What is Fun?

Define fun.

Grown men (and one grown woman) playing baseball in a make-believe Yankee stadium, while a pretend commentator calls the plays and a pretend news shooter records the action on a Varicam?

Grown men (and six grown women) sitting in a darkened auditorium listening to Tom McMahon elucidate the finer points of the emerging AVC/H.26 standard? Taking bets on whether MPEG-4 will be DOA or not? Advanced Authoring Format? Metadata?

All this fun led to one broken rib and one torn hamstring, though it's not clear whether the hamstring was torn on the baseball field or during the lecture on logarithmic RGB.

I'm just having a little fun myself, in a nerdy kind of way. In fact the energy and sense of possibility at the HPA Technology Retreat was really something to see. First of all, everything came off without a hitch; attendance was up from last year, and the number of quality Hollywood and technical people who stayed for several days was truly impressive.

Part of the appeal was the way the surprisingly accessible program was organized — short, to-the-point sessions in the auditorium as well as breakfast roundtables that truly helped kick each day off with a sense of intensity and focus.

But it was also a little frustrating to hear some of the same circular arguments swirling around about digital cinema. Harry Mathias of Barco was one of the most popular breakfast hosts, so clearly the questions of digital cinema and its rate of adoption are high on people's radar. There were even some new twists to the discourse, especially in the area of Who Will Pay. But there was much said in earnest that I have heard before: Mark Schubin, for example, seems to unequivocally prefer film even when the objective quality of film and digital are the same, sounding much like a vinyl fan who prefers LPs to CDs. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Brook Williams of Texas Instruments and Mathias point to surveys that indicate impressive audience preference for digital screens; these surveys are undoubtedly true, but they are not publicly available since they put theater owners in a tricky position when it comes to asserting they can't afford to buy digital technology.

As a moviegoer, I prefer digital screens (or answer prints), but I also respect that the naysayers are not trying to impede progress, only demanding that progress be made without compromising what matters. So party on, I say. And may our most pressing battles in 2003 be over digital cinema.

HPA President Leon Silverman and master of ceremonies and program organizer Mark Schubin should be very happy with their event, as should HPA coordinator Eileen Kramer and everyone who helped on the logistical front. Thank you everyone.

I also want to say thanks for all the smart technologists who showed up and participated with such commitment. Compression algorithms and file encryption may not be the reasons film and television are made, but they're as powerful a force in shaping and enabling culture as any story. And they're just so much fun.