4 Reasons Movies Shouldn't Be Watched On Laptops

INTRODUCTION

According to a recent study, only 14% of adults stated they preferred viewing a new movie in the cinema, while 36% preferred streaming it from a device at home. While this trend may have been expedited by the pandemic, I think it’s a trend that’s on the rise regardless. Fewer and fewer people are going to cinemas anymore and I think that’s kind of sad. 

And I mean, look, I get it. I’m guilty of it too. Convenience outweighs viewing experience. 80% of my cinematic diet is probably consumed at home from a TV or a laptop rather than on the big screen.

Before this video becomes too much of a lamentation about the death of cinema, I’d like to flip it to remind us why going to the cinema is still the superior experience by going over 4 reasons we should still make the effort to get out of the house and go to the movies.        

CONSISTENCY

One of the biggest issues of watching movies from home comes from the inconsistency of the image.

Filmmakers spend years developing their craft, putting blood, sweat and tears into lighting, testing for the perfect lenses and tweaking nuances of colour on a calibrated monitor in the grade. Only to have 60%, or so, of the audience watch the final product from a smartphone with a cracked screen in a bright room full of reflections.

Cinema is a medium which is all about refining and tweaking the details in order to create a lasting art work. A lot of this is undone by watching the final product in a sub optimal viewing environment.

I mean yes, you get the gist of the visuals, but it’s kind of like listening to an album that was carefully, meticulously written, recorded, mixed and mastered on a noisy airplane with the cheapest pair of headphones sold in the 7 Eleven. You can kind of make out most of the lyrics and melody but all the sonic nuance that the artists spent their time and energy creating is lost.

Most movie complexes use high end digital cinema projectors that are DCI compliant, tested to output a high standard of quality images, in a dark, light free environment. This means that the viewing experience at different cinemas around the world will be almost identical. Colour and contrast will be consistent and resolution is standardised to either 2K or 4K. 

This differs from home viewing a movie. Different screens made by different manufacturers have different resolutions, will display colour and contrast inconsistently at varying levels of brightness and don’t have to conform to any compliance standards.

Using different media players may also affect the colour and luminance information. For example a pet peeve of mine is that Apple’s Quicktime Player shifts the gamma curve and plays video files with different contrast from the original file. 

Also, unless you are viewing a movie at night with all the lights in the house off, there will be excess ambient light that may cause reflections or dilute the brightness of the image.   

THE AUDIENCE EFFECT

One of the most noticeable impacts that viewing a movie at home has, is that it shifts the experience from being a communal one to being an individual one.

The idea of cinema was born out of creating a medium which could be shared by an audience. I’d say that communal viewing heightens the effect that a film has on us. Whatever emotion the filmmakers impart to the audience is heightened when we share it as a group. For horror films you can hear the audience gasp, for comedies laughter rings out, and for compelling dramas you can almost feel a communal silent focus take hold.

I think part of this reaction comes from it being an uninterrupted viewing experience. Streaming sites are set up in a way to ease and encourage the process of watching films in little segments. Watch for 5 minutes. Pause and make something to eat. Watch for another 10 minutes while you simultaneously browse your phone. Skip forward past a scene you get bored of. Then come back the next day and find the movie paused right where you left off so that you can begin this fragmented viewing process again.

Filmmakers work extremely hard to design each film as a continuous, cohesive experience that suspends your disbelief and envelops you in the world of the story. Breaking down the medium by stopping and starting it destroys a movie’s ability to take hold of you.        

The cinema is so important because it forces you to view a film as it was intended to be viewed, as a single, uninterrupted experience. 

Sometimes filmmakers want to test your patience and use more drawn out scenes to support their point of view of the story. Sitting through a movie from beginning to end, even if you don’t care for the film, will at least give you a complete idea of what the filmmaker was intending to do. 

Plus, in today’s world where everything is so sped up and our attention spans have become shorter than ever before, I think turning off your phone and watching a complete film from start to finish is an important mental exercise we should all regularly perform.  

SOUND

The sound that you hear in a cinema is far more immersive than that from a laptop, phone or TV. This is because of surround sound. Consumer display products, like a laptop, typically have a single speaker built into the device that emanates sound from one source or direction.

Cinemas have surround sound which uses multiple speakers in multiple positions to provide sound that is more immersive and which surrounds you 360 degrees.

Like high end cinema projectors which are standardised, so too is the sound. The global standard is Dolby Digital which provides an audio mix with multiple channels, such as Dolby Digital 5.1. This provides 3 front channels which are sent to separate speakers: a centre, left and right which provide clean dialogue and placement of on screen sounds. Two twin surround channels are typically placed on the sides and behind the audience to provide a fuller, 360 degree listening experience. A low frequency channel that provides bass effects, with about a tenth of the bandwidth of the other channels, makes up the final .1.

 The cinema is therefore set up to provide a more captivating sonic experience that places you in the centre of the action and better draws you into the world of the movie.  

THE ALTAR OF CINEMA

The final reason to go to the cinema is less of a practical one and more of a conceptual one, but is arguably the most important. This may seem a bit over the top, and hopefully no one takes offence, but I think a comparison can be made between cinema and religion in the way that they are presented.

In most religions it is of course possible to practice from home without interacting with others through meditation or prayer. However all major religions have physical spaces which bring communities together: temples, churches, mosques. Often these spaces are large, impressively built and feature significant iconography.

I think as humans we are drawn to spaces, and get some kind of greater, more significant experience from coming together as a collective in a space that is designed and devoted to that experience. 

Standing in the queue for popcorn, buying tickets, sitting amongst a group of people, watching the trailers - it’s almost ritualistic and builds up a level of excitement and reverence for the film we’re about to watch. An image which is projected onto a massive screen has to be taken more seriously than one on a smartphone.

The issue with having a continuous never ending supply of content to stream at home on a laptop is that it diminishes the importance of the medium. It makes movies more mundane and everyday. Taking the time to visit the cinema builds anticipation and makes it more of an experience and an event.

CONCLUSION

So much effort goes into making movies as a work of art. I think they should be appreciated as such and not given the same gravity as this YouTube video for example. They are different mediums. The smaller the screen becomes the more that watching a film turns into an individual experience rather than the group experience that it was designed to be.

Going to the movies may be less practical than just bingeing the latest releases on a laptop, but the experience of going to a cinema elevates movies into the unique medium that they are.