What is the truth about dig­i­tal projection?

While pro­mot­ing Mag­no­lia at the end of the 1990s, Paul Thomas Ander­son spoke about dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion in cin­e­mas as one of his biggest fears: ​“Ulti­mate­ly, it’s like watch­ing the best TV screen in the world as opposed to watch­ing 24 frames flick­er through light, which is a hyp­not­ic and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence that should nev­er go away.” In the decades that fol­lowed, oth­er famous film­mak­ers expressed sim­i­lar feel­ings. Dur­ing a con­fer­ence in 2014, Christo­pher Nolan weighed in on the issue, shar­ing a slight­ly more open-mind­ed yet still skep­ti­cal posi­tion. ​“I’m a fan of any tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, but for me, it’s going to have to exceed what came before, and it hasn’t yet,” he said.

Since the ear­ly 2010s, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy has become the norm in main­stream cin­e­mas and film pro­jec­tors have most­ly dis­ap­peared. In the world of inde­pen­dent movie hous­es, how­ev­er, film pro­jec­tion still sur­vives. In the Unit­ed States, 35 or even 70 mil­lime­ter screen­ings of films can often be found in cities like New York and Chica­go, with plen­ty of demand for rep screen­ings as well as screen­ings of movies like Brady Corbet’s newest fea­ture, The Bru­tal­ist, shot on film with the inten­tion of being pro­ject­ed in that for­mat. This is well-known to most peo­ple. What isn’t as obvi­ous is that many inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas also use dig­i­tal pro­jec­tors, not just because most movies today are shot using dig­i­tal cam­eras, but because of the format’s qual­i­ty and the unique advan­tages it brings to the table.

Jack Theak­ston is a pro­jec­tion­ist and archivist with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in mul­ti­ple pre­mier venues in the Unit­ed States. When talk­ing about dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion in cin­e­mas, he claims that most peo­ple are unaware of how much the tech­nol­o­gy has improved in the past cou­ple of decades. ​“If you look at the first film dig­i­tal pro­jec­tors that showed up on the mar­ket in the ear­ly 2000s, there’s no com­par­i­son,” he says. ​“We’ve gone from sub-2K qual­i­ty to 2K qual­i­ty to 4K qual­i­ty, and now we have HDR in the mix and laser pro­jec­tion, which is more effi­cient as well.” While the ques­tion of which for­mat looks bet­ter under ide­al con­di­tions is a con­tentious one with strong opin­ions on both sides, there is no doubt that, in 2024, dig­i­tal is more than capa­ble of deliv­er­ing an excel­lent qual­i­ty that will sat­is­fy most movie-goers. If that is the case, are there any down­sides to mod­ern dig­i­tal projection?

Leav­ing aside aes­thet­ic con­cerns, the main com­plaint raised against dig­i­tal is relat­ed to the equip­ment. The cost of a good pro­jec­tor can be in the six fig­ures and repair­ing them can mean a big invest­ment for movie the­aters. That’s not men­tion­ing that, as sci­ence moves for­ward, there is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty that pro­jec­tors might become obso­lete in the near future. This makes dig­i­tal less desir­able when com­pared to old film pro­jec­tors, which are made to last for a very long time. This com­plaint is not uni­ver­sal, though. Accord­ing to Theak­ston, ​“it is more expen­sive to main­tain a dig­i­tal pro­jec­tor on paper, but it is more expen­sive to main­tain a film pro­jec­tor now because none of these parts are being man­u­fac­tured anymore.”

For the Amer­i­can film his­to­ri­an and cura­tor Max Alvarez, the bot­tom line is that ​“if the cin­e­ma is a seri­ous cin­e­ma run by seri­ous peo­ple, when they install a dig­i­tal pro­jec­tor, it will look great.” Despite this, he firm­ly main­tains that film is the supe­ri­or medi­um when it comes to pro­jec­tion. ​“For a while, I was buy­ing into the trend and say­ing ​‘Well, times change. Tech­nol­o­gy changes. It’s time for a new look in cin­e­mas and dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion prob­a­bly is the way to go.’ But in the 2010s I made the mis­take of going to Lin­coln Cen­ter to see an archival 70 mil­lime­ter print of a Robert Wise film from 1968 and it looked mag­nif­i­cent. It looks so much rich­er, and there was so much tex­ture and depth there. It was far supe­ri­or to hav­ing seen some­thing dig­i­tal­ly.” Andrew Lewis, who cur­rent­ly works as a pro­jec­tion­ist for the New York art house New Plaza Cin­e­ma, feels sim­i­lar­ly. While his expe­ri­ence with pro­jec­tion is lim­it­ed to dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, he is fas­ci­nat­ed by film and is ​“con­stant­ly on the look­out for 35 mil­lime­ter screenings.”

How­ev­er, when recount­ing anec­dotes relat­ed to film screen­ings, Lewis also men­tions a hand­ful of bad expe­ri­ences. Even ignor­ing extreme exam­ples, most cinephiles who go to film screen­ings are famil­iar with scratched or poor­ly main­tained prints. For cin­e­mas this can be a major has­sle. For 24 years, Chris and Nasim Kuen­zel were the own­ers of the CAMEO Art House The­ater in Fayet­teville, North Car­oli­na, where they used film pro­jec­tion up until the 2010s before tran­si­tion­ing to dig­i­tal. When bring­ing up the top­ic, the first thing that comes to Nasim’s mind is the time they had to can­cel an event because the print they received for the screen­ing was unac­cept­ably scratched. ​“That’s one of the hor­ri­ble things about the actu­al 35 mil­lime­ter. You’re hop­ing that the guy before you did a good job for the last 20 years,” she says. Chris agrees – just trans­port­ing and manip­u­lat­ing the film prints was dif­fi­cult and required extreme care, and bad prints are not rare. ​“Prints com­ing in with scratch­es… When we had film, I would say, there was at least one a month.” For the Kuen­zels, who retired as the theater’s own­ers this past August, there are just too many incon­ve­niences when try­ing to run an inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma in a small­er city like Fayet­teville, and the ben­e­fits of one medi­um over the oth­er were not some­thing they could wor­ry about. ​“We’ve been so focused on find­ing ways to get the audi­ence back – since the pan­dem­ic, you know – that the whole pro­jec­tion aspect is some­thing that we just kind of take for grant­ed,” says Chris.

Dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion has also helped cin­e­mas in oth­er less con­tro­ver­sial ways. In the past 20 years, the advance­ment in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy has allowed for a rev­o­lu­tion in film preser­va­tion and restora­tion. For Theak­ston, ​“dig­i­tal is essen­tial­ly a god­send for main­tain­ing qual­i­ty while being able to tack­le projects and prob­lems that you wouldn’t oth­er­wise be able to do in the pho­to­chem­i­cal world.” Accord­ing to Bruce Gold­stein, who has been work­ing at the New York art house Film Forum as a reper­to­ry pro­gram­mer since the 1980s, ​“dig­i­tal has opened up the world of reper­to­ry cin­e­ma for the­aters that could nev­er do 35 millimeter.”

Hun­dreds of clas­sic titles have been dig­i­tized in the past decade and found their way into cin­e­mas around North Amer­i­can and the rest of the world because of new tech­nolo­gies. In the days of film, ship­ping costs and the fragili­ty of prints meant that com­pa­nies were very selec­tive when dis­trib­ut­ing old movies. Today, small the­aters of all sorts can show­case old, rare films eas­i­ly. ​“Some of the recent dig­i­tal restora­tions are gor­geous,” says Gold­stein. ​“And I think the audi­ence would pre­fer to see that than an old beat up print that was fad­ed, for example.”

At the same time, Gold­stein is not in any way against the use of film. ​“We do a lot of 35 mil­lime­ter screen­ings at Film Forum for the sim­ple rea­son that the younger audi­ence is thrilled to have 35 mil­lime­ter.” To him, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion has giv­en way for the show­ings of 35 or 70 mil­lime­ter to become more of an event. The unique­ness of the medi­um makes peo­ple excit­ed, which is a way for cin­e­mas to make things feel spe­cial. ​“We have more options now than ever before, and I think that’s great,” he says.