2011 News Review

by Peter J. Knight

So it is the end of another year, and it has certainly been a year which has been dominated by the conversion from film to digital. Many of the circuits have made their projection staff redundant, believing that they are no longer required in this new world. We have seen two big competitors of the 35mm world, beginning to work a bit more closely as the requirement for their product is reduced - namely Deluxe and Technicolor sharing their film processing facilities. In fact in December Technicolor announced plans to shutdown many of its plans in Europe. Also in December it was announced that the 50% conversion tipping point had been reached across the world.

Along with Digital, 3D has remained in the news - often with complaints about the price, safety concerns or just the experience.

Probably one of the main technological highlights was the demonstration and general industry noise around higher framerates, which the digital technology allows for. There were several demonstrations and announcements around its use over the year. The other technological announcement of the year was that of lazer projection.

And of course all the digital related companies such as Sony, Barco, Christie, NEC, TI, RealD and the rest were all making announcements around new contracts they had won, which film festival or prestigious event they had been selected to be involved with, or what percentage of the market they now accounted for. With Vue Cinemas deciding to go exclusively with Sony Projectors the UK market share of digital projectors moved heavily in their direction.

But of course Sony Projectors were not without their share of bad publicly during the year, when a US newspaper story revealed that because it took 20 minutes to change the lens from 2D to 3D films and back again that often this wasn’t happening in the cinemas and as a result many 2D films were being shown through the 3D lens meaning that a large amount of light was being lost. This story spread rapidly across the Internet and via various blogs within days.

In some good news, with the Harry Potter films coming to an end, Warner Brothers announced in January that they were opening a major studio facility at Leavesden, England which was also going to include a Harry Potter tour where visitors could walk around the sets from the film franchise. This was going to open in 2012.

And of course there was the usual collection of stories about cinemas which were opening or closing, or still closed and empty. This included a number of former Odeon cinemas, a new cinema in Newquay, Cornwall and the taking over of six cinemas owned by Reel Cinemas by Odeon Cinemas, including the Loughborough cinema. IMAX cinemas also saw an increase in the number of screens it opened within other cinema venues throughout the year, with more planned during 2012.

One of the big things which I noticed over the year was the increased number of pop up cinema and mobile/outdoor events which had started to happen, largely due to the change in the technology and how easy it was to operate. There were large events such as those put on by the Nomad Cinema, a company setup by the Lexi Cinema. What was interesting about Nomad was that apart from just doing the summer screenings, they also took over an empty shop in central London in order to put on screenings over the Christmas period. Many of the films being shown being linked to a theme. Secret Cinemas continued to do well as well. But there was also smaller ‘Pop Up’ cinemas which appeared, such as Films on Fridges in East London, which existed for just a few weeks in the summer before disappearing. Certainly where once there were only a few cinema events being listed by Time Out in the summer, this list is now growing to an ever growing number, and the number of mobile and outdoor cinemas which are being discovered on the Internet each day is growing.

2011 was also the year that the controversial UK Film Council was disbanded and many of its duties were merged into the BFI

Of course the retirement of a projectionist in Bridgewater after 67 years lead to a number of stories and highlighted the world of the projectionist. Later on the year Mark Kermode’s book “The Good, The Bad & the Multiplex” was published which amongst other things supported the work and plight of the projectionist. Anyone who saw the “King’s Speech” earlier in the year, would have seen a brief view of a BTH projector, which was provided to the film company by the Projected Picture Trust in Bletchley Park.

And so the end of the year reaches us. I think 2012 will see many of the same themes as this year, with the completion of the Digital switchover. We will of course see the impact of the Olympics on cinema admissions, along with the continued financial situation.

You can view all of this year’s published stories at: http://www.madcornishprojectionist.co.uk/news2011.php

Wishing you a Happy New Year and keep viewing.......