[PRCo] [Fwd: Steel and Snow]

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Here are Carl Schultz's comments about Transit Gloria Mundi versus HDTV,
and Digital technology.  I can see that one of his concerns is that
people can pirate and peddle his work to friends for pennies.  And in a
society where everyone thinks their rights supersede those of anyone
else and who feel we did nothing wrong if we didn't get caught, I can
relate to his concern.

Carl Schultz wrote:
> 

> > And Carl ... the usual nice assembly job.  The picture of the Bullet
> > dashing over the Ardmore car did make a nice transition from the PST to
> > P&W scenes!
> 
> You knew this was a trick shot, right? The Bullet and the Ardmore car
> were never in frame at the same time in the original footage.
> 
> Thanks very much for all your kind comments, and for spreading the word.
> This has certainly been our most successful first few weeks yet with a
> new tape.
> 
> > NOW, SOME QUESTIONS CARL:
> >
> > I decided to squint a little longer at my smaller TV screen because of
> > the future of HDTV.
> >
> > The dealer from whom I bought the VCR agreed that my logic was not
> > overtly flawed when I bought simply a VCR instead of a VCR/TV
> > combination because HDTV is so close.  He explained that there isn't
> > much being broadcast in high definition right now but that most if not
> > all shows will be high definition in about seven more years and that
> > duplicate analog and digital signals will be phased out in about ten
> > years.  He said that conversion boxes will be sold ten years from now
> > to enable people with old TV sets to convert the HDTV signals, but he
> > thought, as I did, that the cost of the converters will be very high
> > to force you to buy a high priced television set.
> 
> Within the industry there is a lot of pessimism about whether much HDTV
> will ever be broadcast over the air. Premium cable channels, yes, but
> the rules permit over-the-air broadcasters to use the increased
> bandwidth allocation to simulcast several standard-res channels or even
> non-video data for computer display. So far, it looks like local TV
> stations will opt to continue their standard-res broadcasts and then use
> the extra bandwidth to broadcast more different stuff - they think there
> is more money in more program streams rather than one better picture.
> What the public wants will ultimately decide the issue - if subscribers
> start watching the HDTV premium channels in droves and abandon std-res
> network prime time programming, the networks will *require* their
> affiliates to broadcast the network feed in HDTV and that will be that.
> 
> > Now with all this in mind, and with the idea that my VCR table library
> > is going to soon be out of date and possibly not even usable,
> >
> >      1.  What are you doing to convert your output to digital disc
> >          format?  Will the digital discs last longer than VCR tapes
> >          and is the quality really any higher when made from 8mm
> >          home movies?  What do you view as the reasons for and
> >          against?
> 
> At the moment, I am in what doctors call "watchful waiting" mode. There
> aren't enough DVD players out there among my customer base that I need
> to act quickly. In general, my customers are on the trailing rather than
> the leading edge of technology.
> 
> DVD may or may not last longer than VHS. DVD will certainly stand up to
> repeated playings better (I'm talking about repeated playings like
> visitor orientation videos at trolley museums, not like guys who watch a
> given tape several times a year).
> 
> 8mm original film is definitely the narrow end of the quality funnel. If
> anything, the kind of compression used in DVDs will degrade rather than
> improve the image as compared to VHS. That said, the possibility of
> being able to copy a DVD without any loss may increase piracy. A VHS
> copy of a VHS tape looks pretty bad, but a direct digital copy of a DVD
> will be indistinguishable from the original.
> 
> The main reason to go to DVD is the possibility of including a lot of
> extra non-moving content. I try to keep use of stills in my productions
> to an absolute minimum - I figure a lot of my customers who are
> interested in a system may already have the stills sitting on their
> library shelves in books and don't particularly want to pay for me to
> recycle these stills and hold them onscreen for however long I may think
> I should hold them, rather than however long the viewer may want to look
> at them. On the other hand, if in my research I happen to turn up a lot
> of stills of a system, and can just put the still on the DVD as a single
> frame and not use up a lot of disk space with almost-identical movie
> frames, then that's something worth doing. I could put stills on the DVD
> at much higher than TV (even HDTV) resolution, and people can scroll
> around and/or zoom in and out on their computer, and print them out if
> they want. I can include scans of maps, schedules, transfers, tokens,
> and all that sort of stuff, even pages and pages of text, so the DVD
> becomes a sort of multi-media reference work on a system, which can be
> watched like a movie on a DVD player attached to a TV set, or put into a
> computer to look at all the other stuff. Or not, if you're not
> interested.
> 
> That is the future I see for non-fiction DVDs, and the first thing I
> would try it on is TROLLEY, if only I can get the rights issues sorted
> out. Even as I was making TROLLEY I regretted not having a second set of
> stereo audio channels available, or closed captions. A great many of the
> shots I chose deliberately because they illustrate something in addition
> to what the narrator was talking about on the soundtrack. For example,
> while the narrator is talking about car types, there is a shot of a
> combination open/closed California car in LA, and in the background the
> Angel's Flight Incline is clearly visible and in operation. But to have
> the narrator break out of the car type thread and go "Oh, by the way..."
> would be a disaster for continuity, but on an optional soundtrack, or in
> closed captions, it would be wonderful additional content. Another
> example is one of the shots about safety films: it's a perfect
> illustration of how single-truck cars galloped on rough track, and why
> they got phased out.
> 
> >      2.  Do you plan to go the high definition route, or is it simply
> >          not worth it with all the unsharp 8 mm film out there?
> 
> Definitely not worth it for 8mm, or even 16mm for that matter. At some
> point several years from now, when costs are lower and HDTV sets more
> widely distributed, I may have a go at HDTV for footage I shoot myself
> of light rail. Or foreign systems if I can stir up enough interest.
> 
> BTW - Did you know that Phil Craig has been posted to London for several
> years? He has offered to act as my agent in place to try to get British,
> and eventually Continental distribution going again, at which point I
> may tackle Russ's and Henry's extensive archives of European films. It
> wouldn't be worth it for the US market alone, but I know it would work
> if I had a good channel open for European distribution.
> 
> Ha vista la vasta!
> 
> Carl

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