My thoughts on Digital Cinema

Ok so I realise that cinemas have been running digitally for well over a decade at this point, so in that regard I am somewhat late to this. However I have been to the cinema a couple of times this year for the first time in ages and I find myself surprisingly underwhelmed. 

This isn’t because I’m a dinosaur or being nostalgic, I’m a former projectionist who worked with 16mm and 35mm and is also a trained digital projectionist. I’m all for progress and I love watching films on my Apple TV in full 4K Dolby Vision. The reason I’m so underwhelmed by the digital cinema experience is that the overall presentation is just lacking in so many ways. I’ll elaborate.

First a little background on my expertise in this field, I was a projectionist for several years, mostly working with 35mm but did some with 16mm and attained my digital projectionist certification. I worked mostly independent cinemas, but did end my career with a major multiplex chain before moving on to trains. I liked all the places that I worked and going from the “everything is done manually” approach in independents to “it’s mostly automated” in multiplexes was interesting but also presented new challenges. It was because of the automation I got to work my first interlock (one film print through multiple projectors at the same time). I’ll go into my former work in another post, but suffice it to say I really do know what I’m talking about. 

So the first thing I noticed is that the picture didn’t fill the screen. I’m not talking aspect ratio here, obviously a 1.85:1 film won’t fill a 2.35:1 screen. However I am talking vertically, the screen I went to most recently is one that I’m very familiar with from years ago. It’s huge, just over 14m wide and it used to be powered by a Cinemeccanica Victoria 5 projector sporting a Christie console with a 4.5KW xenon arc lamp behind it. Vertically there was space to the top and bottom of the picture, something that absolutely never used to be the case on 35mm. This suggests that the projector isn’t setup properly, the other thing that I noticed was (what I consider to be) excessive bowing at the bottom of the picture. Now this will be exacerbated by the angle of the throw and the fact that the screen does have a curve to it (which helps maintain a uniform focus across the full width of the screen). However I’ve never seen it so pronounced so something is off here.

Secondly was ghosting. I’ve seen this on TVs and monitors with low refresh rates but this is a new experience in the cinema for me. Recently I’ve seen films in two different cinemas, both different chains so I can’t pin this on one brand. It was jarring on both occasions. Ah yes, I know what you’re thinking, films are 24 frames per second, of course you’ll get ghosting. To that I say, never used to in 35mm simply because it wasn’t possible. 35mm film is made up of a series of still images, each image sits in front of the aperture of the projector for 1/24th of a second and is exposed twice before the next frame is moved into position. There was no ghosting as you weren’t watching a moving picture but a series of stills that gave the illusion of movement thanks to persistence of vision and the frame being moved on while the lamp was blocked from illuminating the screen. In short, it’s just not a great experience to see such ghosting happen. 

Thirdly was just overall brightness on both occasions. The picture was ok but it lacked vibrancy. It was a dark picture, the kind that on an old projector would be an indicator of an underpowered lamp. I mentioned this screen in particular used to have a 4500W xenon lamp in it, this picture looked much more like a 2000W lamp was in use. It just lacked punch and vibrancy. 

It’s a shame that both of my recent cinema experiences have triggered the projectionist in me. Not filling the screen and not being bright enough are just things that I wouldn’t allow. I’d have to do some digging to find out more about these specific setups, but from an end viewer perspective it’s just lacking.

Now for a bonus gripe… masking. It’s just not used anymore and it really irks me. Masking would cover the parts of the screen not being used leaving you with a nice deep black border that would effectively disappear from your sight while you focus on the film. Without masking (and I’ve had to run 35mm without masking when it had failed one time), you get left with a soft border. Closest analogy would be watching a letterboxed film on an old LCD or plasma TV where the blacks weren’t like you get on an OLED panel. 

As much as the process of making films has progressed and the technology for exhibition improves, right now it just feels off. I was always told that the projectionist is the last link in the film making chain, a bad presentation would be to the detriment of all the hard work so many people had put into making that film. For my money, I feel like right now we just aren’t doing the films justice in the picture department. The technology exists, fixing the screen filling issues, projectors that don’t have ghosting issues and brighter pictures would just really add to the experience for me. 

This isn’t meant to be a post bashing digital cinema, rather it’s about pointing out where I feel cinema presentation is failing right now. I imagine the issues over filling the screen and potentially brightness (depending on the type of projector in use) are easily fixed with some adjustments.