3-D digital movie projectors are making the already degrading movie-going experience even more of a ripoff, as the Boston Globe pointed out last month in an article lamenting projectionists' habit of leaving a 3-D lens on when screening a 2-D movie. The result is that many 2-D movies are appearing underlit and gloomy because, as one projectionist explained, a polarization device used for 3-D screenings "has to be taken out of the image path. If they’re not doing that, it’s crazy, because you’ve got a big polarizer that absorbs 50 percent of the light." It appears that at AMC Empire, that craziness is deeply entrenched.
Flim blogger Frants tells us he attended a screening of Terrance Malick's Tree of Life this morning at 10:10 a.m. (nice work if you can get it) and tells us everything went horribly wrong:
As the previews started, I noticed a dimness in the projection, like it just wasn't as vibrant as it should be. After the previews ended (20 minutes of them!), the movie started: Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris"?! Clearly they were showing the wrong film*, but I noticed something more. Allen's film opens with picturesque scenes of Paris, and having seen both Allen's film and the actual city, I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be vibrant and colorful. Nope: dim and bland-looking.
I remembered Burr's piece saying to look to the projection booth. If the regular lens is on, you'd just see one light source. If the 3D lens is on, you'd see two. Since it was the wrong film, and everyone was grumbling and milling about waiting for the real movie to get cued up, I walked up and snapped the attached pic: clearly two lenses showing the actors strolling through the streets of Paris.
I'm a little disappointing [sic] in AMC Empire. They're pretty good, showing a good diversity of films, half-price in the mornings. But here's yet another way the ridiculous fad of 3-D is creeping into the lives of people trying completely to avoid it. I'm glad it messed up this morning; I don't want to see as visual a film as "The Tree of Life" robbed of its color and brightness.
*This happens more often than you'd think at AMC Empire. It's usually the early morning shows (AMC is half-price before noon). Digital projectors require a key to show a particular film (this prevents piracy); sometimes in the mornings they've done a last minute switch, sometimes the person doesn't even have the key (which led to us sitting there for 30 minutes, looking at nothing). In the end, AMC has refunded me the $6 ticket price AND given me a pass, so it works out.
Yeah, if you don't mind them wasting your time with their incompetence. We called up AMC Empire and spoke with a projectionist who told us the theater was using the Sony 4K digital projector that many have been complaining about, because projectionists are leaving the 3-D lenses on during a 2-D film. The AMC projectionist explained that this morning's SNAFU arose because "the movie had the right title but when you clicked on the file it was the wrong movie." But what about the lens?!
The projectionist insisted, "Even if it's not a 3-D movie, if it's a 3-D projector the 3-D lens is still used. If it's a 3-D house we have to use a 3-D lens. I haven't had any complaints about the 3-D lens making 2-D movies dark." That's probably because most American moviegoers are corpulent balloon creatures too busy shoveling gelatinous popcorn down their gaping mouth-holes to notice any nuances in the predigested Hollywood pabulum they paid $13 to consume while simultaneously texting, blathering to their neighbor, and feeding the bed bugs. But hey, the movie chains have us by the balls—if only there was some other way to watch a film these days without crawling to the mulitplex!
For more, we turn to entertaining movie columnist Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere, who tells us:
The rule of thumb in most theatres is that the SMPTE standard of 14 foot lamberts of light projected onto a screen is not observed or enforced. Before the 3D problem (i.e., showing 2D films through 3D digital projectors onto 3D silver screens) came along it was generally understood or presumed that exhibitors deliberately don't project 14 foot lamberts in order to prolong the life of their projection bulbs. The 3D problem has apparently only made things worse, or added a second layer of dysfunction.
That said, I've experienced what have seemed like decent light levels at a few Manhattan theatres. Decent, I say. Acceptable but not great. Seeing a film the way it's meant to be seen always feels a little bit astounding thing [sic] because it happens so rarely.
But the sound is a problem at the AMC Lincoln Square. I've had problems simply trying to hear dialogue in their biggest non-IMAX theatre. I saw Ridley Scott's Robin Hood there in early May and then a second time at the Grand Lumiere at the Cannes Film festival. The difference in the volume and clarity of sound were striking—it sounded FAR better in Cannes.
