Rivoli Theatre

We saw Arnold Schwartznegger’s PREDITOR here on their big screen. About 30 minutes into the show, about 4 or 5 jive-turkeys came in and began making noise as if nobody else was there. Several shush! shush! sounds from the audience yielded the agonizingly familiar “We paid our money and we won’t shut up.. blah, blah, blah!” Then I heard one Negro voice say out loud, “You’re the reason us N…… don’t never have nuthin' cuz people like you ruin it for ev'body!” I’ll never forget that, never forget the guy who said it. AMEN.

x

William, I worked post production at 20th Century fox and also at News of the Day for a while in the late 50s. It was tense but I enjoyed it a lot and we always had passes to the Roxy and Rivoli. The guys at News of the Day had a very stressful job with new footgae being delivered all day long and having to get two newsreels out every week.

I still run track & picture screenings, but not as many as before. But I’m not in the regular theatre world. I’m in Post-Production projection, its like working a film festival 5 days a week.

CConnolly, I shall tell you what I know about IMAX.
First of all the picture is not digital, but a 70mm fifteen perforation film which runs thru the IMAX projectr horizontally at 24 frames per second. The projector is capable of running two prints at the same time for 3-D.The sound comes on CD disks which is then loaded onto the computer’s hard drive which syncs up the picture and sound. In the theatre I worked, the light source is a 15,000 watt lamp and the sound system carried 12,000 watts of power. A wall to wall,floor to ceiling silver screen, to maximize the reflection to the audience, was installed. IMAX has been a new shot in the arm now due to DMR which is a process of digitally re-mastering regularly shot 35mm movies to the IMAX process,as was the case in “Robots” and the upcoming “Batman Returns” amoung many others.
I hope I helped explain a bit about IMAX and hope someone with more knowledge can add to or correct anything I wrote

It is not like it once was with film, Digital is picking up speed in doing preview screenings. I still run a lot of film, but we do about 4-6 different video type screenings a week. Today I have two HD screenings, one from a D-5 format and another from HDcam-SR, plus two film screenings. Some people might say it is hard to go from film and video type formats. It really isn’t that hard to do.

Rob, I can only imagine the pressur of working at RCMH. But it had to be a rewarding and thrilling experience. As for the Guys running digital, I suppose it must have it’s anxious moments. As a film projectionist, when something went wrong we could generally take care of the problem. Switching rectifiers/generators for a light source problem or amplifiers when the sound gave us trouble. Heck, most of us at one time or another have had to change out an intermittent or replace a drive gear at one time or another not to mention a water cooled jaw in a arc lamp house that suddenly sprung a leak. Ahh the memories… but my experience with digital was one of
a feeling of helpness when it went sour, something I was not used to or enjoyed very much. All one could do was call the 800# for tech support. As you very well know, digital projection comes with it’s one sets of problems. So the industry had changed a great deal, my last booth job was in an IMAX theatre, I played “Polar Express” in IMAX 3-D. What a nightmare that was!, the print didi not carry a time code as does DTS for example, but rather runs on it’s own program so the chances of losing sync was always about. Then of course if you had a film break and lost any frames in the left eye print you had to replace (slug) the missing footage in the right eye print to keep everything matched up. Of course we had to do the same thing in the old 3-D and Cinerama days and I know some of the boys would sometimes cheat and simply remove the missing footage from all the prints, but with IMAX if you did that you would lose sound sync.
But at least we had film, and running 2-3 or even, as you did, 5 projectors in a single thetare in a single booth. I miss that!

Bill Huelbig, you might want to add your link for that interesting “Days of Heaven” booklet to the Cinema 1, 2, 3 site.

I found that “Days of Heaven” book I mentioned in an earlier post. Here’s the cover:

View link

I know some of you projectionists explained this once but I still don’t “get” how digital projection works. How is the image “shown”? There’s no film, right? I’m sorry but could someone either explain (simply…) or tell me about a website that could?

Also, about two years ago I read about another even more radical film medium wherein the movie would actually be “beamed” via satellite to theaters. If a movie proved to be a big enough draw (HA! Like with todays crap…) another theater in a multiplex could be instantly turned over to that film. The issue was how to prevent hackers from getting a hold of the signal and transmitting it to another area (theater, PC, etc.) Anyone aware of this?

Vito, I imagine the projectionists at the Ziegfeld WORRY! It is new technology, and during the pre-opening screenings of “Star Wars” a representative of Texas Instruments which had their prototype projector in before the opening, and a Dolby representative were also on hand for each screening. (If there were one more tech they might have been able to have a card game going!) As you know — you’re only as good as your last show and “stuff” happens. It always amazes me that for a premiere at the Zieg or the Music Hall, everyone would have a tech representative on hand, but when the picture opens and the audience had to pay, there would often be no tech assistance available. With the elimination of projectionists there are fewer and fewer people around exhibition who continue to care about the presentation (see “Uptown Theatre Washington D.C. on this site for the latest example). There was always the tension of being in the "Showplace of the Nation” at Radio City, and even though digital presentation may be boring, I’ll bet the guys at the Zieg are feeling a bit of tension these days too. Things can go from boredom to chaos in an instant.

Another NYC theater that has 70MM capability is the Paris. A 70MM print of “Howard’s End” was shown at the Paris for nearly a year in the early 1990s. Kenneth Branagh’s film of “Hamlet” was also presented in 70MM at the Paris.

Thanks REandres for that info. I forgot about the water cooled gates
Peter, you misunderstood, I never wrote all projectors are compatable. I am refering to 35/70 projectors, which is what all 70mm theatres have. There is nothing to do but convert the idle rollers, change the aperture plate and lens and your done. As for platters, most of them have feed plates (brains) that simply change out for either 35 or 70 and duel purpose guide rollers so again, little has to be done. As for the masking, we usually have three presetts, Flat, Scope and 70 for both the side and top masking settings. I have had several sneak preview showings of a 70mm print
playing with a 35mm feature and two of us did the conversion during
intermission, (about 20 minutes). In the case of DTS readers, nothing has to be done with them because they are always there, usually mounted above the mag penthouse, and simply bypassed when not in use. I suppose if you wanted to play a 70mm DTS print followed by a 35mm DTS print you would have much more work but that would be unusual.