Some people say movie theatres are an endangered breed. With plasma screens expanding and Blu-Ray discs packing in more resolution, why pay to watch movies in a dark, crowded room with sticky floors? Ah, but that's the rub: the darkness and the crowd are precisely the point (but the sticky floor I can do without).

I read a fascinating book recently called Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. As a technical look at nonlinear editing, the book (published in 2004)is already badly dated. Thankfully, BTS also delves into the fertile mind of Murch, a postproduction legend (if such a thing exists).

Waxing philosophic before a test screening, Murch discusses his theories about the theatrical movie-going experience. To paraphrase (badly), the audience is a force multiplier, carrying a collection of human lives and experiences into the vacuum of a theatre. When a film is projected through the prism of an audience, it takes on dimensions of meaning that aren't ingrained in the celluloid. Put simply, it's a different movie in the theatre than it is in your living room. Unless your living room holds a few hundred people.

I was reminded of Murch's theory on Tuesday night, when Afghan first screened for a real audience. A film that had become flat and lifeless on my editing screen was suddenly alive. And very funny. We got laughs - long and loud - in all the right places, and a few I wasn't expecting.

It wasn't simply a case of novelty. I've watched the film dozens of times now, and hadn't laughed since perhaps the second rough cut. But on Tuesday, I laughed. Surrounded by an audience, part of a collective (Borg-like?) consciousness, I couldn't help laughing on cue. I even discovered new places to laugh, lines I didn't know were funny.

None of this is to suggest Afghan is comedy gold (Gold, Jerry, GOLD!). Tuesday's experience just reminded me how essential the audience is to filmmaking, and what would be lost if movie theatres ever become obsolete.

(Oh, and congratulations to Pardis Parker, writer, producer, and director of Afghan. Congrats also to the filmmakers behind Liberty 45, The Scavengers, For Wendy, Spoiled, There are Monsters, and Treevenge. And thanks to our collective consciousness, the audience who came out to watch the CBC Atlantic Shorts Gala.)