I guess Cinerama had to continue on some how...

[Frank Angel]

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.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yes, have heard of that theater. If I'm not mistaken, it may have been the first D-150 theater built. I have A D-150 Super Curvalon projection lens kicking around here somewhere. The thing weighs a ton, over 20 pounds...

[Frank Angel]

Exactly -- VERY heavy. The projectionist had a bungee cord rigged from the ceiling that hooked on to the top of that Curvalon lens. There was a bungee for each machine.

He told me originally the D-150 contract required that all the other formats have to be projected smaller than an actual D-150 title (how many were there, like 3 or 4 actual D150s?) but that required an elaborate masking system that moved all four -- the normal sides but also top and bottom. Once D150 films stopped being produced, he said they just got different lenses and showed all films filling the screen top to bottom. He said the complex masking system was frequently plagued with issues and it was less touchy when it only needed to move the sides. I never saw any of the D150 titles in the process; I would have loved to see PATTON there. I imagine it was very impressive seeing the 4-way masking opening from a regular 1.85 flat 35mm short or preview to the full screen size for the D150 feature.

[Ed Gordon]

Below is a video done by a retired projectionist who built a curved screen for his home cinema:

The video is from his Youtube channel, "Dave's Digital Movies" at: https://www.youtube.com/@davesdigitalmovies

About
My videos' cover several subjects, many were made through the lockdown. The original idea was to make my 'MEMORIES OF A CINEMA PROJECTIONIST' available for all. I have edited it down to short excerpts, The videos of my home cinema attract quite a bit of attention. I try to give tips based on my 40 years experience as a cinema projectionist. I have just set up a Dave's Digital Movies facebook page.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Exactly -- VERY heavy. The projectionist had a bungee cord rigged from the ceiling that hooked on to the top of that Curvalon lens. There was a bungee for each machine.

He told me originally the D-150 contract required that all the other formats have to be projected smaller than an actual D-150 title (how many were there, like 3 or 4 actual D150s?) but that required an elaborate masking system that moved all four -- the normal sides but also top and bottom. Once D150 films stopped being produced, he said they just got different lenses and showed all films filling the screen top to bottom. He said the complex masking system was frequently plagued with issues and it was less touchy when it only needed to move the sides. I never saw any of the D150 titles in the process; I would have loved to see PATTON there. I imagine it was very impressive seeing the 4-way masking opening from a regular 1.85 flat 35mm short or preview to the full screen size for the D150 feature.

The Bible, and Patton.were it. D-150 came out during the slow time of 70mm releases. The one in Oakbrook opened with Oliver, then it ran Song Of Norway, and a couple of other 70mm shows. Patton ran at The Palace Theater in down town.Chicago. That theater had been de-Cinerama'd, and a pair of DP-70's installed with a flat sheet. Nothing after that till Apocylapse Now played at Oakbrook D150 in 70mm. By the time that rolled around, U.A. had twinned the theater kept the DP-70's, but moved them over to the larger side. Apocylipse was the very first Dolby show I ever went to... The theater was torn down in the mid 80's, and an AT&T parking garage sits on the site today

[Terry Monohan]

Thanks Mark for the nice photos. The UA D-150 jacket and masking control box booth photo is classic. Did you ever see the1960 Mike Todd Jr 70mm Smell-O-Vision movie 'Scent Of Mystery' It failed and was a stinker. One of your photos from the Cinestage Theatre shows the odor control machine set up backstage. The owners or the film tried to re release this bad movie under many different titles like 'Holiday In Spain' in 70mm roadshow without the aromas.

Even that failed, then to keep some of the Cinerama Theatres going when they were starting to run out of 3 projector movies they took the 70mm print of 'Scent Of Mystery' and cut It into 3 sections and released in 3 projector Cinerama under 'Holiday In Spain' I have been told It looked so bad with the crease lines . They have since cleaned it up and released in the curve Blu Ray Smilebox system and you can't see the lines much anymore.

Maybe they need to do what John Waters did in 1981 with Odor Rama in 'Polyester' and re create the Smell-O-Vision effect with some sort of a scratch & sniff aroma card with the Blu Ray version? Someone must still have the scents that were used or a control sheet on the release into the theatre of the smells thru a air blowing system.

A friend of mine saw the original version of 'Scent Of Mystery' in Smell-O-Vision and said the odor smell was pretty good . The timing had to be correct for the release into the cinema or It would miss the cue spot.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Thanks Mark for the nice photos. The UA D-150 jacket and masking control box booth photo is classic. Did you ever see the1960 Mike Todd Jr 70mm Smell-O-Vision movie 'Scent Of Mystery' It failed and was a stinker. One of your photos from the Cinestage Theatre shows the odor control machine set up backstage. The owners or the film tried to re release this bad movie under many different titles like 'Holiday In Spain' in 70mm roadshow without the aromas.

Even that failed, then to keep some of the Cinerama Theatres going when they were starting to run out of 3 projector movies they took the 70mm print of 'Scent Of Mystery' and cut It into 3 sections and released in 3 projector Cinerama under 'Holiday In Spain' I have been told It looked so bad with the crease lines . They have since cleaned it up and released in the curve Blu Ray Smilebox system and you can't see the lines much anymore.

Maybe they need to do what John Waters did in 1981 with Odor Rama in 'Polyester' and re create the Smell-O-Vision effect with some sort of a scratch & sniff aroma card with the Blu Ray version? Someone must still have the scents that were used or a control sheet on the release into the theatre of the smells thru a air blowing system.

A friend of mine saw the original version of 'Scent Of Mystery' in Smell-O-Vision and said the odor smell was pretty good . The timing had to be correct for the release into the cinema or It would miss the cue spot.

Terry, no... never saw it in Smell-O-Vision... I was just 5 years old in.1960. The other image of the outside shows some circus people putting on a show before the start of "Scent". Perhaps Todd Jr wanted to try to give the attendies something more so they wouldn't feel cheated. The only thing left at Cinestage was the scent machine which was in the basement, in it's own room next to the air handler. The vials of odor were still in.place. There were also the usual cat sized rats, so didn't stay down there very long. Am aware of Holiday In Spain, and a friend actually had a beet red 70mm print of it that we ran in my basement screening room. It was extremely boring but the mag tracks still sounded great! Oh, and the original Todd-AO cement splicer was still on the rewind bench in the booth, so a friend that was with grabbed that. Far as I know Todd Jr never produced another film after that...

[Vern Dias]

Speaking of curved screens, I guess it wouldn't hurt to mention that I have a 52"x144" curved 2.75:1 screen with a 10" curve depth in my HT.


PXL_20231020_151412465.jpg
JVC RS3100 projector with an ISCO Cinema DLP 1.5X anamorphic lens.

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Very Immersive, sitting about 8.5' from that 144" wide screen.

[Frank Angel]

Ed, you're a man after my own heart -- GREAT video! How great to be able to get that awesome curve screen look and feel.

More than once over the years,my colleagues question me about my slightly obsessive preference for using a curve screen rather than a flat one, and I give exactly your demonstration but on a flat screen and with a string instead of a measuring tape. Doing it with flat screen is even a bit more dramatic because as you get to either end, the string is no longer touching the screen. So the question is, assuming a projection lens focal point is equidistant across the entire screen, then it follows that if the sides of the screen are farther away from the projector than the center. Therefore, when you rack the lens so that the image is perfectly in focus at the center of a flat screen, it follows theoretically, that the sides would be slightly out of focus, but not so on the curved screen where the lens-to-screen distance remains constant across it's entire width. But it is not; It seems we easily achieve fairly consistent focus end-to-end across a flat screen. How can this be, and if that were NOT the case, I would have pulled out my hair long before it fell out on its own.

One of my friends who works with lenses theorized (and admitted he was only theorizing, not stating a fact), that projection lenses may have a given depth-of-field that allows where "perfect" focus, at least as good as the eye can detect, actually occurs, not a one single point, but within a range of point in front of and behind the screen. One of the A/V techs then suggested that lenses may be purposely designed to correct for the unequal throw distance that a flat screen presents. I say that is highly unlikely since then Isco and Schneider et al would need to offer a different type of lens for flat or curves screens, not to mention that the distance discrepancy between the screen center and the screen edge of a flat screen will vary based on the throw distance itself.

If anyone from Isco or Schneider or an optics designer has an answer to this conundrum, jump right in.


My friends have asked me why I am so enamored of the curved screen; I think it is because aesthetically I find it more pleasing – it just feels more panoramic and I do understand that is totally subjective, possibly even learned. And to that, it probably is because I was probably around 10 when my first introduction to wide screen was when I first saw THIS IS CINERAMA. As a kid who had only seen Academy ratio films until then at Saturday Kids shows, I was simply memorized to see that curtain open and open and open, seemingly endlessly. I remember nothing else about that experience – where I saw it, who took me...nothing – just that curtain opening and that massive curved screen.

Next came CinemaScope and it was the same thing...incredibly wide vista in front of a very impressionable kid's eyes. In fact, I was very intrigued with what was happening with the installation of CinemaScope in Century Theatre chain's Fresh Meadows Theatre, our more high-end/first run theatre which I passed almost daily on my bike, each time stopping and trying to get a peek thru a side door the workers had propped open. I knew it had to be something special because most theatres in the neighborhood were closed for a week to do the CinemaScope installation. At a time when movie theatres were the major entertainment venue, closing them would for a week would be akin today to streaming services shutting down.

I was able to see them working on the screen frame, although I had no idea what it actually was. And just a bit later to sit in the audience to see THE ROBE curtain open wider and wider as THE ROBE credits played, I was hooked. Funny thing, tho about that -- I also had seen THE HOUSE OF WAX at the very same theatre only a short time before and as many on this forum will tell you, I am an unapologetic and admittedly fanatical fan of all things 3D, and that love more than likely started as I sat there watching in total rapture, seeing and feeling the space between objects in the image on the 3D screen (dual projection/polarized 3D). But here's the thing, Fox in all its ads and 1-sheets used the tag-line, The Miracle You See Without Glasses, clever marketing ploy trying to capitalize on the fact that while audiences (some) seemed to enjoy 3D films, they definitely were very negative about having to wear glasses to experience it. Even as a kid, the ads were implying that CInemaScope was going to give the same depth perception as the other 3D films I had seen, i.e., binocular vision but without glasses. This was purposely deceptive and patently untrue; wow, what a disappointment for a kid.

So sitting watching the opening of THE ROBE and seeing those curtains open and open and the wide on the wide curved (somewhat) screen, yes I was impressed, but immediately realized that we had been duped. I kept tugging on my dad's jacket saying, "But daddy, it's not 3D, which little Frankie fully expected it to be. After about the third time of my complaining to him, he about had enough and told me to shut up and watch the movie. No matter, those first childhood experiences certainly made a serious impact on that impressionable young boy.
And that's why I love the curved screen and 3D movies. At my age now, it has it becomes quite clear, all we have been doing, is trying to recapture the wonder of our youth.

[Frank Angel]

Vern -- SWEET!

[Terry Monohan]

Mark** thanks again for the Smell-O-Vision stories. Did you know that UA Theatres was very picky on the D-150 lens. You had to rent It from them if you wanted to show a regular 70mm film print and use the full D-150 masking set up. In the SF Bay Area we were lucky to have 3 or 4 D-150 deep curved screens and a few were not put in UA house's.

The Blumenfeld Northgate Theatre in Marin County had a nice D-150 set up and old man Syufy/Century had a .D-150 screen in the now torn down Dome Theatre in Pleasant Hill CA.

As a high school kid I sent a letter to the D-150 UA Corp in LA about buying the whole D-150 set up. D-150 had a local supply place in San Francisco on Golden Gate Ave. I guess they thought I was a movie theatre owner and they sent me a very nice ad cut out press kit with photos and literature. . I still have kept the cover letter and the D-150 install kit. My parents got mad at me ordering all these movie theatre information brochures. One of my first magazines I sent away for was BoxOffice Magazine It arrived every week and featured the 'Modern Theatre' section once a month. I still have many of these 1950/60 issues. They had a cut out post card you could send in for more information. I got a ton of things in the mail when I put 'Terry Theatres' in place of my name. My family thought I was crazy and they were worried movie theatre sales people would be ringing our doorbell. I should have gotten a PO Box.

This got me a early start in the movie business while still in high school with a job taking tickets/loge boy and working for Fox West Coast Theatres in Oakland CA first at the Fox Oakland Theatre then when It stopped showing movies went up the street to the Paramount Theatre. Both of these large deco old movie palaces in downtown Oakland are still open today renovated and doing live stage events.

Maybe someday I will be lucky and find on E Bay a D-150 Curvulon lens along with the hard to find D-150 masking control adjustment box and D-150 jacket vest.

[Vern Dias]

Vern -- SWEET!

While I am not an optical engineer, I can tell you that I have perfect focus corner to corner on my screen viewed from my primary seating location. Actually, the main issue with cylindrical horizontal expansion anamorphic lenses when used at short throws is pincushion distortion.

To solve this issue, I actually installed the PG / Lens first, then projected a test pattern and measured how far out the sides of the screen needed to be, compared to the center to correct for the pincushion caused by the lens. That's where the 10" depth of curve came from.

The result is less that 1/8" image spill over on the entire periphery of the screen, and the impression that the screen is floating in space.

[Ed Gordon]

Speaking of curved screens, I guess it wouldn't hurt to mention that I have a 52"x144" curved 2.75:1 screen with a 10" curve depth in my HT....Very Immersive, sitting about 8.5' from that 144" wide screen.

That is an impressive screen Vern! Did you build that yourself?

Here is the ultimate small Cinerama setup. It is actually a screening room that was used during the restoration of Brothers Grimm. The clip is part of the extras from the restoration Bluray.

[Vern Dias]

That is an impressive screen Vern! Did you build that yourself?

Here is the ultimate small Cinerama setup. It is actually a screening room that was used during the restoration of Brothers Grimm. The clip is part of the extras from the restoration Bluray.

Yes, I did. Screen material is drapery blackout fabric, it's vinyl on one side with a fabric backing and a great 1.0 gain screen surface. Frame was constructed from 1x3 and 1x2 poplar, with the drapery fabric wrapped around it. Here's a photo showing the basics:

PXL_20201123_211654734.NIGHT.jpg

[Ed Gordon]

...My friends have asked me why I am so enamored of the curved screen; I think it is because aesthetically I find it more pleasing – it just feels more panoramic and I do understand that is totally subjective, possibly even learned. And to that, it probably is because I was probably around 10 when my first introduction to wide screen was when I first saw THIS IS CINERAMA. As a kid who had only seen Academy ratio films until then at Saturday Kids shows, I was simply memorized to see that curtain open and open and open, seemingly endlessly. I remember nothing else about that experience – where I saw it, who took me...nothing – just that curtain opening and that massive curved screen.

Frank, my first curved screen experience was seeing the Windjammer when I was a kid. The Paramount theater in Seattle had a temporary installation for the run of the film. This was around 1958. The Martin Cinerama was not opened until 1963. I recall being impressed with the screen size, but the movie was a boring.

I was more impressed with the Cinemscope/Mag track presentation of Journey to the Center of the Earth at the palatial 5th Avenue theater. The wide screen and multi-channel sound were impressiive, but the main draw was of course the dinasaurs.

The memory of that impressed me so much that when I built my home cinema years later I had to include this intro for home screenings:

... At my age now, it has it becomes quite clear, all we have been doing, is trying to recapture the wonder of our youth.

How true that is!