Military base movie theaters are closing because of the shift to digital projection.
Here’s an interesting piece by Dirk Lammers of the San Francisco Chronicle on the closing of numerous military base movie theaters around the globe, because they can’t get the funding to make the jump to digital projection. As Lammers writes of the photo above, “movie patrons wait for the showing of Hotel Transylvania inside the theater on Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota on its last day of operation, Saturday, Jan. 19, 2013. The Army and Air Force Exchange Service theater serving airmen and their families is one of 60 across the globe that’s closing because it’s too expensive to switch from 35 millimeter film prints to an all-digital projection format.
Stacey Darling loves watching family movies at the Ellsworth Air Force Base theater in South Dakota because it’s so much more affordable than taking her three children to the multiplex in nearby Rapid City. Darling, whose husband is an airman, has been catching second-run films on base for about 2 1/2 years, and was there Saturday for the theater’s last showing. The movie theater is among 60 around the globe run by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service that is screening its last picture show amid the industry’s conversion to digital projection.
Darling said she wishes she could go to the theater even more now that her husband, Senior Master Sgt. David Darling, has deployed to southwest Asia. [But] it’s just not cost effective for the exchange service to invest the $120,000 per theater needed to convert from 35 millimeter film to the new format at the theaters that are being closed, said spokesman Judd Anstey. ‘At locations where customer attendance is decreased due to a preference for off-installation entertainment venues, a determination has been made that continued operation is no longer a viable option,’ Anstey said.”
I have only this to say: $120,000 a theater to convert to digital? This is too much money? These theaters provide both entertainment and a meeting place for those in the armed forces; once again, one more place for people to gather together and share a sense of community is vanishing in the digital era.
