Screenx or imax movie#

So does ScreenX work with horror movies? I think it’ll come down to the filmmakers and how they can exploit a wider screen. It hadn’t ruined my viewing of IT: Chapter 2 - most horror movies typically signal the impending scare through camera work and soundtrack anyway - but I do wonder if knowing when you’re “safe” would take away the helplessness that horror movies should ideally create.

Screenx or imax movie#

It’s quite novel, and for directors who shoot specifically for ScreenX, I can expect the audience’s expectation to be played with more effectively.īut because the two extra screens only work during key scenes, this means the movie outright telegraphs the moments the scares are coming.

During one scene, where I expected a camera pan for a jump scare, my eyes kept flitting to the side walls, wondering if something has already appeared. The anticipation for something to appear at the side screen creates tension. Making you more immersed during the scares is just one thing - with a wider view, the movie can play with audience expectations more effectively. Widening the screen does create some interesting situations for a horror movie like IT. Most of the time, it’s during the movie’s big scares. I had caught IT: Chapter 2 (my review here) on ScreenX, and was surprised to find that the two side screens don’t actually stay on throughout the entire movie, only during key scenes.

The ScreenX experience on an actual movie is a very different one, though.

It’s a bit of a problem during the aforementioned action-packed ad, which made me feel a little disoriented the way VR headsets do. What I didn’t expect was how it reminded me more of putting on a VR headset, because of the way the three screens envelop your entire periphery vision. I had expected the results to be more like playing a video game with three monitors, where the wider view means being able to take in more details to your left and right. Using five projectors, ScreenX creates a 270-degree theatre experience by projecting it onto three walls instead of one, essentially covering your peripheral vision. For the adrenaline junkie, there’s D-Box.Īnd now we have ScreenX, which has recently graced the Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) theatre in the 1 Utama Shopping Centre in Malaysia. 3D has stuck around since James Cameron’s Avatar, and will likely stay until all the Avatars are out. IMAX - with its humongous screens and tall aspect ratio - remains a go-to for large, visually-spectacular films (and is still seeing profit growth despite declining ticket sales). Yet some gimmicks remain, and are now staples of cineplexes everywhere. Few have ever experienced the expensive, distracting, and rather ineffective innovation known as Smell-o-Vision while Sensurround proved so effective that ceiling plaster literally crumbled onto hapless cinema-goers during the 1974 screenings of Earthquake (though you can’t complain that it’s not immersive enough). Even if it means passing out scratch-and-sniff cards at the entrance.īut evolution doesn’t necessarily produce winners, so the history of cinema is a road of gimmick-induced potholes. How else would you get people to leave the comforts of their homes and short shorts, weave through harrowing traffic, and spend good money on movies? And if protecting the Cinematic Experience means evolving it at any means necessary, then evolve it we shall. See, the Cinematic Experience is a sacred thing, and must be protected at all cost. The history of cinema is a road paved with gimmicks.