White Papers Post

Technicolor Starting On the Long Glossary Road

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Back in the late 80’s the digital transition grabbing the attention of engineers was in the broadcast business…no, in the post-production equipment business…no, it was in the potential of both…actually, memory was still expensive and processing power was still locked by unreleased new versions of the Motorola 68000 and other chips which drove everyone’s imagination with expectations of clever glued matrixes of parallel’d A/V ideas…most all failed as the latest versions didn’t arrive until too late – well, not too late for those companies who bought the dreamer companies for pennies on the dollar.

Notwithstanding that tangent, it was interesting times with new names and acronyms and uses for ideas – and the clever folks at Quantel issued their first industry glossary. It got better and better with each edition. The latest is the 20th Edition, released in 2015…and available at this link: Quantel Digital Factbook

There are plenty of other Glossaries at the DCinemaTools Glossary page.

Technicolor has started on the road to a new glossary named the Next Gen Premium Entertainment Experiences, which sounds like something that should be given out by the Event Cinema Association. Instead, it is pages of explanations of better bits. Click on the title.

White Papers Post

Technicolor Starting On the Long Glossary Road

Leave a comment

Back in the late 80’s the digital transition grabbing the attention of engineers was in the broadcast business…no, in the post-production equipment business…no, it was in the potential of both…actually, memory was still expensive and processing power was still locked by unreleased new versions of the Motorola 68000 and other chips which drove everyone’s imagination with expectations of clever glued matrixes of parallel’d A/V ideas…most all failed as the latest versions didn’t arrive until too late – well, not too late for those companies who bought the dreamer companies for pennies on the dollar.

Notwithstanding that tangent, it was interesting times with new names and acronyms and uses for ideas – and the clever folks at Quantel issued their first industry glossary. It got better and better with each edition. The latest is the 20th Edition, released in 2015…and available at this link: Quantel Digital Factbook

There are plenty of other Glossaries at the DCinemaTools Glossary page.

Technicolor has started on the road to a new glossary named the Next Gen Premium Entertainment Experiences, which sounds like something that should be given out by the Event Cinema Association. Instead, it is pages of explanations of better bits. Click on the title.

Consultants

Another Future of Film

Leave a comment

The panel of experts didn’t always merely show the warm and fuzzy side of the matters that Marty Shindler wondrously navigated them through. Under the ‘never-a-dull-moment’ microscope were the very real effects of consolidation, Alternative Content and Event Cinema, the impact and need for tentpole movies examined for every market, technology that ranged from plush chairs to lasers, woven with the continuing aspects of 3D, and how new entries will or won’t be making headway into established business (mostly, won’t).

During the days when the Studios got their hands slapped for too much integration, “Exhibition” entirely meant movie theaters. As a few studios then owned the lion’s share of production facilities and theaters they were also able to control the artists and financing and everything else involved. Since those court cases of the 1940s – 75 years ago, eh? – there has been a lot of care so this would never happen again. With only a few examples to the contrary, studios are quite divested from theaters.

That can’t be said, of course, for the other means of distribution. Last week’s Comcast bid to purchase DreamWorks Animation put the spotlight on their ownership of another animation studio Illumination Entertainment (known for launching the Despicable Me franchise), …and oh, by the way, Universal Studios and the two TV studios on their Universal City lot, Univision and NBC, and the theme park on top of the hill named Universal Studios Hollywood (“The Entertainment Capital of L.A.”). Comcast was prevented from a hostile takeover of Disney in 2004 and a friendly takeover of Time-Warner Cable by the FCC last year because of the amount of distribution they already had and would have. They still control 20% of the US links into homes. (For comparison, in today’s news Charter Communications was allowed by the FCC to take over Time-Warner Cable, giving them a 22% broadband marketshare.) But, to the letter of the law, no theaters.

Of course, this is not peculiar to them. Disney and Sony and Fox and Warner Bros are similarly vested in many of the same ways. Without a representative on stage, it was still their health, driven by their tentpole movies, that the symposium centered upon. On the contrary, theater owners Regal and AMC own Open Road Films, which produced last year’s Academy Award Best Picture and  Best Original Screenplay winner, Spotlight. And AMC’s owner Wanda has purchased the film finance/production group, Legendary Entertainment, which helped finance blockbuster hits such as The Dark Knight, Inception and Straight Outta Compton, among others.

Likewise on the dais, represented and pointed out by AMC’s President of Programming, Bob Lenihan, the theater chains are no slouches with joint partnerships among the other largest chains of new entertainment product (movies, essentially, though not entirely) and advertising and ticketing companies…and distribution. The largest satellite distribution company, DCDC, is owned by AMC Theatres, Cinemark Theatres, Regal Entertainment Group, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. which put movies onto 58% of US screens last year, plus several dozen “special events” including 5 live events.

The arc of Other Digital Stuff getting into cinema theaters has been a slow and haphazard one, filled with the promise of bringing the cinema’s unique social atmosphere to the entire range of high-profile events such as sports and opera, delivering both large productions world-wide and local content to distant diaspora. Several companies bet that they could break even installing equipment and use that installed base as a platform for a distribution empire of alternative content and special events. Several big companies lost big-time on that bet, starting with a spin-off of the giant broadcast manufacturing group EVS, whose large investments (among others) into dcinex was absorbed with little fanfare into Ymagis last year, and the earliest obvious success that has also morphed several times without attaining the traction that potential and bright ideas (and a lot of hard work and investment) promised, Cinedigm, né Access IT.

The dream and promise of low-cost distribution to the cinema (no need to make and fly prints all over the world) and easy programming flexibility at the cinema (Theater Management tools that decrease the team head-count at every point of the chain from the studio to the nonexistent projectionist), became a topic that flew by. “How does a small production get into the big cinema chains, in an era when new ‘studios’ such as Amazon are making their play.” With a large bit of the oxygen leaving the room, the panelist answered, “They don’t.” When another panelist tried to put a positive spin on a different small production’s attempt as having “so-so” results, he re-gained the audience’s sympathy by saying, “We would have killed for ‘so-so’.

That’s when it becomes obvious that each sector that looks like a giant monolith worthy of the Justice Departments scrutiny and other segments enmity, each are still an agglomeration of small entities trying to make their mark. Dolby, represented by the same Doug Darrow who steered the choppy waters of Texas Iinstrument’s digital cinema efforts when the path was obvious but no roads or bridges built, let us know that their successful Atmos system, by far the leader in immersive sound from artist viewpoint to installed base and customer respect, has 1,400 installations.

Given that it is still early days since the system’s release at CinemaCon four years ago, it is still a small number compared to the total number of screens that is approaching one hundred times that many. SMPTE arranged with AMC and Dolby a special set of High Dynamic Range (HDR) presentations after CinemaCon and before NAB that showed off the latest iteration of Dolby Vision at AMC Prime. That still boutique set of technologies known as DolbyVision (Dolby Million-to-One Contrast, High Brightness Laser Technology with comfortable chairs among other highlights) is still only two orders of magnitude smaller after a year of installations worldwide. …hardly a monolith compared to the 800 screen boutique of IMAX.

Dolby sits at the table with a market cap of USD$4.5 billion, IMAX, represented by the recently feted Phil Groves (SVP and EVP of International Distribution) sits at USD$2.25 billion. AMC at USD$2.8 billion, though purchased last year by the Wanda Group, a former property management group with a market cap of USD$30 billion, USD$18 billion of that now generally accepted to be the value of the Wanda Cinema Line…though only a billion of which comes from the 2,000 screens it has throughout China.

Duncan Stewart, Director of Research; Technology, Media and Telecommunications for Deloitte flew in from Toronto. Deloitte is a private firm, with a market cap valued at far over USD$100 billion, and famous for their CEO’s prediction of adding nearly 20,000 net jobs this year. Chris started out the quip-fest, with remarks that showed that a company in its position doesn’t have to cater to anyone – unlike your author who has to make nice with everyone since they all might be a customer or boss someday.

Rounding off the table, Chris Edwards who represents two private companies, The Third Floor (specializing in big-budget movie previz) and The Virtual Reality Company (specializing in the burgeoning VR creation world), who probably measures well financially though would rather talk in the value of helping develop the artists intent, some type of a pixels per idea quotient.

So, when exhibition is discussed, it means Virtual Reality and its twin AR, as well as all the streams of better pixels; high definition, wider gamut, high frame rate and lasers and immersive sound and plenty more.

Our future tech discussions will focus upon the different strategies that are developing, from the expansion of the boutique model that Dolby is implementing with their new product lines, through to Barco’s re-applying their magic to take the majority of the projector market, this time with LasersInside.

Consultants

Another Future of Film

Leave a comment

The panel of experts didn’t always merely show the warm and fuzzy side of the matters that Marty Shindler wondrously navigated them through. Under the ‘never-a-dull-moment’ microscope were the very real effects of consolidation, Alternative Content and Event Cinema, the impact and need for tentpole movies examined for every market, technology that ranged from plush chairs to lasers, woven with the continuing aspects of 3D, and how new entries will or won’t be making headway into established business (mostly, won’t).

During the days when the Studios got their hands slapped for too much integration, “Exhibition” entirely meant movie theaters. As a few studios then owned the lion’s share of production facilities and theaters they were also able to control the artists and financing and everything else involved. Since those court cases of the 1940s – 75 years ago, eh? – there has been a lot of care so this would never happen again. With only a few examples to the contrary, studios are quite divested from theaters.

That can’t be said, of course, for the other means of distribution. Last week’s Comcast bid to purchase DreamWorks Animation put the spotlight on their ownership of another animation studio Illumination Entertainment (known for launching the Despicable Me franchise), …and oh, by the way, Universal Studios and the two TV studios on their Universal City lot, Univision and NBC, and the theme park on top of the hill named Universal Studios Hollywood (“The Entertainment Capital of L.A.”). Comcast was prevented from a hostile takeover of Disney in 2004 and a friendly takeover of Time-Warner Cable by the FCC last year because of the amount of distribution they already had and would have. They still control 20% of the US links into homes. (For comparison, in today’s news Charter Communications was allowed by the FCC to take over Time-Warner Cable, giving them a 22% broadband marketshare.) But, to the letter of the law, no theaters.

Of course, this is not peculiar to them. Disney and Sony and Fox and Warner Bros are similarly vested in many of the same ways. Without a representative on stage, it was still their health, driven by their tentpole movies, that the symposium centered upon. On the contrary, theater owners Regal and AMC own Open Road Films, which produced last year’s Academy Award Best Picture and  Best Original Screenplay winner, Spotlight. And AMC’s owner Wanda has purchased the film finance/production group, Legendary Entertainment, which helped finance blockbuster hits such as The Dark Knight, Inception and Straight Outta Compton, among others.

Likewise on the dais, represented and pointed out by AMC’s President of Programming, Bob Lenihan, the theater chains are no slouches with joint partnerships among the other largest chains of new entertainment product (movies, essentially, though not entirely) and advertising and ticketing companies…and distribution. The largest satellite distribution company, DCDC, is owned by AMC Theatres, Cinemark Theatres, Regal Entertainment Group, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. which put movies onto 58% of US screens last year, plus several dozen “special events” including 5 live events.

The arc of Other Digital Stuff getting into cinema theaters has been a slow and haphazard one, filled with the promise of bringing the cinema’s unique social atmosphere to the entire range of high-profile events such as sports and opera, delivering both large productions world-wide and local content to distant diaspora. Several companies bet that they could break even installing equipment and use that installed base as a platform for a distribution empire of alternative content and special events. Several big companies lost big-time on that bet, starting with a spin-off of the giant broadcast manufacturing group EVS, whose large investments (among others) into dcinex was absorbed with little fanfare into Ymagis last year, and the earliest obvious success that has also morphed several times without attaining the traction that potential and bright ideas (and a lot of hard work and investment) promised, Cinedigm, né Access IT.

The dream and promise of low-cost distribution to the cinema (no need to make and fly prints all over the world) and easy programming flexibility at the cinema (Theater Management tools that decrease the team head-count at every point of the chain from the studio to the nonexistent projectionist), became a topic that flew by. “How does a small production get into the big cinema chains, in an era when new ‘studios’ such as Amazon are making their play.” With a large bit of the oxygen leaving the room, the panelist answered, “They don’t.” When another panelist tried to put a positive spin on a different small production’s attempt as having “so-so” results, he re-gained the audience’s sympathy by saying, “We would have killed for ‘so-so’.

That’s when it becomes obvious that each sector that looks like a giant monolith worthy of the Justice Departments scrutiny and other segments enmity, each are still an agglomeration of small entities trying to make their mark. Dolby, represented by the same Doug Darrow who steered the choppy waters of Texas Iinstrument’s digital cinema efforts when the path was obvious but no roads or bridges built, let us know that their successful Atmos system, by far the leader in immersive sound from artist viewpoint to installed base and customer respect, has 1,400 installations.

Given that it is still early days since the system’s release at CinemaCon four years ago, it is still a small number compared to the total number of screens that is approaching one hundred times that many. SMPTE arranged with AMC and Dolby a special set of High Dynamic Range (HDR) presentations after CinemaCon and before NAB that showed off the latest iteration of Dolby Vision at AMC Prime. That still boutique set of technologies known as DolbyVision (Dolby Million-to-One Contrast, High Brightness Laser Technology with comfortable chairs among other highlights) is still only two orders of magnitude smaller after a year of installations worldwide. …hardly a monolith compared to the 800 screen boutique of IMAX.

Dolby sits at the table with a market cap of USD$4.5 billion, IMAX, represented by the recently feted Phil Groves (SVP and EVP of International Distribution) sits at USD$2.25 billion. AMC at USD$2.8 billion, though purchased last year by the Wanda Group, a former property management group with a market cap of USD$30 billion, USD$18 billion of that now generally accepted to be the value of the Wanda Cinema Line…though only a billion of which comes from the 2,000 screens it has throughout China.

Duncan Stewart, Director of Research; Technology, Media and Telecommunications for Deloitte flew in from Toronto. Deloitte is a private firm, with a market cap valued at far over USD$100 billion, and famous for their CEO’s prediction of adding nearly 20,000 net jobs this year. Chris started out the quip-fest, with remarks that showed that a company in its position doesn’t have to cater to anyone – unlike your author who has to make nice with everyone since they all might be a customer or boss someday.

Rounding off the table, Chris Edwards who represents two private companies, The Third Floor (specializing in big-budget movie previz) and The Virtual Reality Company (specializing in the burgeoning VR creation world), who probably measures well financially though would rather talk in the value of helping develop the artists intent, some type of a pixels per idea quotient.

So, when exhibition is discussed, it means Virtual Reality and its twin AR, as well as all the streams of better pixels; high definition, wider gamut, high frame rate and lasers and immersive sound and plenty more.

Our future tech discussions will focus upon the different strategies that are developing, from the expansion of the boutique model that Dolby is implementing with their new product lines, through to Barco’s re-applying their magic to take the majority of the projector market, this time with LasersInside.

Exhibitor News

The Palette at the Exhibition End of the Artist’s Intent

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Three years after DCI was formed with a million dollars from 6 studios, and combined with the continuing input of the technology groups of the American Society of Cinematographers, NATO, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, …and most relevant for this story, the Entertainment Technology Center of USC which set up a theater in Hollywood for the testing of the ideas that became the DCI specifications in July of 2005.

Ten years later, the hard physical and financial slog of the transition was announced at CinemaCon 2015 as being basically completed. A year later, several major ideas are still in transition, just as obvious now as the move to digital was back then: SMPTE-Compliant DCP distribution and satellite distribution are still in their trial stage, Immersive Sound, introduced as a proprietary format by Dolby is being led down a variation of the ‘open’ path of most D-Cinema technologies, and projectors with laser light engines – two years after the public demonstrations declaring them working, stable and ready for purchase – are numerically fewer than digital projectors were the year that Star Wars Attack of the Clones was released in May of 2002.

It is under this condition that events are unfolding now, slightly different but with a strong echo of the past. Unless you have been a manufacturer you might not be able to appreciate the ability to have a facility to refine your basically working – so to speak, productized – ideas. Last year at this time the Canadian company Imax opened their two screen Los Angeles home in Playa Vista, next door to YouTube…with their own variant of digital projector (a customized Barco system.) And Dolby Labs have recently begun showing equipment and movie events at their new Vine Street technology showcase in Hollywood.

But the real great feeling as a manufacturer is when a client allows the use of their facility to assist with the innovation of ideas and products. This is the importance of the opening this week, just before CinemaCon 2016, of The Barco Innovation Center at AEG Regal LA Live Cinema. The branding is not only at the front door. Barco Red and White Innovation Center messaging overlooks freeway drivers as they pass near the 10 and 110 interchange.

With an impressive array of executives from both the hosting site and each of the show-cased Barco technology divisions, this facility was re-branded and re-launched.

AEG’s Regal LA Live Cinema is part of an extensive multi-venue entertainment complex located in the center of a still forming ‘new’ downtown Los Angeles. To give some perspective, it is 8 miles from downtown Hollywood. It has several adjacent buildings which feature events ranging from red carpet movie premiers, to concerts and sporting events.

Being in this special multi-block AEG owned and operated area, the cinema is also special in that it is the only Regal Cinema directly owned and managed by the parent company AEG. AEG itself has many varied entertainment groups both in and outside of the movie industry, examples being the AXS Event Ticketing Service and AEG Live, which promotes the shows that are normally present at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, among a thousand others, and of course, the 7,334 screens of Regal Entertainment’s theater chains.

And thus it was that four different AEG and Regal executives spoke of the process and promise of having such a technology center in the midst of their customers, all on the basic message of the potential of using technologies as they mature, with personal anecdotes from their own perspectives. For example, Mr. Robert del Moro, Chief Purchasing Officer for Regal spoke to the ability of monitoring the actual value of savings in air conditioning, electricity and other benefits that a complete facility of laser-engine projectors will bring to their decision processes.

Wim Buyens, from his position as CEO Entertainment, Barco, spoke of the company’s mantra of “Creating Moments and Compelling Experiences” for the audiences that they serve, and being appreciative of having a partner which allows the investment of their space and time. In a later conversation he made a tangential point in a similar fashion, stating that it wasn’t up to them as a manufacturer to set standards for the industry but to meet the standards and goals that are set by the studios and their customers and their customers.

The presentations included the Barco Lobby Experience, which coordinates all of the lobby and aisle displays on a timed plan so they can deliver a single message throughout the facility. As with the other two deliverables, this system was first presented as a working concept at CinemaCon 2014. The Experience begins with a recognizable tone to grab people’s attention, then tones and a hip countdown clock are followed by a special videos/audio mix of studio supplied assets. The software sets the volume level so it is above the ambient noise in the different areas.

The intention is to grab and present the lobby audience with an intense exposure to future presentations. Future software add-ons will add social media tools that facilitate ticket purchasing and other add-ons. Further along, they will integrate the software from a newly purchased group which will even allow some monitor displays to deliver age or gender specific material, depending on who is standing in front of that section. [Remind us to do an ROI article in a few months when all these potential items are incorporated.]

In what seemed like a CinemaCon pre-show practice run, a low-key presentation of the Barco Flagship Laser projector was used to demonstrate a full range of 2D and 3D material at the full SMPTE spec of 48 candela/meter2. A special piece of demo material for one of ARRI’s new Alexa cameras was used to show the artful blend of increasing brightness without washing out contrast. Unlike many demonstrations, this material was slow enough to stare into the dark and the light areas, and appreciate what is being attempted. One imagines that this would be a great opportunity to try alternatives to silver screens with the Barco Flagship Projector, perhaps using a quality RealD Precision White Screen to see if eliminating the vignetting brought by the 1.8 gain silver screen would add to the pleasure of the gorgeous material being sent from such a high quality 4K delivery (60,000 lumen~!) system.

With 2 of the Flagship Laser Projectors in the facility now, it was announced that by the end of summer, Barco blue phosphor lasers will replace the rest of the projectors in the facility.

Todd Hoddick, Chief Executive Officer of Barco Escape, showed the latest iteration of the Barco Escape system. Todd is enthusiastic about breaking the preconceived notion that we have to live within the original confines of a glorified sheet on the wall. The thrust of his remarks have to do with the efforts to get Hollywood content, for which he announces 4 movies in the next year, doubling again soon thereafter. There will be a similar coordinated effort with a partner in China. He also plans on nearly 2,000 installs in the coming years (over 1,000 in the US and EU, and 1,000 in China.)

The system itself has continued evolving since the first exposure at CinemaCon 2014. Perhaps the most relevant info is that it is now a fully DCI compliant system. We take this to mean that the 2 side-facing projectors are chosen from Barco’s arsenal of DCI compliant projectors and a clever bit of security software keeping sync. In addition to quoting a price per auditorium of $100,000 ($15,000 higher than quoted at CineEurope…is this a euro to dollar confusion?) plus a $10,000 fixed price per movie (or other entertainment package) which, he said, by putting the onus on Barco to supply material to cinema customers shows their dedication to the idea. Several anecdotes were told of box office success along with several concert and film clips, most seen before, although a clever commercial was shown.

Two Auro Immersive Audio system accompany the two Flagship Laser Projector System, and AuroMax systems are promised before the end of the year.

Thus finishes what can be considered a nice soft launch into the coming rigorous weeks of CinemaCon, the SMPTE Future of Cinema Conference and NAB. The equipment, while all cool and advancing the arts, was not the story. The story was a level higher than that, the relationship and the potential of the palette at the exhibition end of the artist’s intent.

Good luck to them and good luck to us all.

Exhibitor News

The Palette at the Exhibition End of the Artist’s Intent

Leave a comment

Three years after DCI was formed with a million dollars from 6 studios, and combined with the continuing input of the technology groups of the American Society of Cinematographers, NATO, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, …and most relevant for this story, the Entertainment Technology Center of USC which set up a theater in Hollywood for the testing of the ideas that became the DCI specifications in July of 2005.

Ten years later, the hard physical and financial slog of the transition was announced at CinemaCon 2015 as being basically completed. A year later, several major ideas are still in transition, just as obvious now as the move to digital was back then: SMPTE-Compliant DCP distribution and satellite distribution are still in their trial stage, Immersive Sound, introduced as a proprietary format by Dolby is being led down a variation of the ‘open’ path of most D-Cinema technologies, and projectors with laser light engines – two years after the public demonstrations declaring them working, stable and ready for purchase – are numerically fewer than digital projectors were the year that Star Wars Attack of the Clones was released in May of 2002.

It is under this condition that events are unfolding now, slightly different but with a strong echo of the past. Unless you have been a manufacturer you might not be able to appreciate the ability to have a facility to refine your basically working – so to speak, productized – ideas. Last year at this time the Canadian company Imax opened their two screen Los Angeles home in Playa Vista, next door to YouTube…with their own variant of digital projector (a customized Barco system.) And Dolby Labs have recently begun showing equipment and movie events at their new Vine Street technology showcase in Hollywood.

But the real great feeling as a manufacturer is when a client allows the use of their facility to assist with the innovation of ideas and products. This is the importance of the opening this week, just before CinemaCon 2016, of The Barco Innovation Center at AEG Regal LA Live Cinema. The branding is not only at the front door. Barco Red and White Innovation Center messaging overlooks freeway drivers as they pass near the 10 and 110 interchange.

With an impressive array of executives from both the hosting site and each of the show-cased Barco technology divisions, this facility was re-branded and re-launched.

AEG’s Regal LA Live Cinema is part of an extensive multi-venue entertainment complex located in the center of a still forming ‘new’ downtown Los Angeles. To give some perspective, it is 8 miles from downtown Hollywood. It has several adjacent buildings which feature events ranging from red carpet movie premiers, to concerts and sporting events.

Being in this special multi-block AEG owned and operated area, the cinema is also special in that it is the only Regal Cinema directly owned and managed by the parent company AEG. AEG itself has many varied entertainment groups both in and outside of the movie industry, examples being the AXS Event Ticketing Service and AEG Live, which promotes the shows that are normally present at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, among a thousand others, and of course, the 7,334 screens of Regal Entertainment’s theater chains.

And thus it was that four different AEG and Regal executives spoke of the process and promise of having such a technology center in the midst of their customers, all on the basic message of the potential of using technologies as they mature, with personal anecdotes from their own perspectives. For example, Mr. Robert del Moro, Chief Purchasing Officer for Regal spoke to the ability of monitoring the actual value of savings in air conditioning, electricity and other benefits that a complete facility of laser-engine projectors will bring to their decision processes.

Wim Buyens, from his position as CEO Entertainment, Barco, spoke of the company’s mantra of “Creating Moments and Compelling Experiences” for the audiences that they serve, and being appreciative of having a partner which allows the investment of their space and time. In a later conversation he made a tangential point in a similar fashion, stating that it wasn’t up to them as a manufacturer to set standards for the industry but to meet the standards and goals that are set by the studios and their customers and their customers.

The presentations included the Barco Lobby Experience, which coordinates all of the lobby and aisle displays on a timed plan so they can deliver a single message throughout the facility. As with the other two deliverables, this system was first presented as a working concept at CinemaCon 2014. The Experience begins with a recognizable tone to grab people’s attention, then tones and a hip countdown clock are followed by a special videos/audio mix of studio supplied assets. The software sets the volume level so it is above the ambient noise in the different areas.

The intention is to grab and present the lobby audience with an intense exposure to future presentations. Future software add-ons will add social media tools that facilitate ticket purchasing and other add-ons. Further along, they will integrate the software from a newly purchased group which will even allow some monitor displays to deliver age or gender specific material, depending on who is standing in front of that section. [Remind us to do an ROI article in a few months when all these potential items are incorporated.]

In what seemed like a CinemaCon pre-show practice run, a low-key presentation of the Barco Flagship Laser projector was used to demonstrate a full range of 2D and 3D material at the full SMPTE spec of 48 candela/meter2. A special piece of demo material for one of ARRI’s new Alexa cameras was used to show the artful blend of increasing brightness without washing out contrast. Unlike many demonstrations, this material was slow enough to stare into the dark and the light areas, and appreciate what is being attempted. One imagines that this would be a great opportunity to try alternatives to silver screens with the Barco Flagship Projector, perhaps using a quality RealD Precision White Screen to see if eliminating the vignetting brought by the 1.8 gain silver screen would add to the pleasure of the gorgeous material being sent from such a high quality 4K delivery (60,000 lumen~!) system.

With 2 of the Flagship Laser Projectors in the facility now, it was announced that by the end of summer, Barco blue phosphor lasers will replace the rest of the projectors in the facility.

Todd Hoddick, Chief Executive Officer of Barco Escape, showed the latest iteration of the Barco Escape system. Todd is enthusiastic about breaking the preconceived notion that we have to live within the original confines of a glorified sheet on the wall. The thrust of his remarks have to do with the efforts to get Hollywood content, for which he announces 4 movies in the next year, doubling again soon thereafter. There will be a similar coordinated effort with a partner in China. He also plans on nearly 2,000 installs in the coming years (over 1,000 in the US and EU, and 1,000 in China.)

The system itself has continued evolving since the first exposure at CinemaCon 2014. Perhaps the most relevant info is that it is now a fully DCI compliant system. We take this to mean that the 2 side-facing projectors are chosen from Barco’s arsenal of DCI compliant projectors and a clever bit of security software keeping sync. In addition to quoting a price per auditorium of $100,000 ($15,000 higher than quoted at CineEurope…is this a euro to dollar confusion?) plus a $10,000 fixed price per movie (or other entertainment package) which, he said, by putting the onus on Barco to supply material to cinema customers shows their dedication to the idea. Several anecdotes were told of box office success along with several concert and film clips, most seen before, although a clever commercial was shown.

Two Auro Immersive Audio system accompany the two Flagship Laser Projector System, and AuroMax systems are promised before the end of the year.

Thus finishes what can be considered a nice soft launch into the coming rigorous weeks of CinemaCon, the SMPTE Future of Cinema Conference and NAB. The equipment, while all cool and advancing the arts, was not the story. The story was a level higher than that, the relationship and the potential of the palette at the exhibition end of the artist’s intent.

Good luck to them and good luck to us all.

Societies

CinemaCon and NAB/SMPTE Events Posted

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Here are the links for the daily events of CinemaCon 2016 and the Future of Cinema SMPTE/NAB. Note that they follow each other, separated only by one day. Enjoy that Friday off~!

CinemaCon 2016 ScheduleMake sure to note that there is an International Day schedule – which is on the 11th – as well as a schedule for the day of the 11th. Don’t miss anything~! http://cinemacon.com/schedule/2016-events/

SMPTE/NAB Future of CinemaThere is always something about the Future of Cinema Schedule – Note that if you decide that there is something that doesn’t seem interesting in the description, and you use that time to go to meet or eat – it will be THE seminar that everyone talks about for the next six months. “Hey~! Did you see the Correlative Timeshifting 4DmegaFrames per PixelSecond presentation? http://nab16.mapyourshow.com/7_0/sessions/index.cfm?advsrch-sessiontype=86&advsrch=true&advsrch-showresults=true

Good luck with that. 

…Like Tangents In Rain