Thursday, June 21 2012

DIGICEL’s IMAX cinema is a first for Trinidad and Tobago. After about nine months in operation, the cinema is now beginning to attract a steady stream of cinema-goers drawn to its 40 x 70 foot screen and the unique quality of its cinema experience.

It is becoming something of an example of how a business can develop a niche and compete by offering a service different from its competitors.

Like most cinemas, some screening do not draw large numbers. But IMAX has attracted large numbers for films like The Avengers. The cinema last month had to extend its run of that movie which almost always attracted good numbers. Recent highlights at the IMAX have also included Ridley Scott’s audacious Prometheus, which is arguably meant to be seen in no other format.

The IMAX, which charges an admission price of $75, offers a viewing experience and service unlike any other.

IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems. Additionally, the screen at the cinema, located at One Woodbrook Place, is the largest of its kind in the Caribbean and watching a 3-D movie there is a vastly superior experience than watching one elsewhere. For a start, the image does not suffer from the “dimming” phenomena which plagues most 3-D films, whereby the screen seems to darken. Further, the quality of sound (laser-aligned digital) is also notable.

But outside of these technical details, which really sets the cinema apart, the experience is slightly different from what you would expect for a conventional theatre.

IMAX offers patrons the usual snack items you would expect: such as popcorn and hot-dogs. But also patrons have the option of consuming a glass of red wine or a beer as they watch their film (Carib is one of the sponsors of the cinema, alongside Digicel and other companies such as Atlantic LNG).

Digicel IMAX also offers a learning experience for both children and adults as many of the morning films are the IMAX educational films. For example in April, forty-six (46) students from Tobago’s Goodwood High School took an “undersea” virtual tour beneath the oceans, near the coasts of Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Indo-Pacific area via the 3D educational movie Under the Sea, the second documentary in the 2012 season of IMAX sponsor Atlantic LNG’s ‘Ultimate Field Trip’ series.

Via the movie, the students were immersed in face-to-face three-dimensional close-ups of marine life in the world-renowned Coral Triangle and the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Southern Australia. In addition to showing real-life deep sea encounters with some of the most mysterious and dangerous fishes and creatures on the planet, the documentary also showed the deadly impact of the bleaching of coral reefs caused by global warming. This type of initiative is only possible with IMAX technology.