Thursday, 14 March 2013

Fleapits & Multiplexes articles/notes to read

Intro: The Multiplex Revolution

In 1985, a leisure centre opened in the new town of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, and included a ten-screen 'multiplex' cinema that was designed and operated by an American company on exactly the same lines as its highly successful movie theatres in the United States. Attracting more than one million admissions within the first year, its immediate success paved the way for further multiplexes, usually in out-of-town sites close to motorways that allowed plentiful space for surface car parking and offered fast food outlets and other attractions for the key target audience, teenagers. Multiplexes proliferated mainly built by American companies and emphasising Hollywood movies.

In most instances, traditional cinemas were unable to compete and their demise contributed to the decline of many city centres. Planning guidelines belatedly put a halt to most new out-of-town schemes and forced multiplex operators to build in city centres, often on the upper levels of new shopping malls. This has led to a further reduction in the number of surviving older city centre cinemas, but unquestionably the viewing environment in the modern generation of multiplexes - large screens in large auditoria, state-of-the-art sound systems, stepped seating and generous leg room - has been a great improvement over the traditional cinemas.

Task: Develop your Independent Research Skills and read through the articles extracting the key pieces of information. Categorise them by Context: technology, economic, social (audience leisure patterns, cinema attendance, why go to a multiplex etc?)







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