In previous issues, our electronic cinema coverage has concentrated on technical concerns. It's now time to get another perspective-that of the content providers. Several studios and production companies are already exploring the possibilities of "all-digital" feature production, distribution, and presentation. In this issue and next month's, we will feature interviews with two of the e-cinema pioneers-Lucasfilm and Miramax. This month, we caught up with Rick McCallum, producer of The Phantom Menace. Following are excerpts from that interview.

How did Lucasfilm originally become interested in digital cinema?
Rick McCallum: It started when we were doing the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Because of the way we structured Young Indy, we took the 17 to18 episodes we did in a year and thought of it as one big giant film. That allowed us to produce nonlinearly. If I was shooting in Paris and George was editing in San Francisco and we needed a pick-up shot, we could do this"mail order" film where he could call me and say, "I need a 2-shot of this," although we'd each be working on a different episode . . . So, we started to make films in a very different way, and once you start doing that you say to yourself, "If I could only capture this stuff electronically!" We saw things changing so rapidly that we got into partnerships with people that we thought could help us move into digital acquisition and production.

At that time, Sony was just launching Digital Betacam. It was so mind-breaking that there were sequences we could shoot in the field with a camera that weighed 20 pounds. . . Suddenly we realized that when you're making a film and spending millions and millions of dollars in trying to get the best answer print and also create the best soundtrack, nothing is more depressing than going down to the local multiplex on the day the film opens and watch your release print in a theater where the projector is running at 50 percent of its illuminence, the sound system sucks, there's no surrounds, there's no bass at all.

When I started writing about digital cinema, I would get correspondence from people who were very upset at the implication that film could and would be replaced.
RM: In 1994, George [Lucas] was able to sell the inherent basic technology and software to Avid for the Editroid. Avid became a very small force in the television business, but couldn't make an impact at all in feature films. That was five years ago. . . The arguments were always the same:" You can't cut a film without touching it, I need to smell it, I need to touch it before I can cut it." Today, there are probably less than five out of 2,400 editors that are cutting film the old way. By next year, there will be no way to even transfer the work that they are doing, and that is exactly what is going to happen with digital cinematography. Another reason that everything happened so quickly for us with digital cinema is that just three years ago we expected we'd see the first projector by 2005. However, Texas Instruments came up to us late last year .I saw the first demo, and my reaction was, "That's it; it's here!" The business plan may not be here, it may be too expensive, but there has never been anything in the history of capitalism that's ever come close to what is happening now with technology. Never, ever, did you get technology that increases in performance two or three times every 18 months. And that is what is happening-the cinema projector I saw two years ago at TexasI nstruments had cost $195,000. It's $75,000 now. What will it cost in two years ? $30,000?

Since you've screened Phantom Menace on both the Hughes-JVC [now JVC] and Texas Instruments systems, what are your feelings about the electronic cinema look?
RM: We're in an evolutionary period of filmmaking-not just in terms of projection, but in terms of directors and producers and their understanding of the tools of the trade, how we should be using visual effects, and dealing with the fact that they can manipulate every frame now on a level that they were never able to do. I do think electronic cinema is going to evolve over the next four or five years until there is a standard .

PP: That brings me to another question. Do you see a 100-percent digital production cycle coming soon?
RM: I think people will hold their ground no matter how open-minded they are until they understand the limitations they have on shooting film and the opportunities of being able to manipulate the images they're shooting. It's no longer a photographic medium; it's a painterly one, and that's the hardest thing for most cameramen to understand. It's one of the things that really messed them up about Phantom Menace because I have over a dozen shots in the movies shot on an old high-def camera, and they can't spot them.

PP: Is there anything you'd like to see improved in digital acquisition?
RM: The big thing for us is getting our 24-frame camera from Sony and getting our lenses. The really big problem we've had is always the lens issue. But Panavision and Canon have always been so far ahead of the game. They have been working with Sony for over 10 years trying to create a digital format because they know it's going to happen, and they know the power of it. A lot of stuff that goes on with cameramen is about alchemy . . . You have got to create this aura-you know, "It's all about light." But it's not about light anymore. The real issue is collaboration between a writer, a producer, a director, and a cameraman.

Digital production is not an end all; it's just that you have control now. What is wrong with that? That drives costs down; it creates low-cost tools for much younger filmmakers-you don't need to be a part of the machine of Hollywood anymore. and that freaks a lot of people out.

PP: What system or systems would you like to see for distribution of digital cinema?
RM: I would love it to be satellite. You can take a film like Celebration and at 10:00 or midnight on a Friday night, you can just download it right on to a server. Maybe only a million people see it. But if they each pay $5...that's $5 million in receipts. The theater owner keeps $2,500,000, andthe filmmaker suddenly has access to $2.5 million that he could never have had because of the cost of prints, shipping, and distribution. The marketing costs will be minimal because it would probably be done on the Internet. It has nothing to do with traditional or establishment media anymore.

PP: When distributors hear this, they panic because your implicit message is Lucasfilm can produce digital entertainment, which can be distributed using satellite downloads or by trucking hard drives around. Lucasfilm-or, any filmmaker, for that matter-could bypass the entire existing distribution system.
RM: It's a fantastic time to be making movies; it's a fantastic time to watch all this stuff happening. Look what's happened with MP3 in just a few years. It's so brilliant because it is democratizing the process. There are tools like Final Cut which at a low cost blew up all the Avids and Media 100’s .No hardware at all. It can produce over 150 effects that you couldn't even do three years ago. There’s no point in fighting the technology, you have to embrace it and be aware that now with a Cine Alta package and a non linear editing suite you can deliver premium content. Gone are the days where film was the only option and where you had to edit in expensive suites.

You know, if you weren't a part of the "club," you couldn't get a movie made, and if you did, you couldn't get it seen. But, that is all going to change, and that is the best thing in the world. That is what is going to cause the fear, the pain, but it is so wonderful.