Sensory-Friendly Films from AMC Theatres
Has anyone here ever been to one of these? I think it's a great idea but I have two problems:
1) Why leave the lights on? I feel much better with the lights off and I'd think most Auties and Aspies are the same.
2) Why don't they offer these kinds of films to adults?
I always have to wear ear plugs in theatres. It'd be nice to have the option not to have to do this.
auntblabby
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there needs to be more deep bass below approx. 30 cycles per second, at levels appreciably higher than the nearby motor traffic rumble. such deep [almost infrasonic] bass is relaxing and stimulating at the same time. the absense of such deep bass makes the poor sound insulation of most movie theatres more apparent because of the motor traffic rumble leakage into the theatre, notable during most quieter movie scenes, even scenes with relatively loud and relatively low bass [but still higher than 30 cycles per second frequency]. for people who hate bass, there should be special auditoriums/sub-spaces with a different sound system or headphones with individually adjustable volume.
now, my pet peeve is JUDDER - a neologism combining the words "shudder" and "jitter" - i have always been sensitive to this artifact of 24 frame-per-second film projection. judder is a shuddering jitter artifact visible when larger objects, magnified on large screens, pan across the field of view at anything above a crawl. cinematographers are aware of this and have rules regarding the speed and perspective of pans, to minimize the resultant coarse [or unsmooth] motion. judder is most visible on regular IMAX, which magnifie the effect to a high degree. judder is made even worse on broadcast telecine conversion to 30-frame per second video, because of the frame rate difference between video and film- every second, 5.97 separated frames have to be repeated in a 3:2 ratio, for the frames to line up properly in 30 frame-per-second broadcast. this intruduces a stutter superimposed upon the coarse film frame rate, which when magnified on a large-screen tv, looks truly ugly.
film formats such as hi-def imax [48 frames-per-second] and showscan [60 frames per second] have vanishingly small amounts of this disturbing effect, and i can watch those without problem. most other movies that have any kind of panning or on-screen motion are intolerable for me to watch on the big screen- on small-screen tv sets they are tolerable but less than pleasant. the purists usually howl at any criticism of judder, saying that such is artistically sacrosanct, but there is nothing really sacred about 24 FPS due to the fact that this frame rate was chosen primarily due to the fact that it was the minimum speed which afforded enough audio bandwidth to make for intelligible soundtracks for the first talking pictures [IOW there was enough per-frame room on the existing coarse film stock for soundwaves to resolve using the primitive light valve transducers of the day].
i thank god that there are jitter-elimination technologies in newer 120/240 hz digital tv sets, which filter out this gawdawful distortion. i have watched so many movies since i got one of these sets. their judder-free on-screen motion is so smooth and easy on my eyes. it is long past the time when the film industry abandoned 24FPS in favor of at least 30 or better yet, 60 FPS, which is not so much a burden now because of digital techniques used in lieu of extra miles of film stock. just my jejune opinion ![]()
auntblabby
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more movie theatre suggestions-
*there needs to be more use of subdued red footlights, not bright enough to backwash upon the projection screen but bright enough to light the way to the lavatory/water fountain.
*the theatre owners need to stop being so damned cheap, and pay for brighter projection bulbs, as the cheapo low-wattage units a lot of theatres use make the dark murky scenes in some movies unwatchable.
*they also might consider using a modest amount of audio compression or dynamic EQ on the quieter scenes, to bring up the volume from a subliminal level to that of plain comprehension, what with the way today's actors like to mumble their lines sotto voce. alternately, they could use supertitles so people like me could understand what those muttering actors are muttering about.
*they need to increase the space between each row of seats, so long-legged types such as myself don't have their limbs fall asleep on them from having to squat in those itty-bitty seats.
*a 3D suggestion- instead of projecting 3D movies upon a big screen, they could do away with the projection screen altogether and instead use hi-def goggles, with each eye getting its own dimensional feed to produce the composite-field 3D imaging. this makes sense because the goggles are necessary in the first place for imparting of the 3D effect, so why not kill 2 birds with one stone by just projecting the images into these electronic goggles in the first place? this would also save much money for the theatre owners because they could do away with the watt-eating projection bulb. just a thought.
