Landmark, AMC commit to captioned movies

By John Waldo

Editor: Here's John's latest update on recent successes in securing movie captioning. For more of his reporting, please visit http://www.hearinglosslaw.com

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January 2012

In a significant expansion of movie access, the Landmark and AMC theater chains have agreed to add closed-captioning capacity to most if not all of their theaters in conjunction with their conversion to digital projection.

Landmark's commitment came in a personal meeting last week with Ted Mundorff, the chain's Chief Executive Officer. Mundorff said that the cost-sharing formula that the movie studios have offered to the major theater chains like Regal and AMC does not work with Landmark's emphasis on independent and art films, which means that digital conversion may take longer and may not include all of Landmark's theaters. He said that Landmark anticipates having its digital conversion plans finalized by the middle of 2012, and that when conversions are undertaken, Landmark will add closed-captioning capabilities. Closed captioning displays the captions on individual viewing devices, thereby not altering the movie-going experience of other patrons.

Although Landmark operates far fewer theaters than Regal, AMC or Cinemark, its commitment to captioning may in some respects be more significant than the commitments of those larger chains. Landmark theaters focus on showing movies that appeal to an adult audience in the best sense of the word, and that audience includes the older population groups that have the greatest prevalence of hearing loss. Thankfully, Mundorff agreed that making films accessible to people with hearing loss may benefit Landmark significantly more than it would benefit the typical suburban multiplexes that cater more to younger movie-goers.

Landmark plans to use Sony projector/servers in those theaters that it converts to digital projection. It will experiment with caption-display devices. It has installed the CaptiView modules at its theaters in Los Angeles and Baltimore, but is having some difficulty working the bugs out of the equipment that supposedly makes CaptiView compatible with Sony servers. Mundorff said Landmark is very interested in obtaining and testing the Sony eyeware that Regal is using on a trial basis in Seattle.

As to those theaters that Landmark will not convert to digital projection, Mundorff said he would investigate the feasiblity of installing Rear Windows Captioning devices.

Mundorff also acknowledged that Landmark may be in a position to encourage more of the independent and art-house film-makers to include captioning as part of their package, and Mundorff committed to asking for captioning. Captions are done under contract with the studios by an operational arm of WGBH public television, and are furnished to the theaters without charge. According to WGBH, the one-time cost of captioning a typical movie is less than $2,000.

In Washington, Landmark owns the Egyptian, Harvard Exit, Guild 45th, Metro, Varsity and Crest theaters, all in Seattle. In California, Landmark owns the Landmar, NuArt and Regent in Los Angeles, the Hillcrest, Ken and La Jolla Village inSan Diego, the Embarcadero, Bridge, Lumiere, Opera Plaza, Aquarius and Guild in San Francisco and the Peninsula, and the Albany Twin, California, Piedmont and Shattuck in the East Bay.

AMC's formal announcement of a nationwide commitment to captioning came in the form of a corporate press release dated Dec. 20. That press release was anticlimatic. AMC orally made that commitment in an Aug. 10 meeting involving representatives of the Association of Late Deafened Adults (ALDA), myself and attorneys from the public-interest firm of Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley. The meeting with AMC was a follow-up to the resolution of a lawsuit ALDA filed against Cinemark in California. In an amicable resolution of that action, Cinemark, America's third-largest movie-theater owner, committed to closed-captioning of all its first-run theaters in California upon conversion to digital projection, then made that commitment national in scope. Regal, America's largest theater owner, made a similar commitment.

AMC initially resisted any commitment to full captioning. In July, though, the King County Superior Court ruled in a lawsuit brought by the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) that AMC can afford to provide the necessary equipment to show all caption-equipped movies in captioned form, and ordered AMC to do so within 90 days of conversion to digital projection. Although it is appealing that order, AMC made a verbal commitment to full captioning shortly after that decision.