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.