Michelle Pfeiffer, Dustin Hoffman and other Hollywood types made their entrances at the Toronto International Film Festival traipsing along a red carpet, while the English Quebec feature The Baroness and the Pig arrived via satellite.

Steering clear from traditional analog and chemical elements throughout the production process, The Baroness and the Pig was originated on a high-definition video Sony HDW 700A 1080i camcorder and posted on a beta version of the Avid|DS HD system. For its TIFF2002 screenings at Toronto’s Varsity Cinemas, Montreal’s Pixel Systems set up a satellite dish atop the Manulife Centre (home of the Varsity) that picked up the film feed, which was subsequently downloaded onto a D-cinema server. The film was then projected in HD from a 24p Christie digital cinema projector.

The projection at the press and industry screening went off without a hitch, with the image quality extremely sharp and clean throughout. The lush period film proved that shooting in HD is a feasible alternative for low-budget feature production, although some limitations were apparent, especially insofar as an occasional blurring effect when either the characters or the camera moved rapidly.

Produced by Media Principia, the film is written and directed by Michael Mackenzie, a prolific playwright who used one of his plays as the basis for this, his feature directorial debut.

The film tells the story of a late 19th century Parisian baroness of wealthy American origins (played by Patricia Clarkson, also featured in fest buzz film Far from Heaven), whose forward-thinking ideas include taking in a so-called enfant sauvage (Caroline Dhavernas) and training her to be a servant. The cast also includes Colm Feore and the film boasts an original score by Philip Glass. Lensed by Genie-nominated cinematographer Eric Cayla, the movie may very well represent the future of feature production, distribution and exhibition.

The Baroness and the Pig is in large part the baby of Daniel Langlois, the film’s Montreal-based executive producer and founder of Media Principia, Pixel Systems and software manufacturer Softimage. At TIFF he spoke at a Rogers Industry Centre session entitled Making Waves: the Impact of Digital Cinema Distribution on Independent Exhibitors and Producers on behalf of his Pix Cinema venture, which has developed a global D-cinema distribution network using direct satellite delivery.

Among the advantages of D-cinema discussed was superior picture quality. For example, many industry insiders argue that state-of-the-art digital projection provides greater detail in an image’s black areas. And no one can argue that digital projection saves on the cost of $2,000 to $3,000 per film print, bypasses the worry of print degradation and allows for content to always be screened at a specific quality standard.

There has been little progress in the adoption of D-cinema in Hollywood, however, simply because there is little incentive for the studios to chip in on the cost of replacing traditional film projectors with top-of-the-line digital ones, which run in the neighborhood of $150,000 each. Hollywood continues to earn huge profits from film prints and the three-tier system of producer-distributor-exhibitor, so if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

In fact, the studios have much to lose, as the approach Pix Cinema is proposing would allow indie producers and exhibitors to grow outside of the current system. It might also make distributors unnecessary to indie producers.

Pix Cinema has developed a website where indie producers can post their films and trailers and advertisers can post their cinema spots. Exhibitors can then log on to pick and choose the content they wish to run at their theatres and when, and the material would then be digitally delivered. This would allow exhibitors greater scheduling flexibility than if they were in possession of the costly print of a current Hollywood film, which they would maximize by running on a particular screen to the exclusion of all other possible content for a certain period of time.

Pix Cinema offers both terrestrial and satellite digital content delivery, the latter facilitating the delivery of content to remote regions that do not have enough bandwidth for terrestrial. As the panel agreed, the question is not whether audiences are seeing better quality with digital projection, it’s about whether audiences, especially those in rural areas, are able to see indie content at all. And therein lies one of digital distribution’s greatest advantages.

Ken Prue, VP marketing at Galaxy Entertainment, which runs 14 Galaxy multiplexes nationwide, talked about how Galaxy’s Waterloo, ON location has kicked the box-office butts of its non-digital competitors when offering digital screenings of Hollywood films such as Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. Using less expensive LCD projectors, the venue has also experienced full houses when digitally projecting non-traditional forms of theatrical content, such as university football games. Earlier this year, Galaxy’s Waterloo location screened Danforth Studios’ (now Greystone Studios) 24p HD feature Drop Dead Roses via a satellite teleport in Toronto operated by Telesat Canada.

-www.baronessandthepig.com

-www.pixnet.com