The best goat curry in town and NCM heads north

It was back to the future for me today as I was invited out to lunch by the company that got me started in the digital cinema space in the first place. That's right, Screen Digest treated me to lunch to celebrate my appointment at Deluxe, without any hard sell about what reports or services we should be buying from them. The lunch venue near the Screen Digest office in north London's Camden was The Mango Room, which serves 'traditional and modern Caribbean cuisine' (and not a pirate in sight). I could not resist the 'Camden Famous Curry Goat', nor starter or desert, so just as well that we stuck to water for this celebration.

As we swapped notes on Screen Digest and Deluxe it dawned on me that I'm making a habit of leaving companies just as they are taking off. Not only has Screen Digest's incredibly detailed on-line 'business intelligence' database services been a success beyond anyone's expectations. But they also picked up the digital cinema ball after I left and rather than trying something pointless like keeping the E-Cinema Alert going, they have made digital cinema a proper statistical and analytical field of study. Their recent digital cinema report is terrific and still selling well, their digital cinema installation base is the best and most up-to-date one in existance (sorry Elisabeta and Bill) and David Hancock and Charlotte Jones will be putting in appearances at IBC and the Venice Film Festival respectively. Hats off to them, and, yes, I'm ever so slightly miffed that I proved not to be irreplaceable.

Unique is also about to take off big time, though I can't go into detail about it now, so I will have to take some credit for that after the fact. But third time lucky, sticking it out with Deluxe until it has made a success of digital cinema in Europe. If not, I will eat a whole goat, I promise.

Across the Atlantic, there is now a strategic alliance between National CineMedia and Canada's largest exhibitor Cineplex Entertainment. The 130-odd cinemas and 1,300+ screens in Canada will join the digital cinema advertising, testing and ultimately buying power of NCM in the US. Given how closely the US and Canada are release wise for Hollywood films it makes sense for this type of cross-border co-operation. [Mental note, must find out what Deluxe's Toronto branch are doing cinema wise, if anything, at this stage.] No jokes about thawing moose delivered ice-encrusted hard drives, please, I've been Toronto and it is a lovely and warm place. Though I still like Montreal better. Once you too have been to Ex-Centris you too will not forget it in a hurry.

Mental (re-) organisation and the digital cinema gods answer prayers

I had prayed to the gods of digital cinema to send us a special digital cinema project, partly because I'm too lazy and scared to go out and hunt for one this early on, and they have responded. It may yet turn out to be one of those "be careful what you wish for, for you might get" type of projects. But for now I am happy to have something to sink my digital baby teeth into.

Of course, there were a whole bunch of other digital cinema projects, ranging from small to large clients, lined up for Deluxe even prior to my arrival. (And did I mention that they handled the first European DCI-flavour JPEG2000 release when they did "Ice Age 2"?) But this one arrived in my Deluxe mail box in my first week on the job and I'm expected to deal with it. Let's see what if anything comes of it.

After the deluge weekend backlog of digital cinema news yesterday, nothing much to report today. Instead, this item from The Guardian's Diary section about a Pentagon initiative that must have been dreamt up by someone who never saw the USO Playboy Bunny show scene in Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now":

Finally, visit purrfectangelz.com for hot shots of the California-based dance troupe the Pentagon has just thoughtfully dispatched to Baghdad and (can this be right?) Haditha to entertain US troops and advance its ongoing effort to win hearts and minds in this staunchly Muslim nation. If they can't beat the insurgency, we don't know what can.

I'd check out the website myself, but the (not-so smart) SmartFilter in our office blocks it for 'Nudity', so I'm guessing that's it's not just 'Charlie' that "don't surf" sites like that.

New office space, plus lots of news and statistics.

"Blog well and blog often." That was the advice from my colleague Sheigh Crabtree at the Hollywood Reporter. I can't hope to match her award-winning quality of writing, but I will follow her advise. My excuse for not writing yesterday is that Monday was a Bank Holiday in the UK.

New week in the office and George politely kicks me out of his office, but into a much nicer corner office (!) on the second floor, which may become my permanent office when the music ends and the game of musical chairs here at Capital FX/EFILM London/Deluxe Digital Europe is over. It's spacious, bright and one where you expect to find people who do IMPORTANT WORK, though in fairness, most of the people here at CFX are slaving away much harder than I. (Currently putting the finishing touches on "Children of Men", which I'm not violating any official Secrets Act. I'm sure, by revealing that it's has been the big DI project here.) With an office like this you're not expected to just do a 9:30 to 5:30 shift, unless we're talking 5:30AM, but that's OK because I've got plenty enough on my plate.

Based on the number of news and announcements it also seems like we are coming out of the quiet summer lull. The big announcement has been Technicolor signing a major deal with National Amusements to deploy digital installations in some major US cities as of this autumn, though there are no details on whose projectors or servers they will use, other than that they will be in line with DCI-specifications. Elsewhere, there is also an article about the digital plans of the Cinema Buyers Group in the US and how AccessIT's Brooklyn cinema has been used to test the digital waters for the company, both from the Film Journal. QuVis' servers will be used in the Venice Film Festival, making an inroad into the Italian market largely dominated by Dolby. There is a press release celebrating XDC's distribution of 25 digital features in Sweden in its first 12 months. One of the interesting things about XDC, other than their insistence that MPEG is a perfectly acceptable distribution format for Europe, is how they distribute they prepare and distribute the content and the key:

XDC processing includes the preparation of the content for physical distribution based on encrypted files, the quality control and the archiving, as well as the dubbed Swedish version for some films where the Original Version is not a Swedish one. Regis Raway continues "XDC is the only digital cinema operator to offer a generic media, this disk is particularly well suited for the Swedish market, because it can travel from one screen to another and play successively. In this case, the key is placed on the disk, which means that the movie can move from one site to another, but that the movie can only play if the disk is plugged into the server." As a consequence, the number of producers and distributors who entrust digital distribution logistical services to XDC are continuously increasing.

I know that on the past XDC used tapes, but I can't quite work out from this whether that is still the case or whether hard drives have replaced this. Given that LAN-connected HDD, which is what DCI has specified, aren't going into widespread use just yet, we will see a lot of different physical distribution solutions for a while.

To finish off, my old employer Screen Digest published an interesting two-page mini report in their July issue, which was re-printed in the SAWA newsletter sent out today. True to their data-centric and heavily analytical roots, they have worked out a Digital Cinema Conversion Suitability Index, by which they compare and contrast different European territories. They have come up with "10 wholly quantitative measures, attributes ranking points to 18 European territories and the US so that the most suitable territories can be identified, with the US acting as a benchmark."

UK comes out top, perhaps not surprisingly, closely followed by Ireland. The bottom though is, however, perhaps not equally obvious. "At the bottom end of the DCS Index is Finland with a suitability measure of 33.9 per cent. The bottom territories also include Greece(35.6), Sweden(36.7), Italy(37.2) and Norway(38.9)." I'm not disputing this, on the contrary, but take note that it is perhaps because they have more of a digital mountain to climb that we have projects such as NORDIC going on in Norway and some Swedish cinemas are pressing ahead agressively with XDC. In time, there is no escaping Deluxe having to also service these most difficult of all the European territories. I just don't see us setting up a Finnish or Greek call centre this year.

Congratulations pour in, real work begins

Word spreads fast in the digital cinema community and many of you wrote to congratulate me on my new appointment. It was particularly heartwarming to hear from Dr. Charles Swartz, who has retired from ETC because of health problems, but still took time out to offer me his best wishes. Even some of our competitors, both existing and would-be digital, sent me a few kind words. This either proves the truth of the saying about whom it is that you should keep closer than your friends, or, that digital cinema is still at such an early stage that the fight is not between us but to jointly grow the digital cinema market size to the point of critical mass.

I won't bore you too much with the logistics of getting set up here at Deluxe in my first week. I'm still waiting for my MacBook, CrackBerry and business cards, all of which will hopefully arrive well before IBC. I am so much more productive with my gadgets and toys, but the beauty of the Lotus Notes system we use at Deluxe is that it has a pure Web interface access, so I can work on it from pretty much anywhere with Internet access. (For those few geeks that share my fascination of how desktop programs will eventually be replaced by Internet-only tools, this article from Guardian's Technology section is quite interesting.) Next week there's even the promise of my own desk and office space. I wonder if they will let me chose which film poster, which seems obligatory at all post and cinema service facilities, I get to put on the wall behind me.

But mainly I've been getting to grips with what needs doing for the next month, quarter and year. While Deluxe US has done impressive work on the digital cinema side for several years, which we hope to tap into, I won't pretend that we're not starting from behind here in Europe. At least compared to companies such as Arts Alliance Media and XDC that have established a solid track record in distributing DCPs. This notwithstanding the fact that Deluxe was the first in Europe to distribute a major Hollywood studio's title in the DCI-specified JPEG2000 format when Fox's 'Ice Age 2' was screened at three Nordisk cinemas in Denmark - though somehow Eclaire seems to have ended up with most of the credit for this event.

Nothing much in the way of digital cinema news has happened in the past three days, so you have to go back a week or so for some interesting announcements such as Kodak working with National CineMedia on a Theatre Management System, Thomson's watermarking being adopted by QuVis and others, as well as DTS buying up most of the IP of Avica. But who cares about that when there is the delicious falling out between Paramount and Tom Cruise? It rivals anything we've seen on our screens this summer for sheer star power and drama.

It's official, I'm part of Deluxe

It's not exactly been a secret in some corners of this surprisingly small industry, but now it is official. I have joined Deluxe and there is a press release at DCinemaToday to prove it, backed up by a small article in Screen International, albeit a cut-n-pasted shorter version of the former. It's good to finally be able to talk openly about it and also to tell you the story behind the appointment.

I was tapped on the shoulder by Steve Bergman at this year's Cannes Film Festival and when he asked me if I would be interested in setting up Deluxe's European digital cinema operation it just seemed so, well, right. I've known Steve since his Boeing days; I have tremendous respect for the other guys working there, such as Jim Whittlesey and Steve Tsai; and I've always liked Deluxe because they get on with things with a very clear focus of what needs doing, but without making a song and dance about it. Working with theses guys to expand Deluxe's digital cinema reach to Europe was too good an offer to refuse. What reason could there be not to join?

Well, for a start there was Unique Digital, whom I was working for at the time and to whom I feel tremendous professional and personal loyalty. Not least as we were getting started with the NORDIC project (NORway's Digital Interoperability in Cinemas), which has been gathering considerable steam in its first quarter. But Deluxe, far sighted that they were, agreed to let me keep an active role in NORDIC, recognising that it was performing work that would benefit the industry as a whole. (Bless them!) So I will be devoting time to NORDIC until the project wraps in May '07. They have ten installations in place, five types of projectors (Barco, Cinemeccanica, Christie, NEC and Sony) and three servers (Dolby, Doremi and QuVis), with more to come. They are showing films (Pirates 2, Superman Returns) and if you have the stomach for it, click on this link to read about the live surgery on the big screen. They have uncovered lots of issues that are being fed back and are helping the hardware suppliers and service providers to improve their offerings. The project partners are rappidly becoming the foremost authorities on practical digital cinema know-how in Scandinavia.

But what about Unique Digital itself? Well, if you pardon the Biblical analogy, like Moses I seem to be destined to lead the Unique tribe through the desert to the promised land. Yet I was fated not to enter it myself. My role as heading up Business Development was nearing it's natural completion; I helped sign up several major new cinema advertising customers and did my bit to expand existing installations considerably, I co-devised the company's digital cinema strategy and have also been part of lining up several potential partners and interested investors in the business. You will be seeing several announcements and press releases from Unique in the coming months about all these things. Or if you just can't wait, contact my friend and colleague Dave Spilde (ds@upmail.no) now to begin discussions of what you and Unique might do together.

What it meant was that Unique didn't need any more business development. They had business enough to keep them occupied and happy for the foreseeable future. What they needed now was a Projects Co-Ordinator, which was not what I signed up for or might even be best suited to do. (Expect them to make an important announcement about this too soon.) Best of all is that we are on very good terms - they even let me keep my mobile/cell number - just as I stayed on excellent terms with my previous company Screen Digest. So don't be surprised to see me in the bar having a beer or two with Dave and Professor Perkis at IBC in Amsterdam. Who knows, I'm not even ruling out synergies between Deluxe and Unique. Like I said, just wait and see what both companies have in their respective pipeline. I know and I'm excited for both.

Apart from all that, second day at Deluxe has gone pretty well. The air-conditioning system sprung a leak - not my fault - and I've managed to memorize the entry code for the men's room. Yes, they really are THAT security conscious here at Dering Street.

First day at work - I manage not to break anything

It's been my first day as Director of Digital Business Development here at Deluxe Europe and so far, so good. I can't say that I've come up with a grand digital strategy for the company, but nobody has been on my back about submitting a proposal and two-hour PowerPoint to go with it - yet. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

I'm sitting in a very nice office that I will sadly have to vacate when George Ilko, Technical Director Deluxe Digital Services Europe, returns from holiday next week. It's a bit of musical chairs here at the moment as the three co-habiting entities that are Capital FX, EFILM London and Deluxe Digital re-organise themselves across the three floors here at Dering Street in London's Mayfair, next door to Soho.

It's raining outside, as it should in London but hasn't pretty much the whole dry summer, and I'm wondering about the limits of blogging and what to write, being new to this whole thing.

Don't expect this to be a Robert Scoble type of blog, as a) I don't know enough in detail about Deluxe to be offering those types of critiques, and b) Deluxe is a much nicer company than Microsoft and Steve Bergman has a much better dress sense than Bill Gates. Also, don't expect this to be a resurrection of the E-Cinema Alert. I'm not a fan of re-makes of things that were perfectly fine the first time around. So instead I will have to find a balance between a format that makes this interesting and revealing enough for you to be coming back for more, while at the same time keeping me from making an arse of myself electronically.

Here's a starter for ten that's recently been doing my head in. In the US the distributor pays for the distribution of the film, be it 35mm or digital, as the name would suggest. In Europe, however, I've found out that it is typically the exhibitor who pays for a driver to go to the depot and pick up the film canisters. Only in exceptional circumstances does a studio/distributor pay, such as this summer when an under-performing blockbuster was shipped in two separate batches to minimise the piracy risk. So security is obviously something that studios/distributors will pay for, so key handling/delivery is on their tab. But at the same time, you can't expect cinema owners to be paying for satellite transponder capacity or be told by the FedEx person that they won't be handing over the hard drive until they pay up. So it would make sense for distributors to either pay and recoup the money from exhibitors through changes in the rental terms, or just pay and accept that this is an inevitable fact of digital life.

But something tells me that it won't be quite that simple in this European market of dozens of countries, hundreds of distributors and too many exhibitor operators to count. That's part of what I've let myself in for. Oh, brave new digital cinema world! I'm off to ballroom dance class.