Radio City Music Hall
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
118 people
favorited this theater
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Bill – read the reviews of it (Variety has one, I think). Sounds like a monumental disaster.
Slightly off topic but REndres, is “Che” any good? Hearing about a 4-hour movie brought me back to the days of “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Cleopatra” for a minute there.
Ed, That is an enormously complex question. In all fairness I work for a company that is involved in digital cinema, and I have both 2k digital and 35/70mm capacity in my screening room. I also work with engineers who travel the country to do digital screenings, and indeed, one was at the Hall the other night. The industry is going digital regardless of the subtleties of the situation. I’m amazed that almost all of the screens in Illinois where I vacation each year are now digital.
At the moment most digital cinema projectors are “2K”, and I have done split-screen experiments here with 35mm/2K (granted on a small 14" wide screen). The results were enough to convince a film company to do its premiere screenings digitally. We now have 4K projectors coming on line, and I’ve been screening Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” which is a 4 hour picture in two parts one “flat” one “Scope”. He shot the whole thing with a 4k handheld camera, and is doing subsequent editing and color correction in his office before making the 2k copy used at Cannes. 4K (four-thousand lines of resolutio across the frame) is said to be the equal of full-frame sprocket hole to sprocket hole 35mm, but remember the 1.85 image used for “Sex and the City” projection with optical sound track is considerably smaller.
Now NHK and JVC in Japan are working with 8K digital projection systems. The JVC chip is basically the same size as the 70mm image, and should be able to produce “IMAX” size images (IMAX is going digital by the way.)
As with everything else this oversimplifies the situation. How good is the 35mm print? (Sometimes, not very, when they have to pump out 4,000 copies for a major release.) How well maintaned are the projectors – digital OR film? Theatres that didn’t maintain their 35mm equipment probably won’t maintain their digital equipment either, and it does take maintanence.
There’s nothing wrong with being old school vito — but remember we are at the “Edison” stage of this whole transition, and digital will get better, and should in a well run situation, give a picture closer to 70mm than could have been achieved in the average situation where 70mm was not an option.
Lots of different opinions about the movie and the screening, but all I can say is … Wow! Movies at Radio City again! It felt good to hear about that show.
It goes without saying, but I wish they did it more often and opened it up to the general public.
Is there agreement that digital just generally now offers a clearer, sharper, brighter picture, which seems to be the case in ordinary multiplex auditoriums, and that RCMH may be one of the few, and maybe the only, place(s) where digital is not necessarily preferable to 35 mm?
Thanks Rob for making some sense out of all this.
I had not thought about the problems of using the 7k lamps on a 35mm print. I just don’t get it, forgive an old man but we did just fine for all those years, and now they seem to be looking for much more profection then we ever did.
As for the picture size, I guess if “size matters” they got what they wanted. So more power to em.
It still seems a bit much and unnessary.
But what do i know, I am so old school.
I’m in – I can learn a lot from you guys!
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.