Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Lights out for film-house projectionists
The Globe and Mail: The lobby of the 97-year-old Fox Theatre in the Beaches is decorated with classic film posters. Its former coat check vestibule is now a box office. With the exception of sugar-free syrups and organic juices at the concession stand, it appears much as it did in the 1950s.
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3 comments:
Technology moves onward whether you're ready fo rit or not. Just as some movie theaters adapted to become part of the food-service business as the author mentioned in order to find another revenue stream once people stopped wanting to pay full price to as many movies the union projectionists will have to find something to do besides attend to the projectors. The same thing happened to the railroads when they switched form steam to diesel-electric, the fireman was no longer needed to stoke the boiler on all but a few very special-purpose trains, but you don't see too many people complaining about th edifficulty of finding a fireman job, instead they look for the jobs that stayed around.
I feel bad for members of this union. I imagine that spending as an apprentice, only to have technology evolve so that your presence is virtually unnecessary, must be frustrating. I think that this union was a little too specific. Training to be a film projectionist doesn't leave much room for career paths other than film projectionist. However, training to work with digital projectors could be parlayed into so many different things - movies, theatre, convention centers / keynote addresses, and live concerts. Perhaps repurposing the union might be useful.
This article has a great point in that film is going away in theaters due to many problems. The one thing that I did not know was that once the movie is down loaded to the sever they can program the intro week of shows. I feel that there always should be a person up there with the projectors or within yelling distance. Just in case the system goes down and someone has to fix it and get it up and working again. Also with the upgrade costing around a 100 k it is not all that expensive for a theater to up grade to this system and it allows the production companies to do more up to the last minute because all they have to do is wire to a hard drive they don’t have to go to film and develop it. I just wonder if IMAX will go over to digital or just stay the way they are.
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