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Thanks! I’ll take a read of it.
Chris Nolan Saving Movie Theaters
- Thread starter niki
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Thanks! I’ll take a read of it.
Mike Krumlauf
Award Winning Filmmaker
I agree, in the 20th century, when we were watching movies on 35mm prints it was a monumental and sacred experience. All theaters are now are big TVs. I rarely if ever go to the theater and now once things begin to start rolling whenever that might be (my money is mid to late summer) I really have no interest in overpaying.
I have a 55in and 70in 4K TVs in my home, they are plenty big for me to experience what I need out of the material. I'm more then happy to wait an additional 6-12weeks to watch it for 3 bucks on my TV at home. Theaters just dont do it for me anymore and honestly I expect them in my life time to die or at least dwindle down like the use of celluloid cameras and film stocks... just the way its going to be.
Especially, "Dude, where's my car?".
(It's a joke, people)
Pricing is open to change. It's quite likely that a studio could offer a PPV for $30-$50 almost immediately upon the theater release, which would then slide down to nothing as a part of its subscription service.
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Interesting take.
I see what you're saying, but movie going has gone through quite a history. Difficult to say what they are or what they should be.
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Ha! just read it. Pretty amazing how closely the article touches on just about everything we mention in this thread. =)
The writers main point, or idk if that is the right way to describe it. More so, the writer describing their reason for going to the movie theater:
Variety said:
Some of these other quotes made me smile, because of our similar discussions here:
and..Variety said:
Variety said:
one thing to note, is that we are cinephiles. Or at least we love the craft related to it all. The writer does say:
Variety said:
Haha, that last one reminded me of Mike's comment. 'holy'Variety said:
Unfortunately, not enough Cinephiles to keep all the theaters up and running. The writer ends the article with these sentiments:
Variety said:
I'd very much agree there is much appeal there. Might be the main reason I go by myself or with friends even.
The writer however said something else, or alluded to in passing about the 'seat assignments' being annoying:
...not sure if you saw the same thing I did, but what caught my eye was: indolent spontaneity of going to the moviesVariety said:
For me, that is what the higher prices takes away. I don't just go when I feel like it. Just like I don't go to a restaurant or buy nice wine whenever I feel like it. Dropping $40 on a bottle of wine, or a local restaurant, or whatever it may be. They're nice, but it has to almost be for a reason. So, it takes that "spontaneity" away. Then, as I walk out of the theater, and I hear that sound of popcorn and trash being swept up in the foyer, and I am sugar crashing from too much soda, and belly full of popcorn, because I opted for the 70c extra to make my $14 small combo a large.... I feel kind of bad. Instead of having just taken a break from life, I am making my life more difficult.
And there is the disconnect for the things that all these lovers of CINEMA mention. There is just this broad brush feel-good about disappearing with others in a trusting bond and cathartic thrill. Yeah, but my mom didn't just buy my ticket so me and my friends could go to the movies and get pizza. No, I went alone, and got to choose between 'Bloodshot' and 'Trolls' (not really, but you get it).
People want to eat healthier, enjoy life. Sugar water and Reeses pieces for the price of honest to goodness good food? Kind of stings.
But it isn't all about the expense. If you really like something, $12-$40 is not expensive. According to records, if we account for inflation, the 70's is possibly the most expensive movie ticket price. So, it is more about "value". What kind of value is the experience? Movie theaters and studios hated how Moviepass was 'cheapifying' theaters. And I can see that. But what are movies? What is soda and popcorn? THEY ARE CHEAP. Not to film or make, of course, but to consume.
So, we have these inexpensive commodities, that we want to use to get away, but now we have to pay a premium. Maybe back in the 70's, that premium was worth it. It offered culture. it offered escape. Movies were from the perspective of people dealing with similar culture and identities. I don't know. Maybe it was worth it. Maybe concessions were the cheap part, and just the tickets were high. It can be easy to blame the TV for all of this. It forced theaters to become something grander than our living rooms. Television forced theaters to become an unattainable experience. I don't know. For those eras, I kind of liked that balance. TV was the new cheap escape, and movies were an event. Luckily, prices didn't go up after the 70's, and they actually stayed down till the the early 2000's. But the thing was "value". Movie theaters have always been worth it. Even today, they are worth going to.... if you want to see a big epic film in immersive big sound..... TV replaced movie theaters as an information source, and as a cheap escape, and film makers and studios rose up to the challenge. But in doing so, year by year, decade by decade, they slowly forced audiences to reduce how often they go.
Are films a part of our culture? do they tell stories that help us define ourselves? when we go, are we enjoying the fact that we are not alone? yes, to all of those. But is it important, like important as plumbing? or hospital work? no. So there is an element of cathartic whimsy. And that is part of the value equations for me. So, yes, I really enjoy going, yes, g-o-i-n-g to the movies. And I think when a movie is really good, sometimes you can see it on the look of another person, and there is something shared from that experience. They can be wonderful places.
Where I don't think movie theaters hold their value to the broader public is "indolent spontaneity". Perhaps something that was more a part of cinema before television. And maybe it should be again.
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I saw ET in the summer of 1982 - daytime weekend matinee - for $3. So, $12 is a pretty accurate inflation indicator of 4X of 1982-2020 time frame (the BLS massages its numbers ... the Wikipedia page on the CPI has most of the relevant info ... and ticket pricing jumps in larger increments). This I had to look up but the Whopper was $1.40 and the Big Mac $1.30 (average prices, depending on a location).
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(Data based on US ticket prices)
What is crazy was how flat movie ticket prices were from 1915 till 1950. The price of a ticket in the 50’s was 0.50 cents, when adjusted for inflation, is roughly $4 in todays USD.
Prices steadily went up from the mid 50’s on until the ealry 80’s, where it saw a second plateauing.
Then from the beginning of the 2000’s till 2019 the near two decades of the fastest increase in ticket prices.
Hollywood was saved by International sales during these two decades. Likely raising the US prices as fewer but more ardent movie goers are willing to pay a little more each year, and theaters needing to rely on profits from fewer audience members, and shorter theatrical runs.
I think the box office brought in 12billion US dollars till recently. Their not doing bad, as an industry. Just fewer people going, but paying more.
What may be an issue for many movie goers in the US, is not exactly the price, but how sharply that price has risen over the last two decades, and salaries haven’t. Movie tocket prices nearly doubled since 2000, but the average income has risen slower, while poverty has also increased (which i think means the middle class shrunk a little). So, when people in the US complain about movie ticket costs, it is kind of understandable. Because overall cost of living has gone up, without a proportional increase in wage. And the movies that were supposed to be that communal cheap escape, especially during hard times, did what...? That’s right, raised prices faster than ever before, bringing in some record breaking box office numbers while they were at it. So, when i say, i don’t care, it is because, that isn’t true cinema to me, that is a machine.
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Here's a minimal timeline of movies in the context of theaters, and some of the "competing" media released or invented along the way.
Movie history timeline (USA):
1878 - First motion capture
1889 - First motion picture camera
1895 - The 90’s! Cinematographe and Auguste and Louis Lumiere
1902 - First full time cinema opened in Los Angeles, CA - and “Trip to the Moon”
1905 - Nickelodeon
1915 - first feature length film
1922 - First 3D film
1927 - First Talkie
1933 - First Drive In Theater
1938 - TV’s COMMERCIALLY SOLD in USA
1939 - Technicolor
1948 - Anti Trust Law - And ushering in what we now know Movie Theaters to be today
1953 - Stereo sound and larger screens
1955 - FIRST TV REMOTE CONTROL (when the viewer became god)
1958 - William Higinbotham invents the first video game
1971 - First video game arcade opens called Computer Space
1974 - New Hollywood
1977 - Star Wars - Federico Fellini says it is not Cinema - Atari releases their first video game console for home users
1979 - Sony Walkman
1980 - unofficial start of the MTV and Cable TV generation of viewers
1983 - Nintendo NES released
1989 - Nintendo Game Boy
1993 - Los Angeles Times reporter William D Montalbano mentions the ‘erosion’ of cinema.
1999 - first digital projectors - Star Wars ‘The Phantom Menace’
2005 - HDTV flat screens introduced, Youtube launched
2007 - iPhone released, Netflix starts streaming service
2013 - Instagram adds video to compete with Vine and Snapchat
2019 - Scorsese says Marvel is not Cinema
2020 - Nolan saves movie theaters
Movie history timeline (USA):
1878 - First motion capture
1889 - First motion picture camera
1895 - The 90’s! Cinematographe and Auguste and Louis Lumiere
1902 - First full time cinema opened in Los Angeles, CA - and “Trip to the Moon”
1905 - Nickelodeon
1915 - first feature length film
1922 - First 3D film
1927 - First Talkie
1933 - First Drive In Theater
1938 - TV’s COMMERCIALLY SOLD in USA
1939 - Technicolor
1948 - Anti Trust Law - And ushering in what we now know Movie Theaters to be today
1953 - Stereo sound and larger screens
1955 - FIRST TV REMOTE CONTROL (when the viewer became god)
1958 - William Higinbotham invents the first video game
1971 - First video game arcade opens called Computer Space
1974 - New Hollywood
1977 - Star Wars - Federico Fellini says it is not Cinema - Atari releases their first video game console for home users
1979 - Sony Walkman
1980 - unofficial start of the MTV and Cable TV generation of viewers
1983 - Nintendo NES released
1989 - Nintendo Game Boy
1993 - Los Angeles Times reporter William D Montalbano mentions the ‘erosion’ of cinema.
1999 - first digital projectors - Star Wars ‘The Phantom Menace’
2005 - HDTV flat screens introduced, Youtube launched
2007 - iPhone released, Netflix starts streaming service
2013 - Instagram adds video to compete with Vine and Snapchat
2019 - Scorsese says Marvel is not Cinema
2020 - Nolan saves movie theaters
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Here's the GDP/capita chart
https://www.statista.com/statistics...-product-gdp-per-capita-in-the-united-states/
Here's an average wage chart
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages
Side note - Germany televised the 1936 Summer Olympics - held in Berlin - but not to homes per se. TV's were exhibited in department stores and special TV parlors, as they were a novelty at that time.
https://www.statista.com/statistics...-product-gdp-per-capita-in-the-united-states/
Here's an average wage chart
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages
Side note - Germany televised the 1936 Summer Olympics - held in Berlin - but not to homes per se. TV's were exhibited in department stores and special TV parlors, as they were a novelty at that time.
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Anytime I hear people talk of CINEMA with a sense of reverence, I think back to the beginnings of movies, especially its perception in the US as low class entertainment.
Cecil DeMille's brother, back in 1913, wrote to him "I cannot understand how you are willing to identify yourself with a cheap form of amusement, and which no one will ever allude to as art."
Many claim that the Silver Screen was the best era.
Many claim the 70's was the last era of true cinema.
Many look back as the 80's as the heyday for going to the theater.
Movies definitely had a lowly start in the US. It was a gimmick adopted by the "circus" type. Step right up, get yer ticket, see a marvel...etc.
Shortly after the birth of film, the world wars broke out, and the US became the major film producer in the world.
However, even today, American cinema has not totally shed those "circus show" roots. All about getting that paper ticket and cheap concessions to go see something ya never seen before, kid!
Cinema in other parts of the world developed differently, although, due to the extreme dominance of 'Hollywood', I'd say that many film making communities all over the world have adapted a bit of that Hollywood mentality. Despite that, there are still many bright and passionate story tellers all over the world continuing to keep cinema something more than just commerce. due to the traditionally expensive nature of film making, it has been difficult to separate the craft from the business. But the last decade has seen immense drops in the cost barrier to film making. And the internet has given everyone an outlet for the time being. There is a lot of good.
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There's a lot of debates on how one defines "poor". A retiree can live in an upscale house but have very little on his/her 1040. Likewise, someone on federal/state assistance can often have no income to declare but have more spending than the retiree from the previous sentence. Also, as you stretch the declared incomes on the absolute levels, you often leave more space to those with no income to the bottom 20%. In other words, one day, the poor may defined as a "$0-$3,500" bracket, and in forty years, as "$0 to 15,000". Finally, you can compare the purchasing power for a given bundle of goods over the years and that's where all the accounting adjustments can become meaningless. The best way, IMO, is to look at the "time spent" ratio.*
*There's a Russian web site that compares an average wage of a Russian/Soviet/Russian worker for about 100 years visavis food items, such as meat and potatoes, with the pre-WWI 1913 considered the high mark of prosperity. The USSR sort of caught up with the Czarist Russia in the late 1970's before dropping off the pace. Then the new Russia hit its high mark before the stock market crash of 2008.
I look at the ratios of the numbers of cars sold per unit of population and their average prices. It works better within a given country/economy on a timeline but can can also be used as a country vs. country comparison. For example, Russian customers buy ~ 1.5M cars for ~ 150 million people (1 for 100) annually, with an average car price around $17,000. The US market averages ~ $40,000 per car with ~ 1 for 20 folks ratio. So, multiply 2.3 x 5 and you arrive to the rough difference in living standards.
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@DLD, do you have a favourite movie theater experience?
Batutta
Major Contributor
Not that you asked me, but when I lived in Los Angeles in the 90's the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood would regularly screen 70mm prints of stuff, and those are among my favourite theater experiences. Films I saw there in 70mm -- Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, Terminator 2, Close Encounters, Apocalypse Now. Film projection in the hands of a capable projectionist in the opening week of release was a glorious experience. Unfortunately, you rarely encountered a capable projectionist outside top tier theatres like the Cinerama Dome, so the image was often partially out of focus, or blurry in one corner, the bulb too dark, colors shifted during reel changes, and after a couple weeks the print was beat to s*%t and full of dirt and scratches and splices. I welcomed the shift to digital once I saw the image was comparable, and often superior to film due to it almost always being in tack sharp focus and devoid of projection artifacts. I remember watching a film print after being accustomed to digital for a while, and wondered how we ever put up with all that stuff. For action films or comedies there is no better experience than watching them with a receptive crowd.
John Brawley
Well-known member
Yeah, the THEATERS have done this to themselves.
They basically have s*%tty showmanship. They didn't care about the value proposition of the cinema experience. They got greedy and lazy.
Once you've seen an optically finished answer print screened by someone that knows what they're doing and how to run a good plant, then digital projection still struggles to match. A good first gen print is breathtaking. It's hard to describe how stupid metrics like resolution and colour gamut compare once you've seen both. But the problem these days is that no one wants a projectionist full time on a screen, prints are struck from dupes a few generations down and on crappy plant and running on prints that are trashed beyond their use by date and pieced together from multiple sources. I don't miss bad film projection at all and about 95% of it was.
It's interesting to me that the cinemas / theaters that are doing OK today are the ones that focus on showmanship. Be it on food, (restaurant level meals brought to your chair mid screening or just pre-show) or just enforcing a no phones and no talking policy.
JB
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Be really interesting to see how film preservation goes a few years from now. Most of the reason many films aren't LOST forever is because of bootlegged prints (usually projectionists) and elements from films that were initially flops or forgotten. It's only with those elements that many can be restored and often looking better than they ever have. (And here's a hint if you think digital will somehow fix that. Most of these films weren't stored properly by the studios that owned them !)
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I have the least favorite - Lindsay Anderson's "O Lucky Man!", which I saw with my mom at the "ministry" theater ("ministry" meant the high placed poobahs with much larger summer homes and a private grocery store that were supposed to be off-limits for the regular folk). One of the projectors was broken, so the projectionist had to rewind the reel and then load the next one. We had to watch the whole film in the "12 minutes on and 5 minutes off" sequences, when the lights went up and then out again. It took about four hours to finish off the experience. (it was three hours in its English version anyway but was censored down a bit in the Soviet ... still, we did see the pig man)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Lucky_Man!
As to the best experiences in terms of the technical enjoyment, those were in the retail stores on a top end home theater system.
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Despite the wealth of information these days, long term archiving is still an issue. Eventhough those film prints have gone bad over a few decades, most digital footy won’t last a decade.
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Got to agree with you. I saw Lawrence of Arabia after the most recent restoration, and it was amazing.
Another one that was more memorable, because it was surreal, was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Fantastic restoration, and the sound during that space warp travel towards the end was intense in a good way. But what was surreal, was the lead actor was there in the crowd. I was watching him, watch himself, watch himself old.