When I think of the last time that I went to the movies, nothing too impressive comes to mind.
The closest cinema to where I live is about a thirty-minute drive, so organizing a trip with either friends or family to see a new movie is already a feat – not to mention everything else that comes after.
After organizing with two friends, on the weekly Cheaper Tuesday night, who is going to undertake the long drive in (we don’t want to use our own petrol – cheap, we know!), we proceed to buy movie snacks beforehand at the local Woolworths instead of from the cinema itself – I mean, who wants to pay five whole dollars for one packet of Skittles?! Definitely not me.
We finally arrive at the theatre; purchase our half-price tickets at $7.50 each ten minutes late in order to avoid the unbearably dreadful and repetitive advertisements for all the local businesses.
Finally… time to watch the movie. Except, one small detail – us three are the only ones in the entire cinema! This is quite surprising to us, considering the movie we are seeing – ‘If I Stay’ has been released recently, and seems to be quite popular. Granted, it was a mid-week movie visit, but this really got the three of us thinking about why it seems that movie attendance is heading down some dreaded downward spiral.
In fact, this is one of the most pressing issues to do with the rise of new media technologies in modern society. The ease at which we are now able to access media forms such as television, movies and music, usually without even leaving your own living room is undeniable. I mean, why go out of your way to travel somewhere, and spend a pretty large amount of money on something that you can get for free, at home?
In saying this however, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 2012 the age bracket from fifteen to twenty year olds attended the cinema most out of anyone, with 93% of these attending a cinema at least once every 12 months.
This is interesting to note in terms of public media space, and assessing why this could be.
For young people, the cinema is often seen as a meeting place for social activities – there have been countless times where my friends and I have organized to catch up by seeing a movie. This fact demonstrates how in we have always centered social events and activities around the relevant technologies at the time. For instance, in the fifties, the drive-in cinema was the place to be on the weekend – now, there are so many technologies that deliver the same purpose, it is hard to choose one in which we focus on.
Keely Thompson 