Mediaboss Marketing

-By Andreas Fuchs

Christie lights up the Big Sky Drive-In in Texas.

With the ozoner season in full bloom across the countryand in Canada, of courseFilm Journal International got into the passenger seat with some key players who are driving the digital conversion of what Vincent rightly calls a uniquely American institution and outstanding value in family entertainment.

As the owner and operator of a soft- and hardtop theatre combination in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, Vincent is in the process of converting to digital projection. Located in a tourist area of Cape Cod, the Wellfleet Cinemas are busy seven nights a week, so that shutting down for installation is not an option for him during the peak summer season. In general, financing the transition is probably the biggest challenge for any independent theatre owner, he feels. Technically, however, of every conversion that I know of in the drive-in spaceand there have been about 40 to 50 screensnot one has reported back that they have a worse picture than with 35mm film. Everyone says that the image has been substantially better.

Cases in point are Harold Spears, proprietor of the Silver Moon, Lakeland and Joy-Lan, Dade City drive-ins in sunny Florida; and John M. Cumins, district manager at B&B Theatres. I am very happy that we switched and very satisfied with the whole situation, Spears confirms. Since November 2011, both screens at the Silver Moon have been running on Christie, producing the desired results in picture quality.

Spears credits preliminary site surveys and the resulting equipment specs to have assured the transition. I had the capital available for the conversion, he humbly responds when asked about the financial implications. Even though hes enrolled in Christies virtual-print-fee reimbursement program, Spears will have to see about the Joy-Lan, he admits. Its a very marginal situation of a single-screen drive-in in a small community. Im just not sure if it justifies the expense at this time. Well make that decision down the road. For now, at least, we havent had any problem getting 35mm there.

Film prints are no longer needed at any of the 29 locations of the 88-year-old B&B circuit, Cumins reports. The L-shaped booth at their Moberly Five & Drive in Moberly, Missouri, serves patrons on plush seats inside and in their cars outside at the same time. Using Christie digital projectors for some six months has been amazing, he says. The picture quality and brightness are beyond anybodys expectations. It is such a long, long throw to get it out there on the drive-in screen. We are actually able now to start pictures a little bit earlier, closer to dusk, because the image is so much brighter. There are no regrets whatsoever! In both locations the public has noticed the difference as well. Weve had some very good feedback, Cumins confirms. If youve been to the drive-in before and you are coming back, you will really notice the difference in our digital presentation.

Another happy digital driver is Walt Effinger, Terri Westhafer, director of digital-cinema business development at Barco, assures us about the April installation at his Skyview Drive-In in Lancaster, Ohio. Going back some seven years, Westhafer and the former UDITOA president and numerous association members have been driving digital hard. By her own admission, Westhafer is a big fan. I fondly recall my own days as a customer at the local passion pits, she laughs. Im sure I am dating myself even using that term. Having frequented drive-ins well into the last few decades, when they became very difficult to find, Westhafer saw an opportunity to resuscitate them when she joined the theatrical business. As much as I enjoyed drive-ins, she confesses, I never recalled them having the most outstanding presentations.

As for the reasons, film was simply inadequate to meet the large-screen requirements of drive-ins, she believes. Hot spots and poor illumination, plus jump-and-weave inherent in sprocket-driven film projectors, made for many blights on the screens. In addition to extraordinary screen sizesmany in excess of 90 feet in width [27 m], they are dealing with throw distances of 300-plus feet [90 m], frequently twice that. They had antiquated equipment ensconced in old, often ramshackle boxes that barely qualified as projection booths situated in dirt fields and had to deal with all sorts of weather conditions, including grim ambient light problems.

So when Effinger told her that the drive-ins were in danger of going the way of the eight-track player if they werent able to understand, afford and walk the path toward digital projection, it became her call to action. I put together a presentation for them that explained the essential differences between film and digital, feeling that my Kodak background, coupled with my decision tofully embrace digital, qualified me to do so. The response was overwhelming, Westhafer says, and subsequently led to the first-ever digital projection demo at a drive-in with NEC and Strong Digital, which were the brightest projectors at the time.

Read the original:
The great digital outdoors: Drive-ins see the light by upgrading technology