Filing Films: A Brief Look at How Technology is Digitizing the Movie Industry

     Movies also have become an integrated part of society, and technology plays a large role in what happens with them also.  Movie technology has been implemented into the creation of movies for decades, in the form of special effects in order to draw the audience in.  Going along with the same trend as music, digitized movies are taking the web by storm.  The movie industry still has a strong hold with theaters, and the digital explosion has not happened quite as quickly as it did with music.  This can be attributed to a couple of reasons including the fact that digital music files are considerably smaller and less time consuming than video files (Nickson, 2013).  Movies take an enormous amount of storage space for high quality images, but still people started pirating movies just as they had with music.  Movies are not simply taking over immediately, but the transition is a much more gradual change.  Chris Nickson, a contributor to A Technology Society, explains the situation quite well when he wrote “As more services spring up letting us download films, and broadband speeds increase, making those hefty downloads faster, it might well signal the end of DVD rentals, and probably have a serious effect on the sales of physical DVDs – although we’ll need much larger hard drives in order to maintain a film library” in his article Technology & Film.  Society has come to expect movies that can play anywhere at virtually anytime, because of the plethora of devices we see on the consumer market.  The following Ted Talk by Frank Smith, tells an accurate description of the film industry’s recent timeline.

     Netflix is by far the most notable name in the world of digital movies, and many believe the physical movie industry is suffering because of it.  Numbers suggest that ticket sales have been gradually declining, and as of January of 2015 ticket sales were at the lowest point since 1995 at 1.26 billion (Bowman, 2015).  Up until now, Netflix wasn’t a significant threat to the theaters, because they only show movies that have already been through the theater.  In 2013 Netflix announced plans to stream films as they are released.  Chief Content Officer for Netflix, Ted Sarandos stated, “Why not premiere movies on Netflix, the same day they're opening in theaters? Why not follow the consumers' desire to watch things when they want? Theater owners stifle this kind of innovation at every turn ... I'm concerned that as theater owners try to strangle innovation and distribution, not only are they going to kill theaters, they might kill movies” as documented in How Netflix Is Closing The Curtains On Movie Theaters.  Netflix is certainly driven by competition, and they have amassed a very large market for their service.  Statistic Brain shows that Netflix has around 64 million subscribers and the company is bringing in 5 ½ billion dollars in annual revenue.  So regardless of their intentions, Netflix and other movie streaming companies have found their niche in American society.

References

Bowman, J. (2015, January 10). How Netflix Is Closing The Curtains On Movie Theaters: The Motley Fool. Retrieved from The Motley Fool: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/10/how-netflix-is-closing-the-curtains-on-movie-theat.aspx

Nickson, C. (2013, January 5). Technology & Films: A Technology Society Website. Retrieved from A Technology Society Website: http://www.atechnologysociety.co.uk/technology-films.html

Talks, T. (Director). (2014). The Film Industry Today [Motion Picture].