What goes around comes around…
Seems like only yesterday theaters proclaimed in newspaper directory ads that certain movies showing in their multiplexes would be presented in the “revolutionary new” digital format.
(We still HAD newspaper movie ads back then.)
It was definitely an expensive transformation process for the industry.
Then before we knew it just about every major theater complex—with the assistance of the Hollywood studios—had converted to digital to the estimated tune of $100,000.- per auditorium.
A benefit for the distributors?
Which eliminated the lab costs of striking 35mm film prints, n expense which could run between $1,200.- and $1,600.- PER.
Savings to exhibitors included the cost of shipping these film prints as well as building them up and eventually tearing down the movies again in their projection booths.
The big plus for moviegoers, of course, was–and continues to be—a pristine screen presentation. No scratches, dirt, bad splices or out of frames scenes to suffer through.
In other words the superb visual quality of “AVENGERS: ENDGAME” you saw on opening night will look and play exactly alike for weeks to come on that same screen.
I know that some purists claim digital presentations are just too stark and vivid and that some of film’s softness may suffer. But let’s be real folks, you can’t beat the continued quality.
Today the entire industry has switched over from film to digital projection and the movies themselves are delivered via an encrypted satellite process. The theater then downloads the movie into its projection system. But the studios keep control of the delivery process by providing an electronic key for each specific movie which releases it to the specific theater.
Or something like that…...
So why am I writing about all of this?
Because I was amused last week when I heard about the 50th anniversary showing of Sam Peckinpah’s bloody “THE WILD BUNCH” at the Alamo Mainstreet Theatre in Kansas City.
It’s not the movie that amused me though, it was the marketing of the event which proclaimed that the movie would actually be presented via 35mm FILM projection—not digitally!
While I was not in attendance, I was told by someone who WAS that sure enough the film print wasn’t in the best condition.
TOUCHE…..
Which brings me back to what comes around goes around.
I still have several (very) wide ties in my closet. All in hopes that they too may come back into style some day. My 1970s leisure suit? Not so much.
Oh, well.
“Remember the Good Old Days of Film?”
– as the good humanist and pacifist Al Huxley, who said “technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards” (proving even a liberal he and non me, can find common ground.)
Nod you get what you pay for (unless you don’t), Al and I part now company: Kerouac tuning out the liberal ‘noise’ theater entertainment 2019 while manually turning down the ‘hue’ tv and political correctness in order to get that never goes out of style vintage feel, yesteryear.
Which is to say film noir drive-in as rooftop antenna/rabbit ears prevail, the mind’s eye old-time radio broadcast too prefer, in lieu modern theater fare, which includes investment a small drink, popcorn, nachos and admission $35 – your plight is more pronounced, with six you get no egg roll but larger dilemma $200 – and then some.
Nod the lost art negotiation, some perspective help “roll back prices 1965 levels” while keeping the movie theme ours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2YRMixW9u8
… everything better with bluebonnet on it, return now to the year our discord politics, entertainment as topics otherwise, 2019.
😎
Peckinpah’s “Wild Bunch” was a bridge to far for many critics of his over the top violent sequences.
I remember his explanation to this day. Hilarious. He said, with a straight face, that the violence in his movies were “cathartic” and actually were a release that would prevent violence in the streets. “Gas-lighting” in it’s truest form, from long ago. 🙂
Peckinpah missed his true calling. He coulda “been somebody” in the Deep State.