EXCLUSIVE: IMAX Portable Up Close

Posted on May 31, 2011

The Kinotech Blog is proud to present this exclusive first look at new close proximity photos of IMAXs portable theatre in Milton, Ontario. The photographs were taken this weekend by Colin Carmichael from a location near the Toronto Auto Auctions. The inflatable structure is designed to showcase IMAX films in parts of the world, such as rural China, where the infrastructure does not exist to build a permanent IMAX theatre. In business concept, its similar to that of Itinerama, which traveled Europe half a century ago. The IMAX portable will also be available for live presentations and the structure can be branded by a sponsor, making it ideal for large events such as the FIFA World Cup. During IMAXs Q1 Earnings Call on April 28, Marla Backer of Hudson Square Research inquired about the portable theatre. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond responded: Were still testing it technically, Marla, and its been up in Toronto where we wanted to expose it to wind, but in fact we had a special treat this winter that we had hail and snow besides wind, so weve been testing it and I think when we make more of them, were going to make some design changes. So I think its going to be a while until its deployed in any kind of meaningful way. We want to test out the business model. I think we always said from the beginning that we are going to see how it goes. I dont want you to get the feeling I am any less optimistic or more pessimistic about it; Im not. Its just we are going to do it in a methodical business-like way and given the growth in the rest of our business we have the luxury to do that, and I think we will see what happens over the next year or so. If you happen to be in the Toronto area and want to see the IMAX portable theatre for yourself, here are the directions: Take 401 to James Snow Parkway Go north on James Snow Parkway to Steeles Ave Turn left on Steeles Ave to Lawson Rd Turn right onto Lawson Rd and follow one mile north. Cross Esquesing Line Cross the next intersection, which will be Hunter Dr on the left and the entrance to the Toronto Auto Auctions on the right. The next driveway on the right will be to Lot B for the Auto Auctions. Directly across from the Lot B entrance, on your left, will be the Lot C entrance.

The IMAX portable theatere is located in the far southwest corner of Lot C. So as to best fit the entire area into the Google Earth image, North is located toward the bottom of the picture:

For further information on the IMAX portable theatre and all things IMAX and giant screen, subscribe to the LF Examiner at www.lfexaminer.com The following photos are by Colin Carmichael and are used with permission.

(C) 2011 Joseph L. Kleiman

IMAX may offer portable cinemas

By Yu Tianyu (China Daily) Updated: 2010-06-22 10:26

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The China National Film Museum has the nation's largest IMAX cinema. China is IMAX's fastest-growing market with 23 IMAX theaters opened to date. [China Daily]

BEIJING - Giant-screen movie technology company IMAX Corp is looking to pump up ticket revenues by opening IMAX Portable Theaters in the country's third- and fourth-tier cities. "Made with a type of hard plastic, an IMAX Portable Theater is a big structure like a tennis bubble blown up. They can be set up anywhere from the Great Wall to a rural Chinese village," Richard Gelfond, CEO of IMAX Corp, said in an exclusive interview with China Daily. "It may give our brand more opportunities to run special events for big premieres and also expand our footprint into new locations where they might not have the infrastructure for a traditional theatre." Currently, there are only 31 multiplex cinemas across China, with each location boasting a population of over 1 million. China, which is IMAX's second-largest market after the United States, still offers many opportunities, said Gelfond. Each inflatable structure costs more than $1 million to build and it is able to seat around 450 people, equipped with IMAX-standard screens and audio. Gelfond said its first portable theater in China would open in September. He said he hopes that advertising revenue generated from the giant billboard created on the inside and outside of each structure would help offset the cost of building them. He also plans to seek government assistance in subsidizing entertainment projects in small cities and rural areas. China is IMAX's fastest-growing market with 23 IMAX cinemas opened to date. The company has plans for more than 50 IMAX theaters by 2012. In mid-June, IMAX and Wanda Cinema Line Corporation, one of the fastest growing cinema chains in China, announced plans to add three additional IMAX systems in the cities of Quanzhou, Wuhan and Dalian. Wanda now operates four IMAX cinemas across China. According to the agreement, Wanda will operate 14 IMAX theatres by the end of 2012.

Gelfond said: "We license our technologies to Chinese film exhibitors, like Wanda, UEM and Stellar, who build the theaters. And they pay us an upfront fee of about $1.3 million per theater as well as royalties. IMAX will keep 3 to 5 percent of the box office receipts."
Related readings: IMAX to open new theater in China Avatar drives IMAX box office record IMAX puts 3D spin on science films with "Hubble 3D" "Avatar" passes $200 million mark at Imax

"IMAX will also help design the theaters and do the marketing work as well as offer content to these exhibitors," he said. Chinese film exhibitors are keen on getting the rights to show IMAX films, especially after Hollywood blockbuster films like Avatar grossed 160 million yuan ($24 million) total at 14 IMAX cinemas in China, accounting for about 10 percent of the total box office take at IMAX cinemas across the globe.

In cooperation with Huayi Brothers Media Group, Aftershock, a Chinese blockbuster film about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed 300,000 people, is due for release on July 22, and has become the first film that IMAX helped digitally remaster outside the US. Director Feng Xiaogang said he expects his film to reap about 500 million yuan at the box office. Gelfond said IMAX will lessen the cost of converting films to the IMAX format.

EXCLUSIVE: First Look At The IMAX Portable Prototype

Posted on April 27, 2011

In just a moment, youll see one of the first photos taken of whats believed to be the prototype for IMAXs portable theatre. The photo was taken in early September, 2010 by area resident Colin Carmichael. It is posted here with permission of the photographer. (In a case of fact being more interesting than fiction, Mr. Carmichael currently lives in the home owned by Robert Kerr at the time that he, Graeme Ferguson, Bill Shaw, and Roman Kroitor were forming what would become IMAX Corporation). Shortly before this photo was taken, the structure suddenly appeared in a field near the town of Milton, Ontario, some 30 minutes from IMAXs corporate headquarters in Mississauga. A few days later, Milton Ward 7 Councillor Rick Di Lorenzo contacted IMAX to inquire about the structure. According to Di Lorenzo on HawthorneVillager.com, They asked what media publication I was from. I said Im not from one I just live in the area. They said they cannot publicly comment on that building at this time but in the future there will be some public information. I asked a little more about it saying I lived in the area and I just wanted to know whats going on. They said then its not a permanent structure but that sorry they couldnt say anything more.

Where the components are made remain a mystery. What is known is that if the current pattern holds, most of them will be from the Greater Toronto Area or close proximity. In the current IMAX Digital configuration, the Christie projectors are manufactured in Kitchener, Ontario, approximately one hour from Mississauga.

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IMAX Digital screens are manufactured in Joliette, Quebec, some seven hours away, by StrongMDI Screen Systems.

As for the structure itself, there are around five manufacturers who could have constructed such an edifice. However, in keeping with the pattern of vendors being close to the GTA, the two most potential manufacturers are Yeadon Fabric Structures and The Farley Group, both located in Guelph, Ontario, an hour from Mississauga.

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So what does an IMAX Portable Theatre prototype look like?

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Imax's Widescreen Profit Performance

By James Sterngold and Michael White on January 27, 2011

Lots of companies have rebounded from the recession, but few have regained form as quickly as the larger-than-life theater company Imax (IMAX). Box-office sales for films shown on its mega-screens more than tripled over the past two years, to $587 million in 2010. (Imax pockets as much as a third of each ticket's cost.) Shares have risen tenfold since late November 2008. By the end of this year, Imax projects it will have about 600 screens, up from 266 in 2005. That could mean more prosperous times ahead, since Imax says its screens generate nearly five times the revenue of those at a traditional cinema. There's also the cool factor: Imax's giant curved screens, once best known for showing feelgood nature films at museums, have become among the hottest dates in Hollywood: Top directors such as James Cameron and J.J. Abrams fight to open their special-effects-laden hits at Imax venues to crank up the wow factor. "The benefits to the studio, I'm sure, involve higher ticket prices and having another kind of aspect to publicize. But the real benefit is that it's immersive and massive," says Abrams, who is producing the next installment of Viacom's (VIA.B)Mission: Impossible franchise for an Imax release. Despite such accolades and the current popularity of Imax's widescreen fare, executives say the company almost failed before plotting a difficult digital rebirth. "We came very close to the financial brink" a decade ago, recalls Chief Executive Officer Richard Gelfond. "We discussed bankruptcy and a recapitalization. For an extended period of time we managed for cash, not growth, and beyond that we had to change the companyjust about everything." Crippled by debt, high costs, and clunky analog technology, Imax twice tried to find a buyer, most recently in 2006. Yet potential suitors doubted the company's ability to move beyond traditional low-return mainstays such as Whales: An Unforgettable Journey, and Imax failed to drum up interest. The repeated failures turned out, in hindsight, to have been a lucky break, since they forced Gelfond to undertake a transformation that fundamentally altered nearly every aspect of Imaxs business model. One key issue: how to convert Hollywood's 35mm films to Imax's 70mm format. Gelfond says Imax, unable to find anyone with technology to blow up the movies without distortion, had to invent its own process. Imax now has 105 patents, with 72 more pending.

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"They are really a pretty simple story of a company with a concept that was 15 years too early," says Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst. "They started to build out their theaters before they had the right content ready, the Hollywood movies. Now they have...become the Louis Vuitton of theaters." A financial restructuring was another critical advance. In 2008 the company penned a deal with theater operators that required far less capital up front from Imax and produced revenues quickly, followed the next year by $131 million in equity offerings. The fresh capital plus shortterm borrowings were used to retire all long-term debt. Tech advances also have helped. Imax's old large-format film reels, which cost up to $40,000 per copy and weighed hundreds of pounds, have been replaced with hard drives that cost a few hundred dollars and offer better-quality digital video. And the cost of building large-format theaters or retrofitting multiplexes with Imax systems has fallen from about $7 million to a few hundred thousand dollars, thanks to lower construction costs and less expensive gear. Moviemakers say Imax can help lift a film above the weekend multiplex clutter. "What creates the buzz for a movie is when somebody walks out of an Imax theater Tweeting and Facebooking, saying, 'You should see what I just saw,'" says Jon Landau, James Cameron's producing partner on Avatar and a coming sequel. "That's what we're going for." Imax's first clear sign of mainstream success was withThe Matrix Reloaded in 2003, the first time Imax showed a movie simultaneously with regular theaters. "I was looking to do something out of the box; to make our film special," says Dan Fellman, head of domestic distribution at Time Warner's (TWX) Warner Bros. Entertainment, the studio behind the movie. "Whether or not I broke even wasn't the question." The movie grossed $742 million, up from $464 million for the original The Matrix. Although the Imax box-office take was just $14 million, it was enough to prove the format's credibility to Hollywood. It's a different story today: Imax showings generated $242 million of Avatar's $2.78 billion worldwide box office and almost one-quarter of the ticket sales for Tron: Legacy on just 2 percent of the screens showing the film, according to Imax. The trick now, Gelfond says, is to leverage the Imax brand without diluting it. The company is forming 3net, a cable channel with Sony (SNE) and Discovery Communications (DISCA), and has built a prototype portable Imax theater that could show movies or even live events such as rock concerts at temporary locations. Says Greg Foster, Imax's chairman of filmed entertainment: "If we can provide a piece of our DNA that creates a better experience, then it might make sense to try something new." 15

The bottom line: Widescreen theater operator Imax, once barely afloat, is riding the current wave of popularity for 3D and special-effects films.
Sterngold is a reporter for Bloomberg News. White is a reporter for Bloomberg News in Los Angeles.

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IMAX Strikes Back

Go big or stay home. Directors and studio executives are clamoring to have their summer blockbusters released on supersize screens, reviving a technology that was once a mainstay of science museums.
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By RACHEL DODES

Reuters

Space Odyssey: An audience watches 'The Dream Is Alive,' about the space shuttle, at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, a classic legacy IMAX theater built in the 1970s.

As a kid growing up in Chicago, Hollywood director Christopher Nolan used to visit the Museum of Science and Industry to watch IMAX movies like "Everest" and "To Fly," a history of aviation. "I remember looking at the audience every time a helicopter banked, and everyone was leaning slightly to the side," recalls Mr. Nolan, who insisted on using IMAX technology for his newest "Batman" epic "The Dark Knight Rises." "I had never seen an audience so immersed in a film."

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The immersive large-screen format IMAX is growing rapidly in popularity, as studios and theater chains seek new ways to counter the appeal of impressive home-theater setups. Rachel Dodes has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images.

After decades of functioning as something like a planetariuman attraction designed to spice up museums by showing documentaries aimed at families and nature enthusiastsIMAX is suddenly in the spotlight. When Mr. Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" opens July 20, it will contain the most IMAX footage ever for a Hollywood feature, more than one hour's worth. There were 40 minutes of such footage in 2008's "The Dark Knight"which set box-office records in its opening weekend. IMAX's summer slate also includes potential blockbusters "The Avengers," "The Amazing Spider-Man," "Men in Black 3," Tim Burton's gothic comedy "Dark Shadows," and Ridley Scott's 3-D "Prometheus." Mr. Nolan's film was the only one shot using IMAX cameras; the others were converted using IMAX's technology.
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Photo Illustration by Ian Keltie; Lettering by Daniel Pelavin; Columbia Pictures (The Amazing Spider-man, Men in Black 3); Marvel (The Avengers); Warner Bros. Pictures (Dark Knight Rises);

Studios are inviting IMAX executives to movie sets and rearranging opening dates to guarantee a release in the company's trademarked theaters, known for large floor-to-ceiling curved screens, grand stadium seating, surround sound, and premium prices. IMAX tickets cost about 30% more than those sold at standard theatersabout $15 or more for a ticket in New York or Los Angeles.

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With flat-screen TVs and other couch-potato options like Netflix exploding, and theater attendance declining, studios need IMAX to provide marketing popoh-wow moments, word-ofmouth, and high ticket prices to amp up opening-weekend box office numbers, generating yet more buzz. And most importantly, a generation of directors with clout love the way it makes their movies look.Inspired by Mr. Nolan's successful use of the cameras, a group of directors, including J.J. Abrams ("Star Trek"), Brad Bird ("Mission: ImpossibleGhost Protocol") and Michael Bay ("Transformers"), have been increasingly using IMAX to shoot scenes for their movie spectacles. "I think audiences are starting to associate IMAX with the big event moviesthat the two things go hand in hand," says Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, the studio behind all three franchises. The year's hottest movie so far, "The Hunger Games," did so well on IMAX screens that it is returning to them at the first opportunity, on April 27. When a digitally remastered, 3-D version of James Cameron's "Titanic" was released earlier this month at 79 IMAX theaters domesticallyin addition to thousands of othersIMAX accounted for nine of the 10 top-performing locations during opening weekend.
Summer Movie Guide

Going Big: Six Summer Imax Movies

As always in Hollywood, IMAX's marquee moment could be fleeting. Theater owners are building their own large-screen theaters and charging less. New technologies could sweep in at any time. Many directors had been intrigued by IMAX in the past, but their studio partners didn't see the allure. The cameras, which hold just three minutes of 70mm film, running horizontally, are notoriously loud, requiring the dubbing of dialogue after shooting action scenes. They also weigh about 90 pounds, which can make them challenging to maneuver, and nearly impossible to use for hand-held shots. Mr. Nolan dismisses these concerns. "There was a huge irony that we were told it would be too difficult to shoot a Hollywood movie on IMAX when we had this gigantic camera department, grips, electric, hundreds of people working for us," says the director, whose agreement to direct "The Dark Knight" was contingent on Warner Bros. allowing him to shoot the film in IMAX. "These were cameras that had been to the top of Mount Everest, to the bottom of the ocean and into outer space, but people thought we couldn't make a feature film. It was absurd."

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In December, Paramount made the unconventional decision to release "Ghost Protocol" exclusively in IMAX theaters five days before broadening its release. The move, which Mr. Bird advocated, helped catapult the film to the No. 1 spot when it went wide the following week on the way to becoming the highest-grossing "Mission Impossible" installment yet.
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Director Christopher Nolan on the set of 'The Dark Knight Rises' in New York last year, using IMAX equipment. The film, last in the 'Batman' franchise, opens July 20.

For Mr. Bird, the point is that the typical multiplex theater lacks excitement. When he was young, he says "if you wanted to see a brand new movie, the only way was to see it perfectly projected in a really big theater with the bulb turned all the way up and an attentive projectionist."

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Theaters need all the help they can get: Last year, movie attendance shrank 4% to 1.3 billion admissions, the lowest level in 16 years. Box office revenues declined at the same rate, to $10.2 billion. It isn't the first time Hollywood has responded to a downturn by going big. In the 1950s and 60s, studios turned to large format movies, such as VistaVision and Panavision, to get people back into theaters amid an explosion in television ownership. For director Martin Scorsese, who released the Rolling Stones concert film "Shine a Light" in IMAX in 2008, large-format screens are "a natural progression" for ardent moviegoers. "I will never forget seeing 'The Searchers' in VistaVision," says Mr. Scorsese, referring to John Ford's classic Western, and its widescreen, panoramic image. "It was a sacred feeling, seeing that movie on that big screen." That's what the filmmakers want the theaters to do for them. "It's 'go big or stay home,'" says "Men in Black" director Barry Sonnenfeld, "especially if you are going to go to a theater where the subwoofers are broken, the speakers are humming and the projection is too dark." IMAX is under pressure to keep its hot streak going. The company, which went public in 1994 a year after a leveraged buyout, saw its stock perk up in 2010 when "Avatar" filled theaters, and hit an all-time high last June before falling when some movies, many in 3-D, underperformed. Investors' expectations this summer are high. IMAX finally turned a profit in 2009, though the extent of those profits has varied since then, with volatile box office swings and the company aggressively expanding its screens. Despite its share in "Avatar's" success, IMAX's fortunes aren't tied to the success of 3-D, which has gotten mixed reviews from audiences so far. IMAX also has begun to distance itself from animated movies, which weren't as popular among its key audience in the U.S., the young male moviegoers known as fanboys. A group of Canadian filmmakers developed the technology for IMAXshorthand for "maximum image" in the late 1960s. The company's first effort, "Tiger Child," a 17-minute demonstration film, premiered at the 1970 Japanese pop-culture convention Expo. Until a decade ago, the company was focused largely on movies like "Mission to Mir," "China: The Panda Adventure" and 2001's "NSync: Bigger than Live." Many were 40-minute shorts. The museums would build and own the theaters and pay for IMAX technology. IMAX, in turn, would provide the movies, and they would split the take from ticket salesat premium prices. But the market for nature and science documentaries at museums was limited.

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What began to change was that IMAX figured out how studios could more cheaply convert existing movies into an IMAX formatno special cameras needed. In 2002, IMAX switched gears by rereleasing the 1995 film "Apollo 13." It generated publicity for the company but was a commercial flop. The following year, Warner Bros. released "Matrix Revolutions" in IMAX and traditional theaters simultaneously, marking IMAX's first "day-anddate" deal. The 48 IMAX theaters in North America showing the movie grossed $800,000 on the first day it was released, a company record. Still, the company struggled with "the proverbial chicken-and-egg situation," says Richard Gelfond, its chief executive officer. IMAX couldn't gain access to big commercial movies because it didn't have enough screens for studios to justify the conversion costsabout $30,000 per printand it couldn't sell screens to exhibitors because studios weren't making movies for IMAX.
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Lionsgate

Another Shot: In an unusual move, 'The Hunger Games' is returning to 270 IMAX theater screens next weekend after breaking records in its one-week run last month.

Finally, the transition from film to digital in moviemaking lowered the costs for studios to convert their films to IMAX proportions. Theaters began retrofitting existing theaters, with IMAX providing the equipment. In 2007, there were 179 non-museum IMAX screens world-wide; by the end of 2011 there were 517. Although the theaters own the space, IMAX controls the network, booking the movies. Theater owners may be doing business with IMAX, but they are also trying to get into the game themselves. Regal, which has about 70 IMAX locations, for example, launched its own "RPX" or "Regal Premium Experience" which seeks to mirror the IMAX formatin 2010, and now has 17 theaters, planning to double that number by the end of the year. AMC and Carmike have followed suit with their own versions. Exhibitors say they're not trying to compete with IMAX but merely supplement it in areas where building IMAX theaters doesn't make sense. But they don't have IMAX's brand recognition, or its technology. Movies projected on IMAX film, which is 70mm across, with 15 "perfs"exhibitor-speak for "perforations"can hold 10 times more image information than 35mm film, which has just four perfs. As a result, IMAX film creates an image that's cleaner and more high-resolution than what's found in standard films. IMAX's

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patented "DMR" conversion system takes films shot digitally or using 35mm film and enhances their resolution so that they can be projected onto IMAX's huge screens, reducing graininess. Digital technology has given IMAX a huge boost, allowing theater chains to cheaply convert existing spaces into IMAX-branded theaters, albeit with smaller screens than those seen at museums and legacy film theaters. This has occasioned some complaints: In 2009, comedian Aziz Ansari wrote a blog post about his experience seeing "Star Trek" at the AMC IMAX theater in Burbank, which had a screen size of just 28 by 58 feet, significantly smaller than the traditional IMAX theater (New York's Lincoln Square IMAX, which opened in 1994, is 76 by 97). "IMAX is whoring out their name and trying to trick people," wrote Mr. Ansari on his blog, before urging his then-25,000 Twitter followers to boycott its theaters. Shortly thereafter, one aggrieved viewer started a website called LIEmax.com with a map of "real" and "fake" IMAX theaters. IMAX's Mr. Gelfond cites a study that said 98% of audience members liked the new theaters, and added that screen size was just one component of the overall IMAX experience. This year, IMAX plans to screen about two dozen movies, which it chooses itself, raising the risk that it could pick some duds. In March, the company was able to swap Disney's bombing "John Carter" with "The Hunger Games" at 270 of its digital theaters. But the chain was unable to maximize the potential of "The Hunger Games" because it had already committed to show "The Wrath of the Titans" the following week. The company considers this a high-class problem. "The great part about our business is that we are now at a place where we are not able to accommodate all the movies that wanted to be in our network," says Greg Foster, IMAX's chairman of filmed entertainment. "I can tell you, a few years ago that was not the case." Indeed, the company last year decided to start doing short weeklong runs, as it did in the case of "The Hunger Games," "The Lorax" and the coming film "The Avengers." Mr. Foster says its now possible for the company to be more nimble in capitalizing on hot releases, and the growth of its network and success with audiences has given it more clout with studios. "We are not a rounding error anymore," he says. Case in point: When Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Co-chairman Rob Friedman first approached IMAX last year about "The Hunger Games," the company's theaters were already committed to "John Carter," Disney's $250 million 3-D saga. In January, Mr. Friedman says, IMAX called to say it had found an opening. The company shoehorned in "The Hunger Games"

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at 270 digital theaters when it opened in March, limiting "John Carter" to two weeks, though it stayed in the theaters using film. "What happened was they saw the opportunity to counterprogram with 'Hunger Games,' which was a different audience than 'John Carter,'" says Mr. Friedman. On April 27, the film will return to IMAX digital theaters for another weeklong run, bumping "Wrath of the Titans," which has already been in IMAX theaters for a month. IMAX hasn't yet committed to films for August and September, because it wants to give "The Dark Knight Rises" more time to run. That film, will be screened at 100 of IMAX's largest locations in traditional film format, requiring exhibitors to reconvert from digital to film at their own expense. For this unusual mandate, thank that old IMAX fan, Mr. Nolan the director. "I felt if we could have one of those in every major city, we could justify the difficulty of going to a lot of trouble to shoot this way," he says. "You will see a crisper image."

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