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Topic: Movie-Theater Chains Take On IMAX
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-03-2014 09:22 AM
quote: Mike Blakesley
Any theater company claiming that they have the best movie experience simply because of what equipment they have is full of crap. First, it's meaningless to the customer. Second, even great equipment can be used to put on a bad presentation.
It's standard operating procedure in marketing to repeat over and over again that your product is better than that of your rivals and the customers can't get something better anywhere else.
Take a look at this 3 1/2 minute video Barco produced about Carmike's first Auro 11.1 installation in Canton, GA. The video includes all kind of big claims from theater executives. The customer interviews are odd since they talk a whole lot more about the bass response rather than the effect delivered by all those extra speakers on the walls and ceiling.
quote:
Marcel, thanks for finding that picture. Holy wall treatment! That is aweful. And the floating screen with no masking and curved corners. Yikes!
That floating, slightly curved screen with radiused corners reminds me of an old 1970's era Sony front projection TV screen.
The graphics on those walls is very tacky. The color scheme reminds me of the Houston Astros' 70's-80's era uniforms. I can't stand that badly spaced, diagonal RPX lettering. It's definitely something thought of by a non-artist, perhaps even a committee of sales people. The RPX logo looks like it used the old late 70's Letraset Stop typeface as a starting point. The color treatment on the X throws its weight out of balance with the other two letters.
Most of the logos for these Brand X Big Screens, perhaps BXBS for short, suck really badly. One thing I can hand to IMAX is they've kept their brand consistent and professional looking. Too many of these other BXBS brands stink of home-brewed, amateur hour trash. They want to be like IMAX but they can't get their branding done nearly as well as IMAX.
I simply cannot stand Carmike's Big D logo. I could go into a lot of detail about why I don't like it, but I won't (for now). Cinemark's "XD" logo isn't very good; that scraggly looking X doesn't do anything for me, but at least they kept it simple and didn't try working in a bunch of microscopic words into it like Carmike did with its Big D logo. Marcus Theaters' UltraScreen DLX theaters might be pretty nice, but the logo for that premium concept is just kind of blah. This goes on and on. Very few of these BXBS things have a professional look to them.
AMC's ETX and Prime logos aren't bad. At least they're simple and clean looking. AMC might have actually used real graphics people to do the work.
IMHO, if all these different theater chains want to get their own BXBS logos onto movie posters, TV commercials, etc. more often they need to dramatically improve their branding efforts.
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Pravin Ratnam
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 844
From: Atlanta, GA,USA
Registered: Sep 2002
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posted 01-03-2014 10:21 AM
The RPX in Regal Atlantic Station (Atlanta) is nowhere that tacky. For this guarantee, I will go to another Regal(Medlock) and if it's anywhere close to that picture, I will have an easy time spelling my reasons out.
I think the RPX in Regal Atlantic had regular masking for Gravity, but I can't remember for sure as I have been conditioned by multiplexes lately to disregard masking. I know for a fact that some of the common width auditoriums in the Regals I go to used to have top and bottom masking, but nowadays , they don't bother using them. I don' tknow if the adjustable masking mechanism needs repair and they decided not to spend any more money on it or if it's a deliberate policy. The common height auditoriums still seem to use proper masking.
Anwyay, Marcel, that RPX picture looks like something out of a circus or as Bobby put it, the tacky old time Houston Astros color scheme.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 01-03-2014 11:12 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
One thing I can hand to IMAX is they've kept their brand consistent and professional looking.
IMAX has excellent marketing, almost all of the people on here do not support IMAX much at all but there is a whole segment of the movie going crowd that does support it. IMAX quietly but successfully changed their marketing in 2012, it is hard to tell the difference but it did change slightly.
I think XD, AVX, MAX or whatever are not good at all. The marketing is just not there. I don't mind AMC Prime, the marketing of Prime looks decent but it gets away from the two-three letter naming strategy which is important. I don't think we are going to see 4K marketed all that much, we'll have to see. I wonder if the shelf life for AMC ETX is done and that is why we are seeing AMC Prime?
Dolby did a smart move to move away from 5.1 or 7.1 surround marketing concepts, the marketing folks behind Atmos clearly got the point that the customers who are new to Dolby are usually the younger generation. They do not give a shit that sound is 5.1, 7.1 or 64.1. Dolby Atmos "Hear the Whole Picture" is not bad.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-06-2014 09:32 AM
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
IMAX has excellent marketing, almost all of the people on here do not support IMAX much at all but there is a whole segment of the movie going crowd that does support it.
Marketing and branding are actually two different things. IMAX' marketing sucks for all the misleading tactics, plain and simple.
IMAX' branding isn't bad, but it's not super fantastic either. The IMAX logo is little more than Eurostile Bold Extended lettering. Their "word mark" is clean and to IMAX' credit they've typically done a tasteful job in how they've used it and they've stuck with it for decades, growing its brand equity. Keep in mind they set their branding template back in the 1970's, long before computers allowed amateur hour to infect much of the graphic design field. They had to use actual professional designers, ad agencies, etc. to get their branding and graphics work done. Considering much of their business has traditionally been in museums, where customers tend to be more affluent, better educated and more discriminating in terms of visual taste, IMAX really didn't have any option to go with the wacky circus tent kind of theme seen in some conventional multiplex movie theaters.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
I don't mind AMC Prime, the marketing of Prime looks decent but it gets away from the two-three letter naming strategy which is important.
I disagree. It's actually refreshing to see a movie theater have a premium priced auditorium that doesn't carry a three letter acronym, particularly an acronym containing the letter X. The only movie theater brands worthy of carrying the letter X in them is IMAX and THX. That's it. All these other labels (RPX, ETX, AVC, XD, Xtreme, SDX, TitanXC, UltraScreen DLX, etc.) ring hollow for being so brashly unoriginal.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Dolby did a smart move to move away from 5.1 or 7.1 surround marketing concepts, the marketing folks behind Atmos clearly got the point that the customers who are new to Dolby are usually the younger generation. They do not give a shit that sound is 5.1, 7.1 or 64.1. Dolby Atmos "Hear the Whole Picture" is not bad.
Dolby couldn't label Atmos with a numerical scheme even if they tried. I don't think Dolby's current branding scheme speaks to any particular generation. It's still pretty conservative looking, even though they dumped the Eurostile and Helvetica lettering and replaced it with Morgan Sans, a more technical looking type family. I miss Dolby's old branding scheme even if it was rooted in 1970's design. IMHO, Dolby had no business trying to apply Dolby-centric branding to 7.1 surround. There is no Dolby-specific encoding scheme in 7.1 Linear PCM audio. A theater does not need any Dolby-branded hardware to play 7.1 surround.
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