Picture The Future

August 8, 2007

Source: The Australian

Despite talk of big-screen televisions displaying the latest in games or movies pirated from the internet, going to the movies is not a ritual that is about to fade away. Humans are social animals. We like to go out, and will continue to congregate at our local multiplex, just as we do at the shops or the pub. Teenagers still want to escape their parents, and a trip to the movies is a way of sizing up potential partners.

And for all the home entertainment hype, cinemas will always have the biggest screen, the loudest sound and the best sense of participating in a shared experience. They will always be popular because the people who watch films at home are also interested in a trip to the movies.

This is good news for those who have invested millions in multiplexes. The bad news is they are going to have to invest a great deal more to compete with the extraordinary range of alternative ways of seeing a film. Very soon people will be able to download a new title on to their TV, computer or even those mobile devices we used to think of as phones. By the end of the next decade the most popular piercing may well be a microchip that makes it possible to watch a movie while lying down with your eyes shut.

But cinemas face a much more immediate challenge: the people who make movies are chasing every available audience.

What helps cinemas stay in business today is that they show films first. Although exhibitors are keen to to hang, draw and quarter anybody who proclaims this, the truth is that this will change.

"There will be all these actuaries in the US studios sitting around working out how to best make money from each film, because that is just what big multinational public corporations do," says Troy Lum, co-founder of Hoscotch Films, the Australian distributor of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Lives of Others. "They will look at Harry Potter 114 and, because people are illegally downloading it, they will decide to release it everywhere, on as many platforms as they can and all on the same day. They won't have warm, fuzzy feelings that make them want to protect cinemas. That's not their mandate."

In industry-speak, cinemas will lose the first window. There may be a transitional phase, with films released first in cinemas and then in every other way all at once, thus collapsing the existing DVD, pay-TV and free-to-air TV windows into one. But, sooner or later, they will be simultaneously released. The distributors may not admit it, but they are getting ready for the day when their window slams shut.

As it is, most exhibitors have little control over the quality or timing of the blockbusters that are their bread and butter: they get what the US studios give them. So if they want to attract as many people as possible, they have to do it in ways that extend beyond the film.

At present it is about making a trip to the movies an experience, such as the one on offer at Hoyts' Thehalfpipe cinema in Melbourne, which seats 42 but, instead of regular seating, offers beanbags known as LoveSacs.

"Thehalfpipe has been hugely popular because it is unique, a point of difference," says Hoyts marketing manager Anthony Thiessen. "The occupancy rate is twice as high as normal auditoriums. People call and specifically ask what's playing there.

"Mums with little kids are starting to enjoy it too because of the three-seater beanbags."

By the time the senior citizens who like Thehalfpipe's comfortable beanbags have helped themselves up, the kids from the same session will be down in the BlueZone, a concept being introduced at the 20Hoyts multiplexes across the country from Thursday that offers patrons equipped with Bluetooth technology the chance to download film clips, ringtones and screensavers from their favourite movies on to their mobile phones.

Meanwhile, in an elegant cocktail bar nearby, thirtysomething women at the beginning of a hens' night have just ordered champagne and kataifi prawns, to be served once they have settled into the leather recliners in the luxurious auditorium next door. One of the party has organised the evening, but Hoyts is happy to accommodate them. Last year Hoyts offered screenings of The Devil Wears Prada as a "girls' night out" before the film opened to the public. All it took was one email to Hoyts Movie Club members for all 3400 seats in 16 cinemas across Australia to sell out in 72 hours. For their $20 ticket patrons not only got to see the film but received a $50 showbag of goodies.

And then there are people in their 40s and 50s who want to watch a quality film in comfort. They like wide seats with plenty of elbow and leg room. At a flagship cinema in an upmarket shopping centre, such as Greater Union Bondi Junction in Sydney, they get it. All the leading chains have cinemas masquerading as boutique hotels. Despite the cost -- a seat can cost $36, with the cocktails and canapes extra -- they have proved popular. But the cinema that appeals to older people who like luxury is not the only answer.

"There is a conscious desire to create environments that are not just the exclusive domain of one sector or another," says Ross Entwistle, managing director of AHL Entertainment, which owns Greater Union and Queensland exhibitor Birch Carroll & Coyle.

"A full house of teenagers watching a broad comedy has to have as good an experience as an older audience seeing a French subtitled film."

It is all about the experience and that means new technology you can't have at home.

"What is on the screen is so much more elaborate now, but we have become desensitised," says Lum. "Young people are watching the most incredible things on YouTube, and for free. Depraved, ridiculous, exciting things are at the tip of their fingers. It is not good enough to just whack something on the screen and think that they will come."

In the building boom of 20 or so years ago, the aim was to squeeze as many cinemas as possible into the available space, thus giving customers plenty of film choices. Now there is a swing back to big screens in the multiplexes. Some seat 500 people and, like the 28m Xtreme Screen in Sydney's Blacktown, leave home theatres for dead. And there is more change to come.

Not all of it will be obvious to patrons enjoying a night at the movies.For example, digital systems will replace the film reels cinemas have used for a century. The switch from 35mm film to digital is driven by industry economics that suit the studios. In North America the change will save distributors an estimated $US1 billion ($1.1billion) annually in manufacturing costs alone. Of course, the exhibitors, who may have to fork out $US100,000 for the new digital projectors -- three times what they paid for their film projectors -- are not as enthusiastic.

While about 3000 of the 36,000 auditoriums in the US have converted to digital, only 16 of Australia's nearly 2000 screens are digitised. Digital cinema should deliver better and more consistent quality, but only connoisseurs pay much attention to this sort of thing.

What the average movie goer will notice is 3-D, which is driving directors' desire for digital cinema. It makes movie-going a much more sensory experience, and it will not be available for home cinema in the foreseeable future.

Dreamworks Animation (the house of Shrek) says all its films will be released in 3-D by 2009, when Titanic director James Cameron will usher his new sci-fi film, Avatar, into cinemas. It is expected to be a tipping point because the film will showcase 3-D's capacity to make an audience feel it is part of the action. Avatar, which will star Australian Sam Worthington, is a mix of live and computer-generated action.

In the future, there are likely to be two or three 3-D screens in every multiplex.

Digital also has the capacity to substantially shake up what screens at the cinema. In theory at least, whatever can go on a DVD, or be recorded digitally, will go on the big screen. The massive screens are ideal for watching a footy final, a rock concert or people playing games. Both music and sport have been trialled in Australia. Hoyts, in partnership with Xbox, will hold gaming championships series by the end of this year.

If people are willing to pay a hefty ticket price, events such as these may take hold. Using the screen for alternative content has been talked about for years but digital technology will allow it to happen. The odds are that the biggest non-feature hit is something that has not yet been thought of. With cinemas the place where young people hang out, perhaps evangelicals, or the army, will provide content to drive recruitment.

Whether digital cinema changes the nature of the feature films shown is the big unknown.

Despite exhibitors putting so much effort into the movie-going experience, most research confirms that the film is the main attraction drawing people to the cinema.

And in some suburban multiplexes the films are much more diverse than in the past. The latest Harry Potter offering and The Simpsons Movie might still dominate, but there are also foreign-language films and serious dramas that would not have been there five years ago.

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which appealed to conservative Christians, demonstrated how it is possible to bring into cinemas people who don't usually go there.

What have already disappeared into the limbo of direct-to-DVD release are films that are neither commercially popular nor critically acclaimed. With the studios now earning more from overseas than from the US, many of their films are culturally bland and this could drive a swing back to localism.

All this is irrelevant, of course, for people who don't have a cinema in the neighbourhood: there is a significant upgrading program under way, but very few new venues are planned. People poorly served by the cinema chains will be downloading films or renting DVDs through the mail, or just settling for what is on TV.

But for those who do frequent cinemas, it is going to be a lot of fun watching what happens in coming years. For cinema, it will never be necessary to write a eulogy.

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