Saturday, January 10, 2009
Does Size Matter?
How many times has this happened? You see a movie in the theatre, and it’s great. I mean, really great. In fact, you’re certain that this is the best movie ever made, maybe. And then, three months or so later, the movie comes out on dvd, and you rewatch it, sans 60 foot screen and million dollar sound system and you realize something’s not right; the great masterpiece you acknowledged as you left the theatre suddenly seems, well, average, maybe even mediocre, or worse yet, bad. Like, how could I have ever thought this thing was good bad. Several years ago when I was working as a projectionist, I had a friend who labeled this “the 9 to 5 syndrome.” He had seen 9 to 5 at the movie theatre, loved it, and then months later watched it on network tv, expecting to enjoy it as he did in the theatre, only to discover that he very nearly hated it. When it was shown on tv, the network had done the unthinkable: panned and scanned the picture, reducing the widescreen ration to 4:3. I took a more global view of the situation: it’s not just the pan and scan; size matters in a person’s critical awareness of a film, because the visceral impact is lessened with a shrinking image size. Being in the theatre with giant subwoofers and surround sound enveloped in darkness with only one thing to focus on (that 60 foot image) puts your senses in heightened alert. The movie slams it into your subconscious at a hundred miles an hour and your critical reservoirs flashflood out. Sometimes just looking at a car going by or a beautiful woman in the movie theatre is enough to make you think you're looking at the next Mona Lisa... (Add to this an interesting inverse rule component: a person’s “critical” sense grows as the size of the viewing screen shrinks and the number of sound channels decreases. Lose stimulus input and you distill a movie down to its basics: storyline. No smoke. No mirrors. No flash. When I was at USC, in one of our sound classes we watched two cuts of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and STAR WARS to emphasize the sound factor. One without sound, one with it. Without sound, the Star Wars opening credit crawled along (or seemed to) as well as the speed at which Indiana Jones escaped the booby traps protecting the golden idol. Try it.) There is a simple – if unproven -- logic to it: the smaller the image, the lesser emotional impact it can have because of the limited amount of stimulus it provides…
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That's a very interesting view that I've never really before considered. However, now that you've got me thinking about this, why do so many of the public go to see these movies in the first place? If many movies are only "good" on the big screen, then how are they so well advertised on the small screen? After all, due to a large percentage of low incomes, most of the public who views the advertisement will see it without subwoofers, surroundsound, and proper lighting.
ReplyDeleteEven if the preview shows what is considered the most interesting scenes of the production, then what, by your logic, causes the public to say to themselves "Hey, that looks like a pretty good movie. I should go see that!"?
I also agree that "size does matter". Although, it's not so much based upon the quality or the theatrical experience that I look for in viewing a movie. In fact, what I mean to say is my experience specifically on horror movies. Say for example the movie, THE GRUDGE. I watched it in theaters, and rented it at a local video rental store months later in its dvd release. Problem was, I was more horrified at home rather than in the theater. I did not 'hate' or 'liked' the movie more, I just got more traumatized (haha).
ReplyDeleteBottomline the experience is truly different, because perhaps it's the location in which I'm watching a horror film, in the one place where I feel safe the most, my home. Crazy!
This is so true. People see a big, shiny thing and then all of their attention is held until the screen goes black. I actually tried to recreate the theater one time. I turned off all the lights in my house, pushed the chair up to the television screen, and popped in Beowolf. It was fantastic.
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