By 2013, the production of 35mm film will be halted and the age of Digital Cinema will be upon us full force. As a projectionist, I find this incredibly saddening as I feel that I have had a short lived exposure to such a beautiful technology. But, however, I feel a need to embrace the technology that is not going to stop, and keep up with the times, so to speak.

With the age of digital cinema upon us, advertisers and theater owners alike will be able to harness the full potential of "on-screen advertising", in a way that had never been possible with film (mainly do to the enormous costs required in creating any length of film.

In this blog, I will teach you how to create content for Digital Cinema, also known as DCP. (Digital Cinema Package)

The digital projector itself is, in a sense, a giant computer with a lamp and a lens. The DCP that is sent to a theater comes in a HardDrive that plugs into the server which is then uploaded to the server. Most films in this format are over 300GBs, so this process can take some time. Once uploaded, you should be able to tell everything about the fim from it's incredibly long title. Including its name, format type (2D/3D 2k or 4k) the studio that made it, length, etc. While looking at the newly uploaded content, you will notice that it is ONE file, which can be programmed into a schedule and played given the right security requirements sent by the studio.

The key thing to remember in creating your own DCP is to realize that the file is NOT one single file. There are several files all contained in a folder that the server scans for. Once the appropriate files are found, and given the correct format, the server then displays these files as one file, which again, can be played in program or by manual means.

I will now go through the process of creating such a file. (Or "files" as you now know they are such)

-GC