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  • Movie audience behaviour has descended into anarchy

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts...-but-there-is/

    If you can walk out of a theatre this summer without harbouring a case of simmering rage, then you’re a stronger moviegoer than I am.

    While the staggering success of the Barbenheimer phenomenon has delivered a resounding rebuke to the notion that streaming killed the multiplex, it has also sparked another, perhaps even more depressing question: Have we all lost our sense of common respect for one another? Or, to put a finer point on it: Can we not leave our phones alone for more than five minutes?

    This past week, audiences have been flooding social media with complaints about disastrous theatre etiquette – from moviegoers watching YouTube clips at full blast to patrons pulling out their smartphones and taking pictures of the movie – with flash! – as it’s playing. The situation has become so aggravating, incessant and widespread that the U.S. theatre chain Alamo Drafthouse issued a tweet clarifying basic human decency: “Don’t take pictures during the movie with the flash on. Don’t even touch your phone during the movie. Just – just don’t. PSA over.”

    While any visit to the movies over the past two decades has required civil audience members to gird themselves for the occasional glow of a screen or ping of a text, the situation has devolved with remarkably swift and devastating speed since theatres reopened after the worst of the pandemic. At a Barbie matinee last week, it was difficult to escape the glare of a cellphone flashlight, the buzz of a notification, and, yes, the blinding flash of camera as someone just had to catch an image of Ryan Gosling on-screen. One guest directly in front of me even spent a good portion of the film Instagramming her reactions live. (Reader, I moved, but passively-aggressively harrumphing the whole way.)

    Perhaps it is because at-home viewing – and the substandard, half-attention-worthy entertainment that many of the streaming giants have been pushing – has fostered a new relationship between audiences and art. Every film is now expected to be a second-screen experience for audiences, with one eye trained on our social-media feeds and group chats, the other on whatever happens to be playing in front of us.

    When audiences of a certain generation encounter a film that actually requires careful attention – as is the case with both Greta Gerwig’s sly and sharp Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s dense and knotty Oppenheimer – they are left flummoxed, their phone becoming a safety blanket. Actually, scratch that last age qualifier, as I’ve witnessed as much abhorrent behaviour from teens as I have middle-aged adults and senior citizens.

    The only excuse that can reasonably be deployed in protest – “What if I need my phone for an emergency?” – isn’t much of an excuse at all. For decades before mobile devices existed, audiences either worked around or prepared for the threat of home or workplace calamities. If you think that your wife might go into labour any minute now, maybe wait to catch Sound of Freedom until it’s available on-demand.

    Loud and pungent snacks might be another issue, but I’m not going to touch theatres’ one consistent source of revenue. As much as I pine for the days when it was just popcorn, candy and beverages, I understand why theatres have had to up their concessions game by introducing nose-tickling hot wings and hastily assembled burgers that require customers to sloppily smack their lips.

    In case this lands like a holier-than-thou film-critic rant – which, yes, partly – there is just as much bad behaviour from so-called cinephiles as general audiences. If there is any doubt, just sneak into a press and industry screening at the Toronto International Film Festival this September to witness the thousand-points-of-light that illuminate auditoriums full of critics and sales agents and producers.

    The situation is regrettably simple: Almost everyone is guilty, and almost everyone deserves to know that they are sullying what is still, or can be, a unique and frequently magical experience. It is only the preventative measures that are more complicated.

    Just as no one should expect ushers to police behaviour – theatre employees have enough trouble making sure their 70mm prints don’t break down or keeping the freestyle soda machines from accidentally flooding lobbies with Diet Cherry Limeade Fanta – no one should hope that every auditorium happens to have a vigilante audience member who is eager to yell some common sense into the Tommy Texters and Sally Soundtracks of the world. (That kind of stand-and-deliver bravery can also result in deranged violence.)

    While we can dream about cinemas installing magical signal-blocking tech that shuts down any wireless network five minutes before a movie begins – as if we’re about to fly over the Atlantic – that kind of draconian investment is about as likely as hiring unionized projectionists.

    Instead, it will be pure public shaming that might get us to some place of renewed decency. Or perhaps, paradoxically, any improvement will just require more and more audiences going to the movies, with Barbenheimer itself expanding expectations and obligations. The first time someone who hasn’t been to a film in a long while sits down in a theatre, they might be tempted to act the fool. But the second, third, fourth time, maybe it will be that fool in front of them who inspires a behavioural course-correction.

    Be the Barbie you want to see in the world – not the Barbie you TikTok.​

  • #2
    I propose a new, sort of social experiment: Cinema for the generation with an attention span of a lobotomized goldfish: LoGo Cinema

    We tear out the cinema chairs and simply put in some tables and designer seats, a bar with some bar stools. We just keep the light on during the show, serve drinks and snacks. The movie is there more like a background attraction, you know, to overcome those pesky silent moments. Also, we actively encourage Instagramming, TikTokking, live YouTube streaming and Twittering.. err... X-ing?

    We sell tickets at premium prices and we don't just ask tips for the drinks, we also ask a tip for the ticket, as even tipping 20% having your pre-packaged sandwich scanned at the 7 Eleven seems to be hipster those days. We also need at least one gold-plated thing on the menu...

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    • #3
      Thing is, one exciting engagement that did good business does not necessarily portend a long-term, glowing upturn in the exhibition business; there are many many other factors, a few of which are well outlined in the rest of the article, such as...
      .
      moviegoers watching YouTube clips at full blast to patrons pulling out their smartphones and taking pictures of the movie – with flash! – as it’s playing. The situation has become so aggravating, incessant and widespread that the U.S. theatre chain Alamo Drafthouse issued a tweet clarifying basic human decency: “Don’t take pictures during the movie with the flash on. Don’t even touch your phone during the movie​
      The author does touch on this as a very viable solution but dismisses it. I say not so fast -- we need to revisit that idea of cell service blocking. It was discussed at a NATO conference yeas ago -- the problem has been around once cells became like a third eye in the middle of everyone's forehead. NATO should lobby and petition the FCC to add an class exception to their restriction that prohibits blocking/jamming cellphone operation in cinema auditoriums. NATO can lobby for such an exemption....you know, make themselves sort of useful. As long as it is posted that there is no cell reception in the cinema auditorium, that should satisfy the service providers who want you to be on that phone 24/7 as well as the patrons who have been brainwashed to think they need to. It would be no different that when a building has poor or no reception because of the construction. If it is not a problem when it is a natural condition and people seem to be able to survive, why is it any different when it is "man-made" no signal situation. There's no cellphone service DEAL WITH IT!

      Years ago I bought a small blocker device from China (where else) about the size of a paperback with thee antennas sticking out the top; I put it behind the back seat in my car because many of our younger stage hands hands didn't own cars and I did, so many times I'd wound up driving the crew to fast food places after the shows. None seemed to think it would be impolite and rude to answer a cell call in the middle of a conversation with the guy who is taxing the lot...one would think. Same thing happened with family members. It annoyed the sheet out of me. But switch the jammer on, and problem solved. Soon the young'ins just got used the idea that there was no cellphone reception in my car -- it baffled them. They whined about it as first, as is their wont, but then the they just accepted it. They'll do the same as it becomes known that there is no cell service in cinema auditoriums. If they are so hard pressed to make a call, they can simply walk a few yards into the lobby and make their call. And like the author says, if you are a brain surgeon and you have a patient that is touch-and-go, maybe you don't need to see that monumental film, BARBIE, at this particular time.

      Oh, and BTW, that's a bit rich for Alamo to chide patrons for the distraction cellphone light can cause, when their business model has those same patrons chowing down on full meals as if they may never again find food on the planet. And when did it become impossible to enjoy a move without a feedbag strapped to one's face?

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen View Post
        I propose a new, sort of social experiment: Cinema for the generation with an attention span of a lobotomized goldfish: LoGo Cinema.
        Marcel, I was drinking coffee when I read this...made me laugh so hard it squirted out my nose!

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        • #5
          Would passive signal blocking violate any FCC rules? During construction the builders could put a bunch of chicken wire into the walls and ceiling of auditoriums to make them act a bit like Faraday cages. The walls wouldn't emit signals to jam other signals, but they wouldn't let any cellular signals through either. That sounds like a good solution to me (provided the chicken wire stuff didn't cause problems with the sound system wiring and equipment).

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          • #6
            At the microwave frequencies modern mobile devices operate at, you'd need something much narrower than chicken wire to really be an effective Faraday cage, like wire screen-door mesh (does anyone even still make that stuff?). Chicken wire might reasonably attenuate below C-band (4-8 GHz) but as frequency ranges climb ever higher you'd have to go smaller if you really want to future-proof it.... short of wrapping the auditorium in tinfoil or installing metal siding/roofing.
            Last edited by Van Dalton; 08-01-2023, 02:55 AM.

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            • #7
              Basic Human decency has long been in decline and the pandemic only accelerated it.

              I had to go tell a group of pre-teens in the front row to shut up because I could easily hear them halfway back in the theater talking LOUDLY through MI7. I can deal with people whispering but this was something else. The previous week I was with the owner and he had to tell a couple of old birds to be quiet because they were almost yelling to each other during the movie, even though they were sitting side by side.
              Last edited by Jon Dent; 08-01-2023, 08:17 AM.

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              • #8
                STHD
                STHU

                (Sit The Hell Down, Shut The Hell Up!)

                Most weeks I don't have much of a problem with stuff like this.

                This week is a wee bit more of that sort of thing at the start since a lot of people are coming that have never been here before. But I just stand in the back of the auditorium for the first five minutes of the movie every night and everything gets sorted out nicely for the rest of the show.

                People who watch movies here know that they are expected to behave.

                I have watched a movie in any theatre but my own in almost thirty years though, so I don't know what it's like in other places.

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                • #9
                  It ain't just kids. Little old broads (a condition that is neither age or gender specific) long ago forgot how to whisper; and feel as entitled as any 'tween to do some web surfing during a movie. And they get extra huffy if you politely ask them not to use that thing in the theatre.
                  Yet another reason this business is dying.
                  And get off of my lawn.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Frank Cox View Post
                    STHD
                    STHU

                    STFD, STFU?

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post
                      Would passive signal blocking violate any FCC rules?
                      Not unless the write it as part of the rules governing all that stuff. Just the same way they can write and exception to the rule they wrote about banning jammers. Somewhere in those discussions about getting NATO to lobby for a class exemption, I seem to remember someone saying that the EU has such an exception for both theatres and restaurants. There is no intrinsic reason at all why cellphone reception HAS to be available everywhere on the planet, and there is no legitimate reason why cellphone service providers should have license to radiate my property with their microwaves. If Verizon et al want to PAY me to have their junk reaching my patrons, I might consider it, otherwise have the right to do what I need to do to keep their damn EMR out of my theatre.

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                      • #12
                        It is VERY illegal to actively jam cell signals in the US. I advise not to do this or face steep financial penalties. Feel free to review the FCC's stance on this.

                        https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-e...20or%20vehicle.

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                        • #13
                          Darin, I am well aware of the FCC restrictions regarding blocking cellphone signals -- thing is, those rules are man-made and not written in stone tablets and they can be changed. I was not advocating illegal jamming in cinemas, I was advocating that the exhibitor's trade organization, NATO, lobby lawmakers in Congress to get the FCC to amend that regulation with an exemption for cinemas (and restaurants owners if they want to join such an effort), that would make it LEGAL to block cellphone microwaves in the auditorium proper of a cinema. BTW, the signal blocking restriction does not address purposefully installing Faraday construction for new builds. That would be WAY beyond the authority of the FCC to be dictating rules about construction materials.

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                          • #14
                            The FCC doesn't even allow cell phone jamming in prisons.

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Frank Cox View Post
                              STHD
                              STHU
                              In the old days of the Fillmore East -- am old single screen movie theatre converted for rock concerts -- they had a fantastic method of dealing with disruptive patrons, and I can tell you, if we complain about rude and obnoxious patrons today, there were plenty of those...I was going to use that phrase "on steriods," in those days, but probably at those concerts, they were probably on a myriad of stronger drugs. But I digress. To curtail bad behavior, they had ushers (really big linebacker type bouncers) at the four corners of the auditorium and if any one of the them saw someone doing something untoward, that usher would raise his flashlight high above his head and aim it at the perpetrator, giggling the light rapidly. The other three, seeing the beam of light, would then do the same, aiming at that same patron. Now the miscreant has four very bright jiggling flashlights directed at him or her from all sides of the room. That embarrassment of that alone was usually enough to stop the unruly behavior, but it if continued, all four, with flashlights still on the idiot, would start making their way over to the disruptor. If the bad behavior didn't stop before the four bouncers got to the patron, it was well established and know by anyone who attended more than one concert, the jig was over -- the four would grab that individual and escort them right out of the theatre and onto the street. I know, I know, nowadays that wouldn't be practical (mostly for the unending lawsuits!) but back then it sure was fun watching it action and watching the morons get their well deserved comeuppance,

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