Big screen vs. small screens

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2019 (2461 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Recently, director Martin Scorsese offended Marvel-loving movie-goers everywhere with the comment that “Marvel movies aren’t cinema,” but are more akin to “theme parks than they are to movies.” Far be it from me to wade into that debate, but I think there is another, arguably more important, issue at stake — the Cinema vs. Netflix debate.

Here, Scorsese is in an odd predicament. His movie The Irishman has “cinema” written all over it — a legendary director, some of the most celebrated actors of this generation, big themes. But it was made possible by that most laptop of movie purveyors, Netflix. (The movie had a limited theatrical release to satisfy Academy Award nomination criteria. Earlier this week, it garnered five Golden Globe nominations. As of mid-week, it has been streamed more than 26 million times on Netflix.) This begs the question: how is it that this most cinema of movies will be viewed primarily on very small screens?

The brutal answer is that the studios refused to fund Scorsese, but Netflix did. What the studios are choosing to finance is primarily Marvel and other franchise intellectual property. There is nothing remarkable in this. Hollywood has always been a risk-averse, conservative place. And the multiplexes will mostly play what Hollywood deems worthy of investment.

But putting aside what Hollywood peddles for cinema, I believe there are two important reasons why cinema (Hollywood, Canadian or otherwise) can thrive in the era of the uber-convenient smorgasbord that is Netflix and other video-on-demand streaming services.

I don’t subscribe to the premise that cinema-going is more worthy because it is “a shared human experience.” I’ve never felt the warm fuzzies about sharing the cinematic experience with a room full of strangers. The convenience of staying at home to watch thousands of hours of content on demand (in PJs at that) is a powerful incentive for not braving the Canadian cold. But having made movies, I can tell you with certainty that there is a tremendous difference between watching on the big screen — and it’s not just because it’s bigger and louder.

This spring, I held a private screening of a movie I was producing for a select group of investors. The movie screened on a decent-size television. Then in September, we screened the same film at the Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg on a 60-foot screen. One of the investors who attended the spring screening came up to me, very excited, and stated, “I love all the changes. It was just remarkable.” But here’s the thing: the movie’s images hadn’t changed. The film was already “picture-locked” (industry speak for “the images are set in stone”) when she saw it in the spring. But something about seeing it writ large made her believe that she was watching an entirely different movie.

Lest you think that was an isolated occurrence, I can report that it happened to me many times during the post-production process. I swore scenes had been altered, but all that was changing was that I was viewing the scenes on the big screen. And I was the writer, composer and producer.

There is much science behind this phenomenon. In short, in a dark room, a large projection makes our minds pay attention in a way we simply cannot otherwise. This hyper-attentiveness results in our minds not just paying attention but our emotions being that much larger, and the effect on our psyches all the greater. Big cinema equals big emotions.

So if our brains manufacture big emotions from the big screen, so, too, should society. The act of gathering as a community, a city, a country can and should be about conferring status on our biggest stories — the ones that deserve the big screen.

Unlike the United States, where public support for moviemaking only takes the form of labour tax credits, Canada and other countries commendably support the industry through direct investment. Indeed, our movie would have been impossible without the critical investment of Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film & Music. That support provided the means by which our film graced big screens from sea to shining sea, garnering a conversation about the movie’s content and themes that would not have occurred within the confines of a streaming release. Big-screen release equals important social signifier.

The act of seeing a movie in a cinema confers a neural and a social import that the small screen simply cannot. Netflix may have tens of thousands of hours of content, but for those who seek the bigger, more important experience, cinema wins every time.

Danny Schur is the composer/producer/co-writer of the movie musical Stand!, which was recently released in cinemas across Canada.