Last week, everyone was fixated on the “Right Up Our Alley” drone video that made us all nostalgic for bowling alleys. A VP at the drone company DJI on Friday night tweeted this video of a drone flight through a mostly empty movie theater in Minnesota, and I do not know about you, but I really miss it. This video makes the longing about 100 times worse.
According to its YouTube page, the video is by SkyCandy, and is a one-time throughput of Plymouth Grand in Mann theaters in Plymouth, Minnesota. It was filmed using a DJI Air Unit and Rotor Riot Cinewhoop.
The video is just over a minute long, but the drone takes us through the foyer – after being greeted by a masked theater employee through the front door – where people decide what to see, and buy tickets for the show at 07: 30, ”According to the sound. There’s a lot of sounding background music playing in the foyer that I could not really identify, but it felt exactly right.
Next we fly to the concession stand where a couple snatches a bucket of the overpriced movie popcorn, then we turn past the bar where we can hear the bartender say to his patron: “just name it, I saw it,” before we go down a long corridor to one of the real theaters.
There are so many empty seats in the theater that it felt a little sad – but then we briefly hear a familiar pre-movie sound: someone forgot to mute their iPhone. Rude! But funny. Finally we watch and then fly into the movie screen, where guess what is playing (I thought it might be one moment Tenet, but no): the beginning of the video we watched. Game!
For those of us who have not been to a movie theater since social distance traffic began last year, this video is a welcome, sad reminder of the joy of watching a movie on the big screen. Another thing to put on the “things I’m going to do when everything is back to normal”, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.