“Giant screen films can bring about positive change by powerfully motivating viewers to want to get involved. These mammoth films are different from any other films because the screen is so large that you feel enveloped by it, you feel pulled in to what’s on the screen as if you are practically there. Thus watching a giant screen film is much more personally involving than say, watching a television documentary. These films also present positive and inspiring role models — individuals who are passionately exploring our world and making important discoveries. Our research and exit-polling have shown that giant screen films can lead viewers to be motivated to take action after seeing a film and get involved as citizen activists."
-- Chris Palmer, President, MacGillivray Freeman Films Educational Foundation |
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Filming Hurricane on the Bayou in 2005
(Click image to enlarge)
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Giant-Screen Films – A Powerful Impact
The MacGillivray Freeman Films Educational Foundation believes in the potential of giant screen films to transform how people see the world and their place in it. This film format is unique from all other educational mediums in its ability to reveal the beauty and wonder of the world in a most powerful, visceral way. Shown on giant IMAX® screens more than 80 feet tall (4,500 times larger than an average TV screen), giant screen films create an immersive, “you-are-there” experience that places viewers directly in the heart of the action as it unfolds on-screen. Whether they’re swimming across the ocean floor with dolphins or hurtling through space on the wings of the Space Shuttle, viewers participate in a lifelike experience they most likely would not have any other way.
Film Format Facts:
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 IMAX® motion picture systems, invented and developed by Imax Corporation, display images of unsurpassed size, clarity and impact. The images are enhanced by a superb specially-designed six-channel, multi-speaker sound system manufactured by Sonics Associates, Inc., a world leader in sound system design. Images are projected onto giant rectangular screens, up to eight stories high and, in the case of IMAX Dome® theatres, onto domes as large as 27 metres (88'- 5") in diameter. |
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 The 15/70mm image is 10 times larger than a conventional 35mm frame and three times bigger than a standard 70mm frame. The sheer size of a 15/70 film frame, combined with the unique IMAX® or iWERKS™projection technology, is the key to the extraordinary sharpness and clarity of all MacGillivray Freeman films. |
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 The IMAX® system has its roots in EXPO ‘67 in Montreal, Canada where multi-screen films were the hit of the fair. A small group of Canadian filmmakers (Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor and Robert Kerr), who had made some of those popular films, decided to design a new system using a single, powerful projector, rather than the cumbersome multiple projectors used at that time. The result: the IMAX® motion picture projection system which would revolutionize giant screen cinema. IMAX® technology premiered at the Fuji Pavilion, EXPO ‘70 in Osaka, Japan. The first permanent IMAX® projection system was installed at Ontario Place's Cinesphere in Toronto in 1971. OMNIMAX® debuted at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theatre in San Diego in 1973. |
Theatres – Trusted Venues
There are 450 IMAX® and other large format theatres in 45 countries, and nearly half of them are located in prestigious museums and science centers in metropolitan areas. These include such institutions as the renowned Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris, Singapore Science Centre, the National Museum of Naval Aviation, and the American Museum of Natural History.
Though the majority of giant screen theatres are located in North America and Europe, the industry is growing to countries facing tremendous environmental challenges. It’s expected that up to 40 theatres will open in China by 2012 and India will soon be operating eleven theatres. It is important that positive and proactive environmental messages reach these new and fast-growing audiences.
Audiences – Facts
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800 million people have seen an IMAX® presentation since 1970, when the medium premiered. |
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65-70 million people worldwide saw a giant screen film in 2002. 1 |
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18-22% of film viewers are school groups (middle school students) .2 |
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Two-thirds of IMAX® theatre film viewers have a college degree and 27% have a post-graduate degree. 3 |
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Over 50% of the patrons are between the ages of 25-44 years of age and one-third have children under 18 years of age. 3 |
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Almost half of the patrons have traveled internationally in the past 12 months. 3 |
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The audience is evenly split—50% female, 50% male. 3 |
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77% of film viewers say they come to be both educated and entertained/educated. 3 |
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