Lately all you seem to hear about in Hollywood is how digital cinema will make film a thing of the past. George Lucas shot Episode II digitaly and says that it looks as good as anything he's ever filmed with 35mm. Robert Rodriguez got to see some of Episode II and was so impressed that he said that he will be shooting Spy Kids 2 & Once Upon a Time in Mexico using the same Sony 24fps digital cameras as Lucas used. James Cameron, Robert Zemekis, and Francas Ford Copella have also said that they will be going digital. So far most films that were shot digitaly have had pictures noticably of less quality than 35mm (Blair Witch Project, Center of the World, Bambozled). Of course the technology is in it's infancy and will continue to improve every year & we have not seen what these ultra high end Sony/Panavision cameras can do.

While many technicaly minded people think that within a few years digital cameras could shoot an image that is as good as current 35mm film a new compainy called MaxiVision has a process that they claim is 250% better than current 35mm when projected at 24 frames per second and 500% better than current 35mm when projected at 48 frames per second. Film critic Roger Ebert has seen it demonstrated and said that it felt more like he was looking though a window than at a prjected image. MaxiVision has support from directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. Also it has impressed cinematographers like Dean Cundey, Jost Vacano. Some people are saying that is MaxiVision catches on it will be as big of a deal as when widescreen replaced the 1x1.37 acadmey ratio. With the current advances in home theater technolgy theaters may have to begin using such technology to get people to leave their DVD suround sound systems.

Here is MaxiVision's homepage:
http://www.maxivisioncinema.com/

Here is my page about MaxiVision:
http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/makeup/4303/maxivision.html

What does everyone think? In 10 years will everyone be shooting digitaly or will Maxivision be the new Cinemascope and digital be reserved for low budget film-makers (like super 16mm is now)?

I myself prefer *real* film. Why not just shoot at a high frame rate in 70mm for really high quality?

Maxivision certainly sounds promising, though.

Bacuse 70mm cameras are bulkey and expensive and theaters do not want to spend the money for 70mm projectors.

I myself prefer *real* film. Why not just shoot at a high frame rate in 70mm for really high quality?

Do you know something I don't? I just read about a companey called the Super Vista Corporation that has developed a new system called Super Dimension 70 that uses 70mm film at a rate of 48fps and has a computer controled gate to stedy the picture (just like MaxiVision). The shutter exposes each frame 2 times so the gaps now last for only 1/96 of a second.

Somehow I don't see this becoming a reality for your neighborhood mulitplex (new projectors and platers, so much extra film) but I could see it becoming a reality for large format (IMAX) theaters. The Regal IMAX screen at Mall of Georgia seems to spend more time showing "enhanced" 35mm prints of blockbuters (Gladiator, Tomb Raider) than showing real IMAX films. Blowing up a 35mm image so large only adds to the grain. This could be the answer to several of Imax's problems. The cameras are bulky and hard to move (70mm cameras are too but not nearly as much), Imax platters can only hold about 50 minutes of film (SDS-70 can hold 2 hours and 20 minutes).

BTW the thing about MaxiVision that I think will make theaters more receptive to converting to it is that a MaxiVision projector head is $10,000 (rather than $100,000 for a whole new projector) Also MaxiVision projectors can project current 35mm movies as well; since all of hollywood would never change over all at one time.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico is the one I've been waiting for to see what those CineAlta 900 cameras can do. Spykids 2 and Episode II don't count since they were like 95% bluescreen and hence didn't represent what the cameras can do since so much of the background was created on a computer, not shot with a camera. I thought that most of the movie looked amazing, with the exception of a few shots where fleshtones had some digital artifacts. Sony's new cameras have twice the color sampling rate of the cameras used for those film. Episode III will be shot on those new cameras; and with the major shortcomming of the CineAlta 900 series improved it looks like this could finally be what proves digital as a viable alternate to film.