Global Digital Creations Holdings Ltd - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

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Profile:GDC is positioned to be a global leader in computer graphics ("CG") content creation and production and leading digital content and feature film distributor via introduction of proprietary digital cinema technology into China.

The Company`s vision is to build a China-based, world-class quality CG production team targeting international and domestic productions and to develop a value chain of digital content distribution in China using digital cinemas as the distribution channel.

The Company commenced its training of industrial animators and digital artists for CG production in Shenzhen, China in November, 2000. It now has over 200 animators working on CG and special effects for the full feature film production of "Thru the Moebius Strip", in collaboration with Jean Moebius Giraud.

In September 2001, the Company held the first successful live demonstration , outside of USA , of distributing a Columbia Pictures "Final Fantasy" via satellite transmission to the two digital cinemas in Beijing and Shanghai. The movie was digitally compressed, encrypted along with the multi-channel audio tracks and Chinese subtitles, where these signals were satellite transmitted to the two digital cinemas in Beijing and Shanghai, using GDC Technology Limited`s proprietary Digital Film Servers.



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http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/24/digital.movietheate…




Movie theaters going digital
Report: Number of theaters showing digital flicks expected to double
Wednesday, December 24, 2003 Posted: 10:15 AM EST (1515 GMT)

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Grab the popcorn, cinemaphiles. You may be about to sit through one of the best movie sequels in years: digital cinema.

"The digital image is brighter, sharper, the colors are more crisp and the image is a bit steadier," says Patrick von Sychowski, an analyst with Screen Digest, the British-based media research firm.

After years of Hollywood hype, 2004 could truly be a watershed year for digital cinema. A recent surge in investment by theater chains and technology companies means the number of digital projectors in cinemas will more than double to over 400 in the next 12 months, Screen Digest reports.

There`s no guarantee the technology will make the next Jennifer Lopez-Ben Affleck film more watchable, but at least the final product will look better.

As always, whenever art and technology collide, snags emerge. Installation costs for cinemas are high and the major studios are slow to churn out fully digitized blockbusters until technology standards and anti-piracy measures are resolved.

But cinema operators, eager to show off their new digital projectors to the public, aren`t waiting for Hollywood. A host of European chains have begun to show digitized rock concerts, documentaries and features from independent filmmakers.

"The new technology, we see, gives the local filmmaker the chance to exhibit to a bigger audience. Those films that do not get a chance under the 35-millimeter distribution model, will get a fresh chance," said Steve Perrin, deputy head of distribution and exhibition of the UK Film Council.

The film council has committed some $39 million (20 million pounds) to pay for the roll-out of 250 digital screens across Britain by 2005.

Blockbuster on demand
Since the mid-1990s, champions of digital cinematography such as George Lucas and Steven Soderbergh have hailed it as a triumph over the 19th Century breakthrough of celluloid film.

Stored as a digitized image file, the technology offers a better medium to enhance special effects, and playback quality will not deteriorate over time.

A digital film can be beamed to theaters via satellite, optical discs or fiber optic networks, potentially eliminating that exasperating several-month lag overseas viewers must endure for a big Hollywood production. And subtitles can be swapped in and out minutes before show time.

At the theater, a digital film is stored on a computer server connected to a digital projector. The projector is equipped with a state-of-the-art computer chip that cleans up the image -- capable of showing 35 trillion color variations.

Since the Lumiere brothers and D.W. Griffiths pioneered the medium 100 years ago, filmmakers have had to live with the reality of scratches and hairs marring some frames, and hisses and pops distorting the sound.

Digital cinematography promises to remove these headaches. What you will get is ear-popping digital surround sound and crisp images. "It`s great for your standard Bollywood song and dance," von Sychowski said.

It`s not surprising then that India has embarked on one of the most ambitious digital cinema investment programs. Mukta Adlabs Digital Exhibition Limited and Hong Kong-based Global Digital Creations Holdings Limited this year have teamed to wire up an average of 20 Indian cinemas per month.

New investment is also under way in China, Britain and Sweden, making it likely that Europe and Asia will quickly surpass the United States -- the early digital cinema pioneer -- as the new world capitals.

Rewriting the Hollywood script
The biggest advantage for the movie goer, says Peter Wester, project manager for Swedish cinema chain Folkets Hus och Parker, will be most visible not on the marquee -- not necessarily the screen.

A cinema can download a digital version of the film on a computer hard drive and show it as long as the audience shows up. No longer are theaters bound to the major studios` distribution schedule, he said.

"The average rise of income for us is 25 percent after one year," he added.

It can cost thousands of dollars for a cinema to get a Hollywood blockbuster film at or near the release date. A theater operator, therefore, often has little choice but to show the movie as often as possible before returning it to the distributor.

A digital version, because it can be easily reproduced, shipped and stored, costs less than $20 per copy, according to cinema exhibitors. It also allows the cinema operator to free up their viewing schedule, perhaps opening up the odd week-night slot for an art-house title.

And, the build-out is expensive. It costs a cinema operator an estimated $125,000 for the equipment and installation of a digital projector and server. The costs are decreasing, with widespread roll-out expected to halve deployment cost.

The biggest obstacle though is Hollywood. The Walt Disney Co., through its partnership with Pixar Animation Studios Inc., and Warner Bros., are the only studios producing blockbusters in digital film.

The Disney-Pixar film "Finding Nemo" and Warner Bros. "The Last Samurai" were two of a handful of big digital releases this year. (Warner Bros. is a division of CNN`s parent company Time Warner Inc.)

"That`s the big unknown," von Sychowski said. "It`s a matter of how much will the major studios commit to this."



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http://it.asia1.com.sg/newsdaily/news001_20030312.html



S`pore tech firm goes to Bollywood
GDC Tech to retrofit 400 Indian cinemas, digitise feature films
By Raju Chellam , Business Times
12 Mar 2003


(SINGAPORE) In a unique high-tech venture, a Singapore firm has won a multi-million dollar deal to retrofit India`s movie theatres with digital projectors. The company will also convert Indian-made feature films into a digital format that will save thousands of dollars per movie in distribution costs.

The little-known firm is GDC Technology, part of the Global Digital Creations Holdings Group. It was set up in 2000 by Nanyang Technological University professor Man-Nang Chong, who is now based in Hong Kong.

GDC will retrofit 400 movie theatres across India by April 2004. The first theatre, in Mumbai, will start operating under the new format - the first in India - by the end of this month. To do this, GDC has set up a joint venture with Adlabs Films, India`s largest motion picture processing lab. Adlabs is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange.

`Our target is to retrofit 1,500 e-cinemas in India by 2007,` GDC Technology`s Singapore-based head of marketing, Benjamin Ng, told BT. `A 35mm movie reprint would cost more than US$1,000. Our technology would cut that cost to a fraction of the amount, especially in the long run.`

Retrofitting the cinema will involve GDC installing its digital film server and digital projector in the theatre. `The feature film itself will be stored in a high-capacity disk drive double the size of a cigarette packet,` said Mr Ng. `This will be couriered to the cinema. Once the movie`s run has ended, another digital pack will be couriered and the old made obsolete. The entire movie will be digitally encrypted, so it will be impossible for pirates to copy it.`

Mr Ng would not say how much it will cost to retrofit a cinema hall. Industry sources said it may range from US$80,000 to more than US$125,000 depending upon the size of the hall, acoustics and other factors. If it averages US$100,000, the retrofitting exercise for 400 theatres alone would mean gross revenues of US$40 million.

Adlabs` managing director Manmohan Shetty said: `E-cinema is the way to go in India because the movie industry in India itself is unique. We`re planning to offer through various distributors one digital movie a week. This would be a tremendous business opportunity for the cinema operators and a real treat to the movie audience.`

As for movie producers, they send a master copy of the movie to the firm to convert to a digital format. `Our telecine facility will digitise it using GDC`s Digital Super Realism Film Agile Encoder to code, encrypt and package high-resolution files on hard disk drives,` Dr Chong said.

`The digital release or print can be produced almost without human intervention within 24 hours.` It costs about US$50,000 to digitise a full-feature movie.

India has about 10,000 cinema theatres and is the world`s most prolific producer of feature films at 1,000 a year. However, very few prints are made in the first week of the movie`s release. This encourages piracy. The digital distribution method will solve the distribution and piracy problem.

Privately-held GDC Group now employs about 300 people. It has production facilities in China, R&D in Hong Kong, marketing in Singapore, and has an office in Hollywood. Dr Chong, a Malaysian national and a Singapore permanent resident, has been doing R&D on digital imaging technologies since 1992 and led an NTU team that won the worldwide Texas Instruments` Digital Signal Processing Solutions Challenge award of US$100,000. He invented `Revival Digital technology` that enables old films to be digitally restored using a cluster of processors.