Freaky Film / why one used to need a licence to be a projectionist.

I posted about one of these videos way back when I started this blog but I think I can load it up here now. The other one I found on youtube.

Film used to be nitrate based which was highly flammable. It's now basically plastic based so melts but doesn't burn.

The film was so highly flammable it took special training to deal with it. It was a bad combination, highly flammable film and light so bright it would burn right through the film if it stopped moving.

Anyone who's seen Cinema Paradiso will have an idea what I'm talking about.

Nitrate film is also a reason that if you read through the history of movie theatres you'll notice how many of them burned down.

I don't understand some theatres.

We played a Bollywood ( Indian ) film called Drona on the weekend. One of the theatres that had previously played the film did something that makes no sense to me. Bollywood films are almost always long, 2 1/2 to 3 hours and have an intermission about half way through. The intermission is built into the film, the word intermission, or sometimes interval, comes up on the screen.
Every Bollywood film I've played has had an intermission, even one that was only about 2 hours long. So Bollywood audiences expect to have an intermission so they can go to the bathroom etc.
From a theatre's point of view an intermission is great for food sales. We made 75% of our food sales this weekend during the intermission.
So if you are still with me, the audiences expect an intermission and the theatre makes money, everybody's happy.
So why did a previous theatre cut off the section of film that says intermission?! From a film standpoint the only practical reason to do this would be to be able to splice the film altogether into one long movie without an intermission. Why would anyone do that? The only thing I can think of is to save the time of the intermission in order to run more showings of the film per day. Personally I would hate to be sitting watching the film waiting for the intermission to go to the bathroom and it never comes.

It made things a little awkward for us this weekend. A Bollywood film I showed a few months ago had a similar situation. I spliced the intermission titling back into the film. This weekend however one of my projectionists made up the film and didn't know to do that. By the time I found out it was too late to fix it. I knew where the intermission was supposed to be but to the audience it was probably somewhat jarring as the film just stopped without any text warning. Luckily they tend to put the intermissions at either cliffhanger moments or just after pivotal events so it's somewhat predictable. For Drona the intermission came right after the transformation of the regular guy into the Super guy.

England trip- Cinemas- annoyed at myself a little.

I finally got to downloading the hundreds of photos I took in England and was surprised how few of them were movie related. I guess I was so interested in the movies and cinemas I forgot to take pics. There were things I thought I had done but I guess I didn't. I thought I had taken some pics of the big cinemas in Leicester square at night but don't see any. The cinemas looked nice lit up, especially the Empire.

Changing the movie seasons?

From IMDB: "The head of the National Association of Theater Owners charged Tuesday that both the owners and the studios could be earning a lot more money if the studios did not rely on an outmoded release schedule. John Fithian chastised the studios for failing to provide attractive movies throughout the year, noting that April and September are "virtually empty," because studios save their prime product for summer or the winter seasons. "They look at their calendar and wait for May and say, 'OK, now we can open our tent-pole movie.'" He said that if the studios hadn't tried to release the latest Spider-Man, Shrek, and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels all within three weeks of one another, the exhibitors "could have done at least another $50 or $60 million" -- particularly if the studios had decided to open at least some of them in April. "A good movie will be successful no matter when it is released," Fithian said"

I agree with this in most part. It is a bit silly to have three of the biggest movies of the year open within three weeks of each other. Despite what the studios may think most people don't see every movie they want to because of time, money etc. By releasing them so close together many people would have to choose between them.
There are however seasonal considerations. Obviously kid's films will likely do better when the kids aren't in school. The weather affects movie-going a lot, people tend not to go out as much when it's cold.
On the other hand, Cloverfield and 300 last year showed that a good movie played off season can do big business.
I remember when the redone versions of the first 3 Stars Wars movies were released in 1997. Theatres were very happy since George Lucas released them in February I think it was. It brought in a ton of business in what is normally a quiet time.

Some of this is irrelevant to Western Film. Between being 2nd run and subject to the student cycle we often get big movies at slow times for other theatres. However we also run into problems. Certain times of the year attendance drops no matter what's playing because the students are busy with school work. There's also things like Juno, at the rate it's going I might not be able to play it until well into exams. Last year I didn't get 300 until the last few days of exams. Most of the students had already left.

Questions about 3-D.

A convention for movie theatres called Showest just ended in the US. There was a lot of talk about 3-D being the saviour of the theatre since it can't be duplicated at home. A few questions occurred to me.

Some of the films are supposed to be coming out exclusively in 3-D. The Hannah Montana film was like that and so is the upcoming Journey to the Center of the Earth. I wonder how long the exclusive part will last? There are still a lot of places that don't have a 3-D theatre. 3-D is expensive both to put in and maintain. For example the small city St. Thomas south of London isn't likely to have a 3-D screen any time soon. Are they willing to forsake all places like it in order to play exclusively in 3-D?

There's also the matter of second run and independent theatres. Western Film won't have 3-D any time soon either so does that mean we won't be able to play James Cameron's Avatar when it comes out next year?

The 3-D thing also messes up the normal pattern in a multiplex. Normally a film opens in one of the larger screens then gradually moves into smaller screens as the run progresses. Unless they all have 3-D this won't be able to happen.

For example,the Silver City at Masonville converted their largest screen (#2) to play digital and 3-D. They are playing the Hannah Montana film but since none of the other screens can play it they will have to drop it right off the big screen.

Hannah is a bit of a special case but imagine this. Let's say Shrek 4 opens in 3-D only on May 1, then Spiderman 4 opens May 7 in 3-D only. The Silver City would have to either drop Shrek completely after one week or not play Spider-man. Not a choice I would want to have to make.

I predict a similar situation to when Stars Wars: The Phantom Menace opened. Initially Lucas insisted it could only open on screens with digital sound. There was a huge uproar since so many places didn't have digital sound and that requirement fell by the wayside. The 3-D movies will all or at least most have 2-D versions available as well.