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Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Proffesor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
and this is Frame By Frame.
Digital cinema has become the only cinema.
In the last few days, and this is Halloween 2011, as I say these words,
Birns and Sawyer, which is the oldest Hollywood camera rental house in Los Angeles,
just a few days ago auctioned off all of their film camera equipment.
No one is shooting film any more.
This is a sad day for those of us who love film,
but at the same time one has to realize this is just like the coming of talking pictures.
It's a new platform, and it has to be embraced.
Digital filmmaking requires more maintenance to preserve it.
It costs about $20,000 a year to preserve a picture that is digitally born,
versus a film picture that you can just make a negative of and put it in the ground,
and store it on a 35mm fine-grain negative.
But the complete absence of all film cameras from film production, which is what is going on right now,
is a watershed moment.
Birns and Sawyer... the manager of the company said "we like to keep the film cameras, but no one's renting them.
There's no point to it anymore."
MOVIE DIRECTOR: "...and background!" CROWD CHEERS
The ease of digital production, the ease of digital editing, and the fact that, or course,
all theaters are shifting over to digital projection... means that 35mm film is heading for its final revolution,
and the digital revolution has finally arrived.