MARKETING A PROBLEM : IMAX FILMS: START OF SOMETHING BIG?

In film producer Roman Kroitor’s view, the IMAX film process could change moviegoing altogether.

“There’s a hydrogen bomb buried inside the whole system that one day will be an entirely new kind of movie,” said Kroitor, co-founder of IMAX Systems, based in Toronto. “The kinds of subjects you can deal with, the emotional and philosophical depth you can get to--it’s a very, very powerful medium.

“It won’t be long before you can see movies on big, high-definition television at home. At that point, why bother to go to the theater to see exactly the same movie? Nobody will do it. The only reason in the world is to see something amazing and wonderful, and we think that’s IMAX.”

The system that has captured spectacular shots of Earth from the space shuttle, put viewers in high-speed hurtling airplanes and cars and staged 3-D trips inside an atom is the result of a different way of moving film inside a projector.

The high-fidelity, large-format, wide-angle films and the IMAX projectors, which feed the largest film in the motion picture industry, are already revolutionizing documentary film making, Kroitor said. (In March, IMAX Systems was awarded a plaque for its engineering achievements and contribution to the progress of motion pictures from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.)

“You look at the history of film--it’s the first time 20 million people a year go to see documentary movies and pay to do it,” he said of IMAX’s success. “This is a normal movie,” Kroitor continued, creating with his hands the right-angled movie frame a director of 35-millimeter films might look through. “This is an IMAX movie,” he said, stretching his arms out in a nearly 180-degree span. “And this,” he said, straining to pull his arms behind his ears and over his head to show how the images “surround” the audience, “is an OMNIMAX movie.”

The OMNIMAX System, a counterpart to IMAX, projects images on a domed planetarium screen. During both experiences, the audience sits in banked rows close to the seven-story-high screens. Most of the documentaries made in the system have been collaborations of Kroitor’s company with funds from the Smithsonian Institution and NASA or private sources like Lockheed, McDonald’s and Johnson’s Wax.

Australian Ron Jones, driving home in the middle of the night 20 years ago, conceived of the rolling loop, the basis of the IMAX system. The movement presses the 70-millimeter film tightly against a specially designed camera, increasing the information-carrying capacity of the huge frames and thereby the detail of images.

“It’s the difference between old 78-speed records and the LPs of today,” said Kroitor, producer of “Skyward,” “We Are Born of Stars” and “The Dream Is Alive,” three of 11 documentaries shown at this year’s Los Angeles IMAX festival. Still showing at the IMAX Theatre at the Museum of Science and Industry at Exposition Park are “Chronos,” “Speed” and “The Dream Is Alive.”

Kroitor’s high hopes for the system seem a bit optimistic to some film makers.

“What’s keeping major film makers like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas from making films in the IMAX system is the limited marketing of the theaters,” said Mark Magidson, a Culver City entrepreneur who used independently made IMAX-like equipment to make “Chronos” with producer Ron Fricke. The world’s 45 IMAX theaters--located in theme parks, museums and other educational institutions--require related documentary subjects. The films increase the appeal of museums, but the short-length requirements of museum movies severely limit the development of feature-style plots and characters, Magidson said. Despite the present drawbacks, Magidson congratulated IMAX on its achievements. “It doesn’t matter what size screen you see a Woody Allen film on, but the IMAX effect is very visual.”

The cost of the IMAX software is beyond the means of most independent producers, said Steven Marvle, assistant producer of Canticle Films (production costs for an average 30-minute IMAX film run between $2 million to $4 million). The solution to opening up the field is a less expensive projector and a “gutty production company” to build a flat-screen theater in a high-density area outside the confines of a museum, he said. IMAX films must currently be made for both a domed and flat screen, which severely limits composition and aesthetics, he said.