Chicken Little may be revolutionizing the way America watches movies. Maybe not Chicken Little himself, but Disney's new computer-animated movie, Chicken Little, may incite a spread of digital cinema technology throughout American movie theaters.
Digital technology use has been widespread in personal entertainment. DVD players, digital video recorders and CD players all use digital technology. However, most movies are distributed on celluloid film, as has been done since the beginning of the movie industry. That is, movie distributors have been shipping movies on reels of film that are screened in movie theaters all over the United States.
Recently, Hollywood studios have been hoping to reduce movie distribution costs by millions of dollars by shipping movies in digital format. According to http://www.howstuffworks.com, the first big budget movie to be distributed in digital format was George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode II, the Attack of the Clones in May 2002. The movie was shot completely on digital video, but many movie theaters played versions of the movie transferred onto 35mm film because they were not equipped to play the movie in digital format.
The advantage of digital cinema is that it can store large amounts of information in the form that was originally recorded. Also, information in digital form is more durable and does not degrade after each viewing. However, many movie theaters are hesitant to switch to digital projectors, since the transition comes with a price tag of $100,000.
Disney found a new solution to the lack of digital projection equipment in U.S. movie theatres. In June, Disney collaborated with Dolby Laboratories and Industrial Light & Magic, a visual effects company, to install digital movie systems in many theaters. As a result, Disney's Chicken Little is being shown in over 85 American theaters in 3D, taking advantage of digital technology to convey the three-dimensional effects.
Disney's Chicken Little conveys 3D imagery by using double images, a frame for the right eye and another for the left, so that viewers feels they are perceiving depth. According to http://www.cnet.com, since Chicken Little uses digital technology, the idea of depth is conveyed using polarized light. When the viewer puts on 3D glasses with polarized lenses, each eye perceives only half the images displayed by the projector. This makes the viewer believe that meteors and aliens from the movie are coming out of the screen and into the theater.
According to Yahoo! News, the National Association of Theater Owners sees this as the "first experiment" for digital cinema, and that many tests are necessary before the use of digital systems will spread to the 36,000 movie screens in the United States.
Many individuals in the movie industry are excited by the recent spread of 3D technology using digital systems. According to http://www.cnet.com, George Lucas has promised to re-release 3D versions of the original Star Wars movies to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the films in 2007. Movie studios are hoping that the added appeal of 3D in theaters will entice viewers and increase lagging box office sales.
Apparently, 3D viewing has boosted the appeal of Chicken Little. Movie viewer John Borland writes of his own experience on http://www.cnet.com
"In a darkened movie theater here in San Francisco, a small chicken with enormous glasses watches anxiously as the sky cracks open above him. For just a moment, I remove my own bright green 3D glasses, and the screen flattens. What had looked like a window out into the animated world blurs slightly and looks more like ordinary, albeit well-animated, computer graphics. I put the glasses back on, and the shattering sky again stretches out to infinity. I can't say much about the actual movie -- I'm only watching about eight minutes of it, after all -- but this new digital 3D technology looks good."
