Facts ‘Digital recording’, ‘digital editing’ and ‘digital projection’ are a few of the key terms that keep popping up in the discussion about digital cinema. Digital recordings are not – as with traditional film – small images exposed on film material. Rather, the picture is converted into a numeric value and saved as bits on the hard drive or on tape material. Through digital editing, the material is ‘cut’ on the computer, by means of an editing programme the pictures can be altered at will. Colour intensity and contrast can be as easily manipulated as the picture itself (which for example means that the undesired telegraph pole and suchlike can easily be removed). Digital projection simply means that the digital film is streamed from an image carrier or a satellite into the projection room and projected onto the screen without any sort of quality-reducing analogue conversion taking place. (Picture: HOTTE IM PARADIS / D. Graf)

Since the year 2000 when the Hof Film Festival showed the film BERND EICHINGER – WENN DAS LEBEN ZUM KINO WIRD (BERND EICHINGER – WHEN LIFE BECOMES A FILM) by Germán Kral and Husam Chadat as a DigiBeta projection – and became the first festival in Germany to use this new technology – every year more and more ‘digis’ are shown – as long as the quality is maintained at all stages.

Status quo

The technology has already made its way into the cinema, even though audiences may not be aware of it. A comparison: for the film KING KONG in 1933, the roofs of New York were meticulously reproduced as tiny models so that the 50cm gorilla would look colossal and threatening. In 1993, all the dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK originated out of the computer. The corresponding scenes were then blown-up onto the 35mm print, which was then projected traditionally onto the screen.

Contra

The big digital breakthrough has thus far been prevented by the high costs: digital projectors are very expensive and offer only to a limited degree the optical quality viewers expect. Digitally produced and saved films are inferior in colour, contrast, and resolution in comparison with conventional film material; additionally, the depth of focus is quite high, which is not necessarily an advantage since some pictures only then come to life when the foreground or background are somewhat diffused. Too sharp a focus can disturb the emotional perception of a picture – just like, for example, LP lovers complain about missing spatial density on CDs. One gets the feeling of too much ‘cleanliness’, the lack of reality is noticeable, which has to do with the fact that the pixels of a digital projection can be up to one square centimetre in size. A further disadvantage of digital technology is the necessity to invest time and expenses in the editing of the material, in particular the light and dark contrasts.

…and pro

The advantages, however, are obvious: the cameras are relatively inexpensive, the cost of recording materials can be kept at a minimum, and the daily result – the ‘rushes’ – can been immediately inspected. Complications in copying the material for digital editing are no longer a problem as the digital copying process can be carried out without any loss in quality, and above all, there is no longer the problem of expensive, voluminous and extremely fragile film prints: the film is saved on the hard drive or data file or can even be projected from a central file station directly into the cinemas.
Within the framework of the EU-sponsored project ‘European DocuZone’, from 2005 on and in eight European countries – including Germany – a network of digital cinemas is being set up which are ‘fed’ with material from a central projection station. The programme currently hosts documentaries and features which otherwise would hardly find their way into the wider market.

Perspectives

Today’s cinemas are quite apprehensive regarding the great investments necessary to obtain digital technology, very similar to cinemas’ reaction in the 1920s and 30s towards the expenses involved with sound technology. Just as film art back then initially had to do away with many of its sophisticated techniques – due to the immobile recording devices, the actors suddenly began to appear stiff, the films often seemed static, and since synchronous editing was not yet possible, the speaking scenes had to be filmed in one take, which of course later did not allow any elaborate editing of the film itself – so too will the digital technology of the 21st century have to find its own signature if it is to assert its own place alongside, or even replace, traditional cinema.

But one thing is for sure: digital recording technology allows young and independent filmmakers to realise projects without the high costs of a 35mm shoot. Authentic films can be made, experimenting with approaches to new narrative structures – and it’s precisely films like these that have a long tradition in Hof.

2003 - FLÜSSIG by Thomas Struck