Posted Aug 11, 2012, 9:25 PM
|
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Mar 2010
Posts: 1,024
|
|
Looks like the Mayfair on Bank Street is finished unless they can raise some money--and not due to the LPP or the Empire chain----but due to changing technology. Here is the explanation.
Quote:
Projector falls silent at Mayfair
2
By Darren Brown,Ottawa Sun
First posted: Saturday, August 11, 2012 01:12 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, August 11, 2012 03:39 PM EDT
It is a sound as synonymous with movie making as any but the whir of the projector at the Mayfair Theatre in Ottawa will soon fall silent.
As film distributors look to cut costs, they are looking to the future and digital technology.
“At the end of 2012, early 2013, 35mm film will pretty much be extinct in terms of distribution so the Mayfair Theatre, despite kicking and screaming film buffs have against it, us included, our hands are forced that the future is here,” says Mayfair Theatre co-owner, Josh Stafford.
For small movie houses like this one across the country, that poses a very expensive problem.
“We’re trying to raise a little over $50,000, and that’s a lot of money for anybody ... to buy this very high quality digital projector,” says Stafford.
While many large chains have already gone digital, the savings seems to be only for distributors.
To print an 80-minute feature film, it can cost $1,500 to $2,500 so making thousands of prints for a wide-release movie can cost millions of dollars.
In contrast, a feature-length movie can be stored on an off the shelf 300 GB hard drive for $150 and a broad release of 4,000 ‘digital prints’ might cost $600,000.
“This is our 80th anniversary coming up in December and although we get by there’s a lot of ‘for the love of the game’ so we don’t have tens of thousands of dollars in the bank.”
Throughout the year, the Mayfair is having special theme nights and asking patrons to put in a little extra over the price of admission, which goes towards the new projector’s purchase.
With most major theatres having already gone digital for blockbuster summers, many Mayfair patrons may not notice the change but for projectionist, Matthew Ramsden, the coming of a digital age is met with melancholy.
“It will be a really sad day. It’s not just a job for me. I’m kind of the last step in the film-making process.”
To Ramsden, each film reel has its own character.
“When we get a film back we know it’s one we’ve played already because everybody that plays a film, they put their own little mark on it; you make a splice and then you recognize it as your own.”
On this night he’s reacquainting himself with Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds, turning the theatre into a time machine, resplendent with faux balconies, stained glass, old movie posters and of course, the aroma of fresh popcorn as if it hasn’t aged a day.
But in the end there is no denying it, 35mm film at the Mayfair will soon spin off into the sunset.
darren.brown@sunmedia.ca
|
Maybe FOL can help them out by raising some money for them.,after all The Mayfair held fund raisers for FOL.
as posted in earlier articles there operation in Orleans is not doing well .
Last edited by LeadingEdgeBoomer; Aug 11, 2012 at 9:35 PM.
|
Prev
Linear Mode
