The pandemic has forced a number of public-facing businesses to either temporarily close or permanently cease operations, with one of the biggest victims of this trend being the movie theater business.
This week, the historic ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres, which account for 300 screens in the US, announced that it would be shuttering due to economic difficulties related to the pandemic.
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And while some in Hollywood are still holding out hope for a last-minute save, one augmented reality company is already preserving the theater chain's history in a unique way. The team at ReplayAR has collected a series of historic photos shot at ArcLight's most iconic theater, the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, to give movie fans an immersive memory of what they may be about to lose.
The app, which was launched in 2019 for iOS and Android, allows you to anchor AR photos to geographic locations, thus preserving memories immersively.
The Cinerama Dome in 1966
In addition to allowing you to photograph and pin your own photographic memories in AR to a location, the app also allows you to pin "any" photo, graphic, or Gif to a location, as well as assign specific dates to the AR graphic, effectively giving you the power to create a kind of AR history tour when you visit certain locations.
In this case, the ReplayAR team demonstrated the app's abilities by pinning some of the most popular moments in the Cinerama Dome's history to various viewing angles of the real-world location. So even if the Cinerama Dome does indeed shut down for good, users of the app will always have a way to memorialize its past in AR.
Hopefully, all is not lost for the Cinerama Dome, as some are hinting that a Hollywood power player may rescue the beloved theater. Until then, movie buffs can use AR to keep the cinematic history magic alive.
Cover image via ReplayAR/YouTube
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