Boxoffice-March.1988

tured a series of veiy flexible lenses to
complete the system.
The results, as demonstrated last
summer to industry leaders in Hollywood,
are surprising. The image is not
indistinguishable from 35mm, but as
viewed on a 34 foot by 17 foot screen in
AMC's Burbank 10, it is convincing
enough to think that this new process
could bring new life to those exhibitors
that Project HQ has been designed to
help: those smaller exhibitors that are
within the umbrella of a distributor's
print and television campaign, but are
thought to be too unproductive to be given
a very expensive 35mm print dayand-date.
"We are not talking about theatres at
the end of the earth, we are talking
about the marginal theatres that just
miss out on first-nm films," says Durwood.
"A motion picture company has
to make most of its money during that
four to six weeks that its marketing
campaign is working. By supplementing
their usual 35mm and 70mm runs with
16mm prints, they could open in as
many as 3,000 theatres and make much
better use of their advertising."
With figures that estimate that a distributor
could make a 16mm print for a
quarter of what it costs to make a 35mm
one, both Richter and Durwood think
that such a scenario is entirely possible.
The savings for exhibitors would be just
as impressive, with Richter claiming
that transportation costs could be cut by
as much as 80 percent.
"There used to be a small theatre in
Essex, New York, where I live, but it
went out of business when Bonded
started charging $200 to transport a
print from New York City to Essex and
back again," Richter says, giving an
"This system could
surely replace SSmm in
80 percent of the
theatres in this country.
The image is £ne in
theatres up to 500
seats."
example. "That same film on 16mm
could be carried by UPS for S15.00."
(An additional savings to exhibitors,
Richter says, is that the films are
shipped and projected on a single reel.
By eliminating assembling and breakdown
duties, personnel hours would be
reduced accordingly.)
With savings as incredible as those
cited here, one has to wonder if Hollywood
and the major exhibitors across
the country might not look to 16mm to
replace 35mm entirely someday. Richter
says no, conceding that the 16mm
image is not that good, and that audiences
in major cities will continue to
demand 35 and 70mm prints. But Stanley
Durwood is not so quick to dismiss
the idea.
"This system could never replace
70mm, but it could surely replace 35mm
in 80 percent of the theatres in this
country," he says. "The image is fine in
theatres up to 500 seats."
Durwood has tentative plans to test
this belief this summer, when he hopes
to place the 16mm projector package in
50 AMC theatres across the country
(mostly in the Western states, he says).
Almost every major distributor has seen
the process and are ready to supply
AMC with first-run, 16mm prints, Durwood
says, and he intends to run these
films head-to-head with 35mm films in
adjoining theatres. The public will not
be notified of the experiment, and Durwood
is confident that no one will know
the difference.
"Our only concern at this point is the
quality and consistency of the 16mm
prints," Durwood says. "The sound and
image quality of the projection system
is just where we want it, and we'll be
testing to make sure that the projector is
as dependable as we think it is. But I am
very picky, and I know that the picture
projected by this system is excellent."
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