My View

The Big Picture

The Digital Cinema Summit

By Nick Dager
March 15, 2008 | Issue #123

The Digital Cinema Summit is one of the highlights of the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention, which is held every April in Las Vegas. This year'’ Summit is being held Saturday and Sunday April 12-13 and promises to provide a solid update on issues ranging from production and post-production all the way through distribution and exhibition. The Entertainment Technology Center at USC hosts the event with SMPTE. We spoke with ETC-USC executive director David Wertheimer to get an idea of what to expect at the Summit this year.

David Wertheimer is the executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California. He was previously the president of Paramount Digital Entertainment and has been immersed in producing content, developing new technologies, and managing organizations for more than 15 years.

Wertheimer was appointed in early 2007 to head the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC-USC), bringing his expertise to bear on the technological and sociological implications of providing content to consumers who desire it at any time and any place. Through this consortium, which brings together all the major motion picture studios and several leading technology, consumer electronics companies and service providers. In addition to his stint at Paramount, Wertheimer was previously the founder and CEO of WireBreak Entertainment, a digital content distribution and television production company.

I suspect that most of our readers are familiar with the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, which you head, but for those who are not please explain what the center is and how it works.

The Entertainment Technology Center @ USC, founded in 1993 with the help of George Lucas, is a non-profit organization within USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. The ETC brings together the top entertainment, technology and consumer electronic companies to evaluate what consumers really want, which is then translated to the companies that make technology products. The ETC strives to show how technology impacts the next generation consumer, who will improve the consumer experience and will uncover new revenue streams for entertainment-related products. Current ETC sponsor participants include; Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, NBC-Universal, Viacom/Paramount, Warner Bros., along with Cisco, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd, and Thomson.

The ETC basically does three things: We talk to consumers and find out what they want, what they're doing, and where they're headed. We have laboratories, e.g. the Digital Cinema Lab, or now the Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab, where we look at cutting-edge technologies, assess their effectiveness, and bring consumers into contact with devices and services to get feedback.

Most importantly, we bring the decision makers from the studios, the tech, service and CE industries together to talk about how we can work together to solve problems and create new opportunities for consumers.

From your perspective, how is the digital cinema rollout to theatres progressing in North America? Is the story the same in other countries?

I would really defer to you on the rollout. From an ETC perspective, we're just pleased that the Digital Cinema Lab provided an opportunity to help the industry move from ideas to implementation. And it's taking shape around the world.

The Digital Cinema Summit that is held each year in Las Vegas as part of the National Association of Broadcasters convention has become an almost must-attend event. What role does the ETC play in the Summit?

We're working together with SMPTE, as in previous years, to produce the two-day event. In the past, we tried to structure the day generally along these lines: Day one was SMPTE's day to focus on the technology, and Day 2 was ETC's day to focus on the creative aspects of Digital Cinema. Now that Digital Cinema is more mature we've blended that agenda and we're working together on the entire event, with SMPTE naturally taking center stage.

Without giving too much away, what do you see as the highlights at this year’s Summit?

There's a lot of excitement around 3D, and we're going to continue to give insights into production and distribution. We're also going to spend a fair amount of time talking about how DI's are changing and what it means for the production and post-production process. Of course, people will also be interested in hearing the cinematographers' viewpoints in the ASC panel. This event has become a must-attend for people who need to find out the current state-of-the-art in Digital Cinema.