Defining Moments

LFexaminer

Shindler's Site: Defining Moments

By Marty Shindler

"The times, they are a changin’," was how I led off my report on the Digital Technology Seminar at the ISTC conference in Vancouver a year ago (MaxImage! October 1997). (Please join me in congratulating James on beginning the second year of MaxImage!)

Today, I can say it again. And I know I will say it next year. No doubt in my mind.

As the LF theater market shifts toward the commercial segment, much of the talk in the industry is about education vs. entertainment. Terrell Falk is vice president of marketing for Dallas-based theater chain Cinemark USA but, having worked for years at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, is one of a growing number of people who have worked on both sides of the marketplace. Terrell notes that "entertaining product, not educational, will play best" in Cinemark’s theaters, although "educational product will still be a part of certain time slots at our theaters.

"The economics of LF theater exhibition – for both commercial and not-for-profit theaters – still dictates [starting] shows on the hour. However, I think that as the industry grows and there are more commercial screens – the critical mass everyone talks about – audiences will demand longer and better pictures."

Longer films are endorsed by another well-respected industry veteran, Mary Jane Dodge of Sony-Loews Theatres. "Customers [at Sony’s Lincoln Square Theater in New York City] felt that Everest was too short, although enjoyable. A sixty-minute film would make me happy. Audiences would really like 90 minutes. Pure entertainment such as Star Trek, Star Wars and Indiana Jones – you know, adventures and westerns – would do well."

Purely entertaining films are obviously not for everyone, though. There are still opportunities for good, traditional, non-fiction, LF films, even if institutional theater growth is slowing.

Scott Memmott of World Cinemax Productions is no stranger to the industry. He is still looking for good educational films to supplement the signature films in WCP’s three destination theaters. "The Great American West, Everest, and Alaska all did well in our theaters. We’ll play good films like those any time," Memmott says.

Another industry veteran, Steve Bishop, formerly at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, and now director of the Kirby Science Discovery Center in Sioux Falls, SD, advises that "there has to be an inherent interest in the topic [and] a public awareness of the film, to attract the large audience." That would seem to described Everest pretty well.

For the last eight months, the world has taken note of the Everest phenomenon. It has highlighted the LF medium like no other film before it. And it shows that good stories that elicit strong emotion, combined with fabulous visuals in a movie that is marketed well, can do very well.

MacGillivray Freeman Films has become expert at this. Everest is among the best of the breed of film that has supported the LF institutional market for decades. Documentary-style films will continue to be a mainstay for many years by virtue of the installed base of non-commercial theaters. Their audiences will always want good non-fiction films, and the best of these will provide the kinds of returns investors expect.

T-rex: Back to the Cretaceous and the soon-to-be-released Encounter in the Third Dimension represent a relatively new breed: crossover films that are intended to appeal to both the institutional and commercial segments of the exhibition market as the balance shifts from the former to the latter.

I think the release of T-rex is a defining moment in the LF industry, a point at which the tide has turned. There will be the inevitable comparisons to Jurassic Park and Lost World, and in my opinion, Brett Leonard’s 3D dinosaurs pass that test with flying colors (The scene of the tyrannosaurus fighting the ornithomimus was my personal favorite.)

With T-rex, the LF industry shows the big boys in Hollywood that we can play their game, that LF is not just good for travelogues and documentaries. Everest paved the way by attracting unprecedented attention to the giant-screen medium. But T-rex, a drama with a good balance of story, sound and visual effects, will have a significant impact on the LF marketplace.

It is now only a matter of time before the third breed of LF film – the purely commercial film – is born. As Leonard has said (see interview on page 1), "The time is now, as the theaters are being built, to make the software to drive the market."

Several such films are said to be in development, although the most notable, the long-awaited Star Trek film, is now reported to be on hold (see The Biz, MaxImage! October, 1998). But it will not be long before there is a critical mass of commercial theaters to support this type of film.

The pace of production will quicken. We need to be ready. The times are a-changin'!

Marty Shindler is a management consultant who provides a business perspective to creative and technical companies. Marty may be reached at shindler@aol.com.