Loew's Jersey Theatre

Yes Joseph, I too know someone who once was a projectionist there, and he says basically the same things you do. Most of the focus problems are because the gates in the projectors are plastic, as opposed to metal that 99% of projectors use. You couple that with the intense heat comming off the carbon arc, and as my friend said, the gates could melt away.

A wonderful article (with several photos) in “The New York Times” about the Loew’s Jersey Theatre:

View link

Check out photo no. 6 and be utterly amazed…

This building is an international treasure.

I heard from someone I know who works at the Loews that they are trying to get “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” for Dec.6.

I stand corrected – it was 870 for “Phantom of the Opera” (I heard wrong) – even better!

I knew it was going to be a big draw, but this was truly beyond my highest expectations.

A special “thank you” to patrons is posted on the Friends of the Loew’s Web site.

Hi, I’m Robert Minichino, the new technical director at the Loew’s Jersey, and I’d like to respond to some of the comments about our film presentation. First, I apologize for any impression of surliness on the part of any of the FOL staff. I would like everyone to know that I always welcome polite, constructive criticism on any aspect of our presentation. If you would like to make any comments after the movie, feel free to ask for me. I’m always there on movie nights and I’ll be happy to talk with you as I’m keenly interested in providing the best possible presentation of our classic film program to our patrons.

Certainly we could have been more diligent in the past with keeping the image focused, but I am aware of the issue and I do try to keep on top of it all the time. From my perspective it has gotten better as one of our volunteer projectionists has gotten more experience. It is difficult to focus from the booth, and we continue to have people in the orchestra monitoring the focus for us. There’s no excuse for us being out of focus where it can be corrected with a simple adjustment. I’d like to say that we do our best, and I’m happy that this statement is increasingly true.

As MBD mentioned above, we do find that some prints have parts that are out of focus. On our large screen this effect is painfully obvious, particularly from the front rows. Oftentimes we will get a call up to the booth during these scenes and we are unable to improve the focus. In fact, through our binoculars we can often see the film grain sharply defined on the screen at these moments. These problems seem to be confined to older B&W prints as we haven’t noticed the same issues with, for example, new color films. I understand that this can be particularly frustrating and distracting, and unfortunately the only remedy I can offer is to sit further back from the screen.

Bob Furmanek had mentioned above that there is a problem with focus drift and the use of our Kinoton projectors, and I must respectfully disagree. At least after Bob Eberenz had installed water-cooled gates with heat filters and additional forced-air cooling, I haven’t found any long-term focus drift issues with our projectors in the past few years. I have no experience with any issues that existed before this time as I was not yet involved with the theatre. However, we still do have some focus flutter, particularly with dark scenes on B&W film stock, but this would be unavoidable for any theater with our screen and lamphouse size. Our projectors do have curved gates, which does help, and I can’t imagine that any other projector would be much better in this regard.

Finally, the steep downward projection angle (19 degrees) combined with fast lenses and their concomitant shallow depth of field means that we can’t always have the entire image in perfect focus. You would notice this effect as the image being more in-focus in the middle than at the top and bottom. Some formats exhibit this problem worse than others. This can be alleviated with the use of perspective-correction adapters that allow us to shift the projected image off of the optical center axis. Once this is done, the projectors can be tilted at a less steep angle, which reduces both keystone distortion and focus issues. Unfortunately, these adapters are expensive and we are operating on a very tight budget. Thankfully, without correction this effect is still slight even on our worst format, and shouldn’t be obvious or distracting.

I’m trying to fill some awfully big shoes now that Mr. Eberenz has left us. It is my foremost desire to do justice to his work and memory as well as to our beautiful movie palace by providing the best possible presentation through my work with all of the FOL staff.

The Loews Jersey looks like a beautiful movie palace of a theatre, and a perfect place to show great golden oldie-but-goody classic films such as Dr. Zhivago, West Side Story, Lawremce of Arabia and many others. However, I do agree that the photo on the front of this page doesn’t look like it does this theatre any justice.

Talk about the best Groucho Marx impersonation I’ve ever seen!

Just wondering..

Is Colin still involved with the theater?

I havent been there since 1996/7….

Sure had a great time at the Wonder Morton organ shows. A very happy and relaxing weekend trip. Drove all the way from Ohio. Can hardly wait to get back there again for another organ show.

Here are some pictures of the weekend’s events, Wonder Morton, Loew’s Theatre and people.

http://www.gstos.org/ww/ww-event-photos.htm

Instead of “catwalk” I meant to say “gridiron.” Has anyone been up there? Just curious. I’m not going up there.

I know things are not always perfect and yes people who run the Jersey should listen and improve on the projection of its films. Everyone should thank there lucky stars that they have a huge movie palace such as the Loew’s Jersey showing American movie classics. Most people who love movies would kill to have a theatre like this where they live.I hope a good deal of money comes there way and they continue to restore such a glorious theatre.brucec

Allow me to share a story about lighting in the Jersey.

About 7 years ago, Bob Eberenz and I were tracing out speaker lines in the catwalks above the theater. I noticed two ladders that went down on either side of the auditorium into total darkness. Armed with a flashlight and a prayer, I descended the ladder not sure what I would find. About 20 feet down, I found myself behind the side wall on the top of the organ chamber. Looking into the tiny access space, I spotted ancient light bulbs. None of them were working. Nobody was even aware that lighting existed in that particular area of the auditorium!

So I climbed back up and armed myself with a dozen 100 watt bulbs. With one hand holding the ladder and another holding the bulb, I reached as far as I could into the little space and began changing the bulbs. One by one, they lit and I could see how much light they were throwing onto the area. All went well until one of the sockets had a bad circuit and sparked. It scared the heck out of me and it was a good thing I had a strong grip on the ladder. There was a good ten feet between me and the side wall, and the area below me descended into total darkness. I’m not sure how long the drop was and I certainly didn’t want to find out!

When I got back to the projection booth, I was absolutely pitch black from all the dirt. Thank goodness I had worn a protective mask, but my nostrils were still full of black soot.

But the payoff when I got to the orchestra level was worth it. There for the first time in probably 50 years, was lighting above the side chambers throwing a warm glow onto the ornate walls above them. That lighting is still working today. Check it out the next time you are there.

My point to this story is not to take credit for some achievement in the theater (and I hope my use of the first person is not offensive) but to illustrate that the lighting you are seeing now is greatly minimized from what originally existed. When all of the balcony rail lights and side wall lighting is restored, and all the cove and dome lighting is replaced, you will see the beautiful architecture in this magnificent theater come to life once again!

To Bob F.: I remember the constant radio communication between the orchestra tech and the projectionist. I don’t know if that is still done, but I suspect that it is. It was certainly done for the Loew’s Wonder Weekend this last weekend.

Imagine a movie house so big that you need radio communication and or binoculars to check on the quality of the presentation! The projection booth is 180 feet from the screen. That is much too far to judge things from the booth.

If you look at the 1929 lighting board, they had intercom communication in the old days in order to constantly monitor the presentation.