Among the industries most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic is the cinema industry.
Across the U.S. and elsewhere, major cinema chains are either closed or operating at reduced capacity, and the AV professionals who serve them are bringing innovative solutions to help cinemas recover and are reviving drive-in theaters with new projection technology.
Social distancing guidelines and personal health concerns have hugely impacted the cinema business, as scenes of theaters packed full of moviegoers would make public health experts shiver. National chains including AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas are struggling, with the latter opting in October to close all U.S. cinemas until it’s deemed safe to reopen.
Compounding this is the influx of streaming services and reluctance of film studios to release titles to theaters. For example, Warner Bros. is planning to release all of its 2021 movies on both HBO Max and theaters simultaneously.
For cinema integrators, it has been a difficult nine months. While some cinemas – especially smaller operators – may not fully recover and could stay closed for good, others will find a way to reinvent themselves and bring more offerings.
That means AV integrators will have to adapt to that change and bring new technologies to the traditional theater, says Keith Watanabe, vice president of sales and business development at Sonic Equipment Company, a California-based cinema dealer.
“The cinema business has survived and reinvented itself many times throughout the history of the motion picture business,” Watanabe says, citing the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 that had similar impacts on the film industry.
Preserve the cinema experience
According to Watanabe, the rosiest of outlooks has the film industry welcoming movie buffs back to the theaters in the second half of 2021 as massive vaccination programs get underway.
For those theaters that plan on being open for those consumers in the late summer and fall, they’ll need to make sure the experience is unlike any other.
Streaming services including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video and a host of others are thriving, and home TVs and audio systems are only getting better with 4K and QLED now becoming a mainstream household technology.
That means theaters will have to invest in the latest and greatest laser projection technologies as they compete with home theaters, says Jeff Kaplan of Sharp NEC Display Solutions.
“As the cinema industry drastically changes, high quality projectors have never been more important. Projection is a mature and flexible technology and is established as the standard in cinema today,” Kaplan says. “RB laser technology provides the ultimate visual experience for premium and larger-sized screens.”
For integrators, hat means installing the latest projection technology, powerful sound systems, larger screens and creating a more immersive experience.
“Part of our job is to make sure that cinemas can keep their quality levels as high as possible,” Watanabe says.
Theater operators and technology providers like Watanabe still place a premium on the cinema experience, and that needs to be made clear when customers return – especially if they can get similar – if not better – experiences from their couch.
Reviving a lost art of cinema: drive-in theaters
Traditional indoor theaters – although they’ve gone lengths to make sure the experience is both immersive and safe – are not particularly inviting for a general public that wants to avoid large crowds and cramped spaces.
That is giving rise to drive-in theaters, once a staple of a Friday night date night that was somewhat of an afterthought before 2020.
These theaters can also be set up rather quickly, evidenced by the Toronto Film Festival quickly pivoting to erect a 180-square-foot screen upon which films were projected in the city’s waterfront district.
Especially in warmer climates, drive-ins are still thriving, says Bevan Wright, executive vice president of operations at Moving Image Technologies.
In some cases, Wright’s company has even helped some drive-in theaters that were once closed for good reopen to serve the public in a safe and responsible way.
“Drive-ins have been hot,” Wright says. “Ones that were closed, reopened.”
These businesses are begging for technology upgrades given the renewed interest. Many are asking for complete overhauls, like converting projection technology to digital and RGB lasers while others require simple upgrades.
“There’s a lot of retrofitting from the first generation of digital projectors to the second or third generations,” Wright says. “That’s been very popular.”
The renewed infatuation with the drive-in experience may wane a bit as traditional theaters reopen, but Wright predicts that some pop-up theaters in which movies are projected on the side of a building or other structure will actually become permanent installations.
“There are some new ones being built where there are picnic tables between cars and stuff and it’s kind of a big party environment,” Wright says. “I think they’ll stick around.”
Syncing up with today’s entertainment technologies
Even before COVID-19, theater operators were looking for additional revenue streams, like offering cinemas for business meetings to make use of the large screen for presentations, church groups and even eSports tournaments in which multiple auditoriums are linked together.
“There’s a lot more video-over-IP infrastructure being put into these cinemas,” Wright says. “There’s definitely a push to do more live broadcasting in cinemas and other alternative content.”
Christie, a manufacturer of projectors and other technology for the cinema industry, is also developing new technologies that will allow exhibitors to stream content directly to people at home.
The company is doing so using its integrated media block, a patented hardware and software package that combines Christie’s suite of streaming and networking products to enable cinemas to deliver content over IP networks to consumers at home in real time.
According to Watanabe, some cinemas – especially smaller locally owned businesses – are going to have to evolve and adapt to being more of a multi-purpose location with more technological capabilities.
“What I envision is more of a community center and capability as a video hub that can probably cast webcasts from there and receive them as well,” Watanabe says.
