Want to get Millennials into the cinema? Portrait mode movie theatres are coming soon.

"The time is now to revolutionize the way people experience cinema. People have been shooting in portrait mode for years but the industry has failed to keep up."

Portland, OR - Your local movie house is showing the latest indie flick and the people that show up are all over 45 years of age. The problem here is that the younger generation aren't coming along with them. The very things that are keeping this generation away from the cinema could be just the trick to getting them back. Portrait Mode. 

​"If you think about how people are experiencing content, it isn't horizontally. The time is now to revolutionize the way people experience cinema. People have been shooting in portrait mode for years but the industry has failed to keep up." said Sarah Elizabeth of Portrait Mode Cinema Inc. 

Portrait Mode Cinema Inc. (PMCI), founded in Portland Oregon in late 2018 by a group of young entrepreneurs,  purchased an aging theatre and the first thing they did was turn the screen 90 degrees. After purchasing a projector from Staples and using bluetooth to connect their smart phone, Portrait Mode Cinema was a reality. 

Finding content to fit the format was no trouble at all since over 85% of the people in their social circle shoot that way. "Now when we see someone filming in landscape mode we frown upon that, the same way we would get frowned upon by Gen Xers." Said Elizabeth.

Finding an audience is not so easy, even with the PWYC (Pay What You Can) model as they only see an average of 15 people per screening, and that is including family and staff, but Elizabeth and Co. do have a point. Every news clip we see is typically shot in portrait mode, and the network editor will fill the sides with an expanded, blurred view of the content. 

When asked if PMCI would venture into home televisions, Sarah said the team already pitched the concept. "When we approached investors they just suggested to turn the TV 90 degrees, so we're now working on a bracket that will allow the user to swivel their unit on the wall. We WILL revolutionize the cinema industry, 90 degrees at a time!" 

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​Quiet On The Set! is a monthly blog post about happenings in the indie film world. Any resemblance to any persons living, or dead, or in limbo, or who identifies as being alive, or dead, or in limbo, is purely coincidental. 

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photo credit: https://www.istockphoto.com/ca/portfolio/peshkov