Happy Birthday Digital Cinema - 75 years old
Digital cinema is the current hot topic within the film industry and rightly so. The visual images that can now routinely be projected onto 10 meter wide (and wider) screens are stunningly brilliant, the equal if not the better of traditional 35mm film prints. The equipment, from camera through post production to storage and projection, is all available now in various shapes and sizes.
This should all come as no surprise to us as the UK Daily Mail newspaper reported in July 1930,.." With a dramatic success which convinced the most sceptical, digital cinema established itself " [or rather it would have done if the phrase digital cinema had been known then]. John Logie Baird, that pioneering genius of television, had set up a digital cinema in the Coliseum Theatre in London and was showing live pictures on a 2 metre by 1 metre screen. The following year Baird televised the Epsom Derby horse race and then did it again in 1932. The public loved it.
D-cinema of today is settling down into various "flavours". One such is feature film making and in due course this will become the principal method for shooting and showing all types of films. Already many major features are shot and edited electronically ( Star Wars is an example ) and many more will follow once international technical standards are finally agreed. Another flavour of d-cinema is the broad grouping of independent productions, documentaries, niche programmes, advertising, education. These mostly come out of a television background and there are literally thousands of programmes available and thousands more in production. A third flavour is live screening of special events of which sports is the most popular. That is no surprise since it was a sporting event that was the subject of the 1930 programme.
Although on the face of it, d-cinema is just "big " television, the reality is somewhat different. In order to achieve and maintain acceptable image quality on the screen, certain standards have to be set. All image capture should be at high definition quality whenever possible, (e.g.1920x1080/25p) although DigiBeta standard is acceptable and even DV can work in certain limited cases. Post production must be done with great care and attention to detail as errors at this stage are magnified many times over on the screen.
If the programme is to be encoded into e.g. MPEG2 for replay from a server, then the data rate used should be set as high as possible, typically 60Mb/s, to ensure a minimum of artefacts. Lastly the most popular projector to use to show the programme is one based around the Texas DMD chip. These DLP system projectors produce excellent bright images and range in size from 250Kg monsters to lightweight models that can be carried under one arm.
And finally, as a matter of course, the programme audio should be recorded in surround sound. Surround sound will not make a visually poor programme better but it will make a good programme great and a great programme absolutely outstanding.
Digital cinemas are now part of our cultural life and broadcasters must embrace
them. Research in the UK and Europe under taken by Docspace Ltd has shown
that the audiences for documentaries and independent productions tend to watch
less television than the average. There is a whole new market out there, or
rather in there, for a lot of a broadcasters' material and there is a lot
of broadcasters' material which if repurposed skilfully will make excellent
d-cinema programmes.
