Stadium Cinemas Adjusts to Shifting Industry

Stadium Cinemas owner, Kris Phillips with one of the last 35 mm film reels at her theater.  The old projectors were replaced with new digital equipment.  

Story and photo by Denise Windley

As the curtain draws to a close on 35 millimeter motion picture films, Stadium Cinemas has removed the last of the projectors from its theater in west Payson. Digital projectors, fast becoming the dominant means for movie theater screens, were installed and running in their place last week.

The change has been bittersweet for Stadium’s co-owner and manager, Kris Phillips, who has dedicated thirteen years to the business. She packed some of the theater’s final 35 mm film reels into a brown cardboard box on Wednesday, her eyes bearing sadness. They were on their way out. A few remnants from the era have been salvaged and saved, but more are destined for the scrap yard. There is little market for 35 mm films, according to Phillips. In a shifting industry, old technology is embraced by obsolescence. The cost to store it is not always feasible.

And yet the change appears necessary these days for a theater whose business is made by showing audiences the latest films, movies created by a motion picture industry that determines the format. The switch has saved Stadium Cinemas from a fate faced by many other independently owned movie houses. Because most new films are being made only in the digital format, those unable to adjust to the change will find it hard to remain competitive. Some will likely close.

The warning signs flickered for Phillips when her first digital projector was installed three years ago, with a second to follow soon after when the theater expanded. “And that’s when the film company said, ‘Oh, by the way, you have three years [to install the final six projectors]’,” said Phillips.

The new projectors do not come cheaply, according to Phillips. It is costing her theater a half million dollars to install them, though she promises the expense will not be passed onto the price of a ticket.

To defray part of the cost, Stadium Cinemas is participating in a rebate program offered by the film industry to encourage theaters to make the adjustment from 35 mm to digital film. The program will close at the end of April 2013. With the deadline looming, Phillips called upon the help of a longtime family friend and veteran in the movie theater business, Jerry Harrah.

Harrah is the owner of Harrah's Theatre and Equipment Company, based out of Hayward, California, which specializes in theater design. Harrah knows Stadium Cinemas well. He helped design the theater with its original owner, Phillips’s father, Lou Johnson, back in 2000. “Her father was a very a good friend of mine,” he said.

Mr. Johnson passed away before he could see it open. The theater then became the responsibility of Phillips, who co-owns the business with her brother who resides in Alaska. Harrah helped her in the initial phases of its operation. Since then, her talent as a businesswoman and dedication to providing great movies to the local area have made Stadium the successful theater it is today.

Harrah returned to help his friend during the recent transition, overseeing a crew throughout the digital installation. Though quality is a factor, he sees the industry’s shift as being generated out of a desire for the economic benefits derived from filming in digital.

“The cost of making a motion picture and reproducing the film prints has [reached] a point in the industry where a print replacement, like if [the theater] was to damage one and they were to have to make a print and send it out to the theater, it was in the neighborhood, at one point, of $2,000 per print,” he said, regarding 35 mm film.

“Now they are shooting it in film, they convert it to digital, they edit it in digital, where they used to edit into film, and then they convert it back to a digital hard drive. This costs $250. So it is a financial savings for the studio and it’s an ease for the owners. They don’t have to bring in the film--usually five-six reels, where they have to make it up a spool, run it through the projector, then when they’re finished with it, they’ve got to break it back down and ship it back to the film studio.

“What this has done, or what it’s going to do, is save the studio a whole lot of money. We hope that it makes available a lot more funds to make better movies for the viewing public.”

Harrah has been involved in the motion picture business for almost sixty years. “I started when I was thirteen years old,” he said. He knows it at all levels, having worked his way through the ranks, starting out as a teenaged janitor to the designer and owner he is today. He opened his first theater in Tracy, California, and, currently owns and an eight-screen cinema located in South Lake Tahoe. He lauds Stadium Cinemas in Payson as among the best he has seen.

The theater attracts moviegoers not only from the community, but in cities throughout the valley, who bypass their own local movie house to enjoy the experience Stadium Cinemas consistently offers, Phillips noted. She expects the new, solely digital screening to only improve the experience audiences have come to count on at her theater in Payson.