One interesting - but likely temporary - roadblock to all this
digitalism will be fear of hackers.
Some time ago I interviewed someone at the forefront of digital
projection systems, and her big concern (and that of the corporation she
worked for) was that whatever $$$ the studios saved in making and
distributing physical prints to theatres they would pay out in
anti-hacking software, firewalls etc.
Think how disastrous (also potentially hilarious) it would be if the
tagline on movie posters in every theatre in the world could be altered
with a keystroke... one such incident, if it indeed had a deep impact on
the film's resulting box office, might make studios long for the good
old days of paper posters.
One last point, I think there will be paper posters printed for wild
postings and convention giveaways etc for some time to come.
Ron
Richard Halegua Comic Art wrote:
I've been saying for the past 3-4 years.. maybe longer .. that digital
displays are the direction theatres will be headed
first of all, printing, shipping and storing posters are an expense
that studio owners would love to eliminate. Not to mention the
employees needed for such a distribution network.
these employees need to inventory, request out of stock posters from
other warehouses, have to take those rolls of 50 and pull 1-5 posters
to send out to individual theaters etc.
shipping by truck after printing and then individually to theaters is
a greater expense than printing them
also, if a poster has a mistake, it has to be reprinted etc.
a digital display can be controlled by one central location by the
studio - out of the hands of theatre owners - to maintain a consistent
promotion from the theatres in Westwood to those in Montauk and all
the way to Japan, India and Australia with great ease. A simple
program can be set up to change the language fonts
When the studio wants to change the campaign, all they have to do is
create it in the central computer & feed it - simultaneously all over
the world
But then you go further. Digital displays can show trailers
intermingled with posters and can draw people who were just walking
past the theatre better than a static poster. Plus you can "gang them
up" creating ever larger displays with multiple digital panels. How
about driving into a mall & seeing 20 digital panels fitted together
to create an 8 foot by 20 foot display showing trailers that can be
seen across the parking lot. Literally an outdoor cinema
The benefits of digital displays for theatres are endless. You have a
single upfront cost and then you never ship anything to the theatre
again and the same system that is used to feed the displays can also
be used to feed the film itself for digital theatres. another savings
where does the hobby go?
well, it would be hard to say that it doesn't drop some, and certainly
newer collectors would be less likely
Look at the comics hobby. Marvel & DC publish fewer comics today than
they did during the 1940s. As a matter of fact, if you total up all
the comic books published and distributed for any month of 2008, it is
fewer issues than a single issue of Captain Marvel sold during WW2.
(during WW2, Captain Marvel sold 2 million copies @ month. Current
publishing by all companies is less than 1.5 million @month. Another
comic, Walt Disney's Comics & Stories had a print run as high as 4
million for years from the 40s-50s) As a result of fewer comic book
readers (due to social changes- less people reading anything), the
comic book hobby is decreasing in size and has been doing so for about
15 years.
The result is not the elimination of these hobbies, but serious
compression is indeed in the future. At some point Marvel & DC will
cease paper publication as will all newspapers and magazine. The
likely future is a mini-disc for a "reader" that you take wherever you
go, in addition to just reading online of course. When this happens,
millions of comics will devalue in a short period of time (a few
years). Fewer collectors means more unsold titles and downsizing to
just the most popular material for hardcore collectors and historians.
Superman comics will always be collected at some level. the 1940s
title Mystery Men will be a tiny niche for historically oriented
collectors only. The same will be for posters.
Younger people will stop buying posters. THat generation will have
digital displays so they can change whatever they want to show
Posters for the obvious titles will always sell. A poster after all is
the same as an "art print". so Frankenstein, Casablanca, Snow White
will always sell. Getting Gerties Garter however, or My Side of the
Mountain.. well they are hardly requested anyway. So the hobby will
compress as our generations die off, much like that nearly forgotten
hobby - pulp magazines
Rich
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