In one place I worked, the theater had aisle lights- but when the place was tripled, they re-arranged the seat spacings to get more in. The stupid dopes that moved and re-mounted the seats used a concrete stud blaster to fire threaded studs into the floor. They blasted through the conduits that provided asile light power, shorting out the wires at several places. Rather than pay to fix it, we made a deal with the fire safety dept. where we did not have to pay to put in asile lights if we agreed to keep the house lights up a bit.

I also like a well-lit theater, but I notice that in some newer theaters, they simply put in fewer lighting fixtures to save costs. There's a UA near me that has 3 regular 150w fixtures for a 200 seat house, and uses a parking lot light to clean by. Of course, it takes a while to come up, so thay turn it on right when the credits start.. about 2 min later, the screen is totally washed out.

For those who "roll their own", spooling up some of the Kodak VISION 800T Color Negative Film 5289 is great for tungsten-illuminated available light photography. Just be sure it goes through the motion picture ECN-2 process (e.g., a motion picture lab or one of the "specialty" labs offering ECN-2 processing):
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/negative/5289.shtml

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion