New Theatre - Advice requested

[Saleem Padinharkkara]

Hello

I am a movie distributor who is venturing out into exhibition as I got a good deal on an old multiscreen theatre. Well, its just a shell, because it has nothing but screen frames and a projector room. So I would like to know from you the experienced folks here how they would go about it. I am not looking for the right answer but just your thoughts on why you would do it a certain way. I am looking for advice on the following:

1. Projectors
2. Sound Equipment
3. Screens
4. Seats
5. TMS
6. Concessions

About the theatre, its all sloping floors and the screen sizes vary from 30-38 feet. At a minimum, I am looking at laser projection and atmos sound

I am not worried about initial costs, but more focused on keeping operating costs minimal and less disruptions operations wise.

Warm Regards

[Carsten Kurz]

There's a lot more to say, but, create a data sheet for every auditorium and start collecting data. Screen frame dimensions. Can you see previous seat mounting holes? Count them and calculate the number of seats for each. Make a drawing. You may probably think about modern luxury seats and thus get a much lower seat count than was installed there previously.

[Mike Blakesley]

You may not get much in the way of recommendations here unless you post more specifics besides the screen sizes. Measurements of rooms (including ceiling height), what kind of movies are you planning (mainstream first run or something else), what type of concessions are you wanting to offer (basic vs upscale, are you wanting to do food beyond the basics, etc).

I can tell you that going by those screen sizes, putting Atmos sound in all those rooms would probably be overkill, unless your budget is truly unlimited. It would cost an insane amount of money and your audiences probably would be just as satisfied with standard 5.1 systems (if they noticed the difference at all). Of course a Dolby salesman will tell you different.

If you're really wanting to spend a ton of money upfront and offer a wide array of amenities but "keep operating costs minimal," it's kind of hard to do both of those and still have a class operation, although the big chains try to do it all the time (and you can read a lot on here about how successful they are at it). You can automate the bejeezus out of the projection systems, but the rest needs TLC, otherwise known as showmanship. And even the projectors will perform better if there is a human tending to them.

To really get the best answers, maybe the best thing would be to go to CinemaCon next month and network your tail off. The trade show (and other exhibitors) can answer a lot of your equipment questions, and you'd come away with a notebook full of ideas.

[Jon Dent]

I'd argue that these days there's no reason not to install a 7.1 system at the bare minimum. It's just a few hundred bucks for an extra dual channel amp.

Mike is right that Atmos is quite expensive. Just upgrading our system would probably run us over $20k once you factor in a CP950 (or an Atmos license for our IMS3000), speakers and Dolby multichannel amp(s). Better to invest in an over engineered 7.1 system that can easily hit reference if needed.

[Steve Guttag]

For the record, when we have a client ask about Dolby Atmos, I ask them if they can budget between $100 - $150K for it. If the answer is no, then skip it and move on down the list of wants. Mike is incorrect that the room or screen size has a factor in Atmos appreciation. I've done rooms with 20-foot screen size up to about 50-foot. All came out really well. A key to Dolby Atmos is to not skimp on the design/installation. If you take advantage of the cost-cutting options (pairing, culling, 3-sceen channels), you might as well put in a 5.1/7.1 system. The closer you make the Atmos system to the 7.1, the less the difference you make the more you wasted on what you did spend money on. Conversely, if you do it right, then you can deliver whatever they put into the mix and that is the biggest uncontrollable factor. The system will only sound as good as the track.

Jon...it isn't just the Atmos processor an an amp or two. Typical (good) rooms have over 50 speakers, individually amplified and you have to have enough power for them and the DMAs are having to do a lot of power sharing to get their channel counts up (do the math...20A at 208VAC tops out at just over 4KW...I think Dolby specs it as topping out at around 3.6KW so on that 32-channel amp...you might have 100W or so per channel...depending on how many are going. That amp depends on only a handful of speakers are playing at once. You need to add in the wiring the rigging the speaker mounts...when multiplying things in the 50s...it all adds up real fast. Heck it can take 1-3 days just to really calibrate/tune one of those rooms...getting every speaker aimed just so. There is also a lot of paperwork that goes on behind the scenes to get the DARDT spreadsheet right, sufficient drawings to get Dolby approval and then the follow up.

We've had quite positive results from Dolby Atmos and at least one exhibitor is charging a premium for Atmos performances and is having no problem with that (and they often have a non-Atmos performance playing a close-by showtime. So, some customers seem to notice/care. But again, if you do it on the cheap, then no, save your money.

[Mark Lane]

To be truly helpful we need more information. What is your business plan? What kind of movies are you looking at? etc.

What is your business plan for the concessions? For us the concessions are part of the experience. We are an old theater with old ways.. no computer system.. runs more like a 1950's dinner where we just call out the orders. It becomes part of the show. We usually average over 100% of our customers buy concessions because we focus on lower prices and to-go orders. A theater that had prices three times as high as ours could make the same amount of profit on far fewer sales.
Our menu has to fix the business model. We have 15 to 20 seconds to take an order, fill the order, collect money and make change all while interacting with the customer.. The concessions stand layout and menu has to fit the business model.
Once we know your business model we can start to make more helpful suggestions.

[Mike Blakesley]

Mike is incorrect that the room or screen size has a factor in Atmos appreciation. I've done rooms with 20-foot screen size up to about 50-foot. All came out really well.

I never said that an Atmos install in a smaller room wouldn't sound good. I said it would be overkill.... mainly because in the original post, he said:

At a minimum, I am looking at laser projection and atmos sound

This implies that he wants to put Atmos in all the rooms, which you have to admit would be overkill in most situations. But like I mentioned, if an unlimited budget is involved, then Atmos away. I'm just talking from the perspective of a typical exhibitor with a "don't do it if it doesn't make sense" outlook.

It is also possible that Saleem isn't familiar with all the brand names yet and just saw "atmos" on a list of things to look at.

[Steve Guttag]

Mike, how do you define as "overkill?" Quite the opposite. If one is uniform, then there are no bad theatres...they are all good rather than having the one Atmos room and the rest less so. I've done the all 4K laser complex...again, uniformity. At least on the smaller rooms, with Atmos, there are now some high density amplifiers, like the Dolby DMA where the cost can be lowered without lowering the quality. Its still 50+ speakers though.

[Mike Blakesley]

Mike, how do you define as "overkill?" Quite the opposite. If one is uniform, then there are no bad theatres...

Very true but again, I'm thinking from the practical exhibition side. There are almost always two or three movies doing all the business and the rest are either fourth-week holdovers or flops that are playing to near-empty houses. So it makes less sense to spend multiple-times-the-money on systems that will take forever to make a return on the investment.

As I said, if the budget is unlimited or he's not in it for profit, then it's a moot question. The original post doesn't give a screen count, but that is the big question.... if it's three or four screens and affordable, then maybe 100% Atmos is the way to go, but if it's 24 screens then probably not. Put another way, if I was building an eight-plex, I'd rather have two or three fantastic screens and five or six "better-than-average" ones, than eight ordinary ones that were all exactly alike. I mean, I'd love to have an Atmos setup here but it wouldn't make economic sense.

[Geoff Jones]

Put another way, if I was building an eight-plex, I'd rather have two or three fantastic screens and five or six "better-than-average" ones, than eight ordinary ones that were all exactly alike. I mean, I'd love to have an Atmos setup here but it wouldn't make economic sense.

I'm curious: Has there ever been a multiplex where all of the auditoriums were set up exactly the same? (For that matter, has there ever been an eight-plex with two or three fantastic screens and five or six "better-than-average" ones?")

I've skipped a number of movies in the theater because they weren't playing in any good auditoriums. (Last Night in Soho is a recent example.)

I recognize that the business model in a small town like Forsyth or Thief River Falls is very different from most of the country, but...

I think that variations in auditoriums has been a key factor in the decline of movie theaters. It isn't difficult to imagine a moviegoer who isn't technically savvy ending up in a tiny, crappy side auditorium and thinking: This experience just isn't all that spectacular. It isn't worth it. (And of course, many of the people who are technically savvy have long since given up on most public cinemas in favor of a technically superior experience at home.)

Cinemas chains focused on convenience (Showtimes every 30 minutes!) instead of quality. Moviegoers have been trained that the only thing that matters is convenience... and now nothing is more convenient than watching at home.

In many areas, the only auditoriums worth leaving home for are the premium screens, and sadly almost every single one of them in every city is always booked with the exact same movie. If you want to see anything else, you're shit out of luck.

Sigh

[Steve Guttag]

Mike, I've done plexes where, essentially, all auditoriums were equivalent (they varied in seat count a little but nothing that one would feel like there is the good one and the rest. Nowadays, a reason for a larger plex would be to offer multiple showtimes...especially with the way recliners eat up real estate (lowers the seat count). So, even in an 8 plex, you might only be playing 4 or so titles. If you are splitting up a title across 2-3 screens, you would want uniformity between those screens to offer, essentially, the same experience.

I have done the "good-better-best" approach as well. Three tiers where each tier has a uniform experience. And that was in the film-days too. The "good" houses were fine but all of the sound equipment was from the more thrifty side of the manufacturer and/or the sound processor wasn't exactly a Dolby...it was always something a little less expensive. Back then, theatres tried to run a title as long as possible for more favorable splits and those "move-over" houses would maximize those sorts of profits by spending a little less on the show. After all, those that came to a movie 4-6 weeks into a run often were seeking a more thrifty experience than the most technologically advanced. Those wanting the biggest picture/loudest sound often came in the first 1-2 weeks.

But hey, you run a single...all of your theatres have a uniform experience for every show!

[Jon Dent]

I recognize that the business model in a small town like Forsyth or Thief River Falls is very different from most of the country, but...

True, we do have a weird, special little bubble going on here (that somehow got us to #5 nationwide for duplex theaters), but we still do have competition in the area (there's a 15 plex only 45 miles away) so it's not like we coast by strictly on convenience. We (I) do put a lot of emphasis on our technical presentation to make sure people have a reason to get off the couch.

Steve, that's good info. We're planning to build an additional screen in the near future and the owner and I had tossed around the idea of stealing the 7.1 system out of our bigger theater for the new one and then replacing it with an Atmos setup. But if it's going to cost us that much (especially to get it set up correctly) then forget it. As neat as Atmos would be I doubt it would pay off for us unless we started charging a hefty premium.

[Steve Guttag]

And that's a valid answer/summation. I'd rather see you have all rooms 7.1 rather than 1 half-assed Atmos that sounds like 7.1.

[Saleem Padinharkkara]

Thanks everyone for your valuable inputs. I am looking at an all Atmos setup and our budget is about 200K per screen. The reason we are doing all Atmos is because we are primarily dealing with non-hollywood movies and due to that, there are a lot of Atmos titles out there. So from a content perspective, we are covered.

We are betting on uniformity because we do not want our patrons to choose between experiences and ultimately confuse them or have them second guess their choice. We wanted to do 4K laser as well, but strong opinion is that given that our screens are 30-38', its not worth it. 2K laser would do.

This is what we are planning right now
Screens - Harkness
Sound - Dolby Atmos with JBL speakers (close to 40-50 speakers in a room) (Attached)
Projection - Barco 2k laser projectors

I am trying to reduce the labor as much as possible and keep it to like 1 person for 2 screens. Is that possible? If yes, what should I be doing to make it work without diluting the overall experience.

@Jon Dent - I used to work for Digikey Nice place that!

[Steve Guttag]

Personally, I'd use the SP4K line from Barco...no laser-phosphor, real RGB laser and all 4K...which will be, at least, as good as home TVs. The depth in the image of 4K exceeds the hyper-flat of 2K.

Have you loaded your parameters into DARDT to see if your speakers/amps will have the needed power? 100% of my Atmos systems use 5-screen channels. Though optional on under 40-foot screens...again, if you just want to put in a 7.1 system, put in a 7.1 system. The detail of what you get from speakers behind the screen will FAR exceed what you hang from the ceiling. People can determine lateral differences with much finer detail than vertical. Then again, it already looks like some surround reductions are in place (or the rooms are pretty small). Your spread sheet should list the CP950 as a CP950A. There is more to the "A" than just the license. It has the Atmos decoder board as well as a higher wattage power supply.