us. It is predicted that by 2015, only 17% of theatres worldwide will still be projecting 35mm film. How do you feel about this change? Is it better to go digital for practicalities and cost-cutting? Or will movies never quite be the same again without being printed on film? Is it important to have the capacity to project in both formats? Or is this just a refusal to move forward as technology advances?

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