Digital Dreams – Is The Picture Still Blurred?
Peter Seabrook-Harris, regional sales director, Pearl & Dean UK, looks at what obstacles lie ahead for digital cinema and how these can be overcome…
Background to Digital & Cinema
Digital has of course totally engulfed the world of music, photography and video (few, if any, retailers now offer analogue/video products) with cinema the very last bastion of old school 35mm film.
So given the fact that cinematic quality digital projection has been around since 1998, why all the delay in making the big switch?
Digital is indeed a wonderful innovation but it isn’t fool proof – a fact amply illustrated by my purchase of a digital radio which is useless as my reception is still poor. We’ve now seen a big retreat by many of our friends in the wireless world as radio appears to be back tracking on digital. Early adopters can therefore sometimes secure a major market advantage… but they can also pay a significant penalty by jumping the gun and/or going the wrong route.
The first stumbling block has been to agree a worldwide digital cinema standard and the DCI (Digital Screen Initiative) has now addressed this so we now have a common set of industry standards.
However, concerns over the cost of switching and exactly who pays what are now the latest challenge – with the current banking crisis fuelling uncertainty.
Current situation
In the short term, we are still fundamentally a 35mm film based business but as digital screen penetration increases we will no doubt need to run a dual 35mm/digital business model for some years over the medium term.
Like the cinema goers, our agencies and advertisers will frankly not be terribly interested in just how the films and content are delivered. For them it’s all about the physical audience numbers delivered and the greater ability to target the new audience strands created, etc.
3D movies are being touted as a big digital driver but with perhaps less than 10 movies out of 500 releases planned for next year being 3D, they can’t be much more than a Trojan Horse, although some advertisers such as Red Bull have already trialled 3D cinema commercials.
The biggest impact of digital will be in changing the cinema’s virtual total dependence on Hollywood as the sole provider of movies – with alternative non-film content now possible via digital.
Live concerts (from Muse to opera), major sporting events and even Wii gaming are all areas being trialled, and of course exhibitors are also eyeing the growing baby boomers heading for retirement as an off-peak source of incremental revenue.
The inherent flexibility of digital also means that short term campaigns for, say, retail and the media, can now also be run and multiple copy choice can be issued to suit individual movies at the mere flick of a switch.
As ever, our task will be to segment, optimise and market what will become an increasingly diverse audience and much will depend on exhibitors and cinema advertising contractors working in close harmony with our clients and advertisers.
Somehow we also have to slot this all into a wider, dramatically changing media landscape and ensure that we continue to market cinema as the truly unique medium that it is.
Indeed in gradually losing our unique 35mm film based business, we must at all costs avoid the inherent trap of allowing the progressive digital changeover to commoditise us alongside regular digital TV, which our move towards alternative content could prompt.
That is one particular area where we just can’t afford a blurred picture.