The future of film...

[Russ McDonald]

Theater is theater, whether it's the campfire, klieg lights and saw dust, or 4k Digital projectors. It has always been an shared experience. One that we crave. We get a little obsessive here, but we are in the minority. Movies on the big screen are about more than the image. It's about that girl or guy sitting next to you, the one you asked to the movie. Will tonight be the night, that if I reach for the their hand during the scary part, or the funny part. Will they continue to hold my hand moving us to next level, or will they let it go quickly signaling that we're just friends.

I know that it sound corny in this advanced age we live in, with 12 year olds having babies, but that is far from the norm. Movies are the literature of are time, if Mary Shelley was alive today, she would probably have a three picture deal with Fox. We know how every Romantic Comedy is going to end, the audience knows how it's going to end. Yet they still want the ride, they want to feel those feelings over and over again. They will deal with the $5.00 Coke and the $5.00 medium popcorn. Because they love to go to the movies and sit in the dark with strangers. They want the laughter that is coming from all those around them, or the shared scream when the hot camp counselor gets killed by the machete carrying maniac. Thats why are business will always have a long and profitable life span. There are many ancillary markets that will out gross a theatrical release. But if you take out the theatrical run from the equation, and those ancillary are worth next to nothing.

As people choose home theater over the multiplex, more file in to fill up those empty seats, 3D is going to be a big part of it. Look 13 to 24 year olds don't want to wait for the DVD release. A date is a date, the movie is the icing on the cake. Good movies or bad movies it doesn't matter. Like Byron and Shelley and their contemporaries , it gives us something to talk to are fellow human beings about, a way for us to have common ground to start the conversations. Conversations that seem to end with the same line. " We should go to a movie sometime." Which has the same response, " What's coming out this weekend."

 

[Tom Lowe]

When I saw District9 the other week, the projector was so out of focus I could hardly read names on the end credits. Not nice, and not a way to encourage people to visit the cinema.

Graeme

I don't understand how these projectionists "miss focus" on a freekin screen that doesn't even move!

I think 4K and bigger, bigger screens will help to keep people coming to theaters. 3D too. And course, the fun of being in a big theater with nice AC, and the community feel of watching something with a big crowd.

 

[M Most]

if Mary Shelley was alive today, she would probably have a three picture deal with Fox.

That's the most ridiculous statement I've ever read. You're completely wrong on this.

The deal would be with Universal.
:sarcasm:

 

[M Most]

I don't understand how these projectionists "miss focus" on a freekin screen that doesn't even move!

1. Heat
2. General movement in the projection booth

I think 4K and bigger, bigger screens will help to keep people coming to theaters. 3D too. And course, the fun of being in a big theater with nice AC, and the community feel of watching something with a big crowd.

I think 4K means almost nothing to audiences. Bigger screens and 3D, perhaps. Comfortable theater, communal atmosphere, crowd, yes.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

Believe what you want, but I guess you haven't noticed that 2009 is currently shaping up to potentially be the biggest theatrical box office year in history.

Have to agree with Mike here. The BIG SCREEN is still a big part of our cultural experience in America.... and given the throngs of annoying teenagers I see at the multi-plex every week, the big screen is far from dead.

As for projectionists. Therein seems to be the dying breed, especially as things go digital... more and more teenagers are now running projection booths
and an art form is dying.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I think 4K means almost nothing to audiences.

We'll see about that.

Apparently people are already lining up for the IMAX Lite "4K" experience, and paying a premium for it.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The reason they miss focus is because nobody is there to check it.

They press play and move on to the next theater.

Also calculated business decisions. I complained after Australia that the bottom half of the movie was completely out of focus and as if the lens was off its mount or something. They said a guy was scheduled to come in the next day to look at it. So they just ran the movie knowing half of it was out of focus assuming nobody would complain.

 

[Joe G.]

The end credits of District 9 were blurry and unreadable when I saw it too. Could there have been an error with the film prints? I don't recall the entire thing being so blurry.

Theaters are often more trouble than they are worth. Smelly 20 year old burning popcorn, sticky soda-covered floors, excruciatingly loud volumes, commercials which I gave up 10 years ago when I tuned out of television permanently, fucking military recruitment ads, morons with cell phones, text messages, inane comments, kicking my seat (which could land you in the hospital), and a whole lot of bad dialogue, stupid plot points, treating the audience as infants, bad visual effects, my God, this list is just going on and on...

 

[M Most]

The end credits of District 9 were blurry and unreadable when I saw it too. Could there have been an error with the film prints? I don't recall the entire thing being so blurry.

Theaters are often more trouble than they are worth. Smelly 20 year old burning popcorn, sticky soda-covered floors, excruciatingly loud volumes, commercials which I gave up 10 years ago when I tuned out of television permanently, fucking military recruitment ads, morons with cell phones, text messages, inane comments, kicking my seat (which could land you in the hospital), and a whole lot of bad dialogue, stupid plot points, treating the audience as infants, bad visual effects, my God, this list is just going on and on...

So don't go. That still isn't going to stop a couple of hundred million other people from going and, for the most part, enjoying the experience.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

In the cinema I visited, it seemed to be a projection issue as the very top right of the screen was in focus, the rest was not, as if it were some alignment issue - and the trailers were similarly out of focus. I suspect the prints were fine.

Graeme

 

[Bing Bailey]

they should have autofocus built into projectors at this point and let it self correct. if they can do it with dv cams why not. switch on a target and let it autoalign. all that tech exists. then we don't have to worry about lazy/blind projectionists

 

[Brad Webb]

I really don't know what you're trying to prove here. A statement was made that "Hollywood is gasping" and that "the big screen is dying." I responded by saying that the statement is quite a bit of a stretch when one considers that the box office through only the first 8 months of the year is already almost $7.5 billion. I stand by that statement, regardless of how many mathematical nits you want to pick.

$7.5 billion is only the domestic box office. The trend in theaters the last 4 plus years has been that the international box office is starting to equal and beat the US box office. Movies that bomb or don't do as well in the US (Golden Compass, Terminator Salvation, Angles and Demons etc) still turn huge profits thanks to the international box office, which in the coming years will begin to be more important to studios.

Look at Ice Age 3, cost $90 million and only made $194 million in the US,
Then went on to make $614 million overseas, only $6 million less than Harry Potter, making it the #2 movie worldwide this year.

Theaters are far from dead.

 

[fALk Gärtner]

I don´t know what numbers you guys are looking at but here in good old germany box office sales are in a very steep (10-18% per year) decline since around 2000 ( I have not looked at this years numbers so but I can´t imagine it be any better - there were no cool movies whatsoever out that made a splash). I can see that some emerging markets still yearn for the fairground experience of a big screen and 3d might also pique interest in the fairground happy people but this thread started out if content might be king - and from what I see the attention span of people is going down rapidly - sitting quitely in a movie theater for 1.5+ hours is getting out of vogue very fast - I did my thesis in uni about live cinema (make the movie live in front of an audience in an audiovisual environment where they can watch but also talk, drink and dance - if anyone is interested I can explain more) because even 4 years ago this trend was apparent and has steadely accelerated - its very interesting to see - if you have a kickass documentary on YouTube that is split in parts the first part might get a million hits the second part only 100.000 the third part is down to 20.000 - there are multiple examples of that over at the loss generating website. That is also why you hear people chatting in the theater, running up and down aisles - they are bored because their attention span and general lack of time (so many cool things to do with all these gadgets these days) just makes them feel that they want to move on in the middle of the film - films always having the same structure where you can see in act 2 how the movie ends ain´t help any either. The people want to talk with their friends want to actually hang out instead of beeing quite - and a better way to do that is at home where not some rancy old film person in from of them is hushing them to be quite. And from the kids of my friends who are in their late 20s early 30s (edit: the friends not the kids - the kids are between 8 and 12) I can see that whole trend accelerating - heck some of them have never been in a cinema in the first place. Might be that germany is an exception because our movie industry sucks bad and the american image has been tainted a little in the last years that hollywood is not seen as cool as it used to anymore but its clearly there and it will make big ripples - already theaters are closing left and right.
My prediction is that cinema goes back to were it came from - the fair ground where it aint matter what the content is - as long its a good ride - and film will find new ways to tell stories. Might be 10-15 more years before the change over becomes aparent.

 

[Tim Hole]

they should have autofocus built into projectors at this point and let it self correct. if they can do it with dv cams why not. switch on a target and let it autoalign. all that tech exists. then we don't have to worry about lazy/blind projectionists

Digital Projectors do autofocus. Plus as the start of the day they go through a built in calibration process. it still needs to be checked. We had several issues with District 9 prints. First was a racking issue. The perfs were a milimeter out of line on the fourth reel. Which meant racking it higher or the extraction sprockets would have problems. It wasn't just us apparently 20 other cinemas in the uk phoned and complained as well.

The other problem we had, which actually was only noticed by John Barrowman (funnily enough the only person who came out and complained about it), the documentary banners and the MNU symbol in the bottom right of the screen were bouncing as if they weren't tracking properly. Not part of the doco look as the frame would be a static shot and the graphics would bounce slightly up and down. When I looked at another print is was stable.

Obviously no-one else complained about the bouncing issue, John barrowman would have a slightly more critical eye than most being in the industry essentially, but should also have realised that it would have been on the print and there is nothing we could do about it.

ALL screening should be checked at the beginning of each show for focus. There is NO excuse. Nor should there be giant scratches etc...This is why projectionists always have to view a film before it is publically screened for this very reason.

 

[Stephen Gentle]

When I saw District9 the other week, the projector was so out of focus I could hardly read names on the end credits. Not nice, and not a way to encourage people to visit the cinema.

Graeme

I had the same thing in Knowing - really annoying, because it was the first RED footage I'd seen in the wild. Oh, and it was distracting me from the story too...

But I saw Up tonight on a digital projector (RealD, I think) and it was pretty awesome - I was a little worried because they showed an ad before on a digital projector and it looked pretty weird (probably low quality source and a cheap projector), but the two trailers and the film on the other projector had far better image quality than any other film I'd seen. But they were all CG, so it might have been different if it had been live action, but still...

 

[Vincent Grippi]

1. Heat
2. General movement in the projection booth



I think 4K means almost nothing to audiences. Bigger screens and 3D, perhaps. Comfortable theater, communal atmosphere, crowd, yes.

Agreed.

 

[Stefan Christou]

Went and saw District 9 recently, loved it. Loved it as an experience in the cinema and I can't wait till Avatar. With the quality of films at the moment and the advent of 3D, the cinemas are getting my money more than ever.

 

[Eren Ozkural]

Theater is theater, whether it's the campfire, klieg lights and saw dust, or 4k Digital projectors. It has always been an shared experience. One that we crave. We get a little obsessive here, but we are in the minority. Movies on the big screen are about more than the image. It's about that girl or guy sitting next to you, the one you asked to the movie. Will tonight be the night, that if I reach for the their hand during the scary part, or the funny part. Will they continue to hold my hand moving us to next level, or will they let it go quickly signaling that we're just friends.

I know that it sound corny in this advanced age we live in, with 12 year olds having babies, but that is far from the norm. Movies are the literature of are time, if Mary Shelley was alive today, she would probably have a three picture deal with Fox. We know how every Romantic Comedy is going to end, the audience knows how it's going to end. Yet they still want the ride, they want to feel those feelings over and over again. They will deal with the $5.00 Coke and the $5.00 medium popcorn. Because they love to go to the movies and sit in the dark with strangers. They want the laughter that is coming from all those around them, or the shared scream when the hot camp counselor gets killed by the machete carrying maniac. Thats why are business will always have a long and profitable life span. There are many ancillary markets that will out gross a theatrical release. But if you take out the theatrical run from the equation, and those ancillary are worth next to nothing.

As people choose home theater over the multiplex, more file in to fill up those empty seats, 3D is going to be a big part of it. Look 13 to 24 year olds don't want to wait for the DVD release. A date is a date, the movie is the icing on the cake. Good movies or bad movies it doesn't matter. Like Byron and Shelley and their contemporaries , it gives us something to talk to are fellow human beings about, a way for us to have common ground to start the conversations. Conversations that seem to end with the same line. " We should go to a movie sometime." Which has the same response, " What's coming out this weekend."

One of the best posts I've read in REDUSER for a while :thumbup:

My lady and I watch 2-3 films at the cinema a week, usually all in one day. The cineworld chain here in the UK has an unlimited pass where for £15 you can see as many films you want per month at any Cineworld screen. Do they have any deals like that in the US? I havent come across it in Canada...

I've never agreed with the Tarantino school of thought concenring film school but constantly watching new output weather it is good or bad does help you get to know current trends and methods on an instinctive level. Every trip to the cinema is usually followed by scouring fxguide.com, imdb, slashfilm etc. for info and articles about the methods behind the films as well. It all adds up.

But I digress, cinema is far from dead.

 

[Zakaree Sandberg]

3d was around in the 90s... it gave me a headache then.. and it gives me a headache now

 

[Russ McDonald]

One of the best posts I've read in REDUSER for a while :thumbup:

First I want to say that Eren your brilliance, in recognizing my brilliance is well, genius. DID YOU READ THAT DAVID FARLAND! "One of the Best..."

Eren is right as rain theatrical runs are here to stay, at least for the next 2 decades. Well inside the career path of everyone involved with this forum. If you saw these profit participation contracts that the major studios use. You realize the value of the theatrical release. The box office determines the fee's paid by every downline distribution channel.

3D more importantly Avatar 3D, even more importantly a James Cameron crafted 3D movie is going to change everything. Cameron weather you like him or hate him, and if you've ever work on one of his sets you know what I'm talking about... He is a master filmmaker blessed with the war chest to make them right, and he has given us a master-class in shooting 3D with Avatar. Rules are going to change, a whole new set of basic principles of shooting will be born, how you approach a shot is going to change.

The biggest new rule, and if you choose to ignore it, your going to give people like Zak a headache, and probably never make another 3D movie again, is deep focus. Thank you Mr. Welles. Having to work in deep focus changes every aspect of production; production design, how you move the camera, the detailing in the props that you use everything has to be reexamined. The age of the Greengrass school of camera movement is not going to work in 3D. Blowing out the background on the close up isn't going to work the same in 3D. Your going to have to have great acting, by actors who can connect to the audience, because my friends there is no fourth wall in a 3D movie... The nature of the effect generated by stenographic viewing destroys the that subconscious barrier, and obtaining and sustaining the suspension of disbelief is going to be linked to not only the performance, but the eye candy around it.

I hear the grunts and murmurs, " Well yeah if I had 200 million to make a 3D movie I would...." Element Technica's new generation of 3D rigs is going to make it possible for a lot of you make great cost effective 3D films.