I'd say that the creation of the multiplex was a more dramatic transformation in the way most people experienced movies than the film-to-digital revolution now under way. We were adamant about employing union projectionists, even as some of the major chains were trying to get rid of them and substitute low-wage teenagers to push buttons on automated equipment.
#35MM FILM TO DIGITAL CONVERTER TRADE ME MOVIE#
And this takes me back to when I used to run a movie theater (well, I booked it - with one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, Ann Browder, who owed the joint: the single-screen Market Theater in Seattle's historic Pike Place Market). Mostly, I tend to trust projectionists' complaints. In the 2000s they complained about digital intermediates too. In the 1940s and 1950s, they complained about acetate too, saying that nitrate was sharper and easier to focus. Projectionists sometimes complain that mylar images aren't as good as acetate ones.
(Many changes in projection technology were driven by the rise of multiplexes, which demanded that one operator, or even unskilled staff, could handle several screens at once.) It's also more heat-resistant, and so able to take the intensity of the Xenon lamps that became common in multiplexes. If it gets jammed up in a projector, it's more likely to break the equipment than be torn up. For release prints of movies, it's thinner than acetate but it's a lot tougher. Mylar was originally used for audio tape and other plastic products. Release prints are on mylar, a polyester-based medium. 35mm motion picture release prints haven't had a celluloid base for about fifteen years. The ongoing switch from analog to digital movie projection is indeed a big deal, but I was struck by this observation from DB:įirst, let's go fussbudget. That's not to diss Pixar, it's just a vivid statement of digital reality. "A Pixar movie is just a very large number, sitting idle on a disc."