I suppose that back in the day films were shipped in physical form, but how does that work nowadays?
Google Drive link to mp4 file seems unlikely
In: 441
Some get a physical hard drive with the movie and suggested trailers that they load into their projectors.
since a lot of people answered the question i can give some info on the back in the day part as i used to be a theater projectionist about 20 years ago. at my theaters we would get a shipment from UPS or Fed Ex usually on Wednesday and Thursday with new movies coming out. they would come in a box like this
https://a.1stdibscdn.com/archivesE/upload/1121189/f_299373321660659829607/29937332_datamatics.jpg
with 3 or 4 reels of a movie, which was about 20-25 minutes. at my theater we spliced (taped) the two ends together and then they sat on a giant platter. sometimes they would also come with specific movie trailers that you would have to splice on to it as well . we were also given discretion to add whatever we wanted, at least we were until someone added shaft to the pokemon movie as a joke.
our projectors and platters looked like this one
https://www.elivermore.com/photos/Sites/lvr_cinema004.jpg
the movie would be one one platter, get threaded through the projector, and then back onto another platter. also not pictured, we would have dryer sheets taped or pinned to various places. static electricity was a mother fucker with these styles of projectors.
after the movie was done in the theater we would have to cut the tape that spliced the reels together and ship it back to where ever.
To here, I believe its sent physically by plane. Or at least that was the case 10 years ago
Question: can / could movie theaters stream movies from a remote server like we do at home? If not, why?
I’d have thought they’d get it digitally then physically a few days after incase there’s a problem with getting it digitally.
How much a new movie cost? is it royalty based?
I worked in a movie theater, and in 2013, they made the transition from film to digital. The movies came in on HDDs which a timed license (weekly) for the movie theater to run. With film, theaters could/would go rogue and keep playing the movies without the permission of the distributors.
I will say, the projector room, after going digital, wasn’t the same. The film room was exciting, watching the film rotate on the platter, run through the brain, run through the projector, and then run to another platter was really cool to see. All of this was happening at a rate of 2 ft/second. Digital is pretty boring to watch by comparison.
I’ve actually done some work for AMC Theaters at their office in Kansas. We installed a satellite dish there and then installed satellite dishes at a lot of their locations in the Midwest. It was a large project they had years ago in an attempt to get movies downloaded to a local server weeks before the official release instead of relying on the mail to deliver hard drives. It was pretty neat to see the inner workings of it all
Mostly Digital through a format known as DCP, or Digital Cinema Package. It’s like sending a really big, really secure Email. Although some older theaters still get them shipped on hard drives inthe DCP format. Their might still be a few “film theaters” left, but I don’t know of any off hand.
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