Boxoffice - March 2016

SCREEN PLAY
THE GIANT
SCREEN
WORLD
We speak with James
Hyder, Founder and Editor,
Large Format Examiner
Interview by Daniel Loria
What would you say is the big story of
the moment for large format theaters?
The real big story in the giant screen
world is lasers. IMAX rolled out its first
laser system in late 2014 in Toronto and
has since installed more than a dozen of
them. In 2015 we began to see from IMAX
and other manufacturers in the giant screen
world. I cover the giant screen theaters in
the museums mostly; I do cover multiplexes,
but I mostly cover the screens in institutional
places, and that industry is very interested
in the lasers because they have the biggest
screens and need the brightest pictures. The
general consensus is that 4K digital is going
to be good enough; when 4K came out a
couple of years ago people were thinking we
might need 6K or 8K to really match the
quality of 70-millimeter film, but people
generally accept that 4K on a laser system is
really good. A lot of people are very happy
with the IMAX laser system, but others are
also looking at the somewhat less expensive
systems from other manufacturers, including
Christie and Barco, that are becoming
available now. So we’re seeing a number of
theaters make that switch. The image quality
available from laser, the brightness, the
contrast is all pretty spectacular. For a long
time in our business the exhibitors, and the
filmmakers to a certain extent, were saying,
“Maybe we can hold out with film—digital
is probably not going to be good for a very
long time,” and everyone was saying it was 5
to 10 years away for 15 to 20 years. Today,
pretty much the entire industry sees that
we’re switching to digital. Film projectors
are certainly going to be going away within
the next five years; there will probably be
very few of them left five years from now.
Film still holds a lot of advantages for
shooting, but digital cameras are getting
better. Our world of documentaries and
giant screens in museums is now seeing that
they can’t keep their heads in the sand for
much longer, they’re going to be switching
to digital, and most of them are looking for
what system to put into
their theater.
Were lasers also
the big takeaway
from the Giant
Screen Cinema
Association’s 2015
conference?
Yes, that was the first
time for a lot of folks to
see lasers, and they were
pretty impressed with
the IMAX laser system.
IMAX did great to
install its laser system in
JAMES HYDER
the Metreon Theatre in
San Francisco. They still had a film projector
in that theater, so in some cases we were able
to see the same film being shown in 15/70
film and on IMAX’s 4K laser system. A lot
of people were convinced that it looked just
as good and were very impressed. That was
the big takeaway—the folks who hadn’t seen
lasers before were convinced. There are some
people who still just prefer film, but even
they see the writing on the wall.
What has been the reaction of more
immersive giant screen offerings, such
as Barco Escape or ScreenX?
While I’ve been reporting on all the
systems you’ve mentioned, from the point of
view of my industry—museums and institutions—I
don’t think there are a lot of people
who have seen it. I saw them both at CinemaCon
in past years and reported on them,
and even though they are more immersive
than a giant flat screen, perhaps not as immersive
as a dome screen, our industry is not
seeing seriously in that direction. Right now
museums are looking at the price for switching
to laser. Some of them are choosing to
stick with IMAX because of its image quality
and brand reputation, and others are looking
at the possibility of switching out of IMAX
to a less expensive fee—IMAX doesn’t sell its
systems outright, it leases them, so you have
to pay a lease fee, a royalty, and a required
annual maintenance contract.
Are we having a resurgence of 70
millimeter, with major directors like
Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan,
and P.T. Anderson all coming out
with films in the format over the last
couple of years?
I, and a lot of folks who’ve grown up with
70 millimeter and think it’s really a spectacular
format when it’s well done, would love
to see film come back.
Speaking practically, I
think that’s relatively
unlikely. I think it’s impressive
that Christopher
Nolan and Quentin
Tarantino have been
able to get the studios
and theaters to support
them in getting as many
film prints as they do,
but I think it’s just going
to be too difficult and
expensive for most places
to bring back film in a
consistent way.
Some audiences weren’t too happy
with 70-millimeter screenings of The
Hateful Eight.
That’s inevitable when you talk about
older equipment that had to be brought
back into service and hadn’t been run or
maintained regularly for a long time, and
projectionists who haven’t had their hands in
these machines for ten years or more. These
kinds of things are inevitable, and inevitably
digital will almost always be more reliable
and less prone to problems than film.
You primarily cover museums and
other institutional screening spaces.
What large screen formats or offerings
have found success in your sector?
One thing that our world focuses on a lot
that multiplexes don’t, and that people from
our side have been talking about and thinking
should happen, is the full immersion of
dome screens. Domes are still a big problem
in terms of making projection work, and
the dome systems that are out there now—
mostly in planetariums—use multiple digital
projectors. They’ve moved up to what they
call 8K, using multiple 4K projectors to fill
a dome, and you get a picture that is much
more sharp than the film systems in dome
ever were, because that was just expanding
the film image beyond what it could ever do.
The current technology in terms of stitching
the digital images together has pretty much
been perfected now; it makes the dome
experience very compelling with the most
modern systems. The problem is that they
are expensive, they are not standardized, are
not DCI compatible, so there’s a problem
there for Hollywood movies. That’s one area
that I don’t think Hollywood has looked
at; it’s expensive of course to build a dome
theater, but it’s a completely different and
novel experience. n
36 BoxOffice ® MARCH 2016