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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Viability of a boutique movie theater
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Mark Hajducki
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 500
From: Edinburgh, UK
Registered: May 2003
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posted 06-05-2013 03:06 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
It's the best term I can come up with for the concept of not building traditionally-size auditoriums, but rather smaller rooms that feature the correct viewing angles and other performance features of a properly designed movie theater.
The thread seems to have moved towards discussing the luxury cinema market, rather than building smaller cinemas.
The small cinema market may work best as part of another business (hotel, cafe, restaurant, bar) rather than being stand alone.
A small cinema may be able to make use of unused space above or below other uses such as shops only using a small amount of street frontage. The HMV Curzon in Wimbledon, London was built in the empty stockrooms above a music retailer, and neighbouring sports shop. It has three screens (103, 91 and 71 seats).
On a larger scale, when Odeon rebuilt their Edinburgh Lothian Road site (previously ABC) the cinema was moved into the basement with retail and offices above. They have applied for permission to convert most of the upper foyer level into a pizza restaurant which would give them minimal street frontage. It has four screens (299, 228, 77 and 177 seats). The site is not particularly busy as it has competion from a nearby 13 screen multiplex and two 3 screen art cinemas. For a new build it does not have a lot of legroom.
The Traverse Theatre (live action "art" theatre) was built in the basement of an office block, again having almost no street frontage. It has two venues, one seating 216-270, the other seating upto 100 people.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 06-06-2013 12:40 PM
I think the discussion of premium movie theaters is relevant to hash out what can make a smaller auditorium attractive in its own right. Arguably, seating is an important detail to get right.
I've come across web sites for very small "back room" theaters when they get added to our site, and I've yet to see any that evoke what I was looking for. Many of them seem to be a room tucked away in a building somewhere with little more than a smallish screen and a couple dozen seats (sometimes folding chairs).
Using an example of a theater built around, say, a 26-foot wide screen, we can work some numbers from there. I chose 26 feet since that seems to be a common screen size for the majority of non-descript theaters I've been in. Admittedly, some theaters try to get away with smaller, but I think if you get much smaller than 25 feet, you're losing the impact necessary to create a good first impression. Personally, I'd like to see something in the 30-foot range instead, but let's stick to 26.
Allowing for 2 feet on each side of the screen for things like a curtain to be pulled back, that puts the minimum width of the room at 30 feet.
To keep the viewing angles good (36-degrees, using the THX recommendation), the back row of seats can be just 40 feet back. So that the back row doesn't slam up against the back wall and destroy any hope of decent surround back there, let's give 10 feet to the back wall, so that makes it a 50 foot deep room.
One local theater (built in 2007) has several rooms about this size, with seating for about 100 people. These rooms are noticeably small, and they're about the smallest I'd want to go into and still have it feel like a commercial theater environment. Some of the auditoriums in that same theater are even shallower at 36 feet, with a 27 foot wall-to-wall screen, and 71 seats.
My guess is that if we applied some of the seating preferences that are being talked about, we'd lose about 30% of those seats, bringing the total seating down to 50-70. I think that's still a fair number of butts in seats, especially if the smaller room size means that more auditoriums can be used to handle peak periods.
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Gavin Lewarne
Master Film Handler
Posts: 278
From: Plymouth, UK
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 06-06-2013 04:38 PM
our place probably fits, in a strict sense, what you mean by a boutique theatre.
61 seats
11m throw
6mx2m screen in scope, constant height
5.1 with just 2 surrounds per Ls/Rs channel due to smallness of the room.
We have lots of problems when we screen mainstream or locally important films due to sellouts and having to turn other people away. The saving grace is that we are the ONLY cinema in the city, possibly even a large part of the whole region that screens certain films, since we are an arthouse place mostly. Most turn-aways come back or book tickets for another show if its a sell out. If its really popular we get the film back for a second week long run after a short break.
Lots of our regular customers prefer our place to the local multiplex because its "cosy" and more comfortable. We also have old fashioned always-present ushers and if you look behind the back row you can actually look right into the projection room and see us and the projectors. Lots of comments, from young and older people that they like the "human" element to it compared to the sterile environment of the competition.
We are very poor with very limited budgets. some of the décor may be a little tired but we keep everything thoroughly clean, fresh, warm and comfortable. With our small throw and small screen we can compete with the big boys in terms of image quality and sharpness even with just a 2k,. and our sound is rich, full and detailed - probably helped by the small room.
Even after proper calibration, anything above fader 6 is WAY too loud in there, which has lead to another group of loyal customers who appreciate not having their eardrums mutilated by the overly loud harshness of the other places around here.
If a customer askes an usher to increase or decrease the volume im happy to oblige of there are just a few customers in.
I sometimes feel embarrassment at the (slightly) shabby décor but with so little money to work with my priority has to be picture and sound.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 06-07-2013 02:47 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
An idea that's been bouncing around in my head for some time is the idea of a "boutique" movie theater.
It's the best term I can come up with for the concept of not building traditionally-size auditoriums, but rather smaller rooms that feature the correct viewing angles and other performance features of a properly designed movie theater.
Along with creating a more intimate experience, it would allow for placing a multi-screen theater in a smaller building, and I would think that there would be some cost savings to not having to heat/cool larger volumes of air. With less space to furnish, more time and money could be spent on the appointments, such as some interesting styling (just look at what high-end home theaters can look like, with a budget that is a fraction of what I'll bet it costs to outfit a standard, plain-jane auditorium), a curtain, and a really good sound system. Basically, a high-end home theater open to the public.
This can't possibly be an original idea, and to a certain extent, it's being done in iPic and the former Gold Class Cinema locations, but they take it a step further than I would with the super-wide seating and food service, etc.
I don't think a 40-50 seat theater is large enough to be economically viable, plus the seating in the locations creates poor viewing lines, both horizontally and vertically. The screens are too small and too high, so by the time you get far enough back to not be looking up at the screen, you're too far away to have a decent viewing angle.
I would imagine that the hardest thing about such an operation would be economy of scale. The more butts in the seats, the better the margins. But there has to be a crossover point somewhere, and it feels like many theaters do not come close to filling their capacity on a regular basis, so all that extra infrastructure is going to waste just to handle a few peak periods that might be better handled by more screens that can take on the extra butts when necessary.
I've been hearing about DCP-compliant projectors breaking the $30k barrier, which would help with the cost-per-screen issue. There are still sound systems and screens to be purchased, of course.
Is it possible to build out a boutique style theater with a certain number of screens with a seating capacity of, maybe, 80-100, in a smaller space than a traditional multiplex, and have it be economically viable?
A boutique cinema would never work in 2013. From everything I have been seeing, people do not care whether the cinema has proper angles or a 35mm screen. People want the largest cinema possible, faux leather chairs, and loudest ear drum shattering sound. The generation of today has no problem paying a premium for a ticket nor they have a problem paying $20 for a ticket.
Whether or not people on here will agree or not, IMAX does the above best...they clearly have the best branding for this.
When the average person has to pay $12-$15 for a ticket, they will naturally want to see the movie in the larger cinema with the louder sound.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 06-10-2013 02:27 PM
That's pretty much what I'm thinking; no "premium" auditoriums, because all the auditoriums are "premium" but without the distinction. I think when you go to a theater with premium auditoriums, it's like you're being told that "unless you pay extra, you're going to get a middling to substandard experience, so pay up!"
I saw this happen with quite a few theaters that had one or two THX screens. The managers said that people were so concerned about what was playing in the THX houses, that they were disappointed when the movie was not playing in one of them. That made the decision to move a movie all that more difficult.
My response is "why only have one or two premium auditoriums?"
The answer must be because it is not economically feasible to do a 6-10 screen theater with every auditorium done right. Otherwise, why wouldn't a theater want to deliver the best possible presentation consistently across the board?
And that's the genesis of the start of this thread. Instead of a theater with one or two premium screens, and 6-8 bland screens, why not spread the wealth and equip all of the auditoriums properly? Sure, you can have some big houses that seat 200-300 people or more, but the smaller screens can be good on their own, smaller, scale.
In my naive perspective, such a theater would be distinctive in its own right. If marketed properly, people would drive out of their way to check it out, and if run properly, they would come back, driving past competing theaters. Some people won't, but the bland multiplexes have to pay their bills, too.
In regards to sound and picture quality, I think most complaints about sound that is too loud is from the fact that the sound is not too loud, but distorted. Either the mix is done wrong, the equipment is broken or miscalibrated, or the room isn't built and/or tuned correctly.
I think people still want quality, and they'll know what it is when they get it (albeit perhaps with a little education). To quote The American President:
quote:
People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
I would modify that for this discussion by saying that people have been fed substandard experiences for so long, they've learned to expect nothing more. The theater industry has now taught them that the only way to get something better is to pay another $3-8 for the pleasure; making it a "special" experience that you don't do all the time. So then it becomes a value judgement about whether a movie is worth paying for the special experience or just waiting for it to hit the dollar houses or just a little bit longer and get it on Blu-ray with its HD picture and lossless sound.
In a sense, the industry is training their customers to expect less, to make a value judgement based on the expected quality of the movie instead of the quality of the experience that a theater can deliver (no matter what the movie is), and to wait for something to be released on video.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 06-10-2013 08:53 PM
I don't really agree with this; just about every industry has "good, better, best" options available. Think of a hotel; you can pay $100 for a plain old room, or you can pay $300 or more for a deluxe experience, or $1000 (or $20,000 in some places) to be treated like a king.
Or you can go to a Motel 6, pay $50 and get the bare minimum.
The movie industry IS slightly different because of the shelf life of the items. The most popular items are going to be the newest ones. Even if a movie is six weeks old doesn't mean it's not a great movie; but it's now playing in the 50-seat craptacular auditorium at the end of the hallway, while a piece of crap like "After Earth," being brand new, is in the premium house even it it doesn't deserve to be.
The WORST thing that's happening is, aside from money issues, the industry is training people to expect a crappy experience if you don't see the movie in the opening week. Thankfully here in single-screen-land we don't have that problem at least!
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