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Great stuff Mark, thanks!
We had a D-150 theatre out in Syosset NY, and remarkably, they kept that operational long after most every single screen cinema was either tortured into a multiplex, where instead of one screen in an architectural with character, style and class...well-designed and integrated for optimal presentation with enhanced showmanship capabilities, the result were single screens hacked into multiplexes with 2, 4, 10 (and counting) screens...or they simple closed. Even new builds, while not as horrendous as the militated single screens, even the modern multiplexe scream, we are all about CONCESSIONS, with their elaborate gleaming chrome and glass concessions with large, eye-catching video displays, while the actual screening rooms are cookie-cutter, utilitarian, boring spaces, one indistinguishable from the other and each devoid of any of the accutramonts that enhance showmanship -- soulless rooms without character. But there still sat the UA-150 in Syosset. Many times I would get the entire crew together after one of our shows in BRooklyn and we'd drive the long, hour and 45 minutes out on the Long Island Distress Way just to see a movie in that single screen, Dimension 150 theatre. Seeing the trend of stomping out single screens like bugs, I was very concerned that UA would close that theatre, so I asked the Projectionist how is it that the place wasn't already chopped up. He said it was because the UA headquarters was out there on Long Island and when they wanted to do corporate or private screenings, basically showing off their creme-de-la-creme operation, of course they would use the UA-150 instead of any of their other multiplex sites which weren't NEARLY as impressive.
Even when they ran straight 35mm, that curved screen -- not too severe but wonderfully not flat -- added a feel of enhanced panorama. The Projectionist there showed me around the booth and the D-150 corrective lens that was able to keep the horizon lines from bowing by screen curve. Anyone know if they also use that for all presentation, 35mm included so as to compensated for the screen's geometric distortion?
I even prefer the fairly anemic CinemaScope curve as opposed to a flat screen. I was so committed to the "feel" created by a curved screen, that when I installed the system in our single screen in the Whitman Theatre (2500 seat), there was no way to be able to install a curved frame since the screen needed to fly and that only afforded it a single fly pipe with no more than one foot/six inches between its neighbors. What I did was, I created what I call a "perspective curve." This is accomplished by ever-so-slightly, arcing the top and bottom masks, i.e., curving the top mask (on an arc) so it dips doward in the center and curving the bottom mask (on an arc) so it raises slightly in the center as well -- voilà -- the illusion of a curved screen when seen in a darkened theatre with the movie running. Amazingly, the masks need only be slightly arced but the effect is very pronounced, The illusion is only broken if there are house lights up and the curtain is open, but we NEVER let the audience see a naked screen. I read long ago in a manual in the office at the State Theatre in Austin TX (an Interstate Theatre chain house) -- it said (paraphrasing) "The audience must never walk into the theatre and view a naked screen with the curtains opened; this is the mortal sin of presentation!"
Oh, how sinful this industry has become.
We had a D-150 theatre out in Syosset NY, and remarkably, they kept that operational long after most every single screen cinema was either tortured into a multiplex, where instead of one screen in an architectural with character, style and class...well-designed and integrated for optimal presentation with enhanced showmanship capabilities, the result were single screens hacked into multiplexes with 2, 4, 10 (and counting) screens...or they simple closed. Even new builds, while not as horrendous as the militated single screens, even the modern multiplexe scream, we are all about CONCESSIONS, with their elaborate gleaming chrome and glass concessions with large, eye-catching video displays, while the actual screening rooms are cookie-cutter, utilitarian, boring spaces, one indistinguishable from the other and each devoid of any of the accutramonts that enhance showmanship -- soulless rooms without character. But there still sat the UA-150 in Syosset. Many times I would get the entire crew together after one of our shows in BRooklyn and we'd drive the long, hour and 45 minutes out on the Long Island Distress Way just to see a movie in that single screen, Dimension 150 theatre. Seeing the trend of stomping out single screens like bugs, I was very concerned that UA would close that theatre, so I asked the Projectionist how is it that the place wasn't already chopped up. He said it was because the UA headquarters was out there on Long Island and when they wanted to do corporate or private screenings, basically showing off their creme-de-la-creme operation, of course they would use the UA-150 instead of any of their other multiplex sites which weren't NEARLY as impressive.
Even when they ran straight 35mm, that curved screen -- not too severe but wonderfully not flat -- added a feel of enhanced panorama. The Projectionist there showed me around the booth and the D-150 corrective lens that was able to keep the horizon lines from bowing by screen curve. Anyone know if they also use that for all presentation, 35mm included so as to compensated for the screen's geometric distortion?
I even prefer the fairly anemic CinemaScope curve as opposed to a flat screen. I was so committed to the "feel" created by a curved screen, that when I installed the system in our single screen in the Whitman Theatre (2500 seat), there was no way to be able to install a curved frame since the screen needed to fly and that only afforded it a single fly pipe with no more than one foot/six inches between its neighbors. What I did was, I created what I call a "perspective curve." This is accomplished by ever-so-slightly, arcing the top and bottom masks, i.e., curving the top mask (on an arc) so it dips doward in the center and curving the bottom mask (on an arc) so it raises slightly in the center as well -- voilà -- the illusion of a curved screen when seen in a darkened theatre with the movie running. Amazingly, the masks need only be slightly arced but the effect is very pronounced, The illusion is only broken if there are house lights up and the curtain is open, but we NEVER let the audience see a naked screen. I read long ago in a manual in the office at the State Theatre in Austin TX (an Interstate Theatre chain house) -- it said (paraphrasing) "The audience must never walk into the theatre and view a naked screen with the curtains opened; this is the mortal sin of presentation!"
Oh, how sinful this industry has become.
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