Imax: A digital transition, and smaller screens

I hadn't been following the growing uproar (covered by Variety) over the smaller-size Imax screens that have been going in to multiplexes. There's even a site called Liemax that aims to help you discern "real" (giant) Imax locations from "fake" ones.

Here's a recent LA Times piece in which Imax's co-chairman says the company is considering sharing more info with consumers about screen size.

And there's this interesting stat in today's NY Times story on Imax:

How did Imax win over Hollywood? For starters, next-generation Imax projection systems, which rely on digital images rather than film, sharply lowered costs. Before digital arrived, a single Imax print of a major Hollywood film could run $60,000, according to Warner Brothers, compared with about $1,000 for a standard print. Imax’s digital prints cost about $500 each

YouTube Hearts TiVo ... Video Overload on the Net ... ShoWest Report ... And More

- YouTube and TiVo have gotten together to deliver YouTube videos to about 800,000 TiVo users who have the right box and the necessary broadband connection. TiVo has never shared any stats on how many of their users are getting content from the Internet this way (and likely won't, anytime soon). TiVo did an earlier deal with Brightcove; the new YouTube link won't be active until later this year, says the Wall Street Journal.

- Could video kill the Internet star? Here's a NY Times piece worth reading. Steve Lohr writes:

Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits as they traverse the Internet’s pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.

- The LA Times offers a good overview piece of what has been happening at the ShoWest convention in Vegas this week... mostly excitement about digital 3D. Jeffrey Katzenberg was there plugging 'Monsters vs. Aliens,' the spring 20009 DreamWorks Animation release, and its first in 3D. Katzenberg says the extra cost is about $15 million; he hopes there will be 3000 to 5000 screens capable of showing 3D by the time it is released.

- Imax and Texas Instruments have apparently done a deal to use TI's DLP (digital light processing) chips in a new kind of projection system being designed by Imax. (It's not clear yet who will actually make the projectors.) The Hollywood Reporter writes:

Imax...has since its inception 40 years ago used 70mm film to distribute and exhibit movies. By converting to digital, it will dramatically change its business model as digital distribution removes print costs -- about $22,000 for a 2-D print and $45,000 for a 3-D print -- from the equation.

Imax's move to TI is a blow to Sony because Imax had been developing a digital system that employed two Sony 4K projectors and proprietary technology.

- I've been having a good time using Hulu in the beta test period. It helped introduce me to 'Arrested Development,' and I actually didn't mind going out to rent the DVDs of episodes that weren't available on the Hulu site. I also deepened my knowledge (and enjoyment) of '30 Rock,' a show I catch on TV only occasionally. I didn't mind the commercials; the one thing that occasionally bugged me was the fact that you can't store video on your laptop for later viewing (IE, put a show on pause, wait for the whole thing to stream, and then start playing). That makes Hulu tough to use with spotty Internet connections, or if you want to store a show while you're sitting in the airport and then watch it on the plane. (I tried.)

But on the whole, Hulu does a lot right... including allowing you to embed the videos anywhere.

Dan Carew, a blogger in Hong Kong, has a very different opinion, since users outside the US are barred from Hulu (likely because of NBC and Fox's distribution contracts in foreign territories.)

Here's the NY Times story on Hulu's launch.

Monsters, Aliens & IMAX

DreamWorks Animation says it will release a trio of 3-D movies that will be among the first to take advantage of IMAX's new digital 3-D projection system, starting in 2009.

From the press release:

The IMAX 3D releases will include 'Monsters vs. Aliens' in March 2009, 'How to Train Your Dragon' in November 2009 and 'Shrek Goes Forth' in May 2010. A fourth DreamWorks Animation title, 'Kung Fu Panda,' will be released in IMAX’s 2D format in June 2008. The IMAX 3D titles are expected to be among the first presented with IMAX’s digital 3D projection system, which is scheduled to be launched beginning June 2008. This is IMAX’s first multiple 3D picture deal with a Hollywood studio. The 3D titles also will be simultaneously released to conventional digital 3D theatres. Paramount Pictures will be the exclusive distributor of the pictures.

Here's the Dow Jones coverage of the deal. From that story:

[IMAX co-CEO Richard Gelfond] added that DreamWorks and Imax had talked about various film projects before, but the timing never worked out. "Since we had so much lead time here, and they're so committed to their 3D strategy, it just made sense for both of us to do a deal at this time," he said, adding it was Imax's first multi-film deal.

DreamWorks had planned to release the original "Shrek" movie in Imax 3D in 2000, but the idea proved to be several years ahead of its time. The release was cancelled due to financial issues gripping Imax and the exhibition industry back then.

IMAX's Digital Plans ... Shorts on iTunes

- IMAX Corp. has started to say more about its plans for a ginormous digital projection system to serve the world's 290 IMAX theaters. From the press release:

[IMAX has] moved up the launch date of its digital projection system in development to the second quarter of 2008 from its previously announced timeframe of the end of 2008 to mid 2009. The highly anticipated IMAX(R) digital projection system will further enhance The IMAX Experience(R) and help to drive profitability for studios, exhibitors and IMAX(R) theatres by virtually eliminating the need for film prints, increasing program flexibility and ultimately increasing the number of movies shown on IMAX screens.

Under the current roll-out schedule, the Company anticipates that three digital IMAX prototypes will be installed during the second quarter of 2008. Shortly thereafter, IMAX expects to install three additional prototypes. Once these prototypes meet performance specifications, IMAX expects to proceed with a full rollout during the second half of the third quarter and in the fourth quarter of 2008.

No word on who IMAX is working with as partners ... I suspect this is not all technology developed in-house. In a survey IMAX conducted, 46 percent of respondents said they preferrred the digital IMAX projection to film.

- The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece about how iTunes and Web sites are fueling new interest in short films. It focuses on Tiffany Shlain ('The Tribe'), Jon Bloom ('Overnight Sensation'), and Jesus Beltran ('The Grass Grows Green'), among others. From Joe Garofoli's piece:

Creators of short films (40 minutes or less) have finally found an audience through such online sites as iTunes, Revver.com and San Francisco's Frameline Films and Caachi.com, which specializes in distributing independent films. And those sites are even starting to bring a revenue trickle to older shorts that audiences are unearthing online.

Shorts haven't had this kind of exposure since before 1950, when pre-TV-owning audiences saw shorts on the same bill with features and newsreels at the local movie theater. Now, when Oscar viewers hear about a handful of really cool-sounding short films that screen at one the world's 5,000 film festivals, they can actually see them.

"We are at the beginning of a transitional moment" in the short-film industry, said David Straus, CEO and co-founder of Withoutabox.com, an 8-year-old Los Angeles outfit that has helped 150,000 independent filmmakers market their films using the Internet. "It's not just that people can download them and see films online, it's that filmmakers are learning what they can do to reach out to audiences themselves."

Beltran says he has made "a couple thousand dollars" over a few months of having his film up on iTunes. (To clarify an earlier post, Mediastile is handling the distribution of 'The Tribe' on iTunes.)

3-D in Asia ... Movie Gallery Heads for Bankruptcy Protection

- The Hollywood Reporter has a piece that focuses on the emerging market for 3-D screens in Asia. The two players doing the conversions (or hoping to) are Real D and IMAX. From the piece:

"Asia is somewhat in the same position as Europe is in," [Real D CEO Michael] Lewis said. "The digital business arrangements have not been worked out, and you are dealing with more indigenous content, which means that more of the digital projector has to be paid for by the exhibitors."

Lewis estimates that 3-D digital cinema installations include roughly 14 installations in Korea, 16 in Australia and three in Japan. Other sources put the number of 3-D screens in Korea, where chains like CGV and Lotte have led the transition, as high as 20.

There's also a passing mention of In-Three, a company that wants to "dimensionalize" conventional movies. They still haven't announced their first project, despite having launched in 2005. About time, guys?

- It's not a great time to be in the video store business. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Movie Gallery (which owns Hollywood Video) is about to file for bankruptcy protection, hoping to emerge in early 2008. You'll recall that Movie Gallery bought the MovieBeam set-top box service back in March.

MovieBeam's Web site, interestingly, has been down for maintenance for almost two weeks. That must mean the service is doing really well. From the site: "Normal operation will return no later than the end of the day on Wednesday October 3rd."

Growth in 3-D Digital Screens

Cool piece in The Hollywood Reporter, headlined '3-D-ready screens popping up all over.' And one very interesting stat: when Disney released Tim Burton's 'Nightmare Before Christmas' last year, there were 168 screens to show it on in the US; this year, Disney's counting on about 600. Robert Zemeckis' 'Beowulf' will be on as many as 1000 3-D screens in November, but some of those are in IMAX theaters where the 3-D version will be in celluloid.

Pixar's 'Wall*E' and More from Comic-Con ... Q&A with IMAX CEO on Future of Large-Format Movies

- At Comic-Con over the weekend, Disney and Pixar lifted the veil a bit on two forthcoming projects -- the next 'Narnia' movie and the next Pixar movie, 'Wall*E.' From the Cinematical coverage:

First, [director] Stanton talked about ['Wall*E'], which he described as basically "R2-D2 the movie," tells the story of a "trash-collecting robot named Wall*E" who gets a chance to finally leave a world where he's been alone for years and go into space. Once there, "he falls in love and its this love that may allow him to save mankind." He also talked about the challenges of making a film like Wall*E, one where the main character is a robot who communicates with a series of sounds and doesn't have a traditional voice.

To illustrate the challenges of this type of film and how Pixar and Stanton will overcome them, the director then introduced pretty much the only man you could decide to call on when robots communicate with each other, convey emotion with sound and propel the story with their beeps, whistles and other noises: sound guru Ben Burtt.

Burtt took the stage and stood in front of a keyboard, prepared to show how his use of sound would help tell the story and provide, what Burtt called, a "sonic texture for the film."

...Burtt went through several examples of the sounds he created for each of the robots in the film. Of course, the clips were great -- as you would expect from Pixar -- and showed how far animation has come over the years. It was also interesting to see the design of Wall E's love interest, the probe droid Eve, and how it looked like her design had been influenced by the iPod. I wasn't the only one who thought so. Several others around me remarked on the similarities.

- If you want more from San Diego, Variety has been producing scads of dispatches from Comic-Con.

- Kendall Whitehouse over at the Wharton School of Business passed along this great Q&A with Richard Gelfond, co-CEO of IMAX. They're still talking about an eventual transition from film to digital -- but I suspect this is being slowed by the company's precarious financial position. But here, he does mention a specific date, which is interesting. From the interview:

IMAX is in the process of developing a digital IMAX system that, instead of working with 70mm film frames 10 times the size of 35mm, our whole technology will be in the digital world. And we're fairly far along in that development. I've seen a prototype. We're going to start to show customers prototypes in the next couple months. We're aiming to launch it in January 2009.

Gelfond also talks about his predictions for the next five or ten years of the theatrical exhibition business, which include more niche programming to small audiences, but fewer screens overall:

I think you'll see a lot of evolution. You'll continue to see the home as the place of most change. You'll continue to see [distribution] windows shrink, meaning you're going to have access to content in the home even sooner than you do versus the theater. I always ask myself: If you're someone like Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox and also owns different delivery systems around the world, why is it so important to give 50% of the opening box office to the exhibitor? If he can cut them out and deliver [content] directly to the consumer -- especially when they have better ways of viewing it -- why isn't he going to do that?

Now the common answer to that is that the theatrical platform is a marketing platform for the other windows. And some of that holds [true]. But, for example, if there was another Star Wars and Fox could charge $50 on the download, and not have to share it with the theater operator on the opening weekend, why wouldn't you see some kind of blend of that going on? So I think you'll continue to see big changes there.

With the change to digital, you'll see some changes in the way movies are distributed. The lock that the large studios have on distribution is partly because of physical distribution; you just need the infrastructure and the financial resources to distribute widely. But, as you go digital, you may be able to let smaller and more specialized players distribute in some way.

You'll definitely see more live action. You'll see more 3-D.

Two from USA Today: 'Batman' in IMAX and Combatting Cinema Annoyances

Two pieces from USA Today (the official newspaper of hotel dwellers):

- Christopher Nolan will use an IMAX camera to shoot four action sequences for the next Batman movie, 'The Dark Knight,' due out July 18, 2008. From the story:

"There's simply nothing like seeing a movie that way," Nolan says. "It's more immersive for the audience. I wish I could shoot the entire thing this way."

Typically, the feature films that play in IMAX theaters are simply stretched out to fill the enormous screens. That can dilute the picture quality and give the movie a wide, squat look.

Shooting on IMAX, Nolan says, will have a twofold effect. The four scenes will fill the IMAX screens, some of which are eight stories high. And in traditional theaters, the scenes will appear more vivid (think high-definition television over standard).

Don't expect many movies to follow suit. Only 280 IMAX theaters are in operation worldwide, and fewer than 100 show feature films.

And shooting in the format is difficult. IMAX film, which is 10 times the size of standard film stock, is costly and must be shot using bulky cameras.

- Regal Entertainment is offering some patrons at its multiplexes wireless problem-reporting device. Press 1 for a picture problem, 2 for sound, 3 for piracy, and 4 for "other disturbance." The systems will be available in 114 theaters this summer. My question: will a manager actually respond?