One historic LA theater's 70 mm movie makeover for "The Odyssey"

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo, the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, from CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. This is why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?
Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

**Meghan McCarty Carino** (0:31)
The hottest tech in movies is like a century old. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Meghan McCarty Carino.
It's safe to say Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has been the undisputed cinematic event of the summer. Moviegoers across the country, including me, are still trying to hunt down tickets to see it in its intended format, Imax 70mm film. But even theaters with non-Imax 70mm film projection are hard to come by. The Alex Theatre, a historic movie palace from the 20s in Glendale, California, was renovated to screen The Odyssey in 70mm.
Miles Williams is the theater's artistic director. He says they retrofitted using old school film technology to make it happen.

**Miles Williams** (1:23)
The Alex was a first run movie palace for about from the 20s until 1991
So the last film we had here as like a first run studio film was Terminator 2 with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And then, you know, until this this summer, where we came back with like a big, big thing to tell the community, hey, we're back, we're doing movies again. And we've done The Odyssey, and we're the highest grossing 70 millimeter cinema in the entire country.

**Meghan McCarty Carino** (1:55)
So let's do a little sort of primer on some of the, you know, kind of movie theater fundamentals you mentioned. This is the highest grossing 70 millimeter theater for The Odyssey. What is the difference between conventional movie theater, 70 millimeter, Imax and Imax 70 millimeter?

**Miles Williams** (2:14)
We'll start with Imax 70 millimeter because it's the biggest format and the one that everybody's flocking to as Nolan intended, right? So that's actual film stock run horizontally. To geek out with me a little. So it has 15 perforations per still image and it's run and they shot it horizontally. And it's so it's a much like more of a square tall aspect ratio, right?
Imax without the 70 millimeter is digital. Some people call it limax.
It's digital, but it's the same format, right? So that's like those two, right? And then when we get to like regular digital screenings, I mean, they also they have a wide screen format, not the Imax format because their screens aren't built for that, right? Then we get to 70 millimeter. So it's the it's like the baby brother of Imax 70 millimeter. So when that film that runs horizontally is then run vertically with five perforations, giving a more traditional landscape perspective on the film. What was captured on film in the top and bottom is simply not projected. It's not part of the film. So that's why, as Nolan intended, was this big giant thing. But this is the first film that was ever filmed all in Imax, right? So that's a new thing that all of a sudden we're missing a lot, right? But it's still an amazing experience. And we don't hear people's, I've heard some people say they prefer it in 70 versus Imax 70
So that's like going down to 70 You keep going down, 35 millimeter is similar to 70 in the landscape, but 70 is like four times the size of 35 So it's more clarity, more color, more everything, which is part of the reason why it's like the premium form.

**Meghan McCarty Carino** (4:07)
Well, what's the benefit of watching a film projected on film?

**Miles Williams** (4:13)
You know, we experience it as an event. We experience it as something special, something we can't see at home on our giant screen TVs, you know, or on our computer, on our phone. It turns into something that we have to go out to see because we don't have film projectors at home, right? It becomes the event in and of itself. And there is something like special about being so close to art, you know, because historic theaters are like living museums.
And instead of like, you know, art on the walls or sculptures on pedestals, what we have is the collective history of generations of people who've come in and been entertained in these spaces.

**Meghan McCarty Carino** (4:53)
What did you have to do sort of technically to enable film projection in a theater that hadn't had it for quite some time? Sure.