I would like to talk to Dennis about featuring more of his pictures in a project I’m working on.
PS: blaming the demise of an entire way of exhibition could hardly be blamed on a handful of movies. The situation was far more complicated than that. Many of the sixties musicals are mistakenly lumped together as flops when some of them actually did quite well. Case in point: THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE was Universal’s top grosser in 67, ranking right behind AIRPORT, THE STING, JAWS, ET on the list of Uni’s all time best grossers. It made buckets of money and remained in release for well over a year.
I understand that we live in a precarious world, David, I just don’t see the restraint of smoking images to be anywhere near on a par with how we are represented in the media. Sure we have a long way to go, but I don’t see how curtailing smoking in films will lead to losing our civic rights. The former is not worth protesting, the latter is very much so.
Not just movie theatres… I worked in nearly every legitimate theatre on Broadway in NYC and can tell you that it’s common to blast the AC when a new show is in previews, especially during the few shows when the critics come in. They want the audience freezing to keep them alert. And I guess they think the audience will clap harder to keep their circulation going?
One reason I was given for the Strong AC: “think of every person who comes in the door as a little 90 degree furnace.” In the short time of the walk-in, 900-1600 little furnaces walk in the door and the place has to be freezing in order to reach a comfortable temperature once all the little furnaces are seated.
When a patron made a comment on the temperature in the house, we got used to telling them that we were aware of the problem, and I eventually added that it was nearly impossible to get the temperature to change before the show was over.
There is no room for a booth in the location you speak of. It’s the concession stand and the restrooms.
An adjustable screen is wildly impractical. Mechanics break down, maintenance is costly, and doing it manually costs a fortune. Seattle had someone put it into their heads that the curved screen wouldn’t be right for all movies, in spite of the fact that that very screen is what made the theatre popular for forty years. So they put up a flat screen and rolled up the Cinerama screen behind it. It takes almost two days with a full crew of union stagehands to make the change. Costs a fortune and it’s not done right. How can you correctly position the louvers if they’re rolled up most of the time? They don’t. Ask Seattle CInerama patrons which screen they like better… Pacific didn’t want the louvers because they don’t like to spend money on maintenance. You think they’d pay a crew of union stagehands to move the ends of a screen back and forth?
Far too much thought is put into blaming the screen instead of the location of the projector, which is the real problem. Next time you go in there you’ll see that the rear mezz just under the booth is ideal. They would only lose 39 seats that nobody wants to sit in anyway. Adding a booth under the existing one is the simplest and most logical fix, In fact it was recommended by the Cinerama experts before the Dome was redone. But they chose a cheap workaround and tried to hide the dim picture by making the room dark as a dungeon…
Actually I think that digitally altering the image to fit the screen is the better way to go, I believe something similar has been done before… if a lens corected for the distortion they would have one. Different lenses have been tried for curved screens before.
A proper strip screen would fix the contrast issue if it were correctly installed.
You are right on the nose about the back of the mezzanine being the best location for the booth. And a shorter throw means a brighter picture.
Theoretically the digital image could be rectified to compensate for the Dome’s curved screen, however, the Dome’s low-gain screen still is a factor. It’s been proven elsewhere that using 2-3 projectors (all covering the same area, carefully registered to match) can multiply the brightness on any screen.
Presumably using three 4ks properly registered could make a real difference… If any local venue were using 4k there would be some promotion about it, don’t you think?
The bottom of the picture was probably cut off because of the cheap workaround ArcLight uses to try to hide the keystoning. If they’re not going to really fix things, they need to at least raise the masking on the bottom and reset the lens to a slightly smaller picture.
Let’s keep in mind that the studio takes 90 percent of every ticket dollar for most of a picture’s run, unless it runs a long time. The studios stand to save billions a year by not making and distributing prints. The quailty vs film is not proven since good prints properly shown are a distant memory. Digital projection can only exceed the quality of a badly mass produced print run on platters, and only in a small to medium sized venue. Digital sound is a separate argument from digital picture. I’ve always been quite baffled over the industry’s falling all over themselves about sound for the past 25 years, while quietly letting picture quailty go to hell.
Back in the limited run roadshow days the prints were struck directly from the original camera negative for the intital engagements in big cities. You’re talking maybe 50 prints made up under intent supervision over a reasonable back then vs 4500 prints that are quickly mass produced now.
Wow, Mark, sure looks bizarre, doesn’t it? Red masking? Is that a real picture or a simulation of what the masking may have looked like? The red part clearly defines the odd shape caused by the throw angle.
You’re on target about the masking, the further down the picture goes, the more distortion there is, which is why you want to keep the picture closer to the top of the screen than the bottom, and not use the entire width like they try to do now.
Evita looked okay but strange… in order to have a flat screen they needed to bring it forward so far that at least a third of the orchestra level was behind the screen, and and to reduce the keystoning, it was up so high that the only decent place to sit was upstairs. This made the screen feel a little too “in your face.” Not an ideal situation at all.
Yes I saw that article, Brad, about Majestic Crest vs. Landmark, wasn’t it?
I have something on the back burner regarding both the National and the Crest. I’ve had some experience with publicity and getting things into the media, maybe I can make a little noise. Not sure at all how it will play out or what difference it’ll make, but it has my interest and i can try.
And sure, Brad, why not contact the Times and any other media outlet you can imagine about both places? Go for it.
No I meant the downstairs of the old Warner theatre after it was converted in 68 to the Penthouse/Cinerama/Orleans. They ran regular movies on the Cinerama screen for years until it was torn down about 20 years later. I saw National Lampoon’s Vacation there in its initial run. No picture distortion because the booth was in the back of the auditorium.
That would be nice if they got some good stuff in the fall. Don’t know if it could save the National, but it sure couldn’t hurt. I’d like to see Variety do an article on the challenges currently facing the National and the the Crest, hopefully focus a little industry attention there and MAYBE, hopefully, increase their chances for getting a break.
If you scroll up a bit on this page to 6/14/07, you can see the sched of midnight shows that the young man had planned. I think only about 3-4 of them ran before the rest were cancelled. Nice idea, bad choices, not enough promotion, I think.
Again, don’t blame the screen. Cinerama screens in places like New York, Washington DC, Seattle and Omaha, have all shown standard movies on a reduced area of a Cinerama screen for decades with very popular results. Tilting a curved screen upwards is problematic and doesn’t really solve the problem as much as change it.
Evita’s flat screen happened because Alan Parker freaked out over the throw angle making her coffin looking like a wiener. Disney engineers came in and turned the Dome into a black box. Flat ceiling, flat screen with no curtains, looked like a cheesy multiplex. I was there to see Evita. I can’t tell you how many people went down and peeked behind the flat screen to make sure the curved one was still there.
Except for using a low-gain sheet in place of louvers, the screen at the Dome is a Cinerama screen. Check with American Widescreen Museum http://widescreenmuseum.com/index.htm for more information on Cinerama. There were not really a hard set of specs for the screen. Could be 146 or 126 degrees, curved sides like a cylander or flat sides like a bowtie. A lot depended on the venue.
Later processes like Todd AO and D-150 tried to imitate the Cinerama screen, and AWSM has a neat illustration about D-150 and the areas allowed for each format. You were never supposed to blow up 35mm to the full size of the screen because you lose to much light and sharpness… but the Dome does now, and you can see the result.
As for the current geometric distortion at the Dome, ArcLight’s insistance on using the entire screen for everything magnifies the distortion, and the enormous task of closing up the place to build a new frame with a flatter or tilted screen makes much less sense than simply building another booth in the rear mezzanine where it should be. It could be done in stages without missing a single screening, and the result would be a nearly straight throw to the center of the screen, eliminating any horizon sag. And since a straight line is a shorter distance than a diagonal line, the shorter throw means a brighter sharper picture. Louvers could be put onto the existing screen frame in a couple days if they had the right people working on it. BTW, 3 strip Cinerama hasn’t much problem with horizion sag becaust it’s 3 projectors, aimed directly at left, center and right, so they can stay where they are.
Mark, as I’ve said, the screen is not the problem, it’s the location of the projector. Taking the CInerama screen out of the Dome would be like taking all the Chinese decoration out of Graumans Chinese. Put another booth in the back of the mezzanine and the picture would be brighter with no dip in the horizon line. Make the screen out of properly aligned louvers and the brightness and contrast would be much better. But Pacific/ArcLight folks just don’t think that way.
I thought DG looked generally pretty good, and was very well done as a movie…
Back to the Crest, I hope HAIRSPRAY lasts there ling enough for me to get there. Love the movie and have been waiting for something I like to play the Crest. That’s one place I won’t bring my own popcorn into. I’ll make a point of buying popcorn, soda candy right there. This is a great place and I want to support it as much as I can afford to. Curious to see how the new curtain looks in person, and happy to know the pre-show elements are all fully operational now.
Mr. Musil put a great deal of artistry into the place, Mr Bucksbaum is taking good care of it, Mr. Everett has taken pictures that are beautiful enough to hang in an art gallery. And 90038, I love the way you articulated how much the Crest’s showmanship enhanced your enjoyment of the movie as compared to that other place.
Scott: Pacific was originally called Pacific Drive-Ins, the chain was never called Cinerama. They acquired Cinerama inc. (not including any theatres) in the sixties after the Dome was built.
Mark: The Cinerama enthsiasts had more experience with and knowledge of Cinerama than anyone at Pacific, except for the two people I mentioned before. The louvered screen would be made of a high gain material, and most important, each strip needed to be angled so that is was flat toward the audience and anchored into place so that it wouldn’t move. Seattle got the louvered screen but never bothered to angle or anchor the lovvers, so it was effectively just a sliced up sheet screen. First time they showed HOW THE WEST WAS WON, the AC was turned on behind the screen, and all those strips began to flutter, causing bleck lines to appear all across the screen, so it looked like it was raining all over the picture. Apparently Pacific Execs were there and that scared them away from installing louvers in the Dome. Of course had the strips been angled properly and fixed into position, and a white scrim was hung behind the louvers, you would never get that fluttering, and even if you did, the white scrim would prevent the black streaks in the picture.
The experts also demonstrated how the severe angle from the existing booth distorts and weakens the picture, while a more direct throw from the back of the mezzanine would give a brighter undistorted picture. But Pacific didn’t want to loose the 39 seats back there.
It was also the Cinerama folks who suggested that the Dome be retrofitted for 3-strip Cinerama, further that it be shown regularly (but not too often) as a tourist attraction. There were filmmakers who were itching to shoot new footage in 3 strip, like a short prologue in real Cinerama to be shown before every feature, but again, Pacific execs aren’t really interested.
90038: who do you know that would pay for an ArcLight T-shirt? the Cinerama name and logo are more attractive and interesting than that ArcLight scribble. They had more than one design of Cinerama shirts at one time. Not by any stretch of the imagination cold ArcLight merchandise outsell Cinerama.
Where did you get the idea I checked anything for Rescue Dawn?
If you knew the showtimes on Monday or Tuesday, why did you wait to post them until Thursday?
Why is knowing these things supposed to impress anyone, and why do you still feel compelled to keep coming back with “I knew that”? You’ve really just proven my point. I needn’t comment any further, bur i’m sure you will.
PS: thanks very much Dennis for posting the cool theatre shots.
I would like to talk to Dennis about featuring more of his pictures in a project I’m working on.
PS: blaming the demise of an entire way of exhibition could hardly be blamed on a handful of movies. The situation was far more complicated than that. Many of the sixties musicals are mistakenly lumped together as flops when some of them actually did quite well. Case in point: THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE was Universal’s top grosser in 67, ranking right behind AIRPORT, THE STING, JAWS, ET on the list of Uni’s all time best grossers. It made buckets of money and remained in release for well over a year.
I understand that we live in a precarious world, David, I just don’t see the restraint of smoking images to be anywhere near on a par with how we are represented in the media. Sure we have a long way to go, but I don’t see how curtailing smoking in films will lead to losing our civic rights. The former is not worth protesting, the latter is very much so.
NANNY DIARIES is at the Majestic Crest starting Friday 8/25. looks like a fun movie and I’d love to see at at the MC.
BEN-HUR was exhibited as a Roasdhow in amamorphic 70mm to get the extra picture width.
I believe it was the addition of the sound track that shaved some width off the ‘scope image.
Not just movie theatres… I worked in nearly every legitimate theatre on Broadway in NYC and can tell you that it’s common to blast the AC when a new show is in previews, especially during the few shows when the critics come in. They want the audience freezing to keep them alert. And I guess they think the audience will clap harder to keep their circulation going?
One reason I was given for the Strong AC: “think of every person who comes in the door as a little 90 degree furnace.” In the short time of the walk-in, 900-1600 little furnaces walk in the door and the place has to be freezing in order to reach a comfortable temperature once all the little furnaces are seated.
When a patron made a comment on the temperature in the house, we got used to telling them that we were aware of the problem, and I eventually added that it was nearly impossible to get the temperature to change before the show was over.
on that point I wholeheartedly agree.
There is no room for a booth in the location you speak of. It’s the concession stand and the restrooms.
An adjustable screen is wildly impractical. Mechanics break down, maintenance is costly, and doing it manually costs a fortune. Seattle had someone put it into their heads that the curved screen wouldn’t be right for all movies, in spite of the fact that that very screen is what made the theatre popular for forty years. So they put up a flat screen and rolled up the Cinerama screen behind it. It takes almost two days with a full crew of union stagehands to make the change. Costs a fortune and it’s not done right. How can you correctly position the louvers if they’re rolled up most of the time? They don’t. Ask Seattle CInerama patrons which screen they like better… Pacific didn’t want the louvers because they don’t like to spend money on maintenance. You think they’d pay a crew of union stagehands to move the ends of a screen back and forth?
Far too much thought is put into blaming the screen instead of the location of the projector, which is the real problem. Next time you go in there you’ll see that the rear mezz just under the booth is ideal. They would only lose 39 seats that nobody wants to sit in anyway. Adding a booth under the existing one is the simplest and most logical fix, In fact it was recommended by the Cinerama experts before the Dome was redone. But they chose a cheap workaround and tried to hide the dim picture by making the room dark as a dungeon…
Actually I think that digitally altering the image to fit the screen is the better way to go, I believe something similar has been done before… if a lens corected for the distortion they would have one. Different lenses have been tried for curved screens before.
A proper strip screen would fix the contrast issue if it were correctly installed.
You are right on the nose about the back of the mezzanine being the best location for the booth. And a shorter throw means a brighter picture.
Theoretically the digital image could be rectified to compensate for the Dome’s curved screen, however, the Dome’s low-gain screen still is a factor. It’s been proven elsewhere that using 2-3 projectors (all covering the same area, carefully registered to match) can multiply the brightness on any screen.
Presumably using three 4ks properly registered could make a real difference… If any local venue were using 4k there would be some promotion about it, don’t you think?
The bottom of the picture was probably cut off because of the cheap workaround ArcLight uses to try to hide the keystoning. If they’re not going to really fix things, they need to at least raise the masking on the bottom and reset the lens to a slightly smaller picture.
Let’s keep in mind that the studio takes 90 percent of every ticket dollar for most of a picture’s run, unless it runs a long time. The studios stand to save billions a year by not making and distributing prints. The quailty vs film is not proven since good prints properly shown are a distant memory. Digital projection can only exceed the quality of a badly mass produced print run on platters, and only in a small to medium sized venue. Digital sound is a separate argument from digital picture. I’ve always been quite baffled over the industry’s falling all over themselves about sound for the past 25 years, while quietly letting picture quailty go to hell.
Back in the limited run roadshow days the prints were struck directly from the original camera negative for the intital engagements in big cities. You’re talking maybe 50 prints made up under intent supervision over a reasonable back then vs 4500 prints that are quickly mass produced now.
There were several Dome souvenirs in the works a few years ago, including a Dome snow globe, but they never happened and aren’t likely now.
Oswego had more bulbs and neon all over the marquee, too, it just broke and wasn’t replaced. And the letters used to be all the same size.
Wow, Mark, sure looks bizarre, doesn’t it? Red masking? Is that a real picture or a simulation of what the masking may have looked like? The red part clearly defines the odd shape caused by the throw angle.
You’re on target about the masking, the further down the picture goes, the more distortion there is, which is why you want to keep the picture closer to the top of the screen than the bottom, and not use the entire width like they try to do now.
Evita looked okay but strange… in order to have a flat screen they needed to bring it forward so far that at least a third of the orchestra level was behind the screen, and and to reduce the keystoning, it was up so high that the only decent place to sit was upstairs. This made the screen feel a little too “in your face.” Not an ideal situation at all.
Yes I saw that article, Brad, about Majestic Crest vs. Landmark, wasn’t it?
I have something on the back burner regarding both the National and the Crest. I’ve had some experience with publicity and getting things into the media, maybe I can make a little noise. Not sure at all how it will play out or what difference it’ll make, but it has my interest and i can try.
And sure, Brad, why not contact the Times and any other media outlet you can imagine about both places? Go for it.
No I meant the downstairs of the old Warner theatre after it was converted in 68 to the Penthouse/Cinerama/Orleans. They ran regular movies on the Cinerama screen for years until it was torn down about 20 years later. I saw National Lampoon’s Vacation there in its initial run. No picture distortion because the booth was in the back of the auditorium.
That would be nice if they got some good stuff in the fall. Don’t know if it could save the National, but it sure couldn’t hurt. I’d like to see Variety do an article on the challenges currently facing the National and the the Crest, hopefully focus a little industry attention there and MAYBE, hopefully, increase their chances for getting a break.
If you scroll up a bit on this page to 6/14/07, you can see the sched of midnight shows that the young man had planned. I think only about 3-4 of them ran before the rest were cancelled. Nice idea, bad choices, not enough promotion, I think.
Again, don’t blame the screen. Cinerama screens in places like New York, Washington DC, Seattle and Omaha, have all shown standard movies on a reduced area of a Cinerama screen for decades with very popular results. Tilting a curved screen upwards is problematic and doesn’t really solve the problem as much as change it.
Evita’s flat screen happened because Alan Parker freaked out over the throw angle making her coffin looking like a wiener. Disney engineers came in and turned the Dome into a black box. Flat ceiling, flat screen with no curtains, looked like a cheesy multiplex. I was there to see Evita. I can’t tell you how many people went down and peeked behind the flat screen to make sure the curved one was still there.
Except for using a low-gain sheet in place of louvers, the screen at the Dome is a Cinerama screen. Check with American Widescreen Museum http://widescreenmuseum.com/index.htm for more information on Cinerama. There were not really a hard set of specs for the screen. Could be 146 or 126 degrees, curved sides like a cylander or flat sides like a bowtie. A lot depended on the venue.
Later processes like Todd AO and D-150 tried to imitate the Cinerama screen, and AWSM has a neat illustration about D-150 and the areas allowed for each format. You were never supposed to blow up 35mm to the full size of the screen because you lose to much light and sharpness… but the Dome does now, and you can see the result.
As for the current geometric distortion at the Dome, ArcLight’s insistance on using the entire screen for everything magnifies the distortion, and the enormous task of closing up the place to build a new frame with a flatter or tilted screen makes much less sense than simply building another booth in the rear mezzanine where it should be. It could be done in stages without missing a single screening, and the result would be a nearly straight throw to the center of the screen, eliminating any horizon sag. And since a straight line is a shorter distance than a diagonal line, the shorter throw means a brighter sharper picture. Louvers could be put onto the existing screen frame in a couple days if they had the right people working on it. BTW, 3 strip Cinerama hasn’t much problem with horizion sag becaust it’s 3 projectors, aimed directly at left, center and right, so they can stay where they are.
PS: even a flatter Cinemascope tyoe screen would have a distorted and certainly dim picture if the picture was thrown from the current booth.
Mark, as I’ve said, the screen is not the problem, it’s the location of the projector. Taking the CInerama screen out of the Dome would be like taking all the Chinese decoration out of Graumans Chinese. Put another booth in the back of the mezzanine and the picture would be brighter with no dip in the horizon line. Make the screen out of properly aligned louvers and the brightness and contrast would be much better. But Pacific/ArcLight folks just don’t think that way.
I thought DG looked generally pretty good, and was very well done as a movie…
Back to the Crest, I hope HAIRSPRAY lasts there ling enough for me to get there. Love the movie and have been waiting for something I like to play the Crest. That’s one place I won’t bring my own popcorn into. I’ll make a point of buying popcorn, soda candy right there. This is a great place and I want to support it as much as I can afford to. Curious to see how the new curtain looks in person, and happy to know the pre-show elements are all fully operational now.
Mr. Musil put a great deal of artistry into the place, Mr Bucksbaum is taking good care of it, Mr. Everett has taken pictures that are beautiful enough to hang in an art gallery. And 90038, I love the way you articulated how much the Crest’s showmanship enhanced your enjoyment of the movie as compared to that other place.
JS is the onePacific/ArcLight folks should be listening to. I’ve met RB as well. Just don’t ask him what ArcLight means…
Scott: Pacific was originally called Pacific Drive-Ins, the chain was never called Cinerama. They acquired Cinerama inc. (not including any theatres) in the sixties after the Dome was built.
Mark: The Cinerama enthsiasts had more experience with and knowledge of Cinerama than anyone at Pacific, except for the two people I mentioned before. The louvered screen would be made of a high gain material, and most important, each strip needed to be angled so that is was flat toward the audience and anchored into place so that it wouldn’t move. Seattle got the louvered screen but never bothered to angle or anchor the lovvers, so it was effectively just a sliced up sheet screen. First time they showed HOW THE WEST WAS WON, the AC was turned on behind the screen, and all those strips began to flutter, causing bleck lines to appear all across the screen, so it looked like it was raining all over the picture. Apparently Pacific Execs were there and that scared them away from installing louvers in the Dome. Of course had the strips been angled properly and fixed into position, and a white scrim was hung behind the louvers, you would never get that fluttering, and even if you did, the white scrim would prevent the black streaks in the picture.
The experts also demonstrated how the severe angle from the existing booth distorts and weakens the picture, while a more direct throw from the back of the mezzanine would give a brighter undistorted picture. But Pacific didn’t want to loose the 39 seats back there.
It was also the Cinerama folks who suggested that the Dome be retrofitted for 3-strip Cinerama, further that it be shown regularly (but not too often) as a tourist attraction. There were filmmakers who were itching to shoot new footage in 3 strip, like a short prologue in real Cinerama to be shown before every feature, but again, Pacific execs aren’t really interested.
90038: who do you know that would pay for an ArcLight T-shirt? the Cinerama name and logo are more attractive and interesting than that ArcLight scribble. They had more than one design of Cinerama shirts at one time. Not by any stretch of the imagination cold ArcLight merchandise outsell Cinerama.
Where did you get the idea I checked anything for Rescue Dawn?
If you knew the showtimes on Monday or Tuesday, why did you wait to post them until Thursday?
Why is knowing these things supposed to impress anyone, and why do you still feel compelled to keep coming back with “I knew that”? You’ve really just proven my point. I needn’t comment any further, bur i’m sure you will.