We want to tell you what the Russian movie theater of today is. Back in the Soviet time, a movie theater was a special place and for Soviet people watching a movie in a movie theater was a kind of a holiday. Today, people go there just to waste their time away, eat some popcorn and drink beer. In the 90s, movie production, just as other spheres of life, came to a standstill. What’s new about movie theaters now (except for the fact that today it is just business, marketing, commerce, franchising, leasing and kickbacking)? It’s the same good old film and 24 frames per second. Yet, they have introduced a few innovations such as digital movies, 3D-movies and Dolby Digital sound. So, in this post you will find out what Russian movie theaters have come to.

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Traditionally, they show movie premieres on Thursdays, so on Wednesdays the plane with a new movie on board lands at the airport of the city the movie is going to be shown in. The movie theater sends a courier to pick up the parcel from the storehouse of the airport. Each bag is for one movie.

The bag contains two paper boxes.

The boxes contain these round metal things with parts of the movie inside. The point is that each movie consists of several parts. As a rule, there are six parts in the movie.

Before showing the movie, they stick all its parts together.

This lady has been working as a movie checker for over 40 years and she’s going to show us how they stick the movie parts.

A spool.

The movie checker winds the film arond the spool sticking the parts together.

On the film leader of the first part, she writes the name of the movie, its format, the number of parts and the copy number.

Winding the first parts of the movie.

Then, she cuts off its final leader.

With a movie sticky tape, she sticks the first and the second parts of the film together, preliminary cutting off the leader of the second part.

Keep winding.

Then, she does the same with part number three, four, etc.

When the film is ready, they write an accompanying note to stick it to the spool.

As for digital movies, including 3D, they arrive in special cases on HDD disks. They are usually DCP-format (Digital Cinema Package) and their size varies from 230 Gb to 350 Gb.

After that, the movie copy goes to the projection room where projectionists prepare it for the movie show. The projectionist is the person who makes sure that the movie show goes smoothly and movie theater equipment is in order. This person has to be an electrician, installer, mechanic, etc. Their workday starts at 8 a.m. even though they begin showing movies at 10. Why? Because they have a lot of work to do.

This movie theater has 9 showing rooms and all of them need to be checked.

Movie copies.

This device is called a platter and it is used to show the movie uninterruptedly.

The makeup table is used to install the spool on the platter.

Meanwhile, cleaning ladies are bringing the showing rooms into order and the administrator and manager are discussing the timetable and other issues.

The movie theater is open from 10 a.m. till 2 a.m. so it’s a shiftwork. That is why it is very importand that all documents are in order by the end of each shift.

Manager Rustam doesn’t want to be distracted from work.

Some time later however, he is showing off his awards and certificates.

Let’s go back to the digital movies. Forst of all, they have to be downloaded to the video server.

Rrojector setup work.

It’s 9.30 and the movie theater is about to open.

Also, the manager has to assemble and install carton billboards.

Suddenly, the projectionist drops the movie copy which is to be shown in just 20 minutes!

Luckily, they’ve managed to fix it in time.

This device allows the projectionist not to rewind the film over and over again after each show.

The film gets to the projector throught the rollers you see on the walls.

They have to watch the film all the time because it may go wrong.

Moreover, the projection room is large (it’s over 135 m long!) and has a bunch of projectors. Sometimes, the equipment breaks down making the projectionists be on the alert all the time.

Location: Omsk

via poritskiy