Movie theater

Categories: Rooms | Cinemas and movie theaters

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A typical megaplex (AMC Ontario Mills 30 in Ontario, California).

A movie theater (American English) or cinema is a location, usually a building, for viewing movies. Colloquial expressions, mostly used for cinemas collectively, include the silver screen and the big screen (contrasted with the "small screen" of television). Generally, theaters are not owned by individuals, but rather operated by corporations and visited by the general public: one can attend the film showing after buying a ticket. The film is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium.

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Design

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Interior of a movie theatre, complete with acoustic wall hangings, wall-mounted speakers, and cup holders.

Traditionally a movie theater, like a stage theater, consists of a single auditorium with rows of comfortable seats, as well as a lobby area containing a box office, refreshment facilities, and washrooms. Stage theaters are sometimes converted into movie theaters by placing a screen in front of the stage and adding a projector; this conversion may be permanent, or temporary for purposes such as showing art house fare to an audience accustomed to plays. The familiar characteristics of relatively low admission and open seating can be traced to Samuel "Roxy" Rothapfel, an early movie theatre architect. Many of these early theaters contain a balcony, an elevated platform above the theaters rearmost seats. The rearward main floor "loge" seats were sometimes larger, softer, and more widely spaced and sold for a higher price.

The first permanent structure designed for screening of movies was Tally's Electric Theater, completed in 1902 in Los Angeles, California. The 1913 opening of the Regent Theater in New York City signalled a new respectability for the medium, and the start of the two-decade heyday of American cinema design. Los Angeles promoter Sid Grauman began the trend of theatre-as-destination with his ornate "Million Dollar Theatre", which opened on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles in 1918. In the next ten years, as movie revenues exploded, independent promoters and movie studios (who owned their own proprietary chains until an antitrust ruling in 1948) raced to build the most lavish, elaborate, attractive theatres. These forms morphed into a unique architectural genre—the movie palace—a unique and extreme architectural genre which came to an end with the deepening of the Great Depression. The movie chains were also among the first industries to install to a large extent air conditioning systems which gave the theatres an addition lure of comfort in the summer period.

In conventional low pitch viewing floors the preferred seating arrangement is to use staggered rows. While a less efficient use of floor space this allows a somewhat improved sight line between the patrons seated in the next row toward the screen, provided they do not lean toward one another.

So-called stadium seating is employed in many modern theaters. Originally employed for flat-screen IMax viewing (which has a very tall screen) this feature has proven popular with theater patrons as it allows a clear sight line over the seated occupants forward of the viewer.

Several movie studios achieved vertical integration by acquiring and constructing theater chains. The so-called "Big Five" theater chains of the 1920s and 1930s were all owned by studios: Paramount, Warner, Loews (owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Fox, and RKO. All were broken up as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1948 United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. anti-trust case.

Since the mid-1960s in many areas the traditional theater has been largely replaced by multiplex cinemas, where a single lobby is shared between several auditoriums (the term "cinema" or "theater" may then mean either the whole complex or a single auditorium; sometimes "screen" is used with the latter meaning). This arrangement allows the operating company to show more movies with fewer staff. Sometimes a popular movie is shown on multiple screens at the same multiplex, reducing the choice of movies but offering more choice of viewing times. Two or three screens may be produced by dividing up an existing cinema, but newly built multiplexes usually have at least 6 to 8 screens. A very large, modern multiplex with 15 or more screens is called a megaplex. AMC Theatres is credited with creating the first multiplex; Kinepolis pioneered the first megaplex.

IMAX is a system using oversized film to produce image quality far superior to conventional film. IMAX theaters require an oversized screen as well as special projectors. The first permanent IMAX theater was at Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada.

Some movie theaters are outdoors and so can only be used when it is dark. A drive-in movie theater is basically a parking area with a screen at one end and a projection booth at the other. Moviegoers drive into the parking spaces which are usually provided with portable loudspeakers or the vehicle's sound system tunes to an FM station over which the soundtrack is played, and the movie is viewed through the car windscreen. Drive-in movies were mainly found in the United States, and were especially popular in the 1950s and 1960s, but are now almost extinct.

Some outdoor movie theaters are just cleared areas where the audience sits upon chairs or blankets and watch the movie on a temporary screen, or even the wall of a convenient building.

In the late 1990s, student organisations in universities and schools started to show movies in auditoriums equipped with multimedia projectors. Before the ubiquity of classic and modern films in DVD and VHS formats, student groups at large universities often sponsored screenings of films on 16mm projectors in lecture halls as a way to raise money. Many small colleges also had student-run film groups that projected 16mm films on a regular basis to students.

Some alternative methods of showing movies have been popular in the past. In the 1980s the introduction of VHS cassettes made possible video-salons, small rooms where visitors viewed the film on a large TV. These establishments were especially popular in the Soviet Union, where official distribution companies were slow to adapt to changing demand and so movie theaters could not show popular Hollywood and Asian films.

Movies are also commonly shown on airliners in flight, using large screens in each cabin or smaller screens for each group of rows or each individual seat; the airline company sometimes charges a fee for the headphones needed to hear the movie's sound. Movies can also be shown on trains.

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Programming

Movie theaters may also be classified by the type of movies shown:

  • First-run theater: A theater that runs primarily mainstream film fare from the major film companies and distributors, during the initial release period of each film.
  • Second-run or discount theater: A theater that runs films that have been pulled from the first-run theaters and presented at a lower ticket price.
  • Repertoire/repertory theater or art house: A theater that presents more alternative and art films as well as second-run and classic films. (These are sometimes known as dollar theaters.)
  • A sex theater specializes in showing pornographic movies.
  • IMAX theaters can show conventional movies, but the major benefits of the IMAX system are only available when showing movies filmed using it. While a few mainstream feature films have been produced in IMAX, IMAX movies are often documentaries featuring spectacular natural scenery, and may be limited to the 45-minute length of a single reel of IMAX film.
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Admission

According to motion picture rating systems, children or teenagers below a certain age may be forbidden access to theaters showing certain movies, or simply subject to parental guidance.

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Crowd control

As movie theaters have grown into multiplexes and megaplexes, crowd control has become a major concern. An overcrowded megaplex can be rather unpleasant, and in an emergency can be extremely dangerous. Therefore, all major theater chains have implemented crowd control measures.

The most well-known measure is the ubiquitous holdout line which prevents ticketholders for the next showing of that weekend's most popular movie from entering the building until their particular auditorium has been cleared out and cleaned.

Since the 1980s, some theater chains (especially AMC Theatres) have developed a policy of co-locating their theaters in shopping centers (as opposed to the old practice of building stand-alone theaters). They deliberately build lobbies and corridors that cannot hold as many people as the auditoriums, thus making holdout lines necessary. In turn, ticketholders will hopefully be enticed to shop or eat while stuck outside in the holdout line.

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"The back row"

Sometimes couples go to a movie theater for the additional reason that it provides the possibility of some physical intimacy, where the dark provides some privacy (with additional privacy in the back-row). This applies in particular for young people who still live with their parents, and these parents tend to monitor and/or forbid certain activities. Compared with being together in a room without other people, it may also be reassuring for one or both of the couple (and for parents) that the intimacy is necessarily limited.

Arm rests may be a hindrance for intimacy. Some theaters have love seats: seats for two without an armrest in the middle. The most modern theaters have movable armrests throughout the theater that when down can hold a food container as well as act as an armrest or partition between the seats and when up allow closer contact between the couple. More expensive theaters may have large comfortable sofas.

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Other services

Movie theaters usually sell various snack foods and drinks at concession stands which often represents their primary source of income; movie studios in the US traditionally drive hard bargains entitling them to more than 70, 80, or 90% of the gross ticket revenue during the first week (and then the balance changes in 10% increments per week from there). Some movie theaters forbid eating and drinking inside the viewing room (restricting such activities to the lobby), while others encourage it, e.g. by selling large portions of popcorn. Concessions is currently a huge area of expansion with many companies in the US offering a wider range of snacks, including hot dogs and nachos. The noise of people eating, including the opening of wrappers, is frowned upon by many moviegoers.

It is quite common for the lobby to include an arcade game area.

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Business practice controversies

A recent development in cinema programming has been the inclusion of commercial advertising shorts that have nothing to do with film. Many filmgoers have complained that these advertisements defeat the basic point of the experience of seeing films without this kind of commercialism interfering. Other critics like Roger Ebert have expressed concerns that these advertisement, plus an excessive number of movie trailers could lead to pressure to restrict the preferred length of the feature films themselves to facilitate playing schedules. So far, the theatre companies have typically been highly resistant to these complaints, citing the need for the supplementary income.

Another major recent concern is that the dramatic improvements in stereo sound systems have lead to cinemas playing the soundtracks of presented films at unacceptably high volume levels. Usually, the trailers are presented at a very high sound level, presumably to overcome the sounds of a busy crowd. The sound is not adjusted downward for a sparsely occupied theater, and some patrons employ earplugs for the trailer period.

In recent years cinemas have started to show warnings, before the movie starts, against using cameras and camcorders during the movie. These warnings threaten customers with being removed from the cinema and arrest by the police. This example was shown at cinemas in the United Kingdom:

You are not permitted to use any camera or recording equipment in this cinema. This will be treated as an attempt to breach copyright. Any person doing so can be ejected and such articles may be confiscated by the police. We ask the audience to be vigilant against any such activity and report any matters arousing suspicion to cinema staff. Thank you.

The multiplex offers a great amount of flexibility to a theater operator, enabling multiple theaters to exhibit the same popular production in multiple theaters with staggered starting times.

The colocation of theaters and the rotation of start times results in a great economy of scale for the sale of so-called "junk food" — sugary soda pop, popcorn, and the like. In addition to poor nutritional values, the foodstuffs sold are also characterised by extremely high markup and the profit from their sales can form the bulk of the gross margin of a theater.

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Major movie theater companies

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North America

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Asia

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Europe

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Australasia

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See also

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