Radio City Music Hall
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
116 people
favorited this theater
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William, I HAD my fun in the booth.
Roadshows,Cinerama,3-D and all the wacky wonderful gimicks of the 50s. Based on what I hear about what goes on in the booth today,
I think the fun is gone. That horse and pony show at RCMH with the screening the other night would have drove me nuts.
Hey RCDT, hows about next time you have a screening you invite Peter and I over to run it with you. No industry people allowed, tell em just drop the print off and get lost. leave the rest to us.
Oh, and REndres, you are invited as well.
We can show em how it should be done and have a hell-of-a lot of fun doing it.
Vito, We’ll have to “agree to disagree” on this one. I talked to the Dolby tech who did the screening this morning. He said they filled the screen with the digital image all the way to the screen height. That would mean a picture 35'high by 64 ¾' wide. There is no way you can do that with 35mm. (We did do it with 70mm for “The Lion King” and a few other premieres, but as noted above we only had about 8Fl. of light on the screen. And that was with new bulbs and new reflectors in the 5Kw lamphouses.) If you focus the 7K bulbs down to a 35mm aperture there is a marked tendency to burn the film, even with water-cooled gates.
We superimposed video projectors at the Hall all the way back to the days of the Eidophor, and in the case of at least one Grammy awards show with four superimposed projectors. Unlike film, the image can be manipulated digitally so there is an almost perfect overlap. We did one show with two Hughes D-ILA projectors with 10KW lamps superimposed on a 20' wide rear projection screen that was bright enough to read on camera with full stage lighting up. In addition, the superimposed projectors give 100% backup should one fail (minus the brightness of course.) The legend about the Hall when I was growing up was that they always used two film projectors overlapped to get the brightness needed. That wasn’t the case, although I did run four projectors with 6000' reels and two complete prints to give me back-up for “McArthur”, and we used three 70mm machines with one print of “Lion King” on a platter, and the other being run reel-to-reel as a back-up. We also had a 35mm print running on another platter to provide Dolby Digital sound, and serve as an extra back-up if needed.
The premiere the other night did use a MUTT for the 35mm print.
I’m told the digital looked very good indeed, and as mentioned above, you couldn’t have gotten that size out of a 35mm 1.85 print.
vito, you’re missing all the fun in the booth.
Well the Daily News reported yesterday, that after a ticket snafu left thousands of fashionistas all dressed up with absolutly no place to go. They go on to say that security officials said up to 2,000 people – who had gotten tickets through promotional giveaways authorized by the movie studio New Line Cinemas were shut out of the screening. Radio City ushers pointed out the fine print on the rejected tickets that says seating is first come-first served.
Maybe New Line thought thay would be using the full seating capacity of the house, but with the equipment in the mezzanine areas cut the seating down. Who knows but it happened. There was also a lady from London who paid for a special package of the premiere and after party and paid $19,000 for it. Ticket scam.
Long live film indeed!
Did you run the film on a MUTT?
As to the tech prolems, I can recall many a roadshow dry run where there were just two many cooks in the kitchen. The more they tinkered the worse it got. BUT, we never spent 7 hours on it.
Why in the world were they paying with the audio levels. Couldn’t they just balance the channels and assume the mix on the track was done coreectly? In 70mm or 35mm for that matter, prior to the screenings, we simply ran levels, and later with Dolby, Pink noise and in about 45 minutes we were done.
It is unfortunate for RCMH mnagement not to address the exhaust system, it must have cost a unnecesary amount of money in man hours setting up that Digital, as opposed to the cost of an improved exhaust system.
They oversold the house???
Is that because they closed all the mezzanines and did not tell the folks handing out tickets??
I can’t take any more of this, thank God I retired.
Any problems with the oversold house for the premiere?
I agree Vito. Unfortunately, when the new equipment was put in around 1999, it was mainly installed for the 70MM 3D. The 7K lamps would have definitely looked good. The main problem is the fact that they neglected to improve the exhaust. Since then, the exhaust system there has gotten worse. Getting management to fix these problems is difficult to say the least. The main reason it took so long for the tech run, besides setting up all the digital equipment, is because they had audio issues during the tech. They could not agree on left and right levels. In the end, they went back to the original seetings that the Dolby tech set. We did switch back and forth from digital to film during the tech many times. While the digital was brighter, remember that it took 2 machine with 12k output to get it that bright. Yes the digital was in the first mezz. As Peter eluded to, the movie was not good. There were some laughs but not an overwhelming response. Long live film.
Rave review of “King Kong” in the NY Daily News, 3/3/33. I’d say someone left a star out of this accidentally:
View link
Thanks for that info. What madness!
Do you not have 2 or 3 of the 35/70 projectors set up with 7k Lamp? For heavens sake, all they had to do was run the damn thing in 35mm reel-to-reel,they would have had plenty of light and not have to spend 7 hours seting the thing up. It sounds like they created a nightmare waiting to happen with that converged Digital setup.
Plus they would not have had to close the mezzanines.
I suppose the Digital equipment was set up in nthe first mezzanine?
Let me repeat, MADNESS!!
I have to say, and many will think, I have lost my mind, but i would have loved for that Digital set up to fail and blow up in their face forcing them to run film, which is what they should have doine in the first place.I sort of understand running Digital in some locations, like the Ziegfeld, it is quite good, But if you have to go to all the trouble as they did at the Hall, it just makes no sense to me at all. Oh, did I mention I thought this was MADNESS?
Did anyone laugh? You can hear crickets in the theatre when the trailer for that movie plays… :)
Hey Vito. The “Sex” screening was shown in Digital. There were 2 Christie projectors converged. We also had a 35MM back up running a minute behind. The tech run in the morning took over 7 hours to complete. Light readings were not great with one digital projector We were getting 7FL with one 6K lamp. With the 2 converged, we got around 12. The 35mm readings werent too bad considering we had a 5K lamp with a few hours on it. We got a bit over 8FL. The screening ran fine. We never had to switch over to film (too bad). They filled the orchestra. All the mezzanines were kept closed.
On August 9, 2008 at 8pm there will be a rare program at the RCMH featuring the largest theater organ to come out of the Wurlitzer factory (4/54 with two fully functional consoles) or any other organ manufacturer. More information on the program and how to get tickets is available at:
View link
Does anyof out RCMH insiders know how the “Sex and the City” movie is being projected tonight,film or digital.
What is going on that ghost town we used to call the projection room.
Here in Hawaii the picture opens on Friday and all the showings will be 35mm film.
i do not know the answer to that one
Thanks for the information, oldjoe. Do you happen to know when the marquee lettering was converted to all red neon?
The words “Music Hall” was returned to the original gold color – returning the marquee to the orignal tri-color scheme
I would like to repeat a question from May 15. Does anyone have any color pictures of the Hall in the 1930’s? Was the marquee orignally bulit with red, gold and blue neon? During the 1999 restoration, it was stated that the marquee was originally constructed with the multi-colored neon.
Is that true? I thought it strange that they would have replaced all that neon prior to 1999.
As a 7 yr old, waited in the bitter, bitter cold to see the Christmas stage show and “Bedknobs & Broomsticks”.Took me 30 years to see the Holiday Show again after that.
When I was 9, my father bought tickets for the family in advance for what he thought was “Mary Poppins”. When we arrived, we realized “40 Carats” was now playing, though we stayed to watch the decidedly more adult film anyways…1987 was probably the first concert I remember seeing there, it was WCBS-FM’s 15th anniversary, with Dion, Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge, etc…Saw Sinatra (the live one I mean!) three times; 1990 twice, then 1992 with Shirley MacLaine opening.
Fiction should by fixion.
I’m also curious and wonder if you could go back in time and see only 3 shows at the Hall what would they be?
Mine;
Singing in the Rain Easter show
Till the Clouds Roll By in burn your eyes Technicolor and Christmas show which in ‘46 I’m sure it was pretty lavish. And with everybody decending on New York at holiday time in the first year euphoria after the war it was probably where everyone was trying to get in during Hollywood’s most suuccessful year.
Swing Time the best of the Music Hall’s most popular couple.
The Time’s in it’s review said it looked like a riot outside the theater on the opening morning. Back then when people got excited about a new movie and they were first run exclusives at the Hall it was a major event.
Now on opening day you can buy it on DVD in a subway station. No excitement there.
Al Alvarez seems to say Calvacade ran at the Hall for 2 weeks but it was the first Easter Show.
Instead of GOE they presented for the holiday The Last Supper. I’d like to think that in the following year they presented The Crucifiction with the Rockettes as Roman soldiers. A kick line in front of the 3 crosses would have been fun getting some heavy mitting.
God I wish I could go back in time. Some of these stage shows seems so bizarre.
Especially the one for Sign of the Cross. It had a chariot race! And I think the Rockettes were dressed as Gladiators for that one.
And then there’s the one where Santa goes to the bottom of the sea. And then he went to Mars.
I am not making this up.
After the renovations in 1999, the Hall looked like it was new again, and it still is. It’s still one of the best guarded places in New York, and one that’s more famous and better than The Garden. If the Rockettes were a sports team, they would beat up them Knicks, Rangers, and Liberty!!! After the Newsday debacle and the removal of the Voom HD channels from Dish TV (only Cablevision is the only system to have those 15 channels, which is too much for compression), Cablevision is not focusing on its other companies such as AMC, which is starting to show more drama shows ala FX, as well as Clearview Cinemas, which is putting nearly all of its newer cinemas with digital projection. Not to mention the classy Hall!!!
Leon :
whadaya mean? i’m lost
“The place has been scrubbed too clean. It’s historical patina has been washed away along with so many memories.”
Movie534 : you are obviously angry, you alluded to “getting the axe” in a Feb post….whats the deal ?
Does anyone have any color pictures of the Hall in the 1930’s? Was the marquee orignally bulit with red, gold and blue neon?
Yep, just another example of something, in this case something wonderful and beautiful, that Jimmy Dolan and his band of pencil pushers managed to screw up. Everything they get their hands on turns to !@#$. Can’t wait to see what they do to the newspaper Newsday.
Nice to have seen a watchable film like Fantasia at the Hall back then in the 70’s. Especially since ‘69 the halfway decent movies that played there were as rare as natural pearls.
Only been back twice since then. A Christmas show(ugh!) and Ella.
Ella was great I was in the third row towards the center(bought the ticket at the box office right before) so it was easy to tune the place out and pretend I was in an intimate club.
Other than that not worth going to. Too heartbreaking. No more movies, no more stage shows taking place at the bottom of the sea and no more Easter Show.
The place has been scrubbed too clean. It’s historical patina has been washed away along with so many memories.
It now has as much resonance as the Gap store by the Channel Gardens.
Now when you bring people to Rockefeller Center they look at it and say “so what?” And you have to answer honestly “I don’t know. It seemed so special once.”