I’d love to have a huge screen in a dark, quiet room to see movies.
But you don’t usually get that. You usually get a tunnel in a multiplexed building where the screen is about 5 seats wide way up ahead of you, or else a stadium where your seat is very likely way off to one side of the screen. And then folks are talking constantly, and/or their cellphones keep ringing, and the sound effects deafen you so you can’t hear the dialogue.
I will never forget how grand it was to see Abel Gance’s “Napoleon” (a three-projector cinerama-type effect from 1924 or something) shown at Radio City (a stage about 50 yards wide and excellent seats for 4500), or The Who’s “Tommy” movie in NYC’s old Ziegfeld movie palace in quintaphonic sound (yes, 5 channels, with the key “you didn’t see it” tri-alogue in three places through the enormous screen), or even “Woodstock” when it first came out, in the biggest movie theater in our county, where the helicopter shots of the endless crowd made you practically fall out of your seat with vertigo.
Today’s movie “exhibition” industry can crunch dollar numbers, but it has a tough act to follow as far as providing a true experience goes.
I’d love to have a huge screen in a dark, quiet room to see movies. But you don’t usually get that. You usually get a tunnel in a multiplexed building where the screen is about 5 seats wide way up ahead of you, or else a stadium where your seat is very likely way off to one side of the screen. And then folks are talking constantly, and/or their cellphones keep ringing, and the sound effects deafen you so you can’t hear the dialogue.
I will never forget how grand it was to see Abel Gance’s “Napoleon” (a three-projector cinerama-type effect from 1924 or something) shown at Radio City (a stage about 50 yards wide and excellent seats for 4500), or The Who’s “Tommy” movie in NYC’s old Ziegfeld movie palace in quintaphonic sound (yes, 5 channels, with the key “you didn’t see it” tri-alogue in three places through the enormous screen), or even “Woodstock” when it first came out, in the biggest movie theater in our county, where the helicopter shots of the endless crowd made you practically fall out of your seat with vertigo.
Today’s movie “exhibition” industry can crunch dollar numbers, but it has a tough act to follow as far as providing a true experience goes.