There are two important institutions that are about to be decimated by technology: newspapers and movies. It won't be pretty.There are two important institutions that are about to be decimated by technology: newspapers and movies. It won't be pretty.
The biggest impact technology has had on any social institution is moviegoing. I think moviegoing is doomed to die off slowly unless Hollywood can come up with a reasonable new experience. As it now stands, I can feed an HDTV signal into a standard Toshiba LCD projector through the composite video ports and blow out a 100-inch 16:9 image on a screen and get a theater experience in the home. With progressive scan or line-doubling DVD players, the experience is phenomenal. Use a DLP theater projector or a large-screen plasma display, and you're in heaven.
So why do I now want to go to the theater? Do I want to go because it's more expensive than a DVD rental? Do I want to go for the greasy popcorn coated with trans-fat butter-flavored oil? Do I want to go so I can hear cell phones going off all over the place and people yakking on them? Do I want to go because most of the movies aren't shown on large screens at all, but in boxcar-sized rooms with screens not much bigger than my projector screen at home? Do I want to go because the sound is turned too loud and pumped through a mediocre audio system?
The only reason you may want to go is if you can see the big-screen version of the movie and the movie has big-screen impact. In Europe and Asia they still have massive theaters with screens as huge as the ones in the old American drive-ins—a real event and a real group experience. In the United States this is rare, the exception in most instances. Somewhere along the line the economics of movie distribution changed and all these multiplex theaters cropped up. The grand palace was done. Most have shut down or have been transformed into old-fashioned stage/concert theaters.
The movie business has been impinged upon a couple of times. The first was by radio and the entertainment that radio drama provided. Adding sound to movies was an easy fix. When television came along, the movie folks rolled out Cinemascope and wide screens. Other gimmicks such as Cinerama, 70-mm film, and IMAX added to the reasons to get out of the house.
Now with the DVD and the so-called home theater, the average experience is simply better at home. You can stop the movie when you want. You can eat dinner while watching. You can pause the movie and examine a scene more closely. The only thing you really miss is the group experience of sitting in an audience with a hundred or more strangers who react to the film, which is an important form of socialization. Of course, that experience has to be balanced by the idiot with the hat sitting in front of you or the girl who keeps getting up every five minutes to go to the bathroom or make a call.
In the 1950s and 1960s, during the waning years of the traditional big theater with loge seating, there even used to be ushers who could throw people out of the theater. Nowadays in most venues, if an usher ever showed up, he'd be beaten and stripped.
Also, in case you haven't noticed, they are starting to bring the release of the DVD closer and closer to the release of the movie. This means that eventually they will be released at the same time, and only the most spectacular movies will get any attendance. All the art and small films will just be DVDs. This means that essentially all but a few movies will eventually be nothing more than made-for-TV movies going immediately to DVD.
Does this kill Hollywood? And what does it do for the public need for great movies? This is the baffling part of this scenario.—Continue Reading
Read the full story on pcmag.com: Newspapers and Movies—Both Fading Fast
