Why watching movies in theaters doesnt make sense anymore

[Paramvir]

We were making plans to catch the Oscar exclusive screenings at Adlabs IMX today. And every time i see a movie, I am convinced its a bad decision. Funny, since I am a film-maker myself.
Heres the maths:
a typical multiplex ticket costs Rs 150
add to-and-fro transport in an rick/taxi Rs 200
you may have a popcorn-cola-coffee snacks Rs 150
THATS rs 500 for a single person. Multiply by number of people.
It makes sense ANY GIVEN DAY to BUY your own Movie DVD for Rs 600 and watch it at your own pace and time plus get additional benefits like directors cut/commentary/subtitles etc.
Plus for the same money, you can watch the movie again and again.
Also if you like company, you could throw a movie party at your place and ask friends to come over with snacks and drinks. Infinitely cheaper. And less annoying, since theres no stress of strangers talking on their phones, cost of car parking (mental and financial), silly interval music, late entrants to the theater blocking your view inthe most crucial scene and so on.
E-Square in Pune has a nice alternative. The 10 am show costs Rs 40. Thats a boon for film buffs like me. Any thoughts?

[Anurag]

but i like the whole multiplex feel. agreed it is a tad expensve, but i would rather watch at a mall with all those people around then all alone in the house. however i end up doing both. rent a dvd and watch at home plus do an outing.

[vimal]

No doubt, watching films in cinemal halls and multiplexes have become impossible. Even if U do sit in a cinema hall after spending all that money, people have no cinema hall etiquttes watsoever. Most of the people in cinema hall come to see a nautanki film and when they dont like wat they see , they start having picnic among themselves, talking loudly and laughing at inane jokes. And then there are people continuously talking on their fone. They shud be lined outside cinema halls and shot dead.
And morever, the kinda movies, which so many of us watch is not just typical hollywood or bollywood fare but films from around the world, which don't get theatrical relase here in India, so again one ends up buying them from amazon or from grey market(if U are poorly paid like me).
But everything said and done...nothing beats the magic of watching a film in big screen. That all enveloping, exhilarating feeling when U are one with the film, when there is nothing between the medium and U is a feeling which can't be explained in words.

[Paramvir]

Anurag, one can make an 'outing' to a mall and still not spend money. My observation has been that the malls draw greater footfalls than sales, and its a great place for youngsters to hang around. Go to the food court/cafe, and that completes your mall experience.
Vimal, the all encompassing feeling of cinema is fabulous, but at what cost? Its become an elitist experience. Strange, 'bollywood' thrives on the 'masses', but theaters are becoming elitist! Is there a warning amongst all this?
I went to DT Cinema in Gurgaon and was billed Rs 65 for a lousy cup of machine tea, something i picked up in Pune for Rs 10! PVR Saket wont let me walk into he theater with a handbag (its ok for girls though), AND they have no lockers for me to keep my handbag! It seems themultiplexes only want our money and will give nothing in return. Multiplexes in Kolkata are projecting DVDs from low end projectors yet still charging standard multiplex rates!
Its one thing to be expensive. Its another to feel cheated. I think i will invest in a goo home theater system. In fact this could be a great selling point for home theater systems!

[vimal]

Totally agree with U, param. How I wish that cinema was less of business and more of aesthetics, art and entertainment but studio system and massism is killing quality of cinema world over.

[sagar]

read this somehere online:

Reading through the LA Times, as I do before The Oscars every year, I came across a fantastic Op-Ed written by a respected Hollywood author by the name of Neal Gabler. The opinion piece, titled “The Movie Magic is Gone”, explains how Hollywood is losing its place as the epicenter of cultural products and how movies are losing their relevance as the “barometers of the American psyche”.

And what is culprit? You guessed it… the rise of social media! As Gabler elaborates:

“All of this has been hastened by the fact that there is now an instrument to take advantage of the social stratifications. To the extent that the Internet is a niche machine, dividing its users into tiny, self-defined categories, it is providing a challenge to the movies that not even television did, because the Internet addresses a change in consciousness while television simply addressed a change in delivery of content. Television never questioned the very nature of conventional entertainment. The Internet, on the other hand, not only creates niche communities — of young people, beer aficionados, news junkies, Britney Spears fanatics — that seem to obviate the need for the larger community, it plays to another powerful force in modern America and one that also undermines the movies: narcissism. It is certainly no secret that so much of modern media is dedicated to empowering audiences that no longer want to be passive. Already, video games generate more income than movies by centralizing the user and turning him into the protagonist. Popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, in which the user is effectively made into a star and in which content is democratized, get far more hits than movies get audiences. ”

What Gabler calls “narcissism,” I prefer to use the term “digital self expression”. And as I wrote almost a year ago in a piece titled “Social Networks are the New Media”…

“To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the “products” are the people… or as Marshall McLuhan might say, “the people are the message” when it comes to social networks. So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of “cultural products”. In the past century, the creation of cultural products was centered in Hollywood. Now, social networks are broadening the scope of cultural media to include “identity production” (a very appropriate term coined by danah boyd), all the while decentralizing the ecosystem out to the edges. For traditional media companies that are seeking to enter this space (e.g. MTV, Martha Stewart, etc.), it’s critical to follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression. ”

What Gabler and I both seem to be focusing on is the very real possibility that what is truly disrupting Hollywood is not technology per se, but what the technology is enabling the audience to do and how it’s affecting the public’s “consciousness”. In other words, the future of Hollywood may not ultimately rest on issues like how well the studios transition their business models to adapt to digital distribution schemes or how they handle massive copyright infringement.

Instead, what Hollywood might look like in the year 2020 could have more to do with how studios develop new “products”… much like they did with the advent of television (when they created sitcoms, game shows, movies of the week, etc.). But this time, future Hollywood products will probably have to integrate and leverage the virtually unlimited digital resource of self-expression and social media.

At the end of the day, what we’re talking about is the emergence of a new medium with its own art form. And whether Hollywood will remain at the epicenter of future cultural production is the big question. For the first time, Hollywood should be concerned like never before simply by virtue of the fact that, this time, the means of production are now in the hands of the audience itself. What this implies, at the very least, is that the studios will have to increasingly democratize their business model. What does that mean exactly? Go ask the CEO of Veoh.

[ABTOP]

...
It makes sense ANY GIVEN DAY to BUY your own Movie DVD for Rs 600 and watch it at your own pace and time plus get additional benefits like directors cut/commentary/subtitles etc. ...

but you can't invite a lady to your house on the first date to watch a DVD!

[Hasmukh]

sorry to re-open an old thread, but if you are taking a lady out on a first date, you should be talking to her, not sit silently for over 2 hours in darkness.


I agree with param and vimal. especially true since all theaters are turning digital anyway, and with blueray coming out, better watch movies at home! cheaper and more convenient!

[jungle ki raani]

maybe abtop LIKES to take his ladies out to the movies on a first date. like a warmup, you know...