Specialty Fare Gains Exposure
UK Film Council To
Install 250 D-Screens
LONDON – The United Kingdom Film Council’s lottery-funded distribution and exhibition fund announced on July 22 plans to install 250 digital projectors at nearly 150 cinema sites nationwide.

The new equipment, designed to showcase specialty fare, will complement existing 35mm projectors, enabling films to be presented in either format.

“In this new landscape, specialized cinema can now react fully to the market and have the flexibility to grow a market alongside 35mm,” noted fund head Peter Buckingham. “This scheme is open to every exhibitor and distributor who is interested in growing, or is already working in, the specialized film sector.”

In return for providing cinema owners with the digital technology, the Film Council aims to claim a certain amount of screen time for its own specialty selections.

The council also announced that a central independent consortium needed to operate the digital circuit and provide the necessary technology would form later in the year.

Standards Institute
NIST To Provide
DCI Tech Expertise
HOLLYWOOD – The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) became in July an official partner with studio-backed Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI).

Scientists and engineers from NIST were set to provide DCI with technical expertise in the digital arena via test patterns and procedures that measure brightness, contrast, resolution and other variables that influence image quality.

The group was expected to work closely with the Digital Cinema Lab, run by University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center (In Focus, February 2003).