Cinema Technology-Why are we Innovating?
So I guess this will be the first published post of the Kinopto blog-there do exist some unpublished musings on the intricacies of setting up a tech business, giving up the day job and raising finance but those are for another time, for now I wanted to focus on the reason for Kinopto's existence-film.
More specifically, Indie film. Whilst, again, the technical details of our system are beyond the scope of this post, Hollywood in general, and DCI specifications specifically, prevent any great level of innovation in the cinema technology market.
That's not to say that technical advances aren't made, just that they are made within the confines of DCI and therefore limited in what they can achieve. In reality, much of the innovation is DRIVEN by DCI. The buzz words in the industry at the moment are '4K', 'High Frame Rate' and 'Integrated Media Block'. All of these are solid technological advancements, but will they fundamentally change the industry for the better? I would argue not. I would also argue that true innovation should be for the benefit of an industry, and ultimately society, as a whole and not serve the interests of one section to the detriment, financially or otherwise, of the other.
Regular technological improvements such as this benefit equipment manufacturers. It is the model which has built Samsung, Apple et al into some of the most valuable companies in the world. Is the iPad 4 radically different from the iPad 3? No, but they still sold 3 million of them in the first 3 days. These minor improvements create an upgrade culture in consumers which is, in the most part, mutually acceptable. Consumers are happy as they feel, or are seen to be, at the cutting edge. Of course, the manufacturers are happy as they have a repeating, cyclical, constantly replenished customer base.
However, whilst it is this model that cinema technology innovation is following, I am dubious as to whether the pattern seen in consumer electronics can, and will, be successfully repeated and that is because it is not the feature set of the iPad 4 that 3 million people rushed out to buy, it is the package as a whole. Whilst a consumer will proudly say to their peers that they own the 'latest' iPad, will they proclaim with the same enthusiasm that they attend 4K cinema screenings, or that they just saw High Frame Rate? No, they won't. Cinema technology isn't as sexy as consumer electronics, and the benefits of the package as a whole are less clearly defined.
In addition to this, innovators in cinema technology first have to convince the middle-man, the cinema, that this upgrade is beneficial to them, that they will get a return on their investment. Business-to-Business is very different from Business-to-Consumer. Consumers measure their Return on Investment in an intangible way, in 'happiness', 'enjoyment', 'cool-ness'. Businesses, in this case Cinemas, measure it in Pounds, Shillings and Pence.
For me, technical innovation in Cinema shouldn't be focussing on minor advancements in feature sets, but looking at how we can give the end user, the audience, increased feelings of 'happiness', 'enjoyment' and 'cool-ness' to keep them coming back.
In my next post I'm going to look at what we can learn from nearly every other form of media, from Music, to Books to Journalism where it is indie, and self publishing, that is driving change. Isn't it about time cinema caught up?
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