Niche versus mass market: big just isn’t better at the cinema
Chris Murray laments the demise of independent cinemas and the rise of generic shopping centre multiplexes with their get ‘em in, bang ‘em out culture.
Punters visit the cinema for an exciting communal experience, not the ease of parking.
As the multiplex struggles to keep the candy bar traffic flowing, automated cogs pump out digital images and the passionate few who strive to make their independent exhibition houses a cultural beacon (The Ritz, The Astor, Chauvel and so on) face impending doom. It’s an education problem, to be honest.
Kids these days have no idea what it means to sit in a cinema where the environment is part of the experience. Moviegoers of past generations were spoilt and didn’t know it. They had choice with unique cinemas specialising in various genres and programming. Today it’s just a shopping mall with seemingly no celebratory effort. Get ‘em in and bang ‘em out.
They don’t even bother to use curtains anymore. ‘Who cares, we’ve got their money and they will take what they’re given.’
Franchised exhibition, as a creative business, is lacking the gusto and inventive passion that smaller independent venues offer. As a result they’re all clambering for the next big thing to keep punters from illegally downloading or just waiting a few months for the DVD. The small guys have known and acted on this all along ironically due to the back-room blanket deals that have shut out mainstream product from independents for decades.
Much like how the music industry sucked on a shotgun, it’s about freedom of choice, a passionate delivery and getting people excited.
Wouldn’t it be great if instead of having one building with 20 screens, have 20 buildings with two screens scattered across town? Spread ‘em out, show different things, have each venue exude different atmospheres and attract likeminded audiences.
Don’t for a second tell me there’s not enough product.
That’s like saying there’s not enough bands for numerous live venues. CD sales are down, record labels are failing miserably, but kids are still out every night watching their favourite bands.
If people are downloading films, it means they want to watch them, right? So why don’t we take the effort to make that experience affordable, irreplaceable and somewhat magical once more.
Chris Murray is the creative director of Popcorn Taxi.
- This feature first appeared in the relaunched print edition of Encore magazine. To subscribe, click here
December 16th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Comments
16 Dec 11
11:12 PM
Like our little cinema in Yarraville, Melbourne……….www.suntheatre.com.au
12 Jan 12
11:30 AM
The spirit of community is rapidly fading from cinema and its not just about the absence of specialised buildings. At a screening of Melancholia (a film that only the remaining art-house outlets will show), a sensitive moment was ruined by a woman in front of me using her phone; another woman to one side of me started texting; another phone persisted ringing and the mood sustained by the film’s craft was diminished. Perhaps because its a film that divides opinions, those against it seem willing to exhibit casual disregard for others in the cinema. Technology has created a new restlessness, an impatience. We’re no longer prepared to wait and absorb what the film-maker is saying. Everything has to be delivered in quick bites or we’re on the phone telling the world it sucks. Little wonder we’re killing off the auteur. Many of us are now so used to wraparound sound and big screens with anything and everything downloadable that we no longer distinguish between the cinema and our lounge room. We act as if we can make as much noise as we wish and have lost respect for the gradual unravelling of storytelling in the dark. We’ve been fed a pop storytelling formula pepped up with sex and violence for its own sake to reassure the big money. And its well known that big money has little time for dreams or dreaming, only for the ‘cold hard realities of life’. Too many movies are manufactured rather than created.
We need a phone ethic in movies; perhaps the bloody things should be banned altogether (but maybe that’s my generation speaking). Cinema has lost the presence of audience attention. I’d love to recapture the sense of a big movie I had as a schoolboy sitting through the overture of Ben Hur with vast red curtains opening as the film did. The sensation was far better than the film itself. At a recent viewing of War Horse, the audience was required to check in their phones. It improved the experience but made for a queue and a bit of a wait at the end (pity about the movie).
I like the odd chat with Siri but I switch her off in the movies. Why is that such a big ask? The only way I get an undisturbed and uninterrupted movie these days is on my home system with the lights off. But I also enjoy good 3D as a cinema experience because the glasses create, for me, an intimacy with the movie while sharing the experience with an audience/community. The trouble with that is that the technology dominates the story (Tin Tin and Avatar are superb visual experiences of mediocre storytelling). Maybe technology and the growing range of projection systems will create a multitude of specialised communities where individual tastes can be shared (cinemas that seat fifty for the chance to share a Fellini retrospective or a trip through Film Noir). We were stumbling toward that experience with a film club through one of the community colleges (and the opportunity to discuss film, director etc) but a dispute over the cost of the club brought that to an end.
12 Jan 12
6:14 PM
Great ideas and insight Chris..David you nearly made me weep..We act as if we can make as much noise as we wish and have lost respect for the gradual unravelling of storytelling in the dark.”..too true too true.
Bring on the smaller spread out cinema’s..great idea
30 Jan 12
8:58 AM
Chris Murray, you have hit the nail right on the centre of the head, right where it drives the point; trouble is, where does the point go? Deep into the wood, dense wood at that.
Film making as an art, once alive and encouraged, has almost been forgotten. We live in an environment dictated to by soft ware hawkers and greedy groups of money minded people in suits and ties, to whom names such as Jaques Becker, Fritz Lang or Jack Clayton would mean absolutely nothing.
A quick check of the film screen-writing scene today, reveals a bunch of internet sapient software companies dictating the terms and defining the structures of film scripts, WHY? Any artist knows that by closing the doors and widows, and concentrating on one set of outlines can create only one thing outside of deep frustration, and that is isomorphism in unlimited amounts.
I look always to the future, but as I get old, I look back, of course, upon a widening field of memory. I remember the arrival of Hallstrom’s beautifully directed My Life as a Dog and Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is a good example of the art of film-making failing to please the author, because of the foolish attempt at the impossible comparison between book and film. I remember thinking then, as I more fervently believe today, that had either of these screenplays been offered in Australia, in our own quite wonderful land of, what should be, the perfect opportunity to expand and diversify in the cinema arts, they would never have got past the clutch of “experts” or the dollar mad suits and ties.
A note for the fresh out of uni business course experts, the software savvy and the dollar mad bean counters:
Heinz built a company upon the canning of beans, but it was 57 varieties that made them great.
31 Jan 12
7:47 AM
@ RM.
I’m old too – but arrived at a totally different conclusion.
“Commercial film is a juncture where art meets commerce”.
Like it or not we cannot continue following the prevailing nationalistic mantra of “telling our stories” at the cost of continually ailienating audiences.
We are first & foremost a medium of “entertainment” – we therefore have an obligation to give audiences what they desire- not what we believe they should have. Strange part is achieving this is not hard – (telling our stories in an entertertaing manner). Immediate problem however is a vast majority of those currently in control don’t have any idea about what their doing? Hence the appalling returns for local productions – which translates into an unacceptable lack of opportunities (jobs) for aspiring young filmmakers. (writers included).
31 Jan 12
3:49 PM
Been trying to get a ‘paying’ (I’d honestly work for free if it was a job I could love) job in the industry for 12 months now. Just can’t do it. I can see how that would demoralize and turn away a huge number of talented individuals. I’ll keep persisting (give me a job ABC!) but, yeah, it’s not a healthy industry at all.
31 Jan 12
4:45 PM
@Ww
We have arrived at the same destination via different roads, that is all.
I agree with you absolutely. What I refer to as the art of film making, is an art that should always be guided by the purpose of entertaining the audience. Not spoon fed entertainment, or blatant pandering to the lowest common denominator, but entertainment certainly. Any film maker who wishes to honour the mantra of “telling their story” should begin with an understanding of, and respect for, drama and comedy, which are two essential elements in story telling. The open stage, radio, television or celluloid frames drawn through a projector in rapid succession, it’s all theatre.
31 Jan 12
7:19 PM
Brian – know its a well worn clique’ – but this is an industry made up of committed stayers – so what ever you do don’t ever contemplate giving up.
Combine your dreams with determination – this is a time of great expansion & opportunity for this industry – your obviously on the net – use it – the world is your oyster. And always remember – if you can’t dream you shouldn’t be in movies.
Go for it.
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