Everything Wrong With The Modern Movie Theatre

I've been watching movies in theatres for over twenty-five years and I've seen a lot of changes.

I make it a point to see 2-3 movies a week in the theatre. It's an experience I truly love. It's basically my church. It's a ritual for me. Not only that I proposed to my wife in a theatre, later we got married in a theatre.

I don't work for any theatre companies, but I am in the film industry.

This isn't going to be a post about "the good old days" and the ways things "used to be" either. This dissection is meant to be forward thinking -- a way for us to reconsider the theatre experience for the future.

What this will be is an itemized list of things I find wrong with the current movie going experience -- and since I don't work for any companies with the power to change the movie going experience for us- I thought I'd take a shot in the dark and throw this out onto the internet and see if it sticks. See if any change can be affected.

Your move AMC, Cineplex ect...

-Pre-Show / Commercials: I've had the privilege of attending a number of press screenings of major movies, as well, movies at film festivals. You know what makes those experiences truly special? The time it says on your ticket is exactly the time the movie begins. It's special to have the lights go down, the room go quiet and the movie begins... it truly ARRIVES.

When you front load a movie with twenty minutes of car, clothes and food commercials (let's be honest nobody is watching) it cheapens the experience. When I've sat through a fifteen minute pre-show, then another 15-20 minutes of commercials, then another fifteen minutes of trailers -- I'm in such a brainless daze that I almost forget why I came to the theatre to begin with -- and I barely notice the actual START of the movie. The first 5-10 minutes of the movie just feel like another commercial or trailer...

I believe this is the reason why people continue to TALK throughout the beginning of the movie. They've been having conversations for the first forty-five minutes that they've been there (in line, over the pre-show, over the commercials, over the trailers...) and the beginning of the movie no longer has the ARRIVAL it used to have. Psychologically it's like going to an Elvis concert, but being forced to sit through an hour of impersonators before the real thing. It's messy.

I like trailers... but it's been a long time since I've watched a trailer in a theatre that wasn't already available online. The landscape has changed... do we NEED trailers in theatres anymore?

I understand that the pre-show and commercials are likely a source of revenue for the theatre chains... hell they might even be subsidizing the cost of the movie tickets...? I don't know... but.. surely there is another way to rearrange this revenue? If you eliminated the pre-show, commercials and trailer for every movie couldn't you screen a movie more times in a day?

Regarding commercials nobody is actually watching the commercials, taking in their messages, taking in their content... it's all wallpaper... why do companies continue to throw away money in set-piece commercial productions like these? Because some statistic or committee report somewhere says it's valuable still? I think it's a short sighted sense of value... the long term effect of this fatty preamble is a cheapened sense of the movie experience as a whole. I am suggesting that the less special the movie experience feels, overtime, less and less people are going to make time for it. Worse, the less respect people have for the experience the more the experience is ruined for others -- with people continuing to talk/text/use their cells through the beginning of the movie.

If commercials are an important revenue stream for chains is there another way they can be displayed? Maybe in front of the arcade games? Maybe running on a constant stream in the lobby, near the concessions, in the washrooms... anything but in-front of the movie?

-Stadium Seating: I have a theory that when an audience member is looking UP at a movie screen -- it is a completely different experience than when you are looking DOWN at it.

It's difficult to describe, but I remember movies feeling much bigger, demanding more of my attention, demanding reverence, and this was years ago before stadium seating became a staple. A movie should be a humbling experience -- and you simply cannot feel humbled if you are looking DOWN at a screen instead of UP.

The next two times you go to a theatre make a choice to sit in the very back, and after that find a seat that's towards the front (not the very front where it is a strain) but a seat that's below eye level with the screen. It's a small adjustment, but, I'll be damned... it makes a huge difference.

When I sit at the back of a theatre, psycholigically the screen feels smaller, more within my control -easier to judge, keep at arms length- more like the way a laptop screen feels in your lap.

But when a movie lords over you... you become more vulnerable... and I believe a certain degree of vulnerability is what lets a movie get under your skin and affect you.

Franchise / Remake Central: There used to be a time when -if you didn't see a movie in theatres.... you didn't get to see it all. There was no VOD, home streaming services, Blurays or DVDs... there was only the theatre. This made the movie experience special and one-of-a-kind. A can't miss event...

Because of the prominence of franchise experiences, movies feel less and less like one-of-a-kind events -- and because it's clear how much money studios have so much invested in these mega-franchises, we are oversaturated with the content. Miss the movie in a theatre? No problem it'll be on VOD or Blu-Ray within a few months... or on Netflix where I can watch it 24 hours a day on loop if I want.... what has this change done to the mentality of the modern movie goer? There's no urgency to see a movie in the theatre. There's also no urgency to take the theatre experience of that movie seriously because if I miss anything... well.... I'll catch up on what I missed on Netflix in no time.

It's an old sales tactic -- in order to close a sale you have to create a sense of urgency in the buyer -- otherwise there are no stakes. There is no investment...

3D, 4D, D-BOX and all of these theatrical add-ons are ways theatres have tried to artificially create a one-of-a-kind experience... but... in my opinion these are distractions from bigger psychological issues with the experience as a whole. In my opinion these gimmicks have only made the movie theatre experience feel cheaper... more like an amusement park ride than a place of reverence.

In Conclusion: It's easy to say that PEOPLE are the reason why the modern movie theatre experience is awful -- but I don't believe it's "the people's" faults. Theatres have been knowingly/unknowingly conditioning people to disrespect the movie experience for years. It's all one big youtube commercial waiting to be skipped...

How do we move forwards?

Submitted June 09, 2017 at 01:59AM by michaellaicini http://ift.tt/2sYFN0z