Indie 2.0

I’d love to get this whole presentation from Scott, but he’s posted the punchlines on his excellent CinemaTech blog (which covers”Digital cinema, democratization, and other trends remaking the movies”). Here’s an excerpt from the post:
The big challenge of today’s ‘Digital Cinema for Indies’ panel at SXSW was explaining both the technical intricacies and the business parameters of digital cinema. But we tried.

The big challenge right now is that most of the 4000 or so digital screens in the US show studio content, delivered by AccessIT. Those screens aren’t very accessible to independent filmmakers and small distributors. And the cost of mastering completed movies to the DCI standard, a file format designed by the major studios, is still quite high. Right now, panelist Russ Wintner said, “there are four labs in LA — a virtual monopoly — that can turn out a DCP.” (The DCP, or digital cinema package, is the term for the final DCI file that’s sent out to theaters, whether via satellite or hard drive.)

I don’t know too much about DCI and DCP packages (although being the sincere and enthusiastic type, I bought and read the two key books on the subject: here and here). So, OK, I do know a little. And I guess that “virtual monopoly” may be part of what would cause Mark Pederson of OffHollywood Studios to be selling “F the DCI” t-shirts at NAB this year.