I just woundred what your oppinions were off this. I know some people like myself prefer Side masking to vertical masking but how do you guys feel about cinemas with no masking at all?

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Michael Brown
Bradford Student Cinema www.bradfordstudentcinema.co.uk

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Movies are supposed to be not only just entertainment but magic (As in magic lantern). The technical side of showing the movie should be absent. Having naked screen is just poor showmanship and should entitle the viewer to reduced admission. In fact, I can't stand theatres without main curtains. If you must show your slides, have a separate roll down slide screen that will at least make the slides look like they were put there with a purpose.

Steve

It is THX and has SRD/DTS/SDDS but everything I have seen was shown in SRD. (no DTS ect).

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The fragile ability to "lose oneself" in the story, as it unfolds on the screen, can so easily be broken by so many apparently minor things, flicker in a corner of the screen,from an incorrectly alingned xenon bulb, incorrect sound playback levels, even a poorly filed aperture plate.

The masking, or floating screen, under correct projection conditions, provide to the viewer, an "edge of the universe". Within those four edges, occurs the story. The high contrast between the masking and the picture area help the viewer to "filter out" all that is umimportant to his/her enjoyment. Nothing seen in the periphial vision, outside these limits is to be considered.

In even our "budget" theatres, we have always provided a masking ability (even manually operated by lowering a rope for top masking, or moveable boards for side masking).

It might have been nice if scope could have been shown raised on the screen to better the sight lines, but as I remember the flat was optimized and the scope pictures were allowed to be a flag stripe across the center, with any single stray dust particle on the plate waving to the audience.

The lenses weren't good, and the periscope setup and the slight curve on the short focal length did nothing to improve matters. The style at the time was to float the screen in front of a blue wall, which meant any error in the plate showed on the wall and was distracting to some of the audience.

A floating screen in front of a black wall, used only for a single format, could be nice. I admit my experience is based on the abomination I just described.

Don't hesitate to "name and shame" any theatre that shows everything on fixed-sized screens. I name and shame such theatres quite often. In fact, I'll do it again:

In Huntsville, Alabama:
Regal Hollywood 18: Auditoriums 3,4,5,6,7,8,11,12,13,14,15,16
Regal Madison Square 12: Auditoriums 3,4,5,6,9,10,11,12

Unless Regal has done something with these in the past few months, all of the auditoriums mentioned above have 1.85:1 screens with no masking, and scope movies are shown with the sides chopped off.

Does anyone know appropriate people to write at some of the major studios about this problem? Regal Madison Square 12, on Friday night, was showing two prints of "The Mummy II" in the small auditoriums, for example. I think these theatres should be forbidden to show scope prints in the above auditoriums until adjustable masking is in place. They'd have to go with top masking, which isn't ideal, but is far better than nothing.

Regal recently spent a large amount of money putting stadium seating in these locations and neglected to spend approximately $2000 per screen (a total of $40000, a drop in the bucket compared to the recent renovation costs) to fix this mess that Cobb left behind for them.

Can anyone provide specific names and addresses at, say, Fox, Universal, etc. to whom I could write about this problem? If just one of the major studios would act against this problem, it might provide the nudge necessary to get Regal to fix this problem.

Roger Frazee, if you still participate here, did anything ever happen as far as getting the adjustable masking approved for these locations? I have not been doing "sneak peeks" of these auditoriums lately since Hollywood 18 was recently robbed twice, and looking into auditoriums for which I don't have a ticket isn't something I want to be doing with probable increased security at these locations. However, people are still telling me about chopped opening titles and end credits, as well as obvious chopping of the image sides.

Don't get me wrong. I am in no way "Anti-Regal". I will be the first to praise Regal when I see that this problem has been corrected. I would love to announce that this problem has been corrected, take away the 7.5 point facility deduction for these locations in my ratings, and remove the pages describing the problem from my site. Regal should have fixed this problem when they took over these theatres in August of 1997.

As for the other problem mentioned of showing flat movies on scope screens without pulling the masking in properly, I typically count off 4 points for that when I rate presentations (see web site in my signature), since the left and right edges generally look poor, and then there is the showmanship issue.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Trouble is, many of their sreens (and other theater chain as well) were masked 2:1, and the screen is not big enough to run a full 2.35 without making a postage stamp out of the picture.

Nor is there enough room to hang a bigger screen. Poor auditorium design seems to kill them every time when it comes to showmanship, as well as people who are in the booth that don't have the slightest idea on how to put on a quality performance.

I wait for the movie that catches my eye to come out on video or DVD. It jacks my jaws when I see a crappy performance with crappy sound in a crappy auditorium design. There are tens of thousands of people who feel the same as I do about that issue.

The difference between watching movies at home in a DD 5:1 evironment on a 60 inch mitsubishi TV vs the cinema experience is the set up. The picture and sound NEED to be prefect. What happend to having fantasies being fulfilled at the movies? Someone whom I worked for before would told me about the concept of masking. He pointed out the "picture box" look. 12 inches of black around the screen and you pull the audience attention into this "picture box" ......with that in mind, exit lights behind screens, DTS time code, no masking, venietting, incorrect aspect ratio, badly cut aperture plates etc etc, seems to be with what we have to deal with alot.
The Industry money making incentive + customer satisfaction + <caring coefficient>= good movie experience.
It seems this important coeficient is now = to zero!!!