conversion and lowering its costs. In March 2009,
the AMC theater chain announced an agreement
with Sony to provide digital movie projectors to
their 4,628 screens in five countries. These projec-
tors will be installed between 2009 and 2012 at an
estimated cost of some $60,000 per theater.^6
Clearly, while theater owners are less willing to
upgrade than studios might be, there is a substan-
tial potential for distributors and exhibitors to real-
ize great savings as a result of digital conversion.
These savings would occur in distribution costs,
the availability of a wider range of content for the
audiences, and significant control of movie piracy.
In contrast to traditional methods of distributing
movies to movie theaters, digital distribution seems
cost-effective. In traditional film-distribution pro -
cesses, new film prints, costing around $1,200,
must be made for each theater (and must also be
replaced regularly because a print deteriorates as
it runs through a projector). If this movie were dis-
tributed to 5,000 screens (out of the 40,000 total in
the United States), that cost would be $6 million,
not including the cost of shipping the bulky, heavy
cans that contain these 35mm film prints. By con-
trast, downloading a digital copy of a film to a the-
ater’s computer system (which could simply be a
hard drive costing under $100) costs virtually noth-
ing. Converting to digital projection (also called
digital cinema) could save the film industry $1 bil-
lion a year or more. The advent of the DVD and the
home theater system was once regarded as a threat
to the future of the movie theater. However, since
both theater admissions and the number of movie
screens have, according to the latest available
information, remained stable since 2006, it seems
highly likely that the development of digital tech-
nology will give us the options of looking at movies
at home, in theaters, or both.
Digitally equipped theaters are able to offer
more than feature films, including sports, enter-
tainment, cultural events, and independent movies
that might not otherwise seem profitable but which
could be more or less subsidized for short runs in a
multiplex. Such an expanded range of content can
be particularly valuable in areas where there are no
alternative theaters and few cultural opportunities.
Finally, with digital distribution, a blockbuster
movie could be released and screened simultane-
ously in all areas of the United States, even around
the world, thus maximizing the audience. Such
instantaneous, widespread exposure might curtail
the market for pirated copies made surreptitiously
inside a theater by a thief using a camcorder and
then duplicated in cheap copies sold on the streets.
However, the industry also fears that digital exhibi-
tion will foster the theft and subsequent pirating of
the digital release prints themselves. Furthermore,
digital technology is changing so rapidly that long-
term preservation of digital movies will remain prob-
lematic until stable standards can be established.
By contrast, the 35mm film format was very rapidly
standardized in the 1890s within a few years of the
technology’s invention and has remained stable, with
various improvements, until today.
Finally, the motion-picture industry is tradition-
ally very conservative about investing money that
will diminish profits, is not uniformly convinced
about the relative strengths and weaknesses of
digital technology, and perhaps as a result of these
factors, has yet to take a united position in the
conversion to digital technology the way it did in
undertaking the conversion to sound in the
late 1920s. The distributors and exhibitors have
the most to lose because they realize the competi-
tive power of such alternative ways of delivering
movies as direct downloading to homes and, as a
result, have made significant progress in converting
theaters. The battle over film versus digital technol-
ogy is not over. But it seems that the conversion to
digital is no longer a matter of if but rather of when.^7How a Movie Is Made
The making of a movie, whether by a studio or by
an independent producer (as we’ll discuss later)
and whether it is shot on film, video, or a digital(^6) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/technology/companies/
30sony.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=sony%204k%20digital%20movie
%20projector&st=cse.
(^7) Producers, distributors, and exhibitors incur additional costs
when a movie is made and shown in the increasingly popular
3-D format.
HOW A MOVIE IS MADE 491