Sean C. Morgan
Unsuspecting astronauts George Clooney and Sandra Bullock chatted amiably Friday afternoon about the beautiful view and the silence while repairing the Hubble Space Telescope outside the space shuttle Explorer, all hanging in orbit over a magnificent screen-filling earth at the Rio Theater last week.
“Gravity” is the first digital film to play at the Rio since Mike and Susan Kinney installed a new digital projector, although they had shown a couple of trailers in the past couple of weeks.
The Rio had to upgrade or be left behind as studios stop sending film to theaters this year. The cost was about $40,000.
The Kinneys had hoped to raise funds through donations, similar to the effort in Lebanon that replaced the Kuhn Theater projector.
Some 29 people have donated to the cause in Sweet Home. Between donors and $1 per ticket, the Rio raised nearly $6,000 toward the projector.
With a down payment on the projector, the Kinneys were able to install it, but the theater still must find the cash to pay off the bulk of the projector. Donations are still accepted at Key Bank, and a raffle runs through Nov. 2 to help raise funds.
In the meantime, they can keep the business open, and prices will stay at $6.
“We’re caretakers of this place,” Kinney said. “I didn’t want this place to close down.”
Gone are the days of splicing film, although they will maintain the 35 mm projector, said Mike Kinney. He and other theater operators around the state still have a number of movies on film, some only a year old.
Now movies come on hard drives that plug into a USB 3.0 port. Kinney can plug a Blu-Ray player into it, and advertisers can bring their ads in on a thumb drive. “Gravity” comes in at 99 GB at 91 minutes, providing a resolution of 2048×1080. Sound is DTS and Dolby.
Whatever anyone wants to play, Kinney can run it, he said, streaming operas from the Internet to DVDs and Blu-Ray discs.
“The look, it’s great,” Kinney said. “This is rather superb and fits the screen. From now on it’ll be digital only (for new movies),” Kinney said. “Gravity” runs through the end of the month, followed by “Ender’s Game” from Nov. 2 to Nov. 22. “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” runs from Nov. 23 to Dec. 12, with “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” playing from Dec. 13 until the end of the year. All will be digital.
After that, the studios may have a few movies on film, he said, but for the most part, film is gone.
While the Rio will run these movies for extended periods, if attendance slows down, the theater may run other films at a second time. Premiering movies usually comes with a commitment to run them for several weeks. After the initial weekend, attendance drops substantially as people see the films. With film, to add a second title, it required a second film to be set up on the projector. The digital projector this will allow the theater to offer a second title easily – unplug one movie and plug in the other.
The Kinneys are planning to spruce up the rest of the theater too, Kinney said. It’ll soon have new paint on the exterior and the marquee. He also plans on painting and improving the interior.