Thursday, January 22, 2009
By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
You may have a big honking TV -- biggest on the block -- but it is nothing compared to an IMAX screen.
And that is why theater operators and movie studios have been building or installing them at megaplexes around the country, to convince people that sometimes it's not better to wait for the movie in the mailbox or on pay-per-view.
A digital IMAX auditorium will open Friday at the AMC-Loews at the Waterfront, just in time for the re-release everywhere of "The Dark Knight," which has six spectacular sequences filmed with IMAX cameras including the opening six minutes.
"The biggest thing that they should expect is that they're going to feel like they're actually in the movie because the screen will take up most of their field of view, and they're going to be knocked over by a sound system that's going to blow them out the doors," Larry O'Reilly, executive vice president of theater development for IMAX Corp., said this week.
"You can't escape from the movie; you actually feel like you're in the midst of it. Whereas in conventional cinema, there's a bit of a gap between the front row of the theater and the screen and you sit back and observe."
IMAX places the audience as close as possible to the screen, here measuring 50.2 feet wide by 28 feet high, and immerses it in sound designed for the space at hand. "We actually install it using lasers, that's how accurate is the positioning of the speakers."
At AMC-Loews, construction has been under way for a couple of weeks and employees have been briefed on the technology and potential questions from patrons. Among them may be inquiries about the price since IMAX tickets at the Waterfront will cost an additional $3 each. Customers will not be able to buy specific seats in the IMAX auditorium, the way they can in the VIP sections.
The idea of a supersize screen is not new to Pittsburgh.
The Carnegie Science Center boasts an Omnimax Theater, and the Cinemark theater at the Frazer mall near Tarentum includes an IMAX auditorium. When "The Dark Knight" debuted in July, Cinemark was the only nearby place that could show it in IMAX.
Asked how the AMC-Loews will compare to the other venues, O'Reilly says, "In the Omnimax or IMAX dome configuration, the screen comes right up and over the audience, which provides a great level of immersion and is really effective in particular on space films or underwater films because you feel like you really are under water."
As for the Cinemark auditorium, O'Reilly said, "That will be much more in keeping with what you can expect at the AMC location."
AMC built IMAX theaters in Manhattan, Los Angeles and San Francisco from the ground up but, more commonly, has been converting existing auditoriums as in Pittsburgh. Retrofitted locations here and in New Orleans are the 32nd and 33rd, with many more to come.
In addition to "The Dark Knight," a string of movies made for IMAX will be released in 2009, including "Watchmen," "Under the Sea 3D" narrated by Jim Carrey, "Monsters vs. Aliens," "Star Trek," "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," Disney's "A Christmas Carol" and "Avatar."
Some of those movies will feature 3-D scenes -- which the IMAX at AMC-Loews can accommodate -- and some will not.
Filmgoers may have to pay more attention if they plan to see a movie available in 3-D digital or 3-D digital IMAX or just plain old 2-D, which is the old-fashioned, traditional projection.
Consider the options available for "Beowulf" patrons in November 2007. "They could go to the multiplex and they could see it in 2-D if they wanted to, and that was probably a better experience than they were going to get at home," O'Reilly said.
"They could see it in digital 3-D, and that was a slight premium or they could see it in IMAX 3-D, which is the very top end, and so they had the choice of which kind of price point they wanted to hit and what kind of experience they wanted to have."
Although the digital IMAX equipment is sophisticated, it requires a smaller footprint in the projection booth than film would. "When we did the first three film-based locations, they had to actually knock walls out in the booth ... but we don't have to do that anymore," O'Reilly said.
In the battle for dollars from increasingly cautious consumers, IMAX is just one more weapon being used to lure people away from their TV sets, home theater systems and computers.
"IMAX has become more and more prominent, especially as far as feature films are concerned. There's definite demand for a grander theatrical experience," Brandon Gray of boxofficemojo.com said this week.
"Weeks after the normal theaters have dwindled, the IMAX theaters are still selling tickets. I just recall 'The Dark Knight' still had lines around the corner for the IMAX version when the box office overall was not nearly as high as it was."
As O'Reilly says, "By offering VIP [seating], by bringing in specialty food in some cases, by having a digital 3-D upgrade and an IMAX 2-D or 3-D experience, you're able to keep people coming out of their home and getting them off the couch, which is key to the industry going forward."
