End of the Spectrum

First published on The National Times on 13th October, 2011.

Three years ago, the 3D movie was heralded as “the next big thing” that would save cinema. Over the years Australian ticket prices had steadily risen as home theatre became a serious threat, leaving cinemas to try and bridge the gap.

The objective was to up the “experience” that the public pay for, enhance the “immersion” for a premium ticket price and offer something that you just can’t duplicate at home: enter the third dimension.

3D movies aren’t anything new, but they’ve gone through a renaissance in recent years. When made well and actually filmed in 3D — such as James Cameron’s Avatar — movies can be a triumph of cinema and a visual delight.

Too often though we’re presented with a slapped together conversion of a normal film, much cheaper to produce and resulting in a film a bit more eye-watering to watch, but hey, it was still a new age of cinema, right?

Slowly but surely, we moviegoers began to sort through dimensional shifts and see what was really in front of us. Yes, in some cases, the movie industry used 3D well, and made the few extra bucks worthwhile. But more often than not, we were being distracted. The honeymoon period was over all too quickly and in the past year 3D movies have seen a noticeable decrease in audience.

A factor that just accelerated this drop, in Australia in particular, is the ticket price. The average ticket price in the US in 2010 was $7.89, an extra $4 or so for 3D, with the glasses thrown in.

In Australia you were doing well if you could get a ticket for double that price. With our dollar near parity, we’re paying $17 a movie ticket, $20 if you want to see a 3D film, more if you need the glasses. Quite a difference in price there, and it’s even more if you have a family in tow.

There’s been another wake-up call recently, in the form of a study by L. Mark Carrier of California State University, who found that people watching 3D movies essentially have the same immersion experience as those watching a 2D movie, but with the extra three-fold increase of eyestrain, headache, or trouble with vision.

This year has seen a vast reduction in the worldwide takings for 3D movies and the industry is catching on, as fewer movies are being provided in the medium. Whereas a movie such as Shrek Forever After made 65 per cent of its box office take from 3D screenings a year ago, this year’s big summer flicks such as the final Harry Potter and The Green Lantern barely scraped 30 per cent. With the cost of converting a movie to 3D at $80,000 US per minute of footage (let alone going the step further and filming in it) it’s fast becoming a reality that it isn’t worth the box office take.

Here’s where it starts getting a bit sneaky though — many that went to see movies like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Thor, The Green Lantern or Captain America in an Australian cinema this year would have had little choice but to see it in 3D. Normal 2D screenings were available, but they were few and far between. Have large cinemas like Hoyts and Village become so fond of the increased ticket prices that come with 3D, that they schedule the majority of their big audience screenings in it?

And what’s next, you may ask? 4D cinema, that’s what (technically the fourth dimension is “time”, but this is hardly the moment to insist on scientific correctness). Found in the US, Canada, and now New Zealand (Australia can’t be far away), using “d-box” technology your seat will now “pitch, roll and heave” along with the movie. Not immersive enough for you? There’s a few cinemas in Asia that spray water and smell at you, with the recent Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon accompanied with the smell of burning rubber. It’s taking the cinematic experience one step closer to a car wash.

3D movies aren’t going anywhere soon. There’s The Adventures of Tintin at the end of the year, The Amazing Spider-Man in July next year, and somewhere in the distant future, the tantalising promise of Avatar 2 and 3. Even with these tentpoles, it’s undeniable that 3-D will never be the draw card it once was. Once the saving grace of cinema, the philosophy of making more money off less viewers has just led to less viewers overall.

First published on Crikey’s Back in a Bit blog on 10th October, 2011.

Deep within Thailand, north of the city of Chiang Mai and near the Burmese border, is a Mahout Training School.

Put simply, a mahout is a person who works with elephants (a ‘chang’). At one time there were elephants all over Thailand, but over time, and pressured by deforestation, their numbers have dwindled. Ten years ago there were 4000, now there’s 2500, and most of those are in captivity.

Traditionally elephants were used for a variety of tasks, often transport, and for heavy-lifting, particularly hauling timber. They were also used in battle, with kings mounting the beasts to lead the Thai in war against the Burmese. Now a great number of them are used to ferry tourists around and the few that are in the wild are under threat from poachers.

As a business though, they’re highly prized. Elephants are only owned by those who are considerably wealthy and that’s mostly due to the amount of food it takes to feed them. The going rate for one is a million bhat, and with their long life spans, it’s common for an elephant to belong to a family.

Tumbling out of the back of the van a tired and hot mess, I stretched my legs and tried to get my bearings. We were now a lot closer to the Burmese border, and all around us was thick jungle. I breathed in the fresh air and took in the view, and it was at that point that a baby elephant tugged on my clothes.

I looked down at him, waist high and stronger than he thought. He tugged on my clothes again with his trunk, and indicated that I was wasting valuable time that could be better spent feeding him.

I was handed some bananas, and looked down at the hungry and expectant elephant. Chompu was nine months old, and apparently growing every day. Part of me felt like eating the bananas myself — they were $10 a kilo back in Australia, and I hadn’t tasted one in months — so it was with slight reluctance that I started peeling and hand feeding them to the growing pachyderm, who thanked me by sneezing on me.

Our elephant instructor, Nong, patted the young elephant proudly. “He’s the second baby Chompang has had,” she said, indicating the larger, wary mother elephant who was towering near the baby.

“What happened to the first?” I asked, peeling another banana.

“She ran into the fields and ate fruit with chemicals on it.”

“Pesticides?”

Nong nodded sadly. “Very painful way to die, with poison inside you.”

After lunch had settled rather less painfully in our stomachs, it was time to attempt to ride an elephant. We had managed to choose an elephant training school where they give you neither a basket or a harness with which to ride an elephant — instead you sit across its neck and control it with commands, accompanied by kicking it behind the ear.

“It won’t hurt her,” Nong assured us. “You will feel like a fly.”

“But will the elephant hurt me,” I asked, trying to convey the idea that, while a friend of the animals, my first priority was usually myself.

Nong shook her head and laughed. “BoonChoo is a very gentle elephant. She’s used to people and the only time you need to worry is when she sees a buffalo.”

This sounded like a fact I should pay attention to. I instantly fought to remember what a buffalo looked like.

“What do I do if I see a buffalo?”

“There isn’t much to do, just hold on tight. BoonChoo will run away very fast. But don’t worry, there are no buffalo near here.”

BoonChoo looked down at me serenely as I had the procedure for mounting her described to me again. I’d seen photos of elephants, and viewed them myself from a distance in the zoo, but neither of these experiences really prepare you for seeing them up close. For starters, every cartoon I’ve ever watched has lied to me. They’re not grey and certainly not smooth. BoonChoo was dusty brown, with a mottled orange trunk. Her skin was rough and leathery, caked in dirt, and she was covered in bristly hair. It was like a hairy mountain with a pulse.

The mahout gave a friendly, encouraging smile, and motioned for me to climb the elephant. Gripping her ear and shoulder where I was instructed, and using her knee as a ladder, I scurried up with as much grace as I could manage, which turned out to be about the same as a house brick. Once I’d managed to steady myself on her neck and got used to the new altitude, I noticed that my arm had scraped her rough skin and was bleeding.

My wife, Justine, scurried up behind me and took hold of the rope she’d been provided with. Meanwhile, I got the ears.

Equipped with a rudimentary set of instructions on how to use our feet and yell at the elephant in an obscure Thai dialect, we set off with two other tourists and a few mahout, the elephants gently swaying as they ambled their way down a muddy jungle path.

It was soon very clear that although I knew the commands and kicked BoonChoo behind the ear in the right fashion, I was very much just along for the ride. She was the one who decided where she wanted to go, and that usually involved a tasty looking plant, or passing right underneath a branch that didn’t offer me enough clearance.

What didn’t help the situation was my wife sitting behind me, who had managed to bring the experience of back seat driving to a pachyderm.

“Go left more.”

“I’m trying! Quey, Quey!”

“Left! That’s not left!”

“Don’t you think I know that?! Any more from you and I’m turning this elephant around!”

“Ha! I’d like to see you try!”

Once we were resided to the fact that wherever BoonChoo wanted to go, we went, the experience was quite amazing. There I was, sitting on the back of an elephant, having her spray water at me from puddles that she walked past. In the Thai jungle, with the sun beating down mercilessly. Watching an elephant from the group named DoDo literally tip-toe through the mud. Yes sir, this was the dream. I was having the time of my life, and wouldn’t trade it  for anything.

“There’s a buffalo over there,” Justine pointed out.

I absently moved us aside to avoid being impaled on a wayward stick of bamboo. “What did you say?”

“Buffalo,” Justine repeated. She pointed over my shoulder into the reeds. And she was right. Not more than twenty metres away there was something potentially buffalo-shaped. I squinted in the harsh sun.

“It could be a cow…” I ventured hopefully.

“It’s not. It’s a buffalo.”

I squinted a bit more. It was distinctively less ‘cow’ and more ‘buffalo’.

“Quey!” I yelled, trying to get BoonChoo to move away from the reeds before she noticed anything.

I covered her leathery ears and whispered harshly to the mahout. “Buffalo!”

The mahout in front of me laughed and continued to groove along to Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, blaring loudly from his phone. He didn’t comprehend the gravity of the situation. I used my fingers to make horns on my head, in the universally recognised “there’s a buffalo over there” fashion, and momentarily lost my grip on the elephant. The mahout laughed, and waved emphatically in return. We clearly had a failure to communicate.

I remembered the crucial piece of buffalo related advice I had been given, stopped flailing around, and held on tight. BoonChoo sensed something, paused, and looked around carefully. I held my breath and felt her massive head move from side to side. Failing to notice anything in the reeds, she continued to walk on. I gasped in relief.

Moments later one of the mahouts noticed the buffalo and made a frantic hand signal. I waved casually back, and patted my elephant.

This is an excerpt from Matt Smith’s Thailand Diary, available as an e-book from Amazon.

Matt Smith’s Thailand Diary, a short e-book, available at a bargain price on Amazon.

Traveling Matt (of the human variety, not the Fraggle) has recently gone on his first proper overseas trip, to the far off distant land of Thailand. Join him as he visits every temple he can, rides an elephant too close to the Burmese border, gets taken on a wild ride by a tuk-tuk, narrowly escapes a tailor, and has a close encounter with some street cooking.

First published on The Punch on 15th June, 2011

The Dalai Lama’s most recent tour of Australia is in full swing, and it’s taken a slightly strange direction this time around. While his 2007 tour treated the Dalai Lama as he should be treated – as a spiritual leader who deserves respect – that tour met with a financial loss, and now it’s all about bums on seats.

Promotion, merchandise, and the media circuit. HHDL (as he’s known to his tweeps on Twitter) seems to be in it for the money, and he’s got the Collingwood AFL guernsey from Harry O’Brien to prove it.

The effort to engage a broader audience has strangely tainted his message, and the most our media can manage is to treat the man like he’s a punchline. Considering he’s trying to promote a series of undersold public lectures, he’s got to take what he can get… but is this really the best that we can give him?

“The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says to the guy at the counter ‘make me one with everything’.”

The joke from the robotic Karl Stefanovic warranted a blank look from his Holiness, but hey, at least Karl made himself laugh.

With a slight bemusement he’s also appeared on the 7pm Project the same night as St Kilda Schoolgirl Kim Duthie (although credit has to go to Dave Hughes for a respectful interview), and he’s made a guest appearance on Masterchef, – the ‘digital montage’ picture on news.com.au showing Gary Mehigan eating spaghetti off the top of his head.

In an interview with Melbourne media, he gave answers to questions on Kim Duthie and Ricky Nixon, same-sex marriage and his holiday plans.

The Dalai Lama is an optimistic guy who seems to have a good sense of humour. He’s made an effort to engage new audiences, has nearly two million followers on Twitter and a similar amount of Facebook fans. He looks friendly and inviting, and definitely puts a human touch on a world religion.

All of this makes it seem like he shouldn’t be taken seriously. Even Julia Gillard isn’t granting him some of her valuable time, his Holiness isn’t worth the resulting frown from China.

Counter that with the leader of the Catholic church, Pope Benedict XVI. If the Pope visited  Australia, there’d be no invitation to appear on the 7pm Project. He wouldn’t be asked to perform a loaves and fishes style miracle on Masterchef.

I’m not even sure that Karl Stefanovic would dare to make a comparison between Benedict XVI and Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, let alone ask him how many Bishops it takes to screw in a lightbulb – he’s the leader of a world religion, and you’re on a national television show. He warrants some respect as a result; it just isn’t done.

Those hoping to get a brush with his Holiness can benefit from all this though – there’s teaching sessions and talks. There’s a $5000 premium package which includes a photo opportunity. There’s a line of merchandise available, including t-shirts (one would hope brandishing the slogan ‘I saw the Dalai Lama and all I got was this lousy t-shirt’).

The minute you start promoting yourself like a rockstar on tour, you’re losing the impact of the message you’re trying to spread. We’re not at the point of his tour having corporate sponsorship, but a slogan like ‘The Dalai Lama is bought to you by TruEnergy, for that enlightening experience, day or night’ can’t be that far away.

Let’s just hope that his message of peace and harmony, of ‘be excellent to each other’, isn’t lost in the process.