A darkened theatre. A full house. A heroic act. A mighty roar from the crowd. This is the delight of good cinema.

I love going to the movies with people, even people I don’t know. I love to hear others’ reactions, and discuss the movie with people afterwards. In fact, I love it so much, that when my neighbor shows movies in many languages from all over the world in his backyard on Saturday nights during the summer, I often go down for the movie and end up enjoying the wine, cheese, and conversation more than the images flickering across a bedsheet waving gently in the breeze.

So, I got to thinking: What if you could rent a theater for a night? Then I read this: “At this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, filmmaker David LaChapelle screened his new hi-def movie, Rize, by streaming it from Oregon and then transmitting it through a WiMax station in Salt Lake City. It worked flawlessly - soon even theaters won’t have to rely on physical media anymore” (from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/start.html?pg=2).

Improvements in bandwidth and compression will usher in the possibility of streaming movies directly to local theaters.

The cost of streaming cinema could be as low as free, depending on the film’s provider. What this means is that films can potentially be shown to smaller audiences. And this, in turn, means that those audiences could select the film that they want to view and schedule the theater in advance. Moreover, there’s no reason to think that audiences merely want to watch only new films. Imagine a small (but big enough) cadre of film buffs pitching in to watch Citizen Kane on the big screen for a Saturday night. Or how about an all-day Star Wars or Star Trek marathon? These scenarios become not just possible but likely, given the technological transformation. The notion of a film having a “run” becomes meaningless. Films could be made available permanently and would continue to pay the creators back over a very long lifetime of being accessible. It need scarcely be mentioned that this would dramatically change the social dynamic of moviegoing: no more “opening weekend” mega-stats, and films would no longer need to be judged on how much money they might make in a single season.

Furthermore, barriers-to-entry for independent filmmakers are something of an institution in the film industry. Given enough interest, independent filmmakers can reach their understandably smaller audiences by streaming the films on-demand. Money for these films would go directly back to the filmmakers instead of bouncing around endless chains of middlemen.

And who says it has to be movies? Much of the video created these days is in the form of music concerts, comedy routines, and other non-narrative film. Certainly music-lovers would rush to schedule their favorite concert videos and invite all of their friends if cinema-on-demand were readily available. And, like independent filmmakers, independent record labels and musicians would have a real possibility of streaming their material out to their smaller audiences as well.

For example, I recently tried to get my hands on Doki Doki (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/dokidoki) for my neighbor’s Saturday night screenings. Under the current system, the best I could do is buy a hand-burned DVD from the filmmaker online. Under the new scenario, however, social groups could, in effect, have their own film festival, without the overhead of hosting a major festival like Cannes or Sundance.

So, in effect, the local movie theater evolves into a kind of watering hole where audiences can reserve a time-slot and a film for their own purposes. This could prompt a change in theater architecture, from large pack-the-house-to-get-back-your-costs sardine boxes to smaller lounge-style spaces with movie controls, tables, sofas, and such organized around comfort, convenience, and the whole experience. As we move towards the “experience economy” theaters will have to consider these issues carefully.

All of this raises the grim spectre of movie-mogul response. In any industry, the big entrenched oligopolists will act to stifle new forms of creation and distribution that threaten their interests. In this case, though, I don’t think there is much that they can do. Even if they required major cinema chains to sign exclusive licenses with the major studios (i.e. major theaters would not be allowed to stream smaller films or risk being cut off from receiving hot new Hollywood blockbusters), it is likely that smaller theaters (who don’t usually show the big Hollywood films anyway) would leap to capture the cinema-on-demand moviegoing audience. In addition, moviegoers who are actually committed to the experience could easily be enticed into providing feedback to the filmmakers about the film in question (the network connection is a two-way data pipe, remember). Therefore, if the moguls want to stay relevant, they should get with the program and encourage on-demand moviegoing. This line of reasoning is much the same as the need for the big music companies to promote downloading and sharing of music: the bottom line is that these fundamentally “social” activities increase the total level of interest in the media in question. The end result could be more people attending “social screening” more often because they have more control over the experience.

“Social software” can be seen as any technology that promotes social activity. Having a theater in every home promotes at-home viewing (but is typically American in its approach), whereas moving the social software to the theater encourages getting out and engaging in social activity.

And that can’t be a bad thing, can it?