During my daily read through The Hollywood Reporter, I read Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Q&A on the demise of 3D with American audiences. It’s a pretty good Q&A with one of my favorite figures on the creative side of Hollywood about 3D in which he revealed how saddened he is about the 3D fatigue fallen on American audiences. When Avatar was released, 3D seemed to be the next greatest thing coming out of Hollywood. But unfortunately, as Katzenberg states, too many movies have been made that degrade the quality of 3D and has contributed to America’s distastes for the Hollywood’s newest art form.
Anyone who has ever seen a movie with me knows that I am very picky about where I’ll see a movie and I usually only go to certain theaters, those including the ArcLight in Hollywood, The Landmark in Westwood, or Laemmle Theaters in Pasadena. Those theaters all care a great deal about how they show movies, therefore my film experiences there have always been top notch. This partly stems from my tenure working in a movie theater in 2010 and being a digital projectionist in that theater.
One reason why I detest all AMC theaters equally is the lack of quality in the way they display movies. AMC projectionists are lazy, and I have caught one too many of their mistakes during the unfortunate times I find myself seeing a movie in their theaters. One thing I hate doing is seeing a non-IMAX 3D film in an AMC theater because it is always way too dark which frustrates me because I know that the projectionist can fix that. (IMAX projectors brighten the picture automatically, and usually IMAX films are shot with more light, anyways. So IMAX films usually don’t suffer [if at all] from being too dark.)
To show a 3D movie, an extra lens must be placed on the projector that darkens the image. In order to brighten the image, the projectionist must kick up the brightness so the viewer doesn’t watch a dark movie. On many projectors, the projectionist must do this manually, which unfortunately means that many projectionists do not do this step. And since many theaters (ahem, AMC) never quality check their films as they’re playing, this mistake is hardly ever caught unless someone (me) complains after the movie.
The above comment feed is from the Katzenberg story, and the large rant in response to the initial comment is from me. Apart of the reason people hate 3D is because theaters don’t do enough to make sure that the 3D picture looks good enough to the audience. Its ridiculous that large theater chains don’t care enough about movies to ensure that their projectionists do their jobs well.
This is the part in the post where I encourage everyone to be selective about what theater they choose to watch movies in. Find theaters that care about movies, and spend money in those theaters in order to get your money’s worth.
If you live in the LA Area, I recommend the ArcLight (any location, but mainly Hollywood), The Landmark in Westwood, and Laemmle Theaters (all locations).
Extremely Behind the Camera 