EDCF annual meeting 2018

John Graham and David Monk at the dinner party. David Hancock can be seen in the background, far left.

On Thursday, 22 November the European Digital Cinema Forum, or EDCF in short, gathered for its annual meeting, this time in Stockholm and at the Filmhuset, headquarters for the Swedish film Institute (SFI). The proceedings actually started the evening before over a nice dinner, creating a good opportunity for some informal chatting and getting to know each other. Jerry Axelsson, senior officer in charge of projection systems at SFI, received a lot of Kudos for hosting the event, and two representatives of the FSF, Lars Pettersson and Olof Jonson, were kindly invited to participate.

The event proper was opened by Dave Monk, retiring president of the EDCF, who turned the reins over to David Hancock who is now taking over the responsibility of leading this organization. Thursday was off to a flying start with a tour of the SFI building including the projection booth, after which the participants were divided into smaller groups, each assigned to discuss a certain subject. After about half an hour, the groups switched rooms, thereby enabling every participant to take part in the discussion of every subject.

Running the projectors at the SFI is this much fun? Thomas Berg, a.k.a. ”the projection guy” in the SFI projection booth.

Among the topics debated, there were subjects such as ”Alternative content” -meaning the screening of operas, stage plays, live football games etc in traditional cinemas- as well as ”The future of DCI and standards in audio & video” where, among other things, was dealt with the fact that there has been an explosion in formats in recent years resulting in hundreds of versions of a single title having to be prepared (languages, audio formats, 2D, 3D etc).

The third topic was labeled ”The future of watching films” and here the discussion centered around themes like “How are we watching films now?”, existing and coming projection technology,  LED screens, etc.

From left to right: David Hancock -president of the EDCF, Jerry Axelsson and John Graham

The saying goes ”there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, but the lunch break featuring the delicious cuisine of the SFI restaurant came deceptively close, once again offering good opportunity to strike up acquaintances and chat. During the afternoon session, the moderators of the three discussion groups summed up the key points that had come up during the day -thereby inviting the entire auditorium to chime in and take the specific topics yet further.

Happy campers: Olof Jonson, FSF, and Jerry Axelsson, SFI.

For us invited cinematographers it was a day very well spent, the ambiance was very friendly and relaxed, and we found it highly educational and informative as well.

Lars Pettersson