In the current drought, we're all looking for ways to save water. The film industry is no exception. In common with laboratories around the world in recent years, Atlab has implemented systems to reduce the massive amounts of water needed to process fil—but we want to do more.

The silver analogue soundtrack on today's release prints requires additional processing stages, including a spray wash that uses up to 14 litres of water for each spool of a feature. Over the course of a year, it adds up to millions of litres—a lot of water that we'd rather not have to use, in addition to the caustic chemicals used for redevelopment.

This is the method that's been in use for 50 years, but it's about to change. Most theatres have installed projectors with the newer red LED soundtrack readers. These work best with cyan dye soundtracks, which don't need all that extra processing and water. Just a few theatres still have tungsten sound heads, which only work with silver soundtracks. To ensure these theatres receive prints they can play on their older style equipment, we have to continue to supply silver soundtracks on all the prints we make. It's not practical to make special prints just for those theatres.

In the USA, well over half the cinemas now have red LED sound readers. Already a couple of titles have been printed with cyan tracks, and distributed to a select number of screens, with no problems. The National Association of Theatre Owners has undertaken that all its member theatres will have converted to red LED by July 2, 2003. At that time, distributors will be ready to order cyan dye track prints for general distribution. Of course, many of these prints will eventually find their way to Australia as recycled copies.

Here in Australia, we could be ready before then. Already about 75 percent of theatre projectors have red LED heads, and are ready for cyan tracks. Atlab will be able to start supplying prints with cyan tracks when a few more have converted.

If your projectors still have the older tungsten white light sound readers, you should convert to red LED readers before this July to ensure compatibility with the new cyan dye prints—whenever they start. But the sooner you convert, the sooner we can start making a real saving of water—and that will help everyone in Australia.