THE BIG ISSUE Digitalization and Archiving Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Theaters : switch to digital In 2012, all the chain of film from production to exploitation is digital At the end of 2011, the American continent has approximately screens in d-cinema Europe almost and Asia Rest of the world has less than Fourth territories have no more theaters with film screens : Norway, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Netherlands and France (90 % in oct 2012 and 100 % in mid-2013). Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Shooting : the fall of 35 mm Ficam key figures - only 16% of film projects shooted on 35 m in January-September Grand sensor digital cameras are used for 75% of projects for January to September 2012 The Digital Cameras became fully digital in 2012 and are adopted by the whole industry Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Decline of the film series copies The market for Positive film has decline in France by 81% between 2011 and 2012 ! - Agfa has already gradually stopped film production with a diversification to other sectors. - Fujifilm announced the closure of its film production in March 2013, and the company will then live on the european stock until Fujifilm still produces only a film archive trichrome. - Kodak is in a particular situation as under the protection of "Chapter 11" in United States (presumably until mid-year 2013). Kodak will refocus its activities on the professional world. Kodak wont stoped the production of motion picture but reorganize the product portfolio with restriction of range. The price of film copies will increase by +15 % in At the same time, Kodak launches a new range of film (internegative) for long term preservation, but with some limited specifications and guarantee for 50 years. Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Awarness and new fundings In France : New Funding dedicated to digitalisation of movies For 3 years, there is a new policy in France, witch consists of helping private film compagnies to adapte themselves to switch to « all-digital ». 1- French government decided to create the Grand Emprunt (a big loan) to improve investments in the new technologies and tranform all the films catalogs to digital. This loan concerns only the films made before After a selection comittee, CNC contributes to many projects of digitalisation and restoration of old films to euros/per film. This fund is open to european producers or distributors and to laboratories witch are working with them. It has been accepted by the European commission few months ago. Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

First analysis of the problem of digital transition in archiving Since 2007, science & technology council of academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (MPAA) witch represents the American Majors writes several studies about digital and film archiving. In particular, one, The digital dilemna Tome 1 and 2 explained that the transition from motion picture film to a completely digital infrastructure has one unexpected consequence No garanted long term access to digital data ! Key figures of the archiving life spend - Hard drive disc maximum life : 5 years - A LTO (Linear Tape Open) maximum life : 10/15 years - New Optical Disc Archive (ODA) of Sony maximum life : 50 years guarantee by Sony, but no real tests by an independent agency yet Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Digital Archive : a world of regular migrations Digital motion picture materials requires for long term preservation, active and continual management the whole life of the archive, because of : -maintenance of hard drive discs or tape robots, -the regular migrations of contents tape to tape, -rapid obsolescence of the machines One consequence with digital archiving the total cost of ownership represents much more than just the price of materials as in film archiving. The Digital storage of a movie is more expensive after 10 years than the same movie storage in 35 mm film Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Issues for long term Digital archive - For long term preservation in Digital, the right mass storage technology is Tape. It is the only choice for PB archives. - Migration is a long process : 1PB may take 8-12 months. Dedicated resources are necessary. Fortunatly, efficient Solutions are still to come to automatise the process of migration (software to check the quality of writing on the tape, verify Archive Degradation -Need of standardisation in archiving : Standards for reading archiving TAR, LTFS and AXF… - For a long-term preservation in Digital, there is NO Garranty of availability of the contents if service company closes because of a bankruptcy. Requiring to the laboratory a re-materialisation of content in case of danger Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Film archive : store & forget Film is relatively simple and unexpensive to preserve for a very long time. It requires only suitable environment conditions such as constant temperature and humidity, to remain stable and accessible. The life of a movie shoot in one 35 mm is guarantee between 50 and 100 years. It cost approximately euros to transfer a movie to film. Movie shooted in yellow-cyan-magenta separations on 3 black-and-white films and stored in a secure environment could be stable during more than 100 years. The US majors are already using this method for their blockbusters as a archival masters. Its the most safest archive method, but also a very expensive operation. It costs euros minimum. Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

Cost of digital preservation and the « long tail » In this context, producers and distributors have to choose an archiving strategy preserving the financial benefits regarding the cost of maintaining and protecting the films. After 3 or 4 years, revenue of non- theatrical and theatrical experience will fall rapidly and extensively. In general, this is also the time of the first migration of contents in a archiving system. So the producer has to manage with, on one hand the cost of the archive which is relatively stable and in another hand a commercial potential for his movie which is beginning to be low in a long tail process. Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012

A mezzanine format to optimize the digital exploitation The difficulties are currently for owners of archives to adapt themselves to new ways to consume in both production and distribution (repurposing the content toward an increasing number of broadcasting plateforms). To optimize the digital preservation during the 10 or 15 first years of life of a film, US Majors are trying to reach a consensus on a standard digital file format for sharing and preserving the movies : mezzanine format. Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012 IMF (Interoperable Master Format) is a modular system which should solve the problem of the choice of a digital preservation format, regarding the problem of the various conversion necessary when you want that your film will be broadcasted in the IPTV chain, on VOD platforms, mobile devices, tablet PCs... Because its a modular solution inside all the codec and wrapping mode are compatibles inside an application. In France, we are now developping our specific Application for movie preservation in the highest quality possible (lossless compression)

Securise back-ups and masters In France, the bankrupty of Quinta Industries group (LTC, ScanLab, Audis de Joinville…), which concentrated a large part of the most important movies in postproduction created among the film market a change regarding the fragility of the back-up and of the digital archives of the films during the working process and just after => CNC, CST, AFC, Ficam and most of the producers associations worked nowadays to increase the level of safety for film, with futures recommendations 1 – Technical recommendations and good practices to improve the security of rushes between shoot and postproduction 2 – A digital master at the end of the postproduction in an uncompressed format as DPX or OpenEX, following an interoperable format as DCDM (Digital Master Digital Master) and a tape storage standard as TAR or LTFS 3 - For long term preservation, after 10/15 years, CST and Ficam recommended to do a shoot in 35 mm. In parallel, the CNC wrote a law that obliged the producers to do a legal deposit of their movies in 35mm. Digital Production Challenge – Paris 17 th Novembrer 2012