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Towards the end of 2005, the UK distribution and exhibition sectors were
starting to move towards digital distribution and exhibition. For exhibitors,
digital projection, especially when married to the increasing use digital
formats in production, can now replicate - if not surpass - the image quality of
conventional 35mm cinema presentation. And, of course, digital sound systems
have been used in cinemas for some time.
In distribution terms, the advantages of digital technology are even clearer,
though perhaps longer term. Digital technology is seen to offer a more cost
effective and logistics-light alternative to the tried and trusted, but unwieldy
model of 35mm print distribution described above. It will, eventually, be
cheaper and much less stressful to send films as computer files to cinemas
across the UK, than to transport 20-25kg tins of film in the back of a van.
Digital distribution and exhibition on a large scale has started to appear in
certain parts of the world, notably China and Brazil, where conventional
logistics cannot, for one reason or another, efficiently bring together supply
and demand. In the UK, digital technology has been embraced by the
non-theatrical sector, in film societies and schools, where the use of DVD and
mid-range digital projection has replaced 16mm.
The force of this change, coupled with the new capacity of technology to
replicate 35mm imaging, has led the UK Film Council to establish a digital
distribution and exhibition programme for the theatrical sector at the end of
2005. Entitled the Digital Screen Network (DSN), it will eventually support new
facilities in 211 screens across the country (out of a total of just over 3,300
screens in the UK), and is seen as a small but important step change towards
full digital cinema.
The DSN will initially work with files transferred from a high definition
digital master (either HDD5, or HD Cam). The compressed and encrypted files will
be sent directly to cinemas to be downloaded, de-encrypted (unlocked) and opened
as files for screening with digital projection equipment. In principle, digital
distribution will, in time, change the paradigm of 35mm print logistics. It will
be possible for the distributor to send feature film files electronically, via
broadband networks, thus eliminating dependence on transportation.
There is little doubt that the advent of digital distribution has the
potential radically to alter the modus operandi of distributors around the
world. The comparatively low cost of film copies and additional logistical
effectiveness of digital distribution provide the distributor with greater
flexibility. It will be less expensive in the coming years to offer a wide
theatrical opening with many copies, and also conversely, to screen a film for
just one performance at any cinema. In theory at least, it will be possible for
both distributors and exhibitors to respond more precisely to audience demand.
All this suggests that in the future, more titles, both mainstream and
specialised, will receive wide theatrical openings, and that this broadening of
access at the point of release will dramatically reduce the overall theatrical
period from 3-6 months to perhaps 1-3 months. Thereafter, films will enter into
a second-run and repertory programming market aided by lower costs.
The shortened first-run period will in turn bring forward the distributor's
release of the DVD. And there's the rub. The adoption of digital technologies
offers greater opportunities for distributors to create joined-up campaigns for
theatrical and DVD releases, in which, increasingly, the theatrical opening is
used as a way of providing a loss-leading marketing platform for the highly
lucrative DVD leg.
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