With the current transition from film to digital projection, the Keysville Drive-In Theatre has two choices after this season. According to Keysville Drive-In Owner Mark Frank, the options are either to “go digital or go dark.”
The Keysville Drive-In is roughly a half hour drive from Longwood’s campus and was opened in 1952. The theatre closed in 2001 but was reopened by Frank in 2009.
The drive-in participated in Honda Project Drive-In, a campaign which raised money to ultimately provide nine digital projectors to different drive-in movie theaters across the country. In order to receive a projector, the drive-ins had to receive the most number of votes through online voting or texting. By the end of September, all nine projectors were awarded to the winning drive-ins, Keysville not being a recipient.
Many of the drive-ins that competed for the projectors were in regions with larger populations, whereas Keysville lacked voting numbers due to its rural location. Despite the lack of a digital projector, Frank said Project Drive-In “got the awareness out there” and caused the Keysville Drive-In to become a little busier than normal due to the awareness that was made.
Theatres across the country have made the switch to digital over the past decade. Out of all the theatres in the United States, drive-ins have generally been slower to convert and rely on film technology. Frank said, maybe “10 percent of the theatres in America and almost all of them are in rural America, are running 35 mm film. It’s just getting tough to find.”
The Keysville Drive-In is facing a tremendous pressure to convert to digital due to the decrease in film production, according to Frank. The fade outof35mmfilmisashardto come by as a video home system (VHS). The medium of film is in the process of being replaced by “an eight pound digital hard drive” that can easily be shipped to theatres.
Several advantages of converting to digital projection are the lower costs of shipping, the consistent picture quality and the physical ease of starting a movie.
According to Frank, “As long as you don’t have any corrupt files, you can play that picture a million times over and over again and the quality won’t go down.” The biggest argument against converting to digital was the cost to make the transition. “It just doesn’t make sense to buy an $80,000 machine ... It would only keep me in business. It wouldn’t make me any money,” said Frank.
On the other hand, film is a technology that does get worn down over time. The more a reel of 35 mm film is played over time, the more the quality of the picture goes down. The key to keeping film in good condition is to make sure the film is kept clean and to fix any mechanical issues quickly.
If the theatre does not decide to “go digital” when production of film ceases, this could mean a change in theatre business around Farmville. The Keysville Drive-In Theatre and Sunchase Cinema 8 are the only two
theaters within a roughly 20-mile radius of the Town of Farmville. Business that usually goes to the drive-in would be forced to drive to Sunchase or to attend a theatre farther from home.
Sunchase Cinema General Manager Debbie Hunt said she hasn’t seen much competition between the two theaters because each theatre has a distinct audience. The drive-in could be seen to cater to families with children, and Sunchase brings in many college students.
“In some ways, it’s a different crowd that’s into drive-in and into theatre,” Hunt said.
Hunt added, “They are not able to show a variety of movies like we do. They show two, and we show eight at a time.”
Sunchase has made the leap from film to digital, and each of the theatre rooms has its own digital projector. Certain rooms also have a machine that can switch between showing two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) movies.
Currently, the drive-in is only open seasonally from March through November and will show its last film of this year, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” starting Nov. 22. After that last film is shown, the drive- in will go into what Frank calls “hibernation.” Once the drive- in closes for the winter, anyone interested in going to see a movie will need to drive to Sunchase Cinema 8.
If the Keysville Drive-In eventually closes due to the inability to convert to digital technology, there would be a shift in local theatre business.
Hunt said, “I’m sure we would have to pick up some” of the business if the drive-in chose to “go dark.”
