CT View: Digital projection it only seems like yesterday

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Digital projection: it only seems like yesterday…

Who would have thought that 20 years had elapsed since the introduction of digital projection? Time has a habit of passing quickly — best stop and reflect a while, says Alastair Balmain

Time flies when you’re having fun. It only seems yesterday that George Lucas gifted Jar Jar Binks to a largely astonished world. It was actually 20 years ago, which makes me feel rather old, but, more to the point, it seems incredible that “The Phantom Menace” was the first time digital projection truly captured the public imagination — that still feels pretty fresh in my mind. Two decades on however and it seems a valid moment to reflect on the work of the visionaries that brought digital to fruition.

As Patrick von Sychowski and Michael Karagosian write on pages 17 and 20, the story behind the launch of digital cinema had plot-lines as good as any space opera or action thriller. But what really makes this a compelling tale is the quality of the cast involved — there was a whole raft of characters all striving to achieve the great technical leap forward. As I write this from my kitchen, I have a decidedly tenuous personal connection to one of the names that crops up in this chapter of cinema’s history since our garden overlooks the “Lord Rank Playing Field”. J. Arthur Rank is a figure remembered fondly in our village and in this part of the world as a patrician landlord, a keen shooting man and a generous supporter of local causes, but in the cinema world the Rank Organisation is remembered as a towering giant that, at its peak, so nearly rivalled the major Hollywood studios. The role the R&D team at Rank Brimar played in the development of digital was a case of what could have been. Sadly the Rank Organisation divested its cinema interests just as things were getting really exciting.

Though it took the support of others to get digital projection across the line, the final battle for supremacy (Hughes-JVC vs TI’s DLP technology) was a dogfight in the best tradition’s of Rank’s “Reach for the Skies”. Today, we take the dominance of DLP technology for granted, but only a few short years ago others were battling to be top dog. And where are we now? Laser projection, direct view LED… some even talk about that “Star Wars” favourite: holographic projection. Technology never stands still. Think of that CD player in your car’s dashboard. Once it was a cassette player, before that an eight-track. That CD slot won’t be in the car you buy tomorrow (nor will the internal combustion engine), but music will still be played — and the same is true of film. The technology may develop, but the yearning for engaging stories and the cinematic medium itself stays the same.

In military terms, pioneers lay the paths the rest of the brigade follows. Cinema should cherish its own pioneers.