ONEIDA —Several new pieces of state-of-the-art technology are making their debut at the Movieplex Cinema in Glenwood Plaza this weekend.
In one auditorium, a new system will allow for digital and 3-D films to be shown at the Zurich Cinemas-owned theater. Being able to show digital films means a new level of quality and adding 3-D capabilities is a necessary step to take in order to prepare for the future of movies and other entertainment, said Zurich Cinemas Director of Operations Jamison Mills.
Already, there is a list of 3-D movies that Movieplex will now be able to show with a projector add-on from a company called RealD. On Friday, the PG-rated 3-D feature “Coraline” began its run.
There’s something special about being able to have 3-D at the theater, Mills said.
“The 3-D, as it stands right now, is something that people can’t get at home at this point and to see it on the big screen is incredible,” he said.
The effect is similar to what one would see at Disney World, said Mills, and there is a buzz in the industry about 3-D becoming the next big thing at the movies.
“There are some people out there who have some extremely high hopes for it,” he said, as some predict that in coming years, a majority of the movies released will be in 3-D.
It also seems evident that live concerts and sporting events will be coming to movie theaters on a regular basis in the future. Having this kind of system is a good way to get ready for that, Mills said.
When it comes to the digital component, there are a number of new benefits and many serve the movie goer. For one, sound quality goes up, as does the visual part of the experience.
“The quality stands up to time,” Mills said. “Running the film over and over and over again, you don’t have any deterioration of the picture on the screen with digital. It’s just a far superior format.”
There are benefits for people who work at the theater too. Oneida Movieplex Cinema General Manager Melinda Keil said that there are a few things that make dealing with digital much easier, especially the setup.
“It’s a matter of going over to a computer and pressing play on a screen,” she said.
With a Dolby-made server and Christie projector, the new digital movie system looks very different than all of the theater’s other projectors, which still use the 35 millimeter film reels. Mills said that film stock will become obsolete in the future as more theaters switch to the digital systems. Zurich company heads plan to put digital systems into all auditoriums in their six theaters in the future.
Using a computer server system, Keil is able to download a movie and related components from a disk drive that is sent to the theater. Once it’s in the system, she uses a rather simple interface to program the presentation. This will make life easier for projectionists, as with the older systems, they have to deal with about 5 to 7 reels per movie. Now all they’ll have to work with is a disk drive and computer.
“It’s just so much simpler,” she said.
It is also anticipated that there will be fewer chances for technology to fail using this system, Keil said.
To set up for the system, a new 15-foot by 36-foot screen was added to the second-largest auditorium in the Oneida theater, Mills said. An appropriate sound system was already in place, though when current projection systems are replaced with digital systems, there will need to be some speaker work done in other auditoriums.
The cost to see a movie in the auditorium that uses the digital system will be the same as seeing it in any other auditorium should it be a non-3-D feature. When 3-D features come to the theater, patrons will have to pay $2 extra to see these films.
Mills said that this covers several additional costs that the company incurs in showing the films and the glasses cost.
Instead of the mostly cardboard red and blue plastic lensed glasses that used to be associated with 3-D films, now the glasses are more similar to a plastic pair of sunglasses. They’re a novelty that is also produced by RealD and something that movie goers are welcome to keep after a movie.
But Mills suspects that not everyone will want to every single time and in those cases, there will be an alternative.
“If they aren’t going to do anything with them and would probably just throw them away, they can put them in a recycling bin and we’ll take care of them,” Mills said.
This way, the glasses can be sanitized and used for future showings.
Mills said that he’d rather not say how much was paid for the digital system and the 3-D component, but did say that it was “a significant investment per screen,” as one system has been added to one auditorium per Zurich Cinemas-owned theater.
Beyond “Coraline,” there are plenty of other 3-D releases that will be screened at Oneida Movieplex Cinema this year. These films include Disney’s “Jonas Brothers: 3D Concert Experience” starting on Feb. 27, Dreamworks Animation’s “Monsters vs. Aliens” starting on March 27, Disney-Pixar’s “Up” on May 29 and Fox’s “Avatar” by James Cameron on Dec. 18.
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