Movie theater
A cinema (Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as North America) also known as a movie theater or the movies (only in North America), also known as a movie house, or the pictures, is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ("movies" or "films"). Most cinemas are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing a ticket. The film is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium. Some cinemas are now equipped for digital cinema projection, removing the need to create and transport a physical film print.
Spelling and alternative termsColloquial expressions, mostly used for cinemas collectively, include the silver screen, the big screen (contrasted with the "small screen" of television) and (in the United Kingdom) the pics, the flicks, and the flea pit, which derives from the long standing belief that the seats were infested with fleas as they were so uncomfortable to sit on, resulting in frequent fidgeting.
A "screening room" usually refers to a small facility for viewing movies, often for the use of those involved in the production of motion pictures, or in large private residences.
History
Many older movie theaters, such as the River Oaks Theatre in Houston,
Texas, have been restored and play arthouse movies; newer multiplexes in the areas
with restored theaters show first run films.
Before 1900
Noting that the
first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in the USA was at Koster
& Bials Music Hall on 34th Street in New York City on April 23, 1896, the
first "theater" in the US dedicated exclusively to showing motion pictures
was Vitascope Hall, established on Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana June 26,
1896: it was converted from a vacant store. In the basement of the new Ellicott
Square Building, Main Street, Buffalo, New York, Mitchell Mark and his brother
Moe Mark added what they called Edison’s Vitascope Theater (entered through
Edisonia Hall), which they opened to the general public on Monday, 19 October
1896, in collaboration with Rudolph Wagner, who had moved to Buffalo after spending
several years working at the Edison laboratories: this 72 seat, plush theater
was designed from scratch solely to show motion pictures. Terry Ramseye, in his
book, A Million and One Nights [p. 276], notes that this “was one of the
earliest permanently located and exclusively motion-picture exhibitions.”
According to the Buffalo News (Wednesday, 2 November 1932), “There were seats
for about 90 persons (sic) and the admission was three cents. Feeble, flickering
films of travel scenes were the usual fare." (The true number of seats was
72.)
1900-1919
The first permanent structure designed for screening
of movies in the state of California was Tally's Electric Theater, completed in
1902 in Los Angeles, California. In 1912, the Picture House, in Clevedon, England
opened with a charity film performance to raise funds for the victims of the Titanic
disaster, and remains (as the Curzon Community Cinema) in business as of August,
2007 as the oldest continually-operating movie theater in the world. The 1913
opening of the Regent Theater in New York City signaled a new respectability for
the medium, and the start of the two-decade heyday of American cinema design.
The million dollar Mark Strand Theater at 47th Street and Broadway in New York
City opened in 1914 by Mitchell Mark was the archetypical movie palace. The ornate
Al Ringling Theater was the very first "Movie Palace" it was built in
Baraboo, WI by Al Ringling, one of the founders of the Ringling Bros. Circus for
the then incredible sum of $100,000.00. Later, Los Angeles promoter Sid Grauman
continued the trend of theatre-as-destination with his ornate "Million Dollar
Theatre", using the same design firm as Ringling (the MDT was the first to
signify its primary use for motion pictures with the "theatre" spelling),
and opened on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles in 1918.
1920 to 1980
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 boasted a lucurious design, a giant screen, and, beginning
in 1953, stereophonic sound. The movie chains were also among the first industries
to install air conditioning systems which gave the theatres an additional lure
of comfort in the summer period.
Several movie studios achieved vertical integration by acquiring and constructing theatre chains. The so-called "Big Five" theatre chains of the 1920s and 1930s were all owned by studios: Paramount, Warner, Loews (which owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Fox, and RKO. All were broken up as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1948 USA v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. anti-trust case.
In the 1970s, porn theatres started to have rampant ubiquity in some areas. However, the introduction of the low-cost VHS video system for home televisions has decommissioned many porno cinemas as well as many 'second-run' theatres.
After 1980
People can pay to watch movies at home, through cable television or streamed from the Internethttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Streaming_media: pay-per-view (PPV) and video on demand (VOD). This may have contributed to an industry wide slump in the late 1980s. The theater industry responded by building larger auditoriums, installing more screens (to allow for more variety and more show times), upgrading sound systems and installing more amenities and higher-quality concessions. The growing popularity of high-definition television sets, along with HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players has probably also contibuted to the decline in cinema attendance. On February 17, 2009; all US television stations will be broadcast in the digital format. This could also effect US movie theaters.
3D
Sometimes a 3-D film is shown. Visitors borrow or keep special glasses to
watch it. Depending on the system used, these are e.g. polarized glasses.
Design
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 for buying tickets, a counter and/or self-service facilities for
buying snacks and drinks, and washrooms. Stage theaters are sometimes converted
into movie theatres 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 arthouse
fare to an audience accustomed to plays. The familiar characteristics of relatively
low admission and open seating can be traced to Samuel Roxy Rothafel, an early
movie theater impresario. Many of these early theatres contain a balcony, an elevated
platform above the theater's rearmost seats. The rearward main floor "loge"
seats were sometimes larger, softer, and more widely spaced and sold for a higher
price.
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.
"Stadium seating" is employed in many modern theaters, giving patrons a clear sight line over the heads of those seated in front of them. Originally employed for flat-screen IMAX viewing (which has a very tall screen) this feature has proven popular with theatre patrons. The first stadium-style movie theater in the USA was the AMC Grand in Dallas, Texas, which opened in 1995.
Rows of seats are divided by one or more aisles so that there are seldom more than 20 seats in a row. This allows easier access to seating, as the space between rows is very narrow. Depending on the angle of rake of the seats, the aisles have steps. In older theaters, aisle lights were often built into the end seats of each row to help patrons find their way in the dark. Since the advent of stadium theaters with stepped aisles, each step in the aisles may be outlined with small lights to prevent patrons from tripping in the darkened theater.
Multiplexes
and megaplexes
North America's first two-screen theatre, The Elgin Theatre
was created in 1957 by Nat Taylor in Ottawa, Ontario, when he expanded the 20
year old facility. Taylor is credited as inventor of the multiplex or cineplex,
and later founded the Cineplex Odeon Corporation, opening the 18 screen Toronto
Eaton Centre Cineplex, the world's largest at the time.
Stanley Durwood of American Multi-Cinema (now AMC Theatres) pioneered what would become the multiplex in 1963 after realizing that he could operate several attached auditoriums with the same staff needed for one through careful management of the start times for each movie.
Since that time multiple-screen theatres have become the norm, and many existing venues have been retrofitted so that they have multiple auditoriums. A single lobby is shared among them. In most markets, nearly all single-screen theatres have gone out of business. Because of the late development of multiplexes, the term "cinema" or "theater" may refer either the whole complex or a single auditorium, and sometimes "screen" is used to refer to an auditorium.
A popular movie may be shown on multiple screens at the same multiplex, which reduces the choice of movies but offers more choice of viewing times or a greater number of seats to accommodate patrons. Two or three screens may be created by dividing up an existing cinema (as Durwood did with his Roxy in 1964), but newly built multiplexes usually have at least six to eight screens, and often as many as twelve, fourteen or even sixteen. In these large modern theaters, an electronic display in the ticket hall often shows a list of movies with starting time, auditorium number, admission rating, and whether it is sold out. Sometimes the number of remaining available seats is shown as well. At the entrance of each auditorium there may be a one-line electronic display with the title of the movie. After the movie has started, it can display the title and time of the next scheduled showing.
Although definitions vary, a large multiplex with 20 or more screens is usually called a megaplex. The first megaplex is generally considered to be the Kinepolis in Brussels, Belgium, which opened in 1988 with 25 screens and a seating capacity of 7,500. The first megaplex in the US was Studio 28 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which reopened in 1988 with 20 screens and a seating capacity of 6,000.
IMAX
IMAX is a system using film with more than 10 times
the frame size of a 35mm film to produce image quality far superior to conventional
film. IMAX theaters use an oversized screen as well as special projectors. The
first permanent IMAX theater was at Ontario Place in Toronto, Ontario.
Drive-in
A drive-in movie theatre is basically an outdoor parking area with
a screen at one end and a projection booth at the other. Moviegoers drive into
the parking spaces which are sometimes sloped upwards at the front to give a more
direct view of the movie screen. Movies are usually viewed through the car windscreen
(windshield) although some people prefer to sit on the hood of the car. Sound
is either provided through portable loudspeakers located by each parking space,
or is broadcast on an FM radio frequency, to be played through the car's stereo
system. Because of their outdoor nature, drive-ins usually only operate seasonally,
and after sunset. Drive-in movie theatres are mainly found in the USA, where they
were especially popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Once numbering in the thousands,
about 400 remain in the U.S. today. In some cases, multiplex or megaplex theatres
were built on the sites of former drive-in theatres.
Other venues
Some
outdoor movie theatres 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. There is a nice outdoor cinema along the seafront in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
In the late 1990s, student organizations 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 16 mm projectors in lecture halls as a way to raise money. Many small colleges also had student-run film groups that projected 16 mm 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 theatres 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 are sometimes also shown on trains, such as the Auto Train.
"Pathé
Unlimited Card" (PUC) for the chain of 12 multi- and megaplex theatres of
Pathé in the Netherlands (100 screens), for 18 euro/month; there are 15,000
pass holders (April 2006)
"Unlimited Card" for the chain of movie
theaters of Cineworld (formerly UGC) in the UK and Ireland, for £13.99/month,
or £11.99 excluding those in London's West End.
Carte "Le Pass"
for the chain of movie theatres of Pathé/Gaumont in Paris, for 20 euro/month;
ditto for each of a number of other French cities (same price, even though the
pass is valid for much fewer screens)
"UGC Illimité" passes
for all UGC movie theaters in France, for 18 euro/month, and an entrance fee of
30 euro.
"UGC Unlimited" passes for the four UGC movie theaters
in Belgium, for 15 euro/month
"SF Movie Passport" pass for all the
movies shown in SF Group theaters in Thailand, valid for a month for one person
and one showing per movie, at the price of 800 baht or eqv USD 20
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