IMAX Meets Media, Celebrates Six Years of Ripoffs
It turns out that Aziz Ansari only thought he had exposed a major moviegoing scandal. After the comic last week Twittered his outrage over a $5 surcharge to watch Star Trek on an IMAX screen only slightly bigger than a conventional screen, the exhibitor's front office said in a presentation Tuesday that was just old news. In fact, they've been misrepresenting their product for years now.
The Ansari fuss was just a hiccup, apparently, in a system that has installed cheaper IMAX systems in participating multiplexes for going on six years. The retrofitting for smaller theaters costs less than a third of that for the better-known 76-foot-high screens ($1.5 million, compared to $5 million) and includes removing the lower rows of seats in stadium-seating venues to create "the perception of greater screen size and viewing immersion." The only actual difference, it seems, is the IMAX's remastering job that supposedly "boosts image resolution and brightness." Everything but its size.
So, just to get this straight: IMAX calls a conference and says its conventional screens have been around a while. They cost theater owners $3.5 million less to install than a real IMAX screen, but they cost you $5 extra every time out, regardless of the size. All you get for your money is "perception." And because no one complained before last week, it's old news. Please prove me -- and them, in the end -- wrong about that last part.
· Imax execs downplay importance of screen size [Reuters]
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Comments
Dear IMAX enthusiasts: Yes, for the last six years, IMAX has been deceiving the public, beginning with the remastering (IMAX DMR) of the film "Apollo 13".
All of the companies IMAX films of current, and dated, Hollywood movies are all 'fake' as none of them contain actual IMAX footage (w.t.e. of last summer's TDK)--just digitally 'faked' apparent resolution, and film grain camouflage, and they are all 'letterboxed' (i.e. a partial, smaller, matted section of the screen).
For one thing, film grain has nothing to do with resolution, the lens has that job. A spy can make a microdot of a 35mm negative that's reduced to the size of a pinhead and all of the resolution will be in that tiny pin-sized film copy, intact.
Another thing is the sound--12,000 watts?--for what, louder explosions? We already have DTS, Dolby Digital, SDDS, and even 70mm six track magnetic sound from days-of-old, and all of them sound just as good or better than IMAX sound. If the volume is cranked up on those popular cinema systems, megawatts or not, believe me, it will shatter your eardrums, too.
I saw the Academy Award Winning movie "Slum Dog Millionaire" last summer at the AMC theatre (g.w. they have fake IMAX there, too) in SDDS and had to leave the screening room three times because the sound was so loud I thought I'd go deaf! It was downright painful--and if I go deaf from watching 'LOUD' movies, then I certainly won't have anymore use for the wonders of digital sound....
What I don't get is why IMAX, Inc. would 'dumb down' the 'image maximum' and resolution, and basically, only offer a louder soundtrack--pretty stupid.
I read another blog today that was interesting--if you want to be enveloped by the screen size and it's a small screen, all you need to do is sit in the first three rows of the theatre, and who the Hell wants to do that unless there are NO other premium seats available.
Take my advice: Go see a true IMAX movie filmed in 15/70mm and projected on their towering six to eight story screens--you'll come out numb and with a neck-ache--enjoy IMAX 15/70mm 'the real thing', and if you don't want that neck-ache, embrace 'fake' IMAX digital, because it offers a slight improvement of what has been available for more than 100 years . . . yes, ordinary 35mm projection....
That's my 3 cents worth....
Grant Sutor Vuille