How Is Digital Cinema Production Affecting The British Film Industry?

The issue with technological convergence is the audience demand. As technologies advance and converge the end users demand more which can be shown by the advance of mobile phones, originally they could only call or text but now they can do a multitude of thins as more technologies have been added into the phone. The industries behind mobile phones have become ever more competitive to keep up the synergy of technology caused by audience demand. The British film industry is the same as the mobile companies, they are constantly improving the viewing of films by adding technologies such as 3D, and while mainstream films can afford to do this the independent ones cannot and so the digital technology for independent films keep the companies in competition with each other and also keeps up the audiences demand for technology convergence.

Vue and Cinema City are perfect examples of the competition between companies and how digital technology keeps the independent cinema in competition with the mainstream ones. Vue, the mainstream cinema, has the finances to converge technologies such as 3D more than Cinema City the independent, which causes Cinema City to lose out on profits. The digital technology that Cinema City can get because of its independent status makes the films cheaper to buy and exhibit and so the cinema can afford to buy other things with the money they normally would have used on buying the films such as 3D or other technology to make the cinema experience better of the audience.

An advantage of technological convergence from an institutional point of view is the ease of distribution, digital films can easily be formatted for DVDs and quality remains very high because the films are not converted from film reels to digital which costs more and reduces quality. Digital films can also be distributed easily by uploading straight onto the internet via the film rather than the DVD or illegal uploads which both cost the industry a lot of money so the industry themselves can upload good quality films on the internet which the audience can pay for which has the added benefit of a wider audience. Digital to digital conversions, film to DVD, cost less money to the industry and so increases the income. An advantage of technological conversions for the audience is cheaper costs of films in other formats such as DVDs. It is easier to convert digital films to DVD so the cost would be less thus saving the audience money. Another advantage for the audience, which would be a disadvantage for the industry is the internet, digital films would be much easier to upload onto the internet than film reels and although this can be an advantage for the industry if they did it themselves is can also be a disadvantage because of file sharing sites and illegal downloading. A disadvantage of technological convergence for audiences is the cost of non-convergent technology such as cassette tapes and videos which, like film reels, are more costly to format into digital and are fast becoming outdated because of the need to buy specialist machinery for them.