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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: 'The Maze Runner' will be shown in three-screen panoramic format
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Buck Wilson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 894
From: St. Joseph MO, USA
Registered: Sep 2010
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posted 09-27-2014 12:43 AM
Absolutely Mike, you hit the nail on the head. It's a HUGE group. For example, the 10 plex I work at has ZERO competition(not even second run) for 50+ miles in ANY direction. Mind you, this is a huge market draw of 150,000+ people. I see your examples dozens of times every single day, and frankly, I'm flat out embarrassed to 'serve' them. They are getting a very sub-standard presentation/experience and I just know they won't be coming back, because why should they? There's nothing special about this place, and beyond that, there's a lot WRONG too. I literally can't stand it. I have a hard time being welcoming or even look them in the face because I know they aren't getting the presentation they deserve or even paid for.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 10-13-2014 02:52 AM
For anybody that's still interested in how such a Barco Escape setup actually looks in real life, I had the "distinct pleasure" of witnessing it first hand yesterday evening at the Kinepolis megaplex in Antwerp. Being somewhat of a testbed for Barco, they had one of their auditoria retrofitted (or, "hacked" would better fit the description) with this Escape thing. To say it was one huge pile of crap is possibly the biggest understatement of the year. There are Kinepolis folks around here, on this very forum, but I doubt they will voice their own, honest opinion about this huge stinking pile of elephant poo.
They promise more immersion, but what you get is the hallmark of anti-immersion. I will elaborate with some (crappy) pictures and more text...
Their lobby had one of these:
Take a good look, the way to the future of "immersive movie experiences", at least according to Barco.
The pre-show was already running once we finally could enter the auditorium, so the pictures I took were with the house lights dimmed and as such not very usable, but the picture below gives an impression of the concoction:
The room originally featured a rather large wall to wall, bottom to ceiling scope-dimensioned, (obviously) unmasked, slightly curved screen. What they did was obviously an enormous hack job. They bolted those two screens on the sides in front of the original screen at an angle of somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees. The part of the original screen that sticks out below has been haphazardly masked with some curtains, but a large part still sticks out on the right hand side.
As you can still see a bit on the picture, the screens are nowhere near perfectly aligned with each other. The seams between them aren't even equal between the bottom and the top, because those "side panels" are also slightly angled vertically...
The two extra projectors are mounted in some big black boxes on the ceiling. This auditorium always had a recess in the ceiling to mount lightning equipment for special shows. This recess has now been used for those projectors. They leak some light even when not showing an image, I also doubt those projectors are real DCI projectors, they probably even don't have a dowser.
The main screen in the middle loses a WHOLE LOT of surface area and now starts a whole lot higher, increasing the need to look up in the first rows. I've done some quick Photoshoping and superimposed the dimensions of the original screen:
Those ugly side panels stopped around where the first row of seats start. The first four rows of seats had their left and right seats blocked off, as you would be looking at the side of one of those panels otherwise. There is no possibility to sit in a position where those panels actually cover your left and right field of view.
We were sitting in row 7 of 17, that's still a few rows below the middle of the auditorium and it would give you a nice, "immersive" field of view if the original screen would still be used to its full potential. But right at this position, the picture already felt small. Like sitting in the back row of an auditorium with a somewhat undersized screen... So much for this added immersion thing.
After a lengthy pre-show, filled with commercials and trailers, projected on screen like some business presentation (the content did not even fill the full height of the screen) and an advertorial (not in Escape format) about the greatness we were about to experience, the show finally started.
It started with... nothing really. We were left staring at the result of three DLP projectors leaking light on three panels in front of us. This grey-fest continued for about a minute or two, and then the show finally started.
The obvious issues became immediately clear. In Europe, all Fox presentations start with a lengthy copyright notice: Big white, super bold letters on a black background, getting you in the right mood by threatening you with jail time. The amount of ambient light bouncing off off those side panels was completely insane and almost insulting.
The first scene of the movie starts in an elevator. This scene is also one of the few scenes that uses the Barco Escape format. The side panels were used to project some bad, CGI images (computer in-game graphics quality) that only loosely matched those on the main screen. The elevator started shaking, but those images did not. My girlfriend later told me that those unmatched pictures even made her feel a bit nauseous. Maybe that's the immersion Barco and Fox are looking for?
It was immediately clear that those projectors on the ceiling where absolutely NO MATCH for the main projector in the back in regards of brightness. The pictures looked washed out, especially compared to the main picture. Just another entry to the long list of distractions.
After a few seconds of "Barco Escapeness", a whole lot of minutes follow without anything being projected on those panels. But those huge, gray-glowing panels are obviously always there, in their fully unmasked glory. Like I told you before, they reflect HUGE amounts of ambient light, they constantly remind you of being there and bringing nothing to the table.
So, after about a minute or 15, a few seconds of Barco Escape is flashed at you during a flashback/dream scene. The images on those side panels have close to nothing to do with the images on screen. They're just random, washed out junk based on the main image... It's nothing but distraction. This whole "format" is nothing but distraction and it needs to DIE before someone actually gets the idea this is a feasible way of grabbing some extra cash.
The people that were sitting beside us, also complained about the fact that the screen was now so small. Although they had reserved seats, they moved to the unused seats in row #3. I cannot blame them, as this shit is so distracting, it's hard to follow the movie this way.
Those ugly grey panels sticking out on the side, the small main picture and the totally useless, washed out pictures that were sometimes flashed on the side panels freaked me out so much, I had to leave about halfway through the movie. I really couldn't stand it anymore and neither my girlfriend, who was happy I was the one that proposed to leave.
Yeah, maybe I was pretty much biased, as I didn't like the idea from the start. But, I tried to be honest here, I really did. At least the first few minutes, I managed to put my bias largely aside, but it's just impossible to ignore the utter bullcrap that this Barco Escape really is.
This really left me thinking: What are they going to do with this auditorium once this Maze Runner-run is over? Are they seriously planning to show other, non-escape movies in this utter hack of an auditorium?!
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