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Author Topic: Do customers like curtains? Ron Curran Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 504 From: Springwood NSW Australia Registered: Feb 2006 posted 12-22-2014 12:46 AM                        I was delighted last week when a lady stayed till the very end of the show with her grandson. "He wanted to see the curtains close" she explained. There is hope for the future yet.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 12-22-2014 01:53 AM                     I for one, like curtains. Maybe it's also a thing with (almost) extinct things, like dinosaurs. Many like them too, although they're not all that cuddly muddly. Besides adding another element of show, curtains also still serve a useful purpose. They protect your screen for example.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-22-2014 04:15 AM                        And when smoking was permitted in cinemas, absolutely essential I'd have thought. OK, the screen wouldn't have been protected during the actual show, but the air inside these auditoria must have been filled with tobacco smoke pretty much 24/7, and the use of screen tabs probably helped to extend the interval between screen replacements. I am just old enough to remember when smoking was allowed in cinemas. I was born in 1974, and my parents started taking me to the Odeon, Wimbledon, in the late 1970s. At that time a snipe was shown as part of the ad and trailer reel, announcing that if you wanted to smoke, you needed to sit in the right-hand block of seating (which was always packed full as a result, even if the rest of the house was virtually empty). I remember once, probably when I was around 9-10, insisting on sitting to the end of the credits. The cleaners' lights were switched on around halfway through them, revealing the screen surface to be an orangy yellow color! I don't think it would have passed Kodak ScreenCheck, somehow... If I remember correctly, it wasn't until the mid to late '80s that smoking in (British, at any rate) cinemas finally disappeared entirely.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 12-22-2014 05:30 AM                     I briefly worked in a place in the late nineties that still allowed smoking. It was a so called service cinema, which predates the current dinner concepts for quite a few years. They were serving (alcoholic) beverages and snacks to your seat. The place is still around, but stopped allowing smoking after a renovation, a while before it was banned entirely in all public spaces including pubs, bars and restaurants. If you want to allow people to smoke, you would now essentially need to construct a glass container around them. Not very practical in a cinema . There was no policy about sitting left or right, you could essentially smoke everywhere you wanted... The cigarette smoke surely didn't do anything good to the screen. Everything was covered with a sticky brownish film, which might have contributed to the 70s flair of it all. As far back as I remember, this place never had any curtains, but it did have (mostly) working movable masking. I'm not sure how much curtains would've helped, it would have made some impact probably. The screens all had some slight yellow staining as nothing seems to be able to escape this vaporized mixture of nicotine and tar, but not as much as you would expect after years of exposure to cigarette smoke.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 12-22-2014 05:51 AM                     I know that I've always considered them essential. Classy cinemas have them...without them, you are, at best, only second-rate. As for smoking...around here, the last cinemas to allow it were the Cinema and Drafthouses of the area (using that name in the general sense rather than the specific brand of view-n-brew). For instance, the Bethesda Theatre Cafe had a smoking section for almost its entire existence. Oh...and IT had a curtain too!  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 12-22-2014 10:20 AM                     I think it's still a great stylistic touch to have curtains and a dramatic curtain opening before the start of a show. The trend of building movie screens without movable masking and curtains is really pretty silly. The philosophy might have been acceptable with a giant sized, peripheral vision filling screen in a 15/70mm film-based IMAX theater. The approach just doesn't work in standard movie theaters with rectangular shaped screens, even the bigger ones charging premium prices. Those screens just look cheap and as if the construction people got to a certain and point, just saying "screw it" and leaving the job incomplete. The only alternative I've found acceptable at all to curtains is the use of a shadow box, like what the General Cinemas Northpark 1-2 theater in Dallas had. The screens at least had movable masking. Regarding smoking in theaters, I remember seeing movies in theaters that allowed smoking when I was a kid. It was usually in some Marine Corps base theater. I'm not sure when the theaters started banning smoking though, but I seem to recall a lot of the policy changes happening in the early 1980's. While smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit and does a lot to stain white things like movie screens, it did have one cool side effect: the smoke really made the light beams from the film projector highly visible. I remember watching the beams as they moved around and changed with the action on the screen. You can't really see that visual effect in today's smoke free auditoriums.  |  IP: Logged Terry Lynn-Stevens Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1081 From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada Registered: Dec 2012 posted 12-22-2014 11:06 AM                     quote: Ron Curran I was delighted last week when a lady stayed till the very end of the show with her grandson. "He wanted to see the curtains close" she explained. There is hope for the future yet. I always liked curtains and grew up watching them open when the picture started. I think they are cool. But I wouldn't hold out any hope for them every returning, I think a large PLF screen with speakers all over the sides and roof is what people find impressive today.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 12-22-2014 11:17 AM                     News flash, Terry. It's not an either-or proposition. A theater can install surround speakers all over the walls and ceilings and still install a screen equipped with movable masking and curtains. For example, yesterday I watched the latest Hobbit movie in a theater equipped with Dolby Atmos as well as curtains, masking and a huge common height screen (Harkins Cine Carpi theater in downtown Oklahoma City). Warren Theaters has two new 4K laser projection equipped houses in their new Broken Arrow Warren theater in Broken Arrow, OK. Those big screens have curtains as well as Dolby Atmos. Dolby Atmos doesn't deserve any blame at all for theaters installing screens without curtains or masking. IMAX has been pulling that nonsense with its digital projection theaters for years, despite being stuck with mere 5.1 audio. They're only now getting around to improving on that. But there's still no sign they'll add curtains.  |  IP: Logged Steve Moore Expert Film Handler Posts: 211 From: Leeds, West Yorks, UK Registered: Apr 2008 posted 12-22-2014 11:42 AM                     Our customers like our tab (curtains) here in Leeds. It's good when changing from w/s/flat/1.85 etc to scope to close the curtains and then open out to the wider picture for impact -if you are lucky enough to have common height. As for the smoke, I remember when I first started projectioning back in 1988 my trainer telling me to close the curtains at the end of the night but to open the masking out fully as the smoke lingered behind it, so that it was not trapped behind the screen. That is one of the things that fascinated the first time I saw a film (Bambi) was the beam of light through the smoke and the curtains opening out - I spent most of the show looking at the window wondering what was happening back here and also at the ornate illuminated Odeon clock on the rear wall (that cinema is long gone now)  |  IP: Logged Terry Lynn-Stevens Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1081 From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada Registered: Dec 2012 posted 12-22-2014 11:46 AM                     quote: Steve Moore It's good when changing from w/s/flat/1.85 etc to scope to close the curtains and then open out to the wider picture for impact -if you are lucky enough to have common height. Nice showmanship!!!  |  IP: Logged Alan Plester Expert Film Handler Posts: 209 From: great yarmouth england Registered: Apr 2001 posted 12-22-2014 01:15 PM                     YES YES YES the magic definitely isn't there, when a lens change takes place, and everyone sees the masking go out, to my mind its horrible, and I cringe every time it happens when I go to the flicks. We have a 4screener where I live, and only one screen has tabs, I relive the magic of yesteryear, showmanship was lost when they took tabs away, we had one in Banbury with festoons, they took my breath away when I was a child, that's what started a 20yr love  |  IP: Logged Mark Hajducki Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 500 From: Edinburgh, UK Registered: May 2003 posted 12-22-2014 02:01 PM                     Have many cinemas been built with curtains in the recent years? quote: Steve Moore close the curtains at the end of the night but to open the masking out fully as the smoke lingered behind it, so that it was not trapped behind the screen. I remember being told to do the same (long after smoking in cinemas had stopped). I think the theory was that the overnight dirt would collect evenly on the screen, rather than have a cleaner section behind the masking.  |  IP: Logged Buck Wilson Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 894 From: St. Joseph MO, USA Registered: Sep 2010 posted 12-22-2014 02:33 PM                     Who WOULDN'T like curtains!?  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-22-2014 02:49 PM                        As most longtime readers know, my theater used to have curtains until they basically wore out and wouldn't work anymore. They were electric of course but were manually operated by the projectionist, due to not being able to work with automation cues. Since we took down the curtains we've had a set of spotlights aimed at the screen at extreme angles from the bottom corners, so it makes streaks of colorful light across the screen which fade out as the show starts. At Christmastime we add an additional set of lights in the middle. It's not a curtain but it's the next best thing, I guess. The good news is, I've been saving my nickels and dimes and hope to put in a set of curtains in the next year or two. It's been on my wish list for... well ever since the old ones stopped working. It's going to be somewhat of a challenge because the screen goes to within a foot of the walls. One question -- since we run ads, what's the proper thing to do? Close the curtains for a minute or so at the end of the ads and then open them again on the beginning of the actual program? (That's what we do with our "curtain lights" now.) Or would it be better to run the trailers first right after the ads and then do the close/open as the feature begins?  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 12-22-2014 03:13 PM                     Mike, use curved track and have the curtains bunch up on the side walls.  |  IP: Logged

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