Former 35mm projectionist here. This statement is flat-out wrong:
A 35mm film projector was a machine with a handful of parts. If one broke, theaters could be back up within a matter of hours.
Are you kidding me? A 35mm projector has hundreds of precision engineered moving parts. If one of them breaks, you're not swapping it out with a replacement from Radio Shack. You might not even trust the pimply teenager running the projector (me) to touch any of the interior parts or gears.
You're going to the pros: Authorized service techs, or a specialized AV supplier who may have it in stock, but is definitely not open on the weekend when these things tend to break. And, the supplier may have have to order the replacement part from Japan or Europe.
If you're part of a chain that uses standard equipment (not a given, considering consolidation) you might be able to borrow parts or spares from your pal running the show at the multiplex across town.
Worst case: Because most theaters operate two sister machines for each film (a reel can only hold ~75 minutes of film max, so you have to switch over to the second machine halfway) you can technically swap reels on a single machine with a 5 minute intermission.
The 35mm projectors were professional-grade machines designed to last for years. Our theater used 25-year-old Italian projectors made by Cinemacannica which is still around today (https://www.cinemeccanica.eu/cinema-products/), and looks like it has moved into digital exhibition.
Hi! Fellow 35mm projectionist here. Your experience must have predated mine, things changed. By the time I worked on them (2007) the dual projector system was long obsolete. At that time (and afaik this remained the state of the art until digital came along) you had a single projector attached to a "platter tree", consisting of three circular rotating tables, holding the entire film (all 4 or 5 reels) spliced together into one mega reel held sideways. One table for input, another for output,and a third for extra (eg running two features on the same screen at different showing times)
This innovation eliminated the need for a projectionist to sit there and swap every 20min -- now a projectionist only had to touch the machinery once per showing rather than once per reel. It did add some labor Thursday nights as new films had to be spliced together and old ones broken up to be fed back into the can.
Thanks to this system a 12 screener could easily be operated by one teenager (me), and a twin theater didn't even need a dedicated projectionist-- just the manager popping up to lace up the film once per showing.
(Films still had the corner black dot cute though, I guess since some older theatres still had the then antique two projector system)
Thanks to startup timers, you didn't even need to be there exactly when it started, just sometime between the last showing and the next one -- but you did this at your peril, as jams and other glitches were most common at startup time, especially in the "brain" the clever device that allowed feeding the film from the inside of the input platter megareel to the outside of the output platter, this avoiding the need for rewinding you would have if you fed from outside to outside as with casette tapes.
All in all, my era's projectors were more even complex in the pursuit of saving labor costs.
I was a projectionist in the late 80s and the dual projector setup was standard. No one was talking digital … the storage and delivery tech wasn’t even close and most people didn’t understand the looming impact of Moores Law.
I do recall seeing the platter system many years later and had a sense of how they worked but not the details. Regardless I’m sure we could swap some great stories of epic “jams” … thanks for sharing!
Amazing insight, thanks for sharing. I had a micron of an idea how it worked, but of course when you look into a specific process, it's clear it's never as simple as it appears
Thanks. Besides the reels, just about the only part I could swap out was the light bulb, and even that had a process around it - for instance, I had to wear lint-free gloves because if I touched the bare bulb with my fingers, the oil from my skin could cause the bulb to explode when 1000+ watts start coursing through it.
Fire safety was a real concern. I had to be tested and licensed by the state, and most of the questions were about what to do if there was a fire. Part of the projection machinery included venting to get all of that hot air away from the projectors and out of the room (not unlike a server room).
Theaters are in a bad spot and I think they are doomed as an industry unless as boutique specialty theaters like LA’s New Beverly [0] as I don’t think the experience is worth the cost.
My favorite local theater was $6 for a Sunday morning showing ($11 for regular). It was probably 50 years old and I think everything in it was maybe as recent as the 80s or 90s. The staff were super friendly and seemed to love movies. While only 3-6 for a 10 theater cinema they would bake their own cookies and brownies and dress up in homemade costumes. A mix of teenagers and 50+ people.
They recently “upgraded” and now tickets are $10.50 ($21 for a regular ticket). The upgrade means the theaters now have fake leather power recliners that are actually less comfortable.
I go see fewer movies now. And I can’t help but wonder “what bank loaned them this money, they’re never getting it back.”
I don’t think movie tickets for $20 can compete with concerts ($20-infinity), major league sports ($15-200), plays, and other activities. To take my family to the movies is now $200 after tickets and popcorn and I can go to a major league soccer game for the same amount that includes parking, tickets, hot dogs, and beer. As long as I don’t want to see a specific game.
I used to see 3-5 movies a month, now I see 3-5 per year. I’m happy having a similar experience at home via streaming (worse picture, no community, but much more convenient).
I feel for the theater owners and employees as I’m sure it’s expensive. But it’s expensive to run a blacksmith and it’s expensive to telephone switchboard. It’s not that those things don’t produce value, they do. It’s that their value comes nowhere near their cost when compared to substitutes.
> I don’t think movie tickets for $20 can compete with concerts ($20-infinity), major league sports ($15-200), plays, and other activities.
Compared to those other things, sure. But if you consider that a lot of people go out to eat once a week and regularly spend far more than $20, then that $20 price tag is not so crazy. Part of the problem has been that a lot of movies released lately barely feel worth paying that much to see. The movies are just mediocre. When I see a good movie, though, I don't even think about how much it cost me to see it.
(Also, seeing a major league sports game for $15 is incredible. In my market, even at $20 movies are usually way cheaper than tickets to a sports game.)
> But if you consider that a lot of people go out to eat once a week and regularly spend far more than $20, then that $20 price tag is not so crazy.
It’s not that $20 is a crazy amount of money. It’s that it is crazy for what you get. I think restaurants would be in a tough spot too if you could get unlimited McDonalds spit out from a box in your kitchen for $18/month. People would still eat out, but much less given the substitutes.
My MLB team regularly does $15 nosebleed tickets. My MLS team does $25 nosebleed tickets a few times a seasons and the food is much cheaper. But it’s also super easy to pay $100/ticket. With movies, everyone pays the same price.
I don’t think movies are worse as I went to the movies pretty consistently over the past 30 years and there were ups and downs.
The price of movie tickets has kept up with inflation for the most part, just doubling in the past 25 years [0] so I think it’s just that the price of digital goods has dropped so much (mp3 in 2000 was $1, still $1 today) because the price of bits gets cheaper. And this is bad for physical goods with clear substitutes.
Interestingly, movie theaters should have benefits from digitalization as digital projectors are much cheaper as film costs a lot to produce and distribute and projectionists used to be the highest paid employee.
The price has kept up with inflation - but now the average person who can afford regular movie tickets can have a better viewing experience at home.
It's fun to go to the theater for the 1 or 2 blockbusters per year that I actually want to see - and be around the excitement / see it on the big screen.
For anything else, I'd MUCH rather stay at home. Even if it was free to see it in the theater, I wouldn't go.
It doesn't have to be that way; in a lot of Asia your ticket is for a specific seat and is priced based on that (both the view and the amenities e.g. the more expensive ones have a full table and table service for the food).
You're unlucky enough to live in a town with a good baseball team I guess. My city's team is so awful you can basically just roll up and get a sub $20 ticket for like any game
Btw, I looked up prices for Indianapolis, a city I used to live north of.
The Indianapolis Indians, a minor league team that gets a lot of folks moving to major league, starts at $15 per ticket.
The Indianapolis Colts, a major league American Football team, $24.
The Indy Fuel tickets, a minor league hockey team, $11.
The Indy Eleven, a 'professional' soccer team, $11.
The Indiana Pacers, a major league basketball team, $8.
And Just for some fun:
Chicago White Sox: $11
Chicago Bulls: $12
Of course, some of these are minor league and your choice of sports and local sports team might be different. Chicago Bears tickets start at $49. The Bengals are considerably more than that.
That's a major problem. Parents love to take their kids to a movie. But today, you have to make the choice "go to a movie with the kids, or pay the power bill."
It's kind of a no-brainer to just pick up a Scooby-Doo DVD or whatever for $5.99 from the bargain bin at Wal-Mart. Popcorn is cheap to make at home.
I understand the theaters' problem, but it's their problem. I've got my own.
>But today, you have to make the choice "go to a movie with the kids, or pay the power bill."
How is this different from any other decade where people went to movies? People who can’t afford their bills have never been the demographic that frequented the movies with their kids.
I think he might have been joking about paying essential bills. In the US, the mean entertainment budget is a few thousand dollars a year. Perhaps it's several thousand dollars a year for people who would even consider spending $200 at a theater. That's still only around $500/mo for entertainment to allocate, and so even though a family in that situation poor, they still are incentivized to spend the money so they can be entertained as often as they'd like to be throughout the month. Spending a third of the money in one night is probably an easy yes as a one-time event, but harder to justify regularly.
It's more of a comparison between costs and benefits. If you have to literally choose between taking the family to the movies or paying the power bill, that's not exactly a tough question.
Going to a 2-hour movie at the cost of $80-100 or more is quite the splurge.
Recently saw "Air" in the theater, and it was an amazon studios movie. Although it starred matt damon, it just didn't have the production values I expected from a movie theater experience.
I wonder if this is what we're looking forward to in the future? the whole pipeline will break down and the quality will lower to a "watch on amazon prime at home" level.
> Also, seeing a major league sports game for $15 is incredible. In my market, even at $20 movies are usually way cheaper than tickets to a sports game.
When I lived in Brooklyn we'd go see the Nets for low 30s in the cheap seats both before and after Kyrie came back from his vaccine vacation. Pretty competitive with movie prices in NYC.
Theaters as we knew them do appear to be dead. I don't think I've gone to see a movie since Covid and when I drive past theaters I don't see a lot of cars in the parking lots.
I don't think there's been anything showing though that I've wanted to see in a long time. Hollywood gets the blame for that.
Cost to see a movie is also a big issue.
It feels like the small theaters though are making a come back. I see plenty of "art house" theaters in Kansas City ... even a drive-in or two are appearing. These surely don't require the high-end playback equipment and tend to, IMHO, show better and more varied content.
It's also been out for a month, and they went to it on the last day it was playing (at their particular theater), which is usually going to be a wednesday or thursday. Cinema attendance is pretty low mid week. At my local cinema, I have a 75% chance of a private showing if I go to a wednesday showing in the first week; but a larger nearby chain has more screens and larger attendence.
I try to go to the local one if I go, because I would like it to stay in business, but they don't carry all the movies. And I just put in a home theater, so it's nice to use that when I can.
This has been my experience my whole life, growing up in a midsize city. Go to a matinee on a Wednesday and you are basically guaranteed to be the only ones there. It was less common in Austin but would still happen about half the time even pre-Covid.
> It feels like the small theaters though are making a come back
These are the only places I watch movies anymore. The overall experience tends to be much better. The screens are smaller, the quality of the sound and image tends to be a bit less, but that doesn't matter because they are also missing many of the things that makes going to the movies unpleasant. On the whole, I find myself actually enjoying the experience in them, unlike the "big guys".
It also helps that I don't tend to enjoy the sorts of movies that are in fashion these days, so the fact that the boutique places don't have first-run movies isn't a minus to me.
> I used to see 3-5 movies a month, now I see 3-5 per year
Same. Except it has nothing to do with theaters and everything to do with Hollywood and what's being released. The question becomes if Hollywood went back to the "old model", the model that saw less franchises and more comedy/drama/etc releases. Would it put butts in seats at the theater? Or has the latest generation/tv-tech obsoleted or diluted the experience thus shrinking the market going forward? (eg. like ecommerce did to shopping malls) Hard to know, but I do miss good unique movies.
I think you're a little off on the alternative ticket pricing. I just checked New York red bulls and two tickets all in start at $74. Not including parking and getting there. Similarly when I looked at concert tickets they are never $15.
Movies are also located in metro areas so easier to get to, are more flexible with times and showing and overall a more comfortable experience especially with a family. I think $20 per person for an afternoon is still competitive as a leisure activity.
I don’t live in New York and two tickets all in can regularly be had for $50, all in. Although interestingly movie tickets are only $20 for regular and $25 for imax in Manhattan so the value calculations vary a bit depending on where you live.
Also you need to be selective on when you go. If you have to go now, you’ll may more. If you can wait until May 20th you can get two tickets vs Montreal for $38 [0]
I thought I saw somewhere that bars were having a similar problem, with Gen Z choosing to drink/socialise at home rather than go to bars, restaurants, etc.
Not just Gen Z. Why should I go to a bar and pay almost double a bottle what it costs me for a decent beer when I and a friend can pick up a twelve pack for what it would cost us to have two beers apiece elsewhere? Why should I pay outrageous prices for a steak when between the two of us we can smoke a brisket and have enough to share with others or leftovers for another meal? And doing so I know I can get excellent service from someone happy to be there?
People forget that these are hospitality industries. They're all about service. You should be able to go there and feel happy you came. Instead most of these places make you feel like a bother and then despite a decent tip on the table you still get hit up for more money at the register.
I try to be polite, friendly and tip well. I expect decent service when I go out and increasingly do not get it. So why should I go out when for a bit more effort I and my friends can do it ourselves and share for either less or the same cost, but a better experience?
Inflation which is a new concept for myself in my mid-40s is playing a large part. We're not fully mentally adjusted to inflation and "value" these services less. Or perhaps we still mentally "value" them in 2019 dollars. Meanwhile, service workers have to live in the present and care about 2023 dollars.
I know I still get a little sticker shock just seeing menu prices now, I can't say honestly that I'm tipping the same because of it. It's what I have control over. Or, I can just avoid the place altogether which is what many people choose to do. I haven't fully done that yet, I've scaled back a little but mostly just natural consequence of having young children (we eat in more now).
Obviously, it doesn't help that tipping culture is absolute hell these days. I feel like I'm being gouged everywhere I go. For every single interaction. And, it's done in a way that's before the service where I feel like it's mandatory or my service will suffer if I don't go along with it. It's awful and I'm choosing more an more to boycott the tip line almost everywhere (seated meal being an exception).
A big part of what’s changed is the “home theatre” experience.
The theatre had a lot to offer when a “big TV” was a 32” 4:3 CRT. Now you can put together a 50+” LCD and meh 5.1 setup for a much more accessible price than that 32” cost 25 years ago.
This is one thing theaters will never be able to compete with home viewing. Catch a matinee on a weekday while kids are in school, and you have a shot at being the only one in a showing, but it's not a reliable experience. I've done this before, I think for one of the avengers movies while I had a few weeks off between jobs and it was a great experience. Choice of seats and no one to spoil the experience.
Other people is the main reason I don't like going to the movies.
Concert tickets may be $15 for small-time acts. For the acts most people actually want to go see they are generally $100 and up these days, face value, and well above that on the secondary market.
These days TVs with large screens are everywhere. When 32" was considered a big TV, theaters delivered a different experience.
I've stopped going to theaters because the cost/benefit analysis doesn't work out. I've got a long list of entertainment subscriptions that need to be paid each month, and honestly because today's movies aren't even worth a $5 ticket price. It feels as though they're too focused on technology and not enough on having a good story.
My own experience as well. After buying a 65" OLED LG , adding a good 5.1 System, and having Netflix, Disney+, Prime streaming in 4K , Dolby Vision, etc , I honestly do not need a cinema.
I would gladly wait for the streaming variant to appear. COVID certainly accelerated this transition.
Indeed, but for certain movies, at a good cinema, it's still worth it IMO. Top Gun: Maverick is a movie I've seen at home and in the theatre. The theatre experience was superior I felt. That movie is probably suited to the experience but I really enjoyed the open atmosphere and distance from the huge screen and the room that audio had to work with.
But yeah, for most things a sweet system (which is very attainable for most people today) is often fine.
Not the GP but tickets are $10 for matinees. They can easily be $18-22 for primetime shows. So if you're a family of 4 you're paying $80-90 for the tickets, everyone gets drinks, popcorn, maybe a snack or two.
It's easy to see it push $45-50 per person pretty quickly with kids.
I know there are lots of people who do it, but I can't wrap my head about why any normal person pays for drinks and food at the cinema. It might not be the biggest ripoff I can think of, but it's probably the most blatant one. The markups are huge, for items everyone knows the cost of.
I worked at an ~independent (the owner had three fairly spread out and independently managed 'local' cinemas) cinema as a teenager, tickets were dirt cheap and almost entirely went to the distributor. Food & drink was 'a rip off', yes, but a lot of people would be happy to to 'support' the local cinema, was pretty much exactly where it made money.
I imagine even mega chains charging literally up to 10x our ticket prices couldn't survive on tickets alone, the distributors still take the majority of admission, as I understood it.
There was a fair amount of distributor-driven quirks/'politics' that to a customer is a weird cinema decision - something else I recall is having to show a certain film, or for a certain length of time, even if it's not selling ('why don't they just stop showing it') under threat of not getting the upcoming blockbuster that definitely will. Sometimes it wasn't even that it wasn't doing well, manager would know in advance (by local demographics) that a film wouldn't do at all well, but basically not have a choice.
OK, I can see the point of buying the food as a way to support a cinema you like. Specially now that cinemas are mostly struggling.
I feel somehow icky paying upwards or five or ten times the cost for something I don't really need. But that's just an internalized habit from growing up in a frugal household. I wish there was a more "honest" way for theaters to work.
I mentioned one in particular saying nothing of the general market. (The big boy in town is absolutely not thriving, because where do you think locals go - the cheap independent that cares about stuff, or the expensive mega-chain with gormless staff with no reason to care at all?)
If my wife and I go by ourselves we will never get any food or drink. Maybe a couple beers if they have a bar, most of the ones nowadays.
If we're taking the kids though I consider it the cost of seeing the latest Marvel movie etc on day 1. If I keep a kids pack of popcorn and Icees on their lap, I know they will sit there and keep quiet instead of dancing in the aisle. Of course I bring candy in my wife's purse as well, I'm not the kind of monster who pays $7 for Red Vines.
Watch a movie without food or drinks is what I did most of my life. Same with almost everyone I know, I don't feel like this is a weird choice to make.
Where I live now it's illegal for cinemas to stop you from bringing food in, so I occasionally might bring my own snack, but that might be like one out ten times. Mostly just watch the movie and eat before or after. (Spain if you want to know)
Same here (Italy) when going to the cinema was popular, years ago.
You could maybe get some sweets or chips or peanuts or similar (small snacks) but not the giant popcorn or sandwiches/hotdogs/etc., but the general idea was to go out and have (say) a pizza and a beer and later go to the cinema or - more seldom - go to the cinema and later go to the pizzeria or restaurant.
I always thought that the eating and drinking in the cinema was a US only thing, France and Germany (AFAICR) had also none of that years ago, but that maybe has changed.
Curious if in other EU countries it has ever been a thing.
Here in Spain it's a similar deal, chips and candy or other easy to eat snacks is the usual. You technically can go ahead and have a cheeseburger in there, but it's rather unheard of.
In Spain you usually just buy the stuff, then go to the theater though, after some legal kerfuffles the current state of things is that an establishment can't sell you chips AND prevent you take your own chips, so we are free from absurd prices. I'm not sure that's the norm elsewhere.
When I was younger, we used to sneak food in. It wasn't like anyone checked if someone's purse or pockets had snacks in it. Granted, this might be different in various parts of the country, but I grew up going to movies every week and never had an issue with bringing food into a theater, so long as you made an attempt to hide it.
It’s possible to go for less, but when I’m taking my kids I want it to be a treat.
I went to see Dune in IMAX. 3 tickets were $72. The popcorn, hotdog, nachos, cokes, and candy were $80. So $150 total for 3 people and I extrapolated to 4. Although I think all of would have shared the one giant popcorn.
I like hearing about your pre-"upgrade" local theater. We had one like that around here even eight years ago that did second-run screenings in addition to loads of foreign films or rescreenings of films from decades ago. Great experience, super cheap. Unfortunately there was basically a hostile takeover of it by a guy who bought into the big seat vision.
A common alternative to the "upgraded" is the sad "closed". My city lost its well-loved second run theater of several decades somewhat recently. At least in our case we're somewhat lucky that the owners of that continue to invest in our only non-chain first run theater, and while it has some of the "big seat" upgrades it still tries to do some of the foreign films and indies and big "midnight" rescreenings of classics. (And is still cheaper than the big box, big chain options.)
> I don’t think movie tickets for $20 can compete with concerts ($20-infinity), major league sports ($15-200), plays, and other activities.
They don't always have to compete. I rarely go see concerts, and I never go see sports, plays, or anything else really. But I go see movies from time to time. In that case there is no competition, at least not in similar activities.
I love live theater the most, and see it frequently. I don't see movies that often. But if all live theater ceased to exist, I doubt that I'd see movies more often. The two things are very, very different and can't substitute for each other.
I can't justify paying more than a month of streaming for a specific movie that I have to share with people and where I can't put in a pee break.
Cinema just do not make sense unless you are a total fan of a given franchise. I wanted to see the new Top Gun, but I just waited until I could buy it digitally.
I can't wait until it becomes illegal to prioritize theaters - even if I have to pay the same for the ticket, the popcorn is a lot cheaper. That might make me watch more movies, but then again who knows.
> Today, those fees have expired and the original digital projectors are out of date or failing outright, servers are crashing, and each service call demands a highly paid IT technician — presuming you can find one at all.
So, all those promises from 20 years ago about how it will be so much cheaper to run a cinema on digital tech, no more duplicating and distributing physical film prints, no more calling out expensive maintenance staff to repair projectors with all those fiddly moving parts... plus ca change, as Jean-Luc Godard might have said. I guess in part this is connected to a broader symptom all HNers will recognize, that we live in a society that generally thinks software is free or cheap to produce, and computer-based thingies, once installed, never need any maintenance or upgrading...
From moviegoers point-of-view it has made a world of difference. For a smaller release the number of film copies we had in circulation here in Finland was miniscule and there was no chance of seeing those movies outside the bigger cities. With DCPs we've seen a resurgence of independent and/or countryside cinemas.
Digital photography kind of was like this.
The operational costs (film, development) were eliminated but the capital cost (cameras) were 5x higher and needed updating more often.
A serious amateur could shoot the same film body for a decade, or even a life, with maybe some regular maintenance (fairly repairable right up through cameras made in 80s and even 90s). Maybe they had a manual focus body, then an autofocus body, and.. that was about it. The camera you were using was probably re-sellable at a decent price because the production life of any given model could run up to a decade.
With digital, the leaps & bounds being made in tech caused camera purchases to be much more frequent. Say every 2 years in 2000s, every 3-4 years in 2010s, and every 4-5 years in 2020s, as the rate of change did eventually slow. Regardless, the camera body also became practically disposable, basically a write-off if damaged, and resale value plummeted due to the rate of advancement.
As it worked out, if you were a heavy shooter, maybe the operational cost going to $0 actually netted you out on the equipment spend.
Most light hobbyists and general vacations/weddings/birthdays sharpshooter ended up spending far more in the digital era. This lasted right up until iPhones became good enough, even indoors poorly lit, that most normies don't own a single camera (5~10 years back).
Camera makers have adjusted to this new world by moving up-market, with less frequent releases, but at higher and higher price points. They understand that their main market now is hobbyists, and the decision to spend $$ vs 0 to enter the hobby is a bigger decision than spending $3k or $1.5k on a body.
I have several working cameras from the 40's and 50's and two fantastic Pentax cameras from the 60's and 70's respectively. The newer Pentax is a K1000 that I've had completely refurbished and it works like it just came out of the box.
Yup. My Cannon AE-1 from the mid-70s still works great, including the (relatively primitive) electronics. And the lenses are outstanding (I still haven't forgiven Cannon for obsoleting the FD mount pre-digital...lots of money went into that lens collection). It could probably use a light refurb, but all the camera repair shops I know closed years ago.
Unfortunately, I got out of the 'habit' of taking pictures with it because it's so much less convenient and the alternatives are 'good enough' for this rank amateur. I do occasionally look at photos I took with it and realize how much I've replaced quality with quantity. The Cannon required a certain amount of thought for each picture, whereas now we just take 50 pix with the cell phone and share out the one we think looks best.
I really like the "slowness" of the old way of taking pictures. The results are better. Really I stopped because film is so anachronistic and expensive / inconvenient to deal with. I have a DSLR that's decent but it's still not the same.
Digital photography democratized photography in ways digital theater projection didn't/couldn't. Digital projection lowered operational costs for studios significantly and theaters marginally. It didn't do anything for consumers. They got a marginally better experience at the same or higher ticket and concession prices.
Digital photography however opened the field to whole swaths of people. The operational cost of photography was a major blocker for a lot of people. The operational cost of a film camera can be integer multiples of its purchase cost. Acceptable digital cameras after about 2000 cost more than shitty 110mm cameras but about what a midrange film camera did but then had effectively zero operational cost. The cost of acceptable quality point & shoots decreased significantly in the first half of the 00s.
This got cameras in people's hands that would have never been able to afford to shoot film.
I don't think "democratized photography" is strictly the correct interpretation.
It lowered the marginal cost of a photograph to $0, and so people took many many many more photos.
But certainly in 2000, anyone buying a $400+ point&shoot digicam also owned a $2000 computer. Far more expensive against the typical era family vacation/birthday/wedding shooter with a $200ish camera, plus $9 film&dev per 36 shots. These typical users took maybe 5-12 rolls/year so there really weren't any savings there. Most of these people weren't shooting SLRs, but like a Canon Sure Shot.
I distinctly remember switching BACK to film for years in college around this era because film SLR equivalent was absurdly cheap compared to buying even an APS-C DSLR.
I think "democratized photography" is a perfectly cromulent statement to make. The cost of the PC is immaterial. People already had a PC for e-mail and porn. The average PC cost was also below $1000, not $2000. Even if they never bought a camera they still had a PC for e-mail and porn.
Photography got democratized because two different groups went digital: the 12-roll-per-year shooters and people that would never pay $10 a roll to get film developed. By 2000 there were 1-2MP point & shoots for $400 and just two years later such cameras were under $150. By the middle of the decade that would get 4-5MP (with a better overall sensor) and 10MP by the end of the decade (with yet better sensors).
Both groups were well served by the advantages of digital. They had a big viewfinder and could review photos on the camera. The 12-roll-a-year crowd could take a year's worth of photos at a single event. The new-camera-owner set could take only a handful of photos and not feel guilty for "wasting" their camera. Both groups could shoot trivial things they'd never waste film on.
Anecdata:
I got interested in photography around 99/00. The marginal cost of film ended up being prohibitive to me. I could barely afford to take enough photos to just learn the ins and outs of my camera. I then got a cheap digital point & shoot. It was 1.3MP and pretty much garbage quality optics. I used the everloving shit out of it and really learned how to use it. I learned to frame shots and to effectively use lighting. Just the fact I could take dozens of photos on a pair of rechargeable AA batteries just let me practice and experiment.
One fact that still remains (and the article suspiciously doesn't mention) is that there's still less manual work involved with digital projection: no loading/unloading/changing film reels, which means reduced personnel costs.
A bit less, but you'd be surprised how much is similar. The films are delivered on physical drives, loaded and unloaded, sent back. There's keying in timings with lights & curtains & music etc., there's checking it actually worked (because yes you're right, there isn't a projectionist sitting there the entire time).
If all goes to plan it definitely is less, I suppose it's roughly the same work for 1 showing, but almost nothing for the rest. But not nothing, and obviously it does go wrong sometimes.
I've noticed a trend with these types of articles.
The story is something like "Running X Business is Expensive", but when I look into it I usually see a couple themes.
- The business is not owner operated
- Key competencies have been outsourced
- Real estate is a cost center (or equity building is just conveniently ignored)
These pieces really just read like medium sophistication bean counters whining that their rent seeking play isn't working out so well.
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If you're not owner operated and you're outsourcing stuff like media servers, I don't really know what to say.
For example Regal has 7,262 screens and theaters supposedly blow $20-70k per screen on media equipment??? That's $150-500Mil that could have easily funded an R&D effort to capture some massive savings (barring some sort of vendor lock in that I'm unaware of).
If you want a cut of business's revenue and all you offer is basically branding and alternative financing, I'm not sure why anyone should feel bad for you.
>Currently, lower-level movie theater employees lack mandated overtime in 28 states. Theater chains nabbed their Fair Labor Standards Act amendment in 1967 to exempt “any employee employed by an establishment which is a motion picture theater” from both minimum wage and overtime. The rationale for the exemption at the time was that theaters could not afford the labor costs because of low profit margins, poor box office and rising costs. While the minimum-wage exemption was removed in 1974, the overtime exemption has remained, to the puzzlement of labor experts.
I’ve commented this before on Cinema threads on HN, but why don’t more cinemas show older releases? There’s 100+ years of film classics, I’m convinced there’s a market for this. I would love to take my kids to see Star Wars A New Hope. Much more than most of crap that came out this year. (There’s crap every year but the good stuff sticks, so there’s survivor bias)
A local cinema here does this every other week or so - a late showing (usually 10pm) of some classic like Star Wars (or more recently, Pink Floyd's The Wall). It sells out every time, but I think that it wouldn't do so if that's what they showed every day.
Because it's niche and getting people into the theatre is dependent on the marketing budget behind the films themselves, and in particular, the celebrities.
There's too much noise in the world for people to realize that 'Blade Runner' is playing at some random theatre.
What could work are co-markted events, for example, playing 'Blade Runner' leading up to a new release, and, if it's promoted broadly.
Or 'film festival' type things - I'm also certain there's a market for Venice/Cannes/Oscars content even in the theatre chains but it'd require marketing coordination.
Finally - price. It's too expensive relative to the 'almost big screen' we have at home, and the shift to 'Big CGI Only' for theatres is real. This is a whole other problem.
I could see it working if it was marketed more like a recurring event where the focus wasn't on the particular film. I'd totally be into a series where it was like... every Tuesday at 8 we're going to show some classic pre-1990 film. We won't tell you in advance what it is, but it'll be good. (Maybe use the AFI lists, or a minimum of an 8.0 IMDB rating or something).
Yes, with a 'club membership' especially. Rando Sci-Fi Classic Tuesday etc..
Don't underestimate the lethargy and stupidity of mega corps. Content owners vastly overvalue their catalogues, and movie chain theatres are stupid and completely lacking in creativity.
They will go out of business before they even entertain an idea.
I would speculate that it has a lot to do with distribution.
I expect that it's trivial to get a copy of a new release, and logistically challenging (and relatively expensive) to get a copy of an old one.
The main value in showing older content is variety. The more films you acquire to show, the more cost (plus overhead cost) you endure.
The studios that own the copyright to older films are the same corporations that want you showing their new lazy high-budget Action Hero XVII shit instead. They are likely to make restrictive deals with large theater chains (the ones with enough budget for quality projectors and seating) to set a schedule that aligns with box-store release dates.
This was one of the things that came up when Amazon bought MGM because MGM pre-Amazon takeover had one of the most-used "rescreening" programs of all the (former) major studios. As soon as the Amazon purchase completed, Amazon shut down a lot of MGM film distribution, including just about all of its rescreening efforts. Amazon only just announced (presumably at shareholder pressure) building a new film distributor and starting to move the large MGM back-catalog back out beyond the Prime fences.
Similarly, when Disney bought what used to be 20th Century Fox, they immediately changed the economics of their classic rescreening programs (as Disney's "Vault" procedures have always been anti-rescreening). That was said to have directly led to breaks in long runs of Rocky Horror Picture Show specifically as Disney's price changes made it tougher to keep it running in some cities that had previously run it regularly for decades. (Of course, that timing was around 2020 so in most cases that wasn't the only excuse to break such traditional people gatherings.)
(ETA snark: it's almost like copyright terms are too long and rent seeking too easy on cinema classics.)
The market is very small, compared to new releases. It's not hard for an existing theater to test this
The ones that work have some unique spin, e.g. the Wurlitzer organist plays an overture, or it's a singalong, or a cult classic for meetups like RHPS, etc
There are cinemas like this out there, but they might not advertise well. I know in my city there are two small (state or city owned) cinemas that only show old (anything from 1920 onwards) or rare movies.
Because A: screenable prints often don't exist, nor do sufficiently good digitial transfers. even if A is met... guess what... the distributors still want their pound of flesh.
No, I did that also. You get a quote from the distributor, and usually have good connections to them.
Some companies suck (most big ones) but they dont have the good ones either. Best prices are for Asian movies or US indies.
European, Latin american and Indian movies do have prohibitive prices, so you cannot show them, their fault.
The very last times I went to a theater were to the "premium" theaters with big reclining seats but not even that was enough to get me back. I haven't been to a theater in probably fifteen years and I have no desire to. It's really about the inconvenience of making a trip somewhere at a specific time. Then you have to deal with all the other people, bathroom lines, blocking your view or just talking over the whole thing.
For middle class it's not really a lot of money for a decent player, stereo, and TV especially when you realize they last over a decade easy. My speakers and stereo are probably 12 years old (but still THX, TrueHD, DTSHD-MA), and I have one of the last plasma TV's made so about 9 years old. Sure it's "only" 1080p. I think with apple goggles or whatever they have coming the equipment expense is about to go way down clearing this expense for the masses.
Then there's just the convenience of seeing what you want when you want. Need to pee or make a snack, just pause it. Falling asleep, just stop it and finish it tomorrow.
Last time I went to a theatre, I bought tickets for specific seats. When my wife and I arrived, we discovered elderly couple occupying our seats and leaving us with worse options. I tried to explain to them that we paid for those and they just “played dumb”. It also became obvious that the man was down with some cold. We ended up leaving before the movie started.
Yah, I was really pissed. I got a refund and yes, it was their preference too. Tbh, at that point it was my preference as well. Had they moved the elderly couple we would be still sitting next to someone clearly sick. No 2hr movie is worth spending a week with cold (ymmv lol)
Honestly it really says something about society that this social experience has degraded to this point. I don't know how it happened and I don't know how to fix it but being sick in a theater is not acceptable, more unacceptable than the behaviors I was mentioning. Then you have people throwing popcorn or worse etc. No respect anymore.
I see the attraction in that but for me the math works out to a net negative with the detractors I listed above and below. But on a walking path in the park listening to a podcast or the birds would be a completely different situation. It's just that on topic here I don't find the theater experience fun anymore, and I don't think I'm alone on this one.
I don't know if there's enough people out there like me, but I'd love a smaller theater with traditional seats and decent sound if it was at a reasonable price. After searching out the best and biggest screens and audio, I've slowly realized that stuff doesn't affect my enjoyment that much.
What does affect my enjoyment is the bill for bringing a small family making me limit the affair to once or twice a year. There are a handful of these discount theaters around and they seem to be popular, but for me require a much longer drive.
Seems like an intractable problem. Because if they followed my advice, maybe they'd lose the crowd of people who have expensive setups at home. I'm not so sure they get much revenue from that crowd anyway, however. Presumably they know their customers better than I do.
I have to really work to get my kids to want to go to the cinema - they aren't (yet) wow'd by a movie being out 'sooner' than we can see it on netflix or similar, and the experience for them is just better at home. I love a great cinema trip, but we barely go once as year, as our at home set up scratches the itch.
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I have a purely 'ok' set up at home - more involved than some peoples, but nothing fancy:
In my living room I have a 120" diagonal screen (£30 from amazon) that we manually pull down the 12 to 24 times a year we use it. I have a schools short throw hd projector that was £70 delivered from ebay and then a set of £15 (2nd hand) pc speakers that are a sub and 2 speakers - all running off a 1st gen chromecast.
In my shed I have a marginally better set up of a mechanised screen (£70), then a more recent chromecast running to an hdmi splitter with optical audio out, which goes into a year 2007 5.1 sony amp (£30), with another schools projector (£130) - this set up came to about £250 all in.
If you have the room to keep the bits, I highly recommend a similar cheap set up - you can obviously spend loads more, but our cheapo living room set up does us proud and the audio is more than good enough for kids films. Means we enjoy loads of films as a family.
That sounds fantastic, have you looked into how to actually get access to new films though? I'd love to also set up some community theater and mainly do cinema classics, but it would be cool to also be able to show the less popular (ie not Avengers 6 or Fast and Furious 12) movies that are in theaters too, but I couldn't figure out how to get into the theatrical distribution after half a day of googling
Barely anything, just measured the BENQ projector in the shed - the front of the projector is 65cm from the screen, and the rear (where the mirror is) is 91cm from the screen.
In the shed it is ceiling mounted so just the mirror is visible as I have it built into the roof (with some fans for cooling). In the living room the similar projector just sits on the floor a similar distance. We sit at the other end of the room, so further away from the fan noise (not that there is much, esp in eco mode.)
Back in the 80's as broke teenagers, we would always go to "third run" theaters. These were almost always theaters that saw their hey-day back in the 60's, but they would play six month old blockbusters for only $1.50 a ticket.
Also after COVID-19 I've got little tolerance for popcorn messes. I know they say they need the concession stand to be profitable but if don't delete it I will "go home" instead of "going big".
How much the better tech matters is something that I find is film dependent.
A big, splashy, large-scale action film? Yeah, it makes a difference to me. OTOH even apparently "thinky" films like the upcoming OPPENHEIMER are likely better in a more immersive situation.
But a smaller film like THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN? Not a factor. (But this also means I don't think you lose much watching it at home if you have a decent screen.)
There are not enough people like you. Like 5% of movie theater seats get sold. The only way to be profitable is to be able to sell out the popular films.
What I often find so interesting is that the projection and sound systems for a high-end home theatre are so much vastly cheaper than what they are describing, and deliver a surprisingly similar experience. You can buy the best 4k laser home theatre projector that Sony offers for around 20k USD. You don't need an optical block, and you can hook it up to an Apple TV or blu ray player and get high bitrate 4k signal. You can build a very respectable quality 9.2.1 surround system for less than 5k USD. The maintenance costs are negligible with this HT stuff. The trick is getting access to cinema releases, which is essentially impossible for a home user. I'm surprised none of the theatre chains have subdivided their spaces into smaller, more intimate rooms which seat around 8 people and use consumer level kit.
Obviously you can build a very nice home theatre for less than that (optoma makes great budget projectors).
Most home theater spaces are much smaller than even a small cinema theater. You need more light to fill a bigger screen and that adds cost. Engineering for a much higher duty cycle adds costs too.
Audio wise, you end up needing a lot more speakers and a more complex system to drive them. Some of the high-end cinemas put subwoofers under every butt; that's an option in a home theater too, but it's pretty excessive.
Just wanted to weigh in on this thread and let people know that without theatrical releases helping support big tentpole movies that we all love... those sorts of films won't get made.
That's the CURRENT paradigm and I'm not saying it's efficient, but there was a reason people have recently been saying 'Tom Cruise saved Hollywood' with the success of Maverick.
Roughly 50% of all theatrical releases LOSE money. A large chunk breaks even, and about 27% have margins that could be considered a decent ROI.
If you're a tech person, I am begging you to make an investment in theatrical filmmaking. Lower the cost of this equipment, or find ways to encourage filmgoing, or for the love of god build a film-producing engine that can make this bonkers-slow and bonkers-unprofitable business move out of the red.
Oh wait, I forgot that movie studios routinely lie about revenues and margins. They are the OG's at hiding profits and engage in accounting shenanigans that make real estate tax lawyers blush.
Like what? Hollywood has been going downhill for years now — there are a few good movies a year, but it's nothing compared to what it used to be like. Just endless bland corporate written-by-committee superhero movies, prequels, sequels, reboots... maybe it's just time for the format to die.
The fact that Hollywood was releasing more original films several decades ago is not an opinion, it's fact.
As to whether there's a corresponding decrease in quality, that's definitely an opinion, but it's not exactly a controversial one. Just google it and you'll find no shortage of articles talking about Hollywood's creative decline. Or just look at the comments in this thread.
It's also not a complaint limited to older people — actually, older people (older millenials, gen Xers, and boomers) seem to be more content with the state of movies these days than the younger crowd, who IME seem more likely to recognize them for the bland corporate moneygrabs they are.
To respond more directly to your obnoxiously-stated point: I was not alive when Hollywood was at what's generally considered it's "peak" (say, 70s through 90s). But to anyone, of any age, comparing the top movies from 1984[0] to the top movies from 2022[1], the difference in quality and originality should be obvious. One striking point: not a single top 10 movie in 2022 is an original IP, compared to 8/10 being original in 1984.
To be fair, Hollywood has always been a bit of a hit-driven industry, and people have been complaining about this for as long as I can remember.
I wouldn't put too much stock in those box office figures; I never heard of Footloose, ranked #6, and the imdb (6.6) and rotten tomatoes (52%/71%) rating are not especially great. The same applies to a number of other films in the top list. Scarface is ranked #32 and is much better known, and has 8.3 on imdb and 81%/94% on rotten tomatoes. This is Spinal Tap is ranked #129 and is iconic enough that the imdb people programmed a special exception so you can rate it from 1 to 11.
I kind of chuck it up to fashion; all these Marvel things are in fashion today; back in the 90s romcoms were pretty fashionable, in the 80s you had the "action hero" era, etc. Hollywood produces hundreds of films every year and there are hundreds of films every year outside of Hollywood. There's still plenty of stuff to watch.
Theaters are dying because they starved themselves.
Film studios are too consolidated, which motivates them to prefer "safe bets" like the eternal continuation of Marvel IP. We should really have an order of magnitude more variety of film shown in theaters, but only a handful of corporations are equipped to create that content in the first place.
The walls of this prison are made of copyright. It's well past time to tear them down.
Hollywood is just about the last industry on earth people should be trying to save. I have no sympathy for the low turnout to high budget propaganda films.
We need more movies like Interstellar & Dune and less Guardians of The Galaxy 36, people might be more willing to go to the cinema then. I can get free tickets and still don't go more than once or twice a year.
What I actually got from the article is that if simply running a movie theater is wildly expensive just to achieve the status quo, so the only way to get enough butts into seats is to really show lowest common denominator movies that will actually turn a profit. The only way to even release the films you'd like to see is to have your tent pole films.
And not all movies need the advanced tech to tell a good story. It's been 25 years since Life Is Beautiful came out (my opinion: a masterpiece). I guess theaters can show the movie now if they get a digital transfer of it, but none of the extremely costly upgrades in the theaters will do anything to make the experience of watching that movie really any better. But I want to watch the next Life is Beautiful.
I feel like Life is Beautiful is art, and I'm asking to see an art exhibition at an amusement park. I have to think I'm the one with the misaligned expectations.
One film will only get a person to sit in your theater one time. If you're very lucky, they will watch the same film two or three times.
After the first few days, how is it any surprise your seats are left empty?
Instead of maximizing for audience diversity, theaters need to rebalance content diversity. Get the same butts back into the same seats by showing something else.
The largest theater in my state has 20 screens showing 19 films. The last time I saw a film there, the theater was empty, because of course it was! Everyone who wanted to see it either already had, was in the next room over, or was planning to see it at one of the other 5 showings that day; or the next...
I bet they could have filled every seat on a Tuesday afternoon if they had just shown something else. It's not like every person in town has seen every movie ever.
It's obvious this whole situation is self-inflicted. The studios that own 100 years of content don't want to compete with their own new releases.
>Instead of maximizing for audience diversity, theaters need to rebalance content diversity. Get the same butts back into the same seats by showing something else.
No one who goes to see the, Avengers: End Game is going to also want to watch, Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie - even on a lark.
What I think you're proposing is theaters should have other movies shown that are similar to the popular movies- which OK, but movies don't just come out of thin air. A movie studio can only make a few $250m+ movies a year, so we get the movies we get. You can have lower budget, lower quality movies of the same genre, but they're most likely going to be bad - which isn't going to work out as being profitable for even the movie theaters to show if keeping up to the status quo and the lights are is already a problem.
If that's your proposal, then congratulations: you've invented Netflix, which is completely packed with middling options. Difference is that the distribution essentially outsources all the equipment costs to watch the slop to the consumer, which regularly upgrades it. They can also grow far more easily than a movie theater physically building a new screen. Before Netflix there were bargain bin DVDs, which were also profitable, but not what I'd call a bastion of art.
> movies don't just come out of thin air. A movie studio can only make a few $250m+ movies a year, so we get the movies we get.
New ones, yes, but what about old ones? It's not like they are broken or incompatible or something. Movies don't just disappear the day after box office weekend!
> No one who goes to see the, Avengers: End Game is going to also want to watch, Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie - even on a lark.
So what? Show something else, then. There are thousands of movies out there to choose from, but there are only 19 showing today! Hell, you could pick one at random from IMDB's top 250, and it would probably fill more seats than yet another 4 daily showings of Evil Dead Rise.
Hell, one of the 19 they are actually showing is Ponyo. That came out in 2008! I bet it outsells at least 3 of the 4 Super Mario Bros. Movie showtimes.
Just because Netflix exists doesn't mean theaters are worthless without new content. What else is there to do around town?
A couple weeks ago, my dad was in town for a few hours. We went out for lunch, and tried to think of something else to do together. Our first thought was to go see a movie, but we weren't interested in a single one of the ones that were showing that day. Imagine that: dozens of theater screens all around the city, and nothing to watch. It's absurd how normal that is.
I kind of agree with you - as when I went to the movies the most, it was actually to see weirdo old films at midnight movie events. I don't live in a city that's large enough to have a theater that can survive on that anymore (for a pop 125k city, we have one mainstream theater and no indies) Partly because real estate is through the roof and putting a movie theater in just again: doesn't work on paper.
One of the challenges of showing these films is actually just to find a good-enough print to do so! So perhaps one of the hurtles for doing this now is getting that digital transfer to the new all-digital systems. Midnight movies are also going to/have died since working at a movie theater is already a shit job, and you're now asking people to work a shit job at a really really crappy schedule.
But I still don't know if it's worth putting out like Ghostbusters on a regular schedule, but it sure was fun to watch it 20+ years after I first saw it at a midnight movie. When (past tense now) Netflix had mail service, they had a good Criterium Collection, which fills the gap for me. I guess $11/month for YA streaming service is an option.
I disagree. No way in hell Dune Part 2 is going to make more than Guardians of the Galaxy 3 this year. Not that I think this is a good thing but I think the public has voted with their dollars and Hollywood is stepping in producing what is selling. I saw around 10-12 films in theaters in 2022 and the only films besides Super Hero/Children's/Video Game related movies I saw were Elvis and Top Gun: Maverick.
There is a very good question about price perception there. What should be the "right" price for a cinema experience?
If you start from first principles and you compute it as "2.5 hours of entertainment in a climate controlled and comfortable environment with refreshments", it doesn't feel unreasonable to put it at 30$ (per person): that's in line with how much other comparable activities will set you back (escape rooms, paintball, whatever).
If you go from "the price has increased too much since I used to go there as a child/teen" then you are going to say that's way too much.
Some (most?) movies do feel better in a cinema than at home (at least to me). And this is without considering 3d, immersive sound/vibration or anything, just "vanilla" cinema. "Everything, everywhere, all at once" doesn't have the same ooomph on my tv.
I don't see them dying but they are endangered and niche. Bit like theatre.
> If you start from first principles and you compute it as "2.5 hours of entertainment in a climate controlled and comfortable environment with refreshments", it doesn't feel unreasonable to put it at 30$ (per person): that's in line with how much other comparable activities will set you back (escape rooms, paintball, whatever).
When I was a kid, my family didn't have AC so on hot summer days my mother would take us to a bookstore. Free AC and entertainment for hours, plus a few dollars for lunch (not in the bookstore, but nearby) and a few dollars more for the books we'd inevitably buy at the end of the day. These days, bookstores are mostly gone but public libraries have AC now so it's gotten even cheaper.
> 2.5 hours of entertainment in a climate controlled and comfortable environment
I watched probably half of the movies I've ever seen during my last summer of college because the house I lived in didn't have air conditioning and the second-run theater 3 blocks away did.
the difference between movies and other activities is that i can watch movies at home while escape rooms, paintball or any live performance can not. so paying $30 for paintball or an opera may be reasonable because there is no alternative, but watching a movie has to compete with the option of watching at home where i can create a cinema environment with a small projector and a large white wall too.
Regal has a subscription, so I pay around $24 a month and get to see as many movies as I want. Considering their regular ticket price is like $15-$19 online, it pretty much pays for itself in a couple of trips. Certainly makes buying concessions easier on the wallet.
> People go to theaters for presentation they can't get at home, but that's no guarantee of the best picture and sound.
I'm not sure the premise is entirely correct. I think the main attraction is watching a movie together with other people, because it adds to the emotional experience.
I think this premise is the same mistake phone makers did when all they advertised was technical specs like RAM and GHz and cores, when that is a very reductionist view of the actual experience of using a phone, which apparently only Apple understood. This seems to work well for Open Air cinemas, where picture and sound might just be ok but not great, but you are in nature with other people and its just totally different from some multiplex chain. At least where I live they are regularly sold out.
Now they just have to release movies that are worth watching, which apparently they lost the capability for since around 2017.
I never got the 'experience' aspect of going to the movie. Sitting in the dark with a pack of strangers you don't really interact with. Some non-zero percentage of whom are rude/entitled further downgrading the experience. And eating bad snacks. With a product on the screen that fails to impress more often than not. I have friends who absolutely adore the movie theatre and consider it a transformative experience. But it just does not resonate with me; does not generate an 'emotion' other than annoyance.
I like going to movies, but it is sad that my local multiplex has some really outdated equipment. I don't need some crazy imax stuff, but going to movie theater and seeing clear pixelization on screen does bother me. From my point of view we jumped to digital prematurely, should have skipped the 2K projection tech.
10 years ago I used to go to the movies a couple of times a month but these days I just hate it.
People seem to talk a lot more than before. Teenagers that care about anything but watching a movie. People playing on smartphones at max brightness. I've even seen people answering their phone mid movie. Kids running around bored to death since their stupid parents thought it was a good idea to bring them to an adult movie.
Image quality just cannot compared to an OLED HDR with Dolby Vision. Sound is usually way too loud and honestly my Atmos home theater setup sounds better than most theaters.
After multiple shitty experiences I've just had enough. I prefer to wait a couple of months and just watch the movie at home either in Bluray or from iTunes/HBO/Disney.
Theaters could provide a good experience but they just don't care. They only care about selling tickets and food.
> People seem to talk a lot more than before. Teenagers that care about anything but watching a movie. People playing on smartphones at max brightness. I've even seen people answering their phone mid movie. Kids running around bored to death since their stupid parents thought it was a good idea to bring them to an adult movie.
This is also my perception, and a big reason why I stopped going to movie theatres (and concerts), but to be honest I don't know if it was really any better 20 years ago or if I'm just an old grumpy curmudgeon. I guess you need a time machine to do any proper research on this. I do know that "talking during theatre or movie screening" should absolutely be listed in the DSM under personality disorders.
I wonder what the economics are of the boutique theatres in places like Portland and Berlin. Berlin seems to have several dozen independent cinemas - all radically different (although many are part of the York Kino group). These go all the way from tiny neighbourhood (kiez) cinemas that are a few couches arranged around a 10 foot screen, to enormous screens in iconic buildings. There are also Summer Kinos, giant semi-permanent outdoor screens that show films in woodland and urban settings within the city. It's an incredible part of Berlin life. Oh and they all serve wine, beer and radler, plus usually a variety of branded sweets. Ticket prices are usually under 10 euro too.
There are of course lots of multi-plex type cinemas in Berlin too, and they're just as trashy as those in the rest of Europe and the US. But they seem comparatively less popular.
Depends. I can imagine the zoning in some parts of Europe being “this property is zoned as a theatre and can only be used as such” and that will drive down rent.
Absolutely, they're positively the opposite of the experience described in the article. Much more chill, casual destination. I enjoy a good 3D, seat shaking multiplex experience perhaps once a year. But the casual drop into to sit on a couch with a beer and some fancy candy Berlin cinema experience is something I indulged in weekly when I lived there.
Just a shout out to Alamo Drafthouse. We have two theaters in our area and they're excellent. Great image and sound, comfortable chairs, always clean, never have to worry about loud people due to their moviegoer policies. Before they were built, we almost never went to the movies. Now, we go all the time.
I find almost all newly released movies uninteresting - maybe it's old age or maybe modern big budget movies are "over-calculated" - it seems like producers want to tick all possible boxes, sell to as broad audience as possible and of course play it safe to the maximum - do not try something new which isn't sequel, prequel or other similar form of "guaranteed audience" insurance. It results in watchable but totally uninteresting and mediocre outcome.
>To me, it sounds like both of these can be replaced with a $2,000 laptop.
Presumably the cost comes from the fact it has to be a secure toolchain from studio to projection. If it was just a random laptop then the full res copy could be syphoned off by a rogue employee.
Not defending the prices, just saying the studios have a strangle hold on that industry so you can't just solve problems in a simple cheap way.
It’s good business considering that a DCP leak of a movie the first day in the theater could be catastrophic.
Heck, a leak of any DCP is bad for the movie studio. DCPs are the highest quality available version of a film the public will ever see. They are better than 4K Blu-Ray in every respect; fantastic news if you are a pirate who wants to re-compress it into some cheap discs for Malaysia. It’s also fantastic news if you are a shady local movie theater wanting to skip royalty payments - what studio executive is going to notice?
(Also, before anyone says “just go after the pirates then,” many pirates are from countries like Russia who don’t give a darn. If a pirate is hosting your movie on Russian bulletproof hosting with a Russian domain, you are basically SOL as a movie studio. All you can do is ask for DNS blocking in countries where that's legal; and hope that you can identify the pirates and wait until they make the mistake of stepping on a US Ally's soil if they ever do.)
> Is the whole thing just so that the file is DRM-ed to hard that nothing else except expensive equipment can play it?
Could be the case. However, one of the quirks about Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) is that they don’t use video codecs like H.264/AVC or H.265/HEVC. Instead, to maintain maximum quality, every single frame is individually compressed and stored with JPEG 2000, and they are played through like a slideshow, just at 24 frames per second. Needless to say this adds compute and especially storage concerns. Storing every frame of a movie individually quickly hits hundreds of gigabytes if not terabytes; and you need to decode and have every frame ready in less than 41 milliseconds, which is shockingly difficult even on high-end hardware. Even a modern Core i9 would have to be parallel and have multiple frames ready at a time because doing it a single frame at a time would be too slow (and thus, most projectors almost certainly use custom chips or FPGA-based decoders but that's really, really expensive). Do I need to mention read speeds and network traffic? If every frame is, say, just 5MB, that is over 960 Megabits per second, saturating a Gigabit link.
Another thing to consider is the multitude of speakers. Dolby Atmos is object-based, meaning there aren’t specific audio streams for specific speakers like in the past. Every speaker’s location is individually stored in the playback device varying between theaters, and the sound is calculated and mixed for that specific theater’s audio setup at the time the movie is played. When you are calculating audio in real-time for 30 or more speakers, the compute costs add up, potentially into custom hardware / FPGA territory. Also that "saturating a Gigabit connection" doesn't include the amount of data that the audio uses, and considering it's 24-bit PCM without any compression for dozens of streams for the objects, that's also pretty substantial. Just 2 streams of 16-bit PCM for ~70 minutes on a CD takes about 700MB.
So, just for one movie, with every frame taking 5MB (possibly more or less, we don't know how big they actually are) and audio taking whatever it takes, you would need a 2.5Gig Ethernet link to be safe, and storage that can deliver that (which is also why an external hard drive is out of the question for actual playback, only very recently do we have built-in NVMe SSDs that can deliver that kind of speed, but we still don't have any external SSDs that can deliver anywhere close; it just has to be RAID on multiple storage devices). Now consider what you need for a theater with 12-20 screens at a time. The storage amount and speed requirements is substantial. Now consider this has been standard for over a decade and think about how expensive this would've been to implement in, say, 2013. Oh, and that storage had better not fail, ever, or your entire theater is down, and there's a lot of refund requests and unsold tickets until it's running again.
I was curious about this so I did a little research.
> you need to decode and have every frame ready in less than 41 milliseconds, which is shockingly difficult even on high-end hardware
There appear to be multiple high-speed JP2K decoders on the market; Comprimato[0] include a calculator for their product and it claims that a $240 GPU from 2016 can decode 4k 4:4:4 at 72fps.
> Do I need to mention read speeds and network traffic? If every frame is, say, just 5MB, that is over 960 Megabits per second, saturating a Gigabit link.
According to Wikipedia, the DCP standard has a maximum bit rate for picture of 250Mbit/s[1]. My $60 home internet connection could stream that at almost 2x realtime.
> When you are calculating audio in real-time for 30 or more speakers, the compute costs add up, potentially into custom hardware / FPGA territory.
Dolby offer a software version of Atmos for soundtrack mastering that runs on a Mac Mini[2]. Real-time 128-channel object mixing was possible using consumer-grade hardware as early as EAX 5.0 in 2005[3], but Atmos does not need to be rendered in real time at a cinema, it can be done in advance and then during playback those pre-rendered PCM streams would be used which is a trivial amount of data to handle (under 20Mbit/s for a full 64-speaker array).
> There appear to be multiple high-speed JP2K decoders on the market; Comprimato[0] include a calculator for their product and it claims that a $240 GPU from 2016 can decode 4k 4:4:4 at 72fps.
Interesting, that's a lot better. This is my source for my numbers:
> According to Wikipedia, the DCP standard has a maximum bit rate for picture of 250Mbit/s.[1]
I'm really surprised, I would not have thought that a 4K frame at a theatrical quality level would fit into about 1.3MB. But maybe that's why they chose JPEG 2000.
> Dolby offer a software version of Atmos for soundtrack mastering that runs on a Mac Mini[2]. 128-channel object mixing was possible using consumer-grade hardware as early as EAX 5.0 in 2005[3].
That's not quite true because Dolby Atmos came out in 2012, not 2005. As for theatrical hardware, even though I'm not sure why it is so expensive, look at the Dolby CP850. It's a 64-channel object mixer for theaters and it costs about $8,000 (or $18,000, depending on where you shop and who you trust on the subject). As far as I know, EAX is not even a true surround sound encoding technology in the first place, and was a much more primitive system only for video games that is not directly comparable.
I suspect part of the cost is all of the outputs, and also because Dolby has been clear that they make their money (patent licensing) on playback equipment, not production equipment. I can't find the specific webpage, but it's no secret in the industry Dolby charges much more on licensing for devices with lots of outputs.
TVs got larger and more capable, so it's not as much of an improvement to go to the cinema. And cinema ticket prices got way too high for the offered improvement. Snacks got worse and way more expensive, comparing to what you can get at home.
Granted it was after work and people had shuttles to catch, but attendance probably averaged 20. And we didn't show Hollywood shit movies, which would draw more, maybe.
One thing that could save theaters is social interaction: people stayed after the movie and talked about it. For Animal Kingdom I think the discussion went on for a half hour. But these were all people with some connection to each other, not random strangers. And you could bring your dinner in there and eat while you watched.
I also, for a while, belonged to a movie club that showed brand new movies in the theater on Sunday morning and usually had the director or other people from the movie for Q&A after. Those drew hundreds of people.
I will say, after not going to a movie theater for awhile and then subsequently seeing D&D in theaters twice...going to a movie theater is actually really nice.
There's something to be said about going to a movie theater and being able to watch a movie distraction-free. No phones, no tablets, etc.
It feels like three things are going on here: higher labor costs, the end of cheap financing, and a lack of good films. Not a good business to be in, I’m afraid.
Retail square footage is not cheap wherever you go. Even rust belt is getting a few bucks a sq foot and average is more like 15-20. So a couple thousand square foot theater is around $10k a month and probably more like 20-40k.
I don't know, maybe theaters get a super good deal as anchor tenants. But doesn't seem to add up that $1,000 a month on a projector rental is a driver of price increases.
I think the basis of the complaint is that it can be an ongoing maintenance expense. And it's more expensive than the pre-digital way of doing things, atr least for the theaters. But yeah, compared to your other overhead costs, it can't be the main driver of ticket prices.
Sometimes it's forced upon cinema owners. There's only one company making non-laser cinema projectors these days, and so laser is really the only tech in town when it comes to replacing an ageing or broken projector.
A 35mm film projector was a machine with a handful of parts. If one broke, theaters could be back up within a matter of hours.
Are you kidding me? A 35mm projector has hundreds of precision engineered moving parts. If one of them breaks, you're not swapping it out with a replacement from Radio Shack. You might not even trust the pimply teenager running the projector (me) to touch any of the interior parts or gears.
You're going to the pros: Authorized service techs, or a specialized AV supplier who may have it in stock, but is definitely not open on the weekend when these things tend to break. And, the supplier may have have to order the replacement part from Japan or Europe.
If you're part of a chain that uses standard equipment (not a given, considering consolidation) you might be able to borrow parts or spares from your pal running the show at the multiplex across town.
Worst case: Because most theaters operate two sister machines for each film (a reel can only hold ~75 minutes of film max, so you have to switch over to the second machine halfway) you can technically swap reels on a single machine with a 5 minute intermission.
The 35mm projectors were professional-grade machines designed to last for years. Our theater used 25-year-old Italian projectors made by Cinemacannica which is still around today (https://www.cinemeccanica.eu/cinema-products/), and looks like it has moved into digital exhibition.
Some of the old 35mm machines are still around, usually at indie theaters. I spotted one a few years ago in Somerville Mass as described here: https://leanmedia.org/memories-movie-theater-film-projection...