Cinemas attract a high-tech audience

Cinemas are engaged in technology, with side images, giant screens or moving seats, to leave a mark on the viewer and cope with the growing competition from digital platforms.

At the Pathé Beaugrenelle cinema in Paris, the projection of The Ant Man and The Wasp is accompanied by cries, laughter or applause thanks to the ScreenX equipment and the 4DX system.

Sometimes, the audience – many teenagers – see pictures on the front and sides, while the seats move and vibrate to accompany the action of the film. In addition, drops of water or gusts of hot air fall on them.

This is the second room in the world (after that of Seoul) equipped with this technology from the South Korean group CJ 4DPLEX, says AFP.

4DX combines seat movements and sensory effects such as wind, rain and fog.
The ScreenX is a format that offers movies with a 270 degree viewing angle. This technology, created in 2012, is present in more than 145 cinemas around the world, including 86 in South Korea and 44 in China.

Other technology, the experience of the 'immersive' cinema & # 39; (ICE, Immersive Cinema Experience), combines comfort and technology.

It typically includes reclining chairs, high-end laser projection, Dolby Atmos sound, and side-light panels so the viewer can enjoy an enveloping environment with LightVibes technology, invented by Philips and adapted to cinemas.

"For the show in the theater to continue to be something incredible, we must bring new things to the audience, especially young people," says François Bertaux, Pathé's director of operations.

4DX (Courtesy)

World Trend

"Since the move to digital projection, early 2010, it's as if we had pulled out Wild beasts, there is not a week without announcing a technological innovation, "says Jean-Marie Dura, author of a report on the" cinema of tomorrow "in 2016.
"It's really a global trend," mainly in a multiplexer, led by the United States and Asia, he adds.

Among the groups launched in this technological race, we find the Canadian IMAX which, last March, could boast of having equipped 1,382 pieces in the world of giant screens. , "Clearly at the top," he says.

The American Dolby is one of its major competitors, with its Dolby Vision technology, which covers a wide range of colors and contrasts (150 screens worldwide). Also noteworthy is the South Korean Samsung, which launched in March in Zurich a first 3D LED room (without projector) or French Ymagis, which has just equipped a first cinema in China of its technology EclairColor.

"All these innovations lead us more and more to an engineering cinema" for "very spectacular films," says Jean-Marie Dura, but "this is not at the expense of films from superior quality".