Will cinema always survive technological change or is the latest technology a bigger threat because it is at the exhibition end of the chain?

In this modern age the film industry is continuously finding new ways, through technology, to enable them to get more money and produce better films. The film industry has also been endlessly trying to introduce smaller production companies into the mainstream audience therefore with the most recent technology, the digitalisation of film, this has become possible. Through the possibility of distributing films via the internet for the viewer to download this threatens the cinema’s future. Can the cinema survive this most recent advancement?
Firstly one must understand how films have been shown at the cinema for years, basically every film shown in a cinema is a separate ‘print’ of the film projected via a reel. The major companies can afford to produce far more copies than the smaller companies can. A small company producing a less commercial product cannot afford to risk spending lots of money on reels when they may not make it up in the box office. Because of this, the film industry strived to find a solution which would allow smaller companies to be able to ‘blanket release’ as the major companies comfortably do.
UK Film Council is finding a solution to this problem via its Digital Screen Network. The deal is that cinemas receiving financial support to equip themselves with digital facilities (thus avoiding the issue of prints) will in return be expected to show more films from independent distributors. They hope small-scale independent films will get seen this way. Another plus to digital technology is that it is much cheaper therefore making it much easier for low budget film makers and distributers. It is now possible for short films to reach a potentially wide audience via a range of hosts, which include the UK Film Council, The UK Media Desk, BBC Film Network, Big Film Shorts, Film London’s Pulse, and a host of short film festivals all which have online submission. Perhaps it is worth considering what is more important, the film or the cinema? To have a wider choice of films, not dominated by the major companies, maybe the cinema should be sacrificed, although it is possible to save cinemas by equipping them with digital facilities which would let the cinema profit more as well.
As far as the major studios and distributers are concerned, digital technology offers great potential to increase profits and dangers in equal measure. Once it becomes the norm to download film via broadband, the potential for a new form of ‘blanket distribution’ is obvious- not only do you no longer need multiple prints; you can also bypass the cinema. However the big screen offers a separate experience that is likely to remain attractive, therefore the cinema could survive this big advancement in technology although it is inevitable that its popularity would decrease. However, the cinema could be destroyed as digital film has the advantage of offering identical versions of the film to each viewer. This will without doubt save billions of pounds at the distribution phase; causing film companies to choose to distribute their films this way.
Piracy is a major concern of all film distributors, with Hollywood investigators claiming at 10% raise each year. The small production companies are hurt more by piracy than multinational conglomerates, as they cannot bear the impact with already acquired capital. The solution to piracy is that through digital distribution there is control and security as most piracy is the result of a cinema-goer with a hidden camera distributing a poor quality version of a film to parts of the world where it has not yet been released (because the prints are somewhere else). Simultaneous global distribution via the internet will put an end to this ‘time-gap’ and thus its exploitation by pirates. This is one of the main possible contributors to the end of cinema, as if the film companies can gain millions of pounds through the decrease in piracy they will.
One issue for debate which could save cinemas is the quality of digital movies. Whereas some film makers and critics argue that the ‘binary reduction’ of imaged in the digital compression process reduces the complexity of image and light, some would argue that digital films only remove the degrees of texture that most viewers wouldn’t notice anyway. Randle and Culkin explain how at the cinema the movie we seen has been shown so many times it “wear(s) and tear(s)” therefore it “reduce(s) the quality of the presentation”. Another point they make which could show the potential ‘death’ of the cinema is that “some experts believe that D-cinema will overtake the quality of the best conventional cinema within the next year or two, and at the same time address age-old industry problems.”
Film companies are always trying to find new ways to produce film and by the digitalisation of film offering a range of new institutional practices it makes this way much more appealing. The editing process can become more creative and composite images can be produced to incorporate digital animation. Although the ‘one way’ process of film making and consumption is threatened by the interactive ‘zeitgeist’, so that the generation of media users who are immersed in online media and videogames are likely to require new forms of interactivity in the film medium, which could mean the cinema still has reason to stay.
Overall, with the smaller production companies and distributers becoming more popular the need for digitalisation is greater than ever. After all, as technology is evolving constantly, wouldn’t the most logical thing to do be digitalising film to create more money for not only the production companies but the cinema as well? Although, once it is the norm for films to be downloaded on the internet and watched that way to reduce piracy, the cinema would not be needed. However, the experience of going to the cinema is one that most people will not be willing to give up as most are ignorant of how the film they seen has been produced and distributed. Perhaps only time will tell whether the cinema will survive the most recent technological advancement, but personally I believe the cinema’s days are numbered due to the new internet based age, especially as “the digital has created new cultural economies”(Marshall).