HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY IMAX (1 Viewer)

[cinemiracle]

Imax has turned 50 but are there any cinemas that can still project the original Imax 70mm format?

 

[moviepas]

Movies made real. Melbourne/Australia attached to the State of Victoria Museum

IMAX Melbourne is a custom-built 3D theatre and home to the largest cinema screen in the world. IMAX provides the most immersive cinematic experience in the global market.

IMAX Melbourne’s screen spans a massive 32 metres wide x 23 metres high. But visiting IMAX Melbourne goes beyond just seeing a movie on a huge screen. The size of the screen combined with Australia's only IMAX 4K Laser Projector, customised theatre geometry and 15,000 watts of digital surround sound delivers the ultimate movie-going experience.

Since opening in 1998, IMAX Melbourne has attracted over 5 million visitors who have experienced everything from visually stunning IMAX documentaries to the biggest Hollywood blockbusters.

 

[Tino]

Why is this in the Blu-ray/UHD forum?

It should be in the MOVIES forum.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Why is this in the Blu-ray/UHD forum?

It should be in the MOVIES forum.

It is now!

 

[Worth]

Cinesphere, the world's first IMAX cinema, built in 1971 in Toronto, is equipped to show both 15/70 and 4K laser digital. There's also an IMAX screen in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb, that has both film and digital capabilities.

 

[Tino]

As does the IMAX in Lincoln Square NYC.

 

[TravisR]

The IMAX in King Of Prussia, PA still has 70mm projection too. Although it's basically just used for Christopher Nolan movies at this point.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Imax has turned 50 but are there any cinemas that can still project the original Imax 70mm format?

The IMAX at the Indiana State Museum can. I was privileged to see Interstellar and The Force Awakens there in 70mm film and it was a great privilege. I also saw Batman v. Superman there that way, which was less so.

Unfortunately, as a consequence of my move, I'll never get there again and we don't have an equivalent where I live now. But it was great to be there as long as I could.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The issue isn't so much that the 15/70 projects no longer exist; they're stashed away in pretty much all of the locations that once had them. The issue is that the movie studios themselves, with very rare exceptions, are no longer willing to pay the cost of making 15/70 prints. A 15/70 print for 2D costs about $30,000. Double that for 3D. With most movies in IMAX only playing for 1-2 weeks, that's a lot of money to recoup in a very short period, which makes studios unwilling to pay for those prints except in the rarest of cases. That's sadly been the case since about fall 2013. But that's not the fault of IMAX - IMAX has never paid for prints for studio films, that's always been the studio's responsibility.

 

[cinemiracle]

Movies made real. Melbourne/Australia attached to the State of Victoria Museum

IMAX Melbourne is a custom-built 3D theatre and home to the largest cinema screen in the world. IMAX provides the most immersive cinematic experience in the global market.

IMAX Melbourne’s screen spans a massive 32 metres wide x 23 metres high. But visiting IMAX Melbourne goes beyond just seeing a movie on a huge screen. The size of the screen combined with Australia's only IMAX 4K Laser Projector, customised theatre geometry and 15,000 watts of digital surround sound delivers the ultimate movie-going experience.

Since opening in 1998, IMAX Melbourne has attracted over 5 million visitors who have experienced everything from visually stunning IMAX documentaries to the biggest Hollywood blockbusters.

Don't you mean the largest INDOOR screen -there are bigger outdoor screens. Sydney's new imax under construction , will be the biggest indoor screen when it is finished.. Don't forget that it took 30 years for Imax to reach Melbourne.

 

[Jake Lipson]

A 15/70 print for 2D costs about $30,000. Double that for 3D. With most movies in IMAX only playing for 1-2 weeks, that's a lot of money to recoup in a very short period, which makes studios unwilling to pay for those prints except in the rarest of cases.

Yeah, and in Indiana, all three of the 15/70 prints had extended runs. Interstellar opened the first weekend of November and played well into December, which is when I saw it, if not longer. The Force Awakens played until the end of February in 70mm, and then continued for another month in digital once Disney asked them to send the print back so it could play somewhere else. Normally, things do not run anywhere near this long. Batman v. Superman's run was less lengthy, but that was likely due to the film's underperformance. For The Force Awakens, it took until February for me to get in there because it was constantly sold out several days in advance during the holiday season, but for Batman v. Superman, we were able to get tickets a day ahead of time for opening weekend, and came and found it only half full.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In my experience here in NYC, at Lincoln Square, when they announce that they'll be showing an IMAX movie in 15/70, it does better in that format than comparable titles do digitally. There's something special about seeing an actual film print, run by an actual projectionist, on a giant screen. I think even a general audience is aware of this and willing to come out and pay to see such an event.

In the past couple years, I've went from being a guy who saw the same movie multiple times in theaters to being a guy who will only go once. The exception to that has been the 15/70 titles. I saw Dunkirk twice in 15/70 this past year because it was such a unique and special event. The presentation was nearly flawless, and maybe it's just in my head, but it felt different to be able to look back towards the projection booth and actually see someone there running the show. If it had been digital, I probably would have gone once.

That said, the new IMAX laser system is pretty impressive in its own right. I saw the Dunkirk prologue, which was released the previous December attached to Rogue One, in both 15/70 film and laser projection. (They showed the Dunkirk footage on film for the first couple weeks, and then switched to laser projection after that. You have to give them credit for hiring a projectionist to show 6 minutes of footage as part of what was otherwise a completely digital presentation.) I expected the film version to wipe the floor with the digital version, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they looked very, very, very close.