Small turnout as last 35mm film screens

Seven Sharp reporter Michael Holland gets a crash course in 35mm film projecting from Hoyts Whangaparaoa technical manager, Anthony Mitchell.

Paul Charman is there as 35mm movie film gets chucked on the ash heap of history.

The last regular screening of a 35mm movie at Hoyts Hibiscus Coast on Wednesday night was more intimate family wake than a cold public funeral.

With this screening, Hoyts completed its conversion to digital projection, not just in New Zealand but right across Australasia.

Retro fans may catch future limited arthouse screenings in this medium but they'll be limited to a handful of theatres not fully stripped of mechanical projectors.

The big film distributors have shown themselves keen to phase the medium out and around the country only a handful of cinemas are still using film.

Most of these will do so for just a few weeks longer.

Rationalisation - including the redundancy of trained projectionists and the cost-saving of transporting digital files - has been good for the industry.

Cinemas have long been under pressure from electronic home entertainment and film piracy. Also, digital projection delivers a far better show, comprising superior visuals and sound.

But following more than 100 years of mechanical film projection in Auckland, some enthusiasts at Hoyts Whangaparaoa on Wednesday night, said they'd expected a larger crowd.

Despite thousands of hits on the New Zealand Herald's online stories on this subject, and the arrival of a film crew from TVNZ's Seven Sharp - only 12 people braved heavy rain to catch the show.

The appropriately named heist movie, Now You See Me did not disappoint.

Seven Sharp reporter Michael Holland asked people how they felt, but that seemed obvious.

The mood was up-beat, as you'd expect at such an entertaining movie.

Luke Connolly said working as a projectionist had been an enjoyable hands-on role.

"When the films arrived in separate reels we'd put them together, which involved running the entire film between your fingers to check that it was splice correctly," he said.

Fellow projectionist, Mark Jensen, who'd worked in the role for nine years, said the 2009 3-D sensation Avatar, hastened the introduction of the digital medium.

"There was a wonderful sense of activity in the projection room as the film ran to the projector and back to the platter again. It was as if it was alive," he said.

The digital medium in contrast is clinical and efficient.

"When something goes wrong you re-boot and if that doesn't work you have to scratch your head, go for patches or call in external tech support. With the 35mm projector, if something was not working properly the projectionist got out a screw driver and fixed it himself. The show had to go on."

When the credits for Now You See Me stopped, we turned to the smiling but misty-eyed technical manager for Hoyts Whangaparaoa, Anthony Mitchell, 21.

Mitchell said it had been a privilege to thread Hoyts' last regular 35mm movie.

"This has been something head office technicians, most of whom are past projectionists, have really envied. But needless to say it's onwards and upwards from here. The new digital medium has its own unique excitement to it.

"Thank you all for coming - and good night."