The Hindu Business Line : Digital cinema to throw up job offers for IT pros

Post-production and infrastructural support for the digital transformation of today's celluloid film-based distribution and exhibition systems will throw up a large number of job opportunities for young pros, say experts.

Multiplexes, digital cinema and electronic cinema - considered the most significant technological advancement in the cinema industry since the advent of digital sound - are going to play a crucial role in the future of film entertainment business in India as well.

The impact of efficiencies and savings from digital cinema-to-cinema operations, on top of the enhanced cinema experience, will be significant. Transmission and screening of movies, advertisements, trailers and other digital content such as concerts and sports events will become usual fare in cinemas.

All this would need qualified human resources to man them. India has already become a lead player in the all-digital quiet revolution, ahead of even the US and China. The country's first satellite delivery of digital cinema was consummated in February 2004.

According to Mr N.T. Nair, Technical Advisor, CMS Computers, the invasion of digital technology into most of the areas of human activity is visible all around. Photography is one such field, with digital cameras edging out their film-based counterparts. Home entertainment market is another.

Digital cinema encompasses every aspect of the movie making process, from production and post-production to distribution and projection. The basic idea is to digitally record, transmit and replay images, rather than using chemicals on film. The main advantage is that the system can store, transmit and retrieve a huge amount of information exactly as it was originally recorded.

Digital cinema affects three major areas of moviemaking: Production - how the movie is actually made; Distribution - how the movie gets from the production company to movie theatres and Projection - how the theatre presents the movie.

"When you see a movie digitally, you see that movie the way its creators intended you to see it - with clarity and detail, in a range of up to 35 trillion colours. Directors just love digital cinema because it ensures that their creation will be reproduced with total fidelity at every screening," Mr Nair said.

A digitally produced or digitally converted movie can be distributed to theatres via satellite, optical discs, or fibre optic networks. The digitised movie is stored in a computer/server, which "serves" it to a digital projector for each screening of the movie.

A `disruptive technology'

Digital cinema is a classic case of a `Disruptive Technology' in action.

A disruptive technology is any new gizmo that puts an end to the good life for technologies that preceded it. Personal computers were disruptive, because they toppled mainframes from their throne. So did cellular telephones with the wired phone system.

Disruptive technology is a term coined by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen to describe a new technology that unexpectedly displaces an established technology.

Digital cinema is `disruptive' at least on the following counts:

Cost: Digital video is 100 times less expensive than film.

Flexibility: The general ease for use has encouraged most filmmakers to switch to digital editing systems. It is so much simpler to put a movie together.

Distribution: Digital movies are basically computer files written into a DVD-ROM and sent through broadband cable or transmitted via satellite. There are virtually no shipping costs involved. It costs not much more to screen the same in 100 theatres than it does for one.

Projection: Unlike in the case of a movie, a digital version looks the same every time it is shown.

But digital projector technology is not entirely without negatives. Though economical on the distribution front, it could lead to a huge churn in the industry, specifically labour.

The other issue is piracy. A copy of digital movie could be easily made if one gets access to the data stream, or manages to break through the encryption, if any. — Our Bureau

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