Wednesday, 5 May 2010

How is digital cinema production affecting the British film industry?

Technological convergence is where new technologies are used in the British Film Industry.
With new technologies the Digital Screen Network has been introduced and several cinemas have been provided with screens and projectors. Cinema's like CinemaCity have a digital screen so this lets them stream live events like concerts into their cinema's and this gets them more money because CinemaCity doesn't show many mainstream movies. Odeon also have a Digital Screen so this causes a slight competition between CinemaCity and Odeon. Using the Digital Screen Network makes distributing films much cheaper because you don't need to create several copies of the same film. CinemaCity only have 3 screens and by using the Digital Screen Network they can show a lot of different movies and widen their audiences.
Technology helps produce and distribute movies by using the internet, movies can be put onto iphones, advertised on social networking sites, film rental's, HD, Blu-ray, 3D - all these technologies allow audiences to enjoy other experiences of watching films. However, as new technologies get more advanced the piracy of movies gets higher. People can upload movies on the internet and audiences can watch these movies for free so the film industry cannot make any money this way and people will stop going to the cinema because they can watch the movie for free on the internet. People will also buy pirated copies of dvd's for a cheap price for example £2.50 while in the shops it would be £5.99. The industry makes no money through pirated dvd's.
Most cinema's have invested in 3D screens, which allows audiences to view movies in 3D but have to pay a much higher price to see these movies. Audiences will go and watch movies in 3D because 3D is the new technology so people are interested in this but soon 3D will lose it's appeal.
The advantages of using new technologies is that the film industry can get their movies advertised on social networking sites where people will see them, and the film industry can release their movies on blu ray dvd's which are more expensive so they will make more money. The film industry also allow their movies to be rented from a dvd rental so audiences can watch the movie for a couple of nights and then if they really enjoy the movie they can buy it from a shop.
The disadvantages of technological convergence is that piracy has got more popular. Movies can be filmed at the back of the cinema, or watched online and people who work for the film industry make less money. With new camcorders being introduced, and other ways for a movie to be leaked on the internet the film industry makes less money. Piracy effects independent movies much more because independent movies don't make as much money as mainstream movies because independent movies don't target global audiences but they target certain groups of audiences.

1 comment:

  1. Laura, you may concentrate on piracy a little more than needed whereas it would be wise to comment on an independent production company like Warp reeping the benefits of digital. Please add in a paragraph on Warp and how they are impacted (it might be easier to compare them to Working Title or Universal).

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