Don't have your cousin that can make a DCP in his basement do it. I would recommend to filmmakers, if you're going to show in a festival, just invest the time and money into your deliverable. HP: I actually have a pretty good time with DCPs as long as the person that's getting it done actually gets it done by a post house. NFS: What's your experience with DCP? How's the road been for DCP adoption? It's just a dicey format that I won't use as a primary format. I'm not a fan of Blu-rays just because with 4 layers of optical information, they can get damaged and scratched, thumb-printed. We will not present films in Blu-ray, but we accept it as a backup format and we will only play it if we cannot get the primary format to play. We are primarily showing DCP and HD-Cam, and I'm quickly seeing HD-Cam drop off as well. It's a hand-painted 16mm short - I'm spending way too much time to play a 3-minute short, but it was something that I felt compelled to do just because it was a film. We are showing a 16mm short this year, though a couple of years ago we took 16mm out as an accepted format. Holden Payne: This is actually the first year that we do not have any 35mm in our history. NFS: What are most films at Sundance projecting from? What's the situation like? Could the continued adoption of DCP mean less gut-wrenching experiences for independent filmmakers when it comes time to project? Payne sat down with No Film School to talk about how films are projected at Sundance 2015, how filmmakers can ensure their master is up to snuff, and what the future holds.Ī "bellweather year" for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival when it comes to film projection. If you've had a film play in the festival circuit, you've probably had at least one screening with technical difficulties. It means the DCP is likely here to stay, according to Holden Payne, the Technical Director of Exhibition and Projection of the Sundance Film Festival. What does that mean for independent filmmakers? For the first year in Sundance history, there are no films projecting from 35mm prints.